For the first time in, like, forever, The Dapper One has issued a trading update that is less than rosy. Quite substantially less than rosy, in fact, unless your roses grow in hues of lead and soot. Sales volumes have gone flat across the Group – food, non-food, Australia, the works. Previously, non-food had held up surprisingly well given the investment Woolies and others had made in keeping food prices low. This effect seems now to have run its course, with growth in Clothing and GM of just 2% against space growth of 2.9% and internal inflation of 7%.  Food sales were up 9.1%, but trading space increased 8.3%, and inflation was 9.2%: flat, flat, flat. In Australia, growth in retail space at David Jones outstripped sales growth at 2.2%, while sales at Country Road declined -2.8%.

Comment: Given what ails us – zero economic growth, zero job creation and negligible salary increases just to kick off – this inevitable tightening at Woolies should come as no surprise.

Comment: Even so diversified a business as Massmart has been unable to escape the worst effects of this thing which must not be called a recession.

Clicks is 37 outlets the richer on the news that the Competition Commission has given the nod for Netcare to outsources its retail pharmacy operations to the Clickety one, on the understanding that no jobs will be lost in the transaction. Welcome news, even as rival Dis-Chem lists its shares at last, although not for purchase by you or I: they are being offered only to “selected institutional investors” in South Africa, “qualified institutional buyers” in the United States and “selected institutions” in other territories. Actual punters will be able to buy shares, likely at a heavy premium, only on the morning of listing. But the big news is that they have identified 100+ opportunities for new stores, with 8 more to be opened this FY and 18 in the next.

Comment: Clicks has managed to keep itself out of the land grab for retail space thus far, opening stores at a tidy clip without much competition. Those days are over.

Another trading update, another … what? Really? Apparently so: SPAR have announced that they expect headline earnings per share for the 12 months through September to come in 20 to 25% higher than for the same period last year, bucking this week’s trend of grey-faced CEOs delivering the bad news to sharp-eyed analysts ahead of the results presentation.

Comment: Nice one.

Yet another grim trading update, this time from Nampak, who warn of foreign exchange losses in Nigeria and Angola of R670million to R700million, asset impairments of R355million to R370million, and a seven-headed beast rising out of the Indian Ocean off Uvongo. And the Nigeria and Angola losses might not be a once-off event: Nampak has R2billion tied up in assets in those troubled geographies, so an easy exit is not in the offing. On the upside, the business expects to deliver a trading profit of between 2% and 7% for the year, driven by a turnaround in the glass business, brisk sales elsewhere in Africa, an uptick in volumes from new customers, and operational efficiencies. The sale of one of its SA properties for R1.7billion didn’t hurt either.

Comment: A great business with solid fundamentals; dicey macroeconomic conditions. A familiar story anywhere you look these days.

Another attempt on our part to dip our toes into the turbid waters of the Sovereign Foods/Country Bird Holdings merger and wiggle them around a bit to try to understand just what in the name of heck is going on. So last week, the Takeover Regulation Panel ruled that the offer by Country Bird Holdings (CBH) for Sovereign Foods had lapsed, sparking a precipitous though not fatal drop in the Sovereign share price. It appears that some kindly soul had appeared at the last minute to mop up the spilt shares, though who and to what end is unclear. The ruling means that CBH will not be able to acquire the shares of 200-something investors who had agreed to sell, and that they won’t be able to make another offer until September next year. In the meantime, Sovereign is stuck with a hostile CBH owning 34.1% of its stock.

Comment: Right, now at least we’ve figured out that it was Country Bird that was trying to buy Sovereign, and not the other way around. Believe us, that’s progress.

Spending some of his freshly-accumulated moral capital this week is Pravin Gordhan, who is calling for nothing less than a revolution in South Africa’s business culture, with a view to achieving more ethical outcomes rather than continuing on the mindless rush to maximum profitability. He’s also concerned with the deals being struck between people on government and the corporate sector, and who ultimately benefits from these. And with the very structure of the economy itself, which he describes as oligopolistic, with too few massive businesses dominating. On the upside he says, we have much to pride ourselves on – like the bullets we have thus far dodged from the ratings agencies. But the economy needs to be more inclusive, more focused on the creation of jobs, and for this business needs to be on board. "The key is to create a unity of purpose, gathering all our resources to generate different kinds of activity," he says.

Comment: South Africa has pulled this off before, achieving a peaceful transition from a stale and destructive political model to something uniquely and creatively our own. The transition to a new South African economy should be just as exciting and inspiring. Let’s do this.

$17.7billion. Roll that one around on your tongue for a bit. Not bad for a day’s work eh. But online retailer Alibaba’s chair Jack Ma believes that despite the apparently stellar success of Alibaba’s ‘Single’s Day’ Event, things are about to get harder, not easier for exclusively online businesses, and that last year’s Singles Day growth of 60% will not be seen again in a hurry. As online shopping becomes the new normal, competition will tighten, and with it growth.