Alarming news from the Dapper One, which announced this week that it expected half-year profits to decline by up to 17.5%, driven thither by our shaky economy and ongoing political uncertainty, and by competition from new entrants H&M and Amazon down under. Woolies also let it be known that sales had grown just +2.5% for the period through December. Breaking this down, on the home front and relevant to our grocery retail readers, SA food sales remained the strongest performer, up +9.4%, while beauty and home declined -0.2%. Food retail space grew +6.8% year-on-year. In other, more positive Woolies news, the business has received kudos from researchers from Stanford for its ‘Farming for the Future’ initiative, by which farmers supplying Woolies are audited on various criteria, including soil management‚ water use‚ biodiversity‚ waste disposal‚ pest management‚ carbon footprint and environmental laws.

Comment: If we may be so bold: Woolies’ food offering is world-beating, and this is reflected in these otherwise worrying interims. Their clothing programme, conversely, is patchy, and appears right now to be something of a drag on the business.

Every year, we at Trade Intelligence publish our annual Retail Trends report, and 2018 is no exception. So what is barreling down the rails towards your business this year? On the surface of it, not much has changed: retailers are still locked in a bitter price war, convenience is on the rise, the in-store experience remains a drawcard, time is a luxury which shoppers are seeking to maximise by going online, heathy living is a priority across demographics, ethical and sustainable consumerism are on the rise, meeting the needs of the community is a retailer imperative, and good governance is receiving renewed attention in the wake of the Steinhoff debacle. What has changed, however, are the intensity of the socio-economic drivers of these trends, and the rate of change as enabling technologies come of age and are widely adopted. For greater detail on these trends, BizCommunity Retail have published Ti CEO and Lead Analyst Maryla Masojada’s report here. Or if you’re interested in booking our indispensable trends presentation for your business, click here.

Well, well, looky here. Clover has announced new appointments to their board, including none other than former Shoprite chief executive Whitey Basson. He is to be joined by Flemming Morgan from the Groupe Danone, both taking their seats as independent non-executive directors effective 1 Jan. Clover are understandably just brimming with excitement right now. “The balance of Basson’s 45 years African retail experience combined with Morgan’s experience at some of the world’s best known fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies will significantly strengthen the Clover board” says Clover chairman, Werner Büchner. Frantz Scheepers is the other newbie to Clover, being appointed as CFO, although newbie to the business he is not. He was Ernst & Young’s lead audit partner on the Clover audit from 2007 to 2013 and part of the audit team during the Clover’s listing in 2010.

Comment: Talk about moving and shaking, Clover. You can’t go far wrong with a board like that, now can you?

Aspen CEO Stephen Saad has called for an inquiry into market manipulation after speculation that Aspen was the next South African company on which Viceroy Research was preparing a report. And when Viceroy say they are preparing a report, they generally crack their knuckles at the same time. This was the outfit, you will recall, that wrote the report (crack!) that in part caused the Steinhoff house of cards to teeter on its infirm foundations. Aspen, like Steinhoff, is a South African business with many global acquisitions – although these have been funded mainly by cash rather than share options, says Saad. Aspen has also kept its debt in check. And while there have been international investigations into its drug pricing, these have nothing to do with the underlying health of the business. Unfortunately for Aspen however, rational arguments do not always hold sway over shareholder sentiment – and the share price fell as much as 10% on Viceroy’s news.

Comment: Fair enough. But if Aspen hadn’t gotten greedy over drug pricing last year, attracting a pile of negative publicity, shareholders might not have got rattled in the first place.

News from the dark side this week is that British American Tobacco (BAT) is buying 100% of local vape outfit Twisp, which sells cumbersome devices to people who pace the pavements outside restaurants and workplaces looking existential. The aim, says BAT, is to grow the next generation products (NGP) category to offer consumers a choice of alternatives to smoking. The business already has a large footprint in this category elsewhere in the world and SA is the next frontier. In other BAT news, the US business has benefited handsomely from the incorrectly-named Trump tax windfall, with a reduction from 30% to somewhere in the high twenties. This could result in a lift in HEPS by as much as 6% this year.

Comment: An agile business in a challenging sector. Nice work, baccy boys (and indeed girls).

Heavy is the head that (almost) wears the crown. Cyril Ramaphosa is now a ‘factor’ as in “'Cyril factor' spurs talk of interest rate cuts in 2018”. Word in the street, however, is that the potentates at the Reserve Bank are unmoved by the prospects of a Ramapresidency, and are likely to keep the interest rate where it is until the rand shows continued resilience and inflation comes in at under the Bank’s projections. Over at the Union Buildings, in the meantime, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba is sanguine about the prospects of +2% growth, should certain unspecified decisions be made, and then bear fruit. The World Bank believes we’ll actually achieve something closer to +1.1%. Manufacturing is enjoying something of a recovery, however, with production up for the second consecutive month by +1.7% year-on-year in November. And finally, Business Confidence, buoyed by the sight of Cyril in a handsome pinstripe is up 1.3 index points in December to 96.4.

Comment: We need better growth to start to make an impact on our brutally high unemployment rate. But there is an early sense in that some of the other fundamentals are slowly swinging into place, which might eventually support this growth. Maybe.

Checkers has added three new variants to its popular range of Oh My Goodness! kiddies’ convenience meals, which was voted best in South Africa by the Sunday Times ‘Tried & Tested Food Awards’ last year. We won’t trouble you with the details here, but suffice it to say that the success of the range is further evidence, if more were needed, of the trend of “Time is a Luxury” identified above. The range’s wholesome formulation deeds into the “Living Healthy” trend, also identified above.

Coca-Cola Beverage SA have joined the quiet stampede of businesses withdrawing their custom from McKinsey, which has admitted it made an error of judgement working for Gupta-linked consultancy Trillian Capital without performing due diligence on the business first. Trillian is accused of having fleeced Eskom, which really should be the prerogative of South African businesses and households which themselves have been fleeced by the flailing parastatal.

So Carrefour is picking up Steinhoff’s 17% of online retailer Showroomprivé for a song – or if you’d prefer, exactly half of what Steinhoff paid in the first place. A study in the US has found that the entry of Lidl into the market has caused its competitors to drop prices on staples by as much as 55%. Over the pond, meanwhile, Asda has installed something called a Parcel Vending Tower, a 16ft tall structure where customers can collect their online orders from vendors like Asos, Missguided and Decathlon in less than a minute. The system had been previously tested by parent company Walmart in the US – next up Massmart?