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We gave you the lowdown on the Massmart interims in our update last week, but here they are again with added snap and pizzazz: sales up 8.7% to R42.3billion, with internal inflation at 5.8%. Taking it to the breakdown: Massdiscounters (Game, DionWired) up 7.6%, Masswarehouse (Makro) up 9.2%, Massbuild (Builders) up 5.8% and Masscash (Cambridge, CBW) up 10.3%. This growth, say the characteristically dissatisfied pundits, is more a result of store openings than like-store sales, in a sector which is almost universally feeling the hard, blunt edge of the economic downturn. Understanding this, punters have been tolerant, with the share price losing around 2% on the announcement of the results, but picking up another 3.1% shortly thereafter.

Comment: As solid a set of numbers as can be expected in this market.

Not all shareholders greeted the news of the Ackerman family’s proposed restructuring of the business with glad cries. Au contraire, smaller punters seemed to believe that the restructuring replaces an opaque and archaic arrangement (the pyramid-shaped Pikwik holding company) aimed at keeping the business in family hands with a disingenuous contrivance (B-shares, available to family only) aimed at exactly the same thing. Problem is, the larger institutional shareholders, who see value unlocked in shares once trading at a discount, are supportive of the move, so the howls of the smaller punters fell on deaf ears at the AGM earlier this week, with some 17% voting against the restructuring, and the Ackermen retained 52% of the Group’s voting rights. 

Comment: When the sun rose on Pick n Pay the morning after the AGM, it rose upon a Pick n Pay safely in family control. Thus it has ever been.

Retail shares eh. Not much going on there, are we right? What? Well then! Shoprite’s share price jumped more than it has in the last eight years on the news that The Big Red One increased turnover 14.4% to R130billions of rands for the 53 weeks through June. The big earner was retail beyond our borders, growing at 32.6%, with West Africa showing the most promise even as rumours surge that Shoprite may be about to exit Uganda, its last outpost on the other side of the continent. Back home, sales grew at an understandably more modest, yet still impressive 10.9%, despite the conditions, which have caused headaches across this great sector we call home. 

Comment: A typically bullish performance from the business, even in these tough times.

In 2014, you will recall, elite forces of the Competition Commission staged a pre-dawn raid on Unilever’s underground bunker on the KZN Riviera. There they uncovered evidence that The Big Blue had been colluding with a business rejoicing in the name Sime Darby Hudson Knight, whose founders never could agree upon who came with the idea in the first place. Anyway, what the Swat team discovered was that Unilever would focus on margarine for retail consumption while Sime etc. would focus on large industrial punters. For this, Sime have now been fined R35million, and have agreed to build a R135million packaging and warehousing facility to enable them to compete for retail customers, and to appoint a BEE company for some of its distribution.

Comment: Taking their cue no doubt from Solomon, there’s often something a little poetic about the Commission’s judgments.

It has been far, far too long since Anglovaal Industries graced these pages, and here we are with a brief and modest (and it must be said, vaguish) trading update. Group revenue, we are reliably informed, was up 8% from last year’s, with good sales in both the grocery and personal care categories. While input costs have increased, AVI countered this by a disciplined focus on costs, by rand hedging and by the judicious application of price increases. In the footwear business, however, volumes were constrained by price increases against the ravages of a weakened rand. Despite this, they confidently predict, they should see earnings per share increase by between 10% and 11%. Comment: So there you have it, such as it is. We look forward to greater detail in due course.

On Thursday, the next jobs report will be out, and nobody is expecting good news. Last quarter, you will recall, 355,000 jobs were lost, or to put it another way, 355,000 families lost their prime means of support. The unemployment rate rocketed up to 26.7% – meaning the talents and motivation of one out of every four South Africans of working age are squandered in frustration and sorrow. Last week, the Reserve Bank said that it expected no economic growth, which in a country of our massive material and human resources is a national scandal and a global embarrassment.

Comment: The party which prides itself (erroneously, we believe) on single-handedly liberating the country politically could perhaps look more seriously at freeing its people economically at last.

Chicken producer Astral Foods is considering cutting its production permanently if input prices continue to increase against a backdrop of depressed consumer spending and imports of cheap chicken from the US and elsewhere.

How are grocery retailers getting by in this tough socio-economic ambit? They’re selling more groceries, naturally, cutting down on luxury lines, beefing up their private label offerings, even absorbing higher costs from suppliers where they have to and generally falling back upon the defensive nature of food retail.