Trade Intelligence Logo

Those Clicks results then – turnover up 9.2% to R15.4bn, with internal inflation running at 0.5% for the year, and turnover from retail operations up 8.2%. UPD, viz. the non-retail side of the bizniz, increased turnover 11.1%, with price inflation averaging 0.1%. And operating profit was up a somewhat muted 7.9% overshooting the R1billion mark for the first time in the company’s history. Clicks itself grew turnover 9.2% also, cashing in on increased sales of small luxury items like beauty products and vitamins with like-store sales up 5.9%. They opened 20 stores for an impressive total of 420, and put another 23 pharmacies in, bringing the number to 306. And do they intend to stop there? Of course they do not. In the FY we are pleased to call 14 they intend spending R356millions on new stores, new pharmacies and store revamps. And as a welcome aside, by closing 14 Musica stores they lifted operating profit by 36.3%, leading the unflappable Mr Kneale to use the term “phenomenal” for the first time this decade.

Comment: Solid stuff, showing once again that getting your CEO in from the UK is potentially quite a good idea.

If you were wondering where your next R80 bottle of Seven Sisters Bukketraube was coming from, look no further than the Walmart in Dayton, Ohio. Seven Sisters, you will be interested to know, is produced by one of South Africa’s two black-owned family wine farms and has been launched in 58 Walmart stores in the US, with rollout expected across that great nation in due course. And while you’re there, pick up some of Lonrho’s Oceanfresh hake and an Econo-Heat’s energy efficient wall mounted heater, both locally sourced product lines which have made their way onto the listings in the US of A. In the north eastern states, The Big Feller has just done celebrating A Taste of South Africa, and it turns out our taste is kind of orangey: the week-long festival which kicked off in their Levittown Pennsylvania Supercentre was co-hosted by the Western Cape Citrus Producers Forum and let’s just say that apples and pears didn’t really get a look in.

Comment: Still, it’s a start, eh?

The Pick n Pay results, then: at the outset, Chairman Ackerman the younger has expressed intense disappointment with the results, which might go some way to explain the abrupt departure of Nick Badminton, and he promises no miracles in the next six months, but as tradition demands has found both good and bad in the mix. The good: Smartshopper – the biggest loyalty programme in SA with 5.8 million members and climbing, and early indications being that those shoppers are outperforming the others, shopping more frequently and averaging a basket 2.7 times the size of their peers. Then the bad – their words not ours: Space growth behind market – Out of stocks and teething problems in category buying – Costs associated with taking the Longmeadow DC in-house – Investment period in strategic transformation. All this, they say, in a soft market with declining consumer confidence. They are targeting 12% space growth in the next 18 months, however, and are seeing a steady improvement in the efficiencies of their DCs. Suppliers are reportedly feeling feisty as an embattled Pick n Pay takes some of its frustrations out on them.

Comment: Hard times, and no mistake. Too early to say make or break, but Mr Brasher will certainly be feeling the heat from Day 1.

Of course there’s no link at all, but growth in SABMiller’s beer volumes in rainy, recession-hit Europe outpaced analysts’ predictions by 3% for an impressive 9% total, while in the sunnier economies of Latin America and Africa they were up just 4% and 6% respectively, confounding those very same analysts but on the downside this time. In fact, both economic growth and consumer sentiment are currently offish in South America, where believe it or not is The Big Fellers’ major market for both sales and profitability, while in Africa a tax increase in Tanzania has apparently hit sales. Elsewhere in Africa, sales of SABMiller’s sorghum-based product Chibuku should help the old bottom line as they take it into 10 markets across the continent worth an estimated $3.7billion. In Aus, in the meantime, sales are down 13% because of a couple of lost business days and the termination of some licences, while in Asia generally they were up 5%.

Comment: So you lose business days and beer sales decline? How does that work?

Things aren’t looking too clever over at the world’s Largest Manufacturer of Food (L-MOF), where international sales for the last nine months rose only 6.1%, where the analysts had predicted 6.3%. This was due to a sharp and surprising decline in growth in the emerging markets of Asia, Oceania and Africa. One of the issues, they say, was the typhoon in the Philippines, where production was closed for a week. And if that isn’t enough, there were the demonstrations in Pakistan, the elections in Egypt and sanctions in Iran. And the recession in Europe has also played its part, as other businesses are finding. Danone, for example, reported the weakest dairy growth in more than three years, driven by the declining appetite of cash-strapped Southern Europeans for their premium yoghurt at breakfast.

Comment: Geopolitics and climate eh. Those cheeky little fellers can be a right hindrance to the shareholders sometimes.

As a meticulously impartial observer and recorder of what goes on in our industry and world, we continually resist the temptation to editorialise in these pages. Our rivals over at The Economist are not so scrupulous, however, and sometimes at a pinch we exercise the right of reply. So to The Economist which this week spoke direly about the prospects of our potentially great nation, we say: spot on, to a point. They identified the abysmal leadership of the ANC and the patronage of the party-appointee system as key factors in our sluggish economic growth and moral and social decline, and wring some pretty convincing hands about South Africa’s descent into one-party-statism. This as ratings agencies Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) downgraded South Africa’s sovereign debt rating, citing concern over mining strikes, underlying social tension and regulatory uncertainty. But in fairness, The Economist piece was pretty one-dimensional, overlooking major pockets of excellence in business and civil society which are keeping us afloat. In our own industry we look to leaders like Gareth Ackerman, who seldom fails to make a sober and measured pronouncement on the issue of the day, and Grant Pattison who engages robustly and productively with government while building a business that is both profitable and responsible. To those names could be added others like Peter Matlare in manufacturing, Mamphela Ramphele and Jonathan Jansen in education, Mark Shuttleworth in technology, Clem Sunter, Moeletsi Mbeki and Joel Netshitenze in thought leadership, Trevor Manuel and Pravin Gordhan in finance and millions of others who lead their businesses, their communities, their churches, their teams and their schools to a better place every day.

Comment: Comment: These South Africans are too big, strong and beautiful to allow the little, grubbing leaders of a single political party which has outlived its vision and its will to service, to drag us down the dusty route The Economist has smugly mapped.