There was a time, not so very long ago, that the arrival of the Pick n Pay results would be greeted with dread or with self-righteous derision by the analysts, depending on where they had been advising their clients to stash the old family silver. Those days are happily behind the Big Blue, which released another set of results this week that tell a story of steady recovery in challenging times. Turnover was up +5.3% to R81.6bn, with trading profit up +4.9% to R1.82bn and HEPS +7.1%, with a net total of 124 new stores excluding Zimbabwe. The business had a great fourth quarter, with South African stores growing turnover +8% for the period. Interestingly, sales ex-DC rose 8 percentage points to 68% of volumes, causing Mr Brasher to talk up the prospects of a new DC north of Joburg in the next 18 months. Punters rewarded Pick n Pay with a handsome +8.9% bump in the share price last Friday afternoon. In more strategic news: more smaller stores and more private label are coming our way. For more info, have a look at the Trade Intelligence 1-page summary here.

Comment: They fought them on the beaches and it’s now way past the end of the beginning, as Mr Churchill might have observed.

Continuing the theme of pleasing results from businesses headed by ex-pats, next up is Clicks, which released a by now customary set of crowd-pleasing interims last week. Let’s see, ah, yes: Turnover up +10% to R14.4bn, with retail health and beauty sales growing +14.3% and operating profit increasing +12.2% to R942m. Even more exciting, having set a target of 25-30 new stores for this financial, Mr Kneale has now upped the number to 40 and emphasised Clicks’ ambitious programme for growth, citing urbanisation as a driver. And where the big grocery retailers are struggling for retail space in existing malls, analysts point out that there are plenty without the cheerful blue signage and gleaming cosmetics aisles of your average Clicks. A challenge will be to grow turnover ahead of expenses with the rollout of new stores, something Mr Kneale believes the Group has well in hand. For more information, click on the Trade Intelligence 1-page summary here.

Comment: It’s too early to call David Kneale a legend of the industry. But the trajectory of Clicks on his watch has been legendary all right.

Look, if Shoprite couldn’t make a buck from it, they wouldn’t be doing it. So giveaways, with which we have at times expressed mild exaggeration, have become hard news now, and worth of inclusion above the fold as it were. So here goes: Checkers have launched the newest iteration of the “Little” campaign for the wee ones, and it’s not a Little Store, it’s a Little Garden, with 24 different seedlings to collect including eight veggies, eight flowers and eight herbs. Customers will be rewarded with one Little Garden seedling kit, containing a small biodegradable pot, a soil pod, seed paper and a pop-out name tag for every R150 spent in any Checkers or Checkers Hyper store across South Africa.

Comment: Stroke of genius, as always, this time with more of the feel-good factor than the nag equation. And why, after all, should the very young be spared all the frustration and heartbreak of growing your own veggies, eh?

IMPERIAL Holdings has moved fast to fill the leadership void left by the departure of Mark Lamberti, appointing FD Osman Arbee as CEO. Marius Swanepoel remains in the driver’s seat over at IMPERIAL Logistics, the division which has the greatest bearing on this great industry we call home. Lamberti, who rose to prominence when he steered the Massmart Group from a few Makro stores to Walmart’s acquisition of choice in Africa, stepped down last week after a court found that he had impaired accountant Adila Chowan’s dignity by referring to her as "an employment equity candidate". He has since urged business leaders in South Africa to redress the past “with sensitivity and humility”, and apologised to IMPERIAL staff for the difficulties they had gone through in this regard. Chowan has left the business and is studying law. The irony in this situation is that Lamberti had set and was meeting ambitious transformation targets in his brief tenure at the logistics and motor giant.

Comment: The message here is that words have power and need to be used with both wisdom and humanity.

This time last year, Pioneer was in a spot of bother, having taken a dodgy position on maize during 2016 – Pioneer bought maize to see the business through the drought, then the drought ended – with a deleterious effect on the bottom line. 12 months on, and things are looking better: according to a trading statement they released last week, sales volumes have risen despite a slight dip in revenue, and they’ve either maintained or grown the market share of some of their main brands. Turnover fell -2.8% to R9.9bn, said Pioneer, due mainly to deflation in soft commodities – maize, wheat products and rice – but total volumes rose +4.3%. All told, Pioneer expect HEPS, a measure of profitability, to climb between 22% and 32% in the six months through March 2018. The only blight on this otherwise modestly pleasing bit of news is that both volumes and profitability declined in their snacking business.

Comment: A good recovery from an unfortunate but entirely understandable decision.

Economists boldly predicted that retail sales for February would grow 3% year on year, down from January’s 3.3%. Anyone wish to hazard a wager how much they were out by this time? You, sir! No, we’re very much afraid we have the advantage this time: it was in fact 1.9 percentage points: Retail Trade Sales grew 4.9% for the month of February, with general dealers, textiles, clothing, footwear and leather all making positive contributions, and only paint, glass and hardware letting the side down. The only economist willing to put her head above the parapet this week pointed to inflation’s seven-year low, the interest rate cut, moderating household debt levels and the general buoyancy of the Age of Cyril as being factors in the uptick, before scurrying back down into the dugout. 

Comment: If only our sister hadn’t given up on her stained-glass panting we might have seen some good news in that sector also.

Massmart grew sales just +1% for the 2017 financial year, as documented in its recently released annual report, and according to the business, sales for the first 12 weeks of 2018 have also been soft, contracting on a like-store basis, with food and liquor outperforming the durable goods to which the Group has significant exposure.

In the UK, Waitrose have employed 100 staff in their stores to steer punters towards healthier eating options, but only if these punters ask for advice, in case you were worried about the total collapse of the Skittles business. And Amazon has just been named by GlobalData as the UK’s fifth-biggest retailer, following Tesco, Sainsbury’s, ASDA and Morrisons in that order. And speaking of Tesco’s, they’ve just reported a +28% increase in operating profit, three years on (already?) from the accounting scandal that was the worst crisis in its venerable history.

AVI’s interims, released this week for the six months through December, were not half bad all things considered, despite revenue rising only +2.3% and volume pressures in both Entyce and Snackworx. I&J benefited from price increases in the hard currencies in which it deals, and the fashion and cosmetics lines about which we have known to be disparaging really came through for the Group this period. Upshot is that operating profit grew +8.7%, which is what we in the industry call a result.