Pick n Pay’s interim results for the six months through August turned out very much to be a game of two halves, Naas. First quarter turnover came roaring in at +9%, while the second quarter, punctuated as it was by civil unrest and looting in key provinces, fell -0.7%. This resulted in turnover growth of +4.1% for the half, with some divisions doing better than others: clothing grew +26% while food and grocery sales were flat. Growth in the “Rest of Africa” which for Pick n Pay, like all retailers, is a shrinking proposition, was pleasing, at +12.9%. Trading profit for the Group romped home too, at a billion ront South African. Group darling Boxer – which alas does not release numbers – grew market share in key categories. Pick n Pay has said it will be growing Boxer’s footprint to over 500 stores in the next three years to tackle Shoprite in the growing lower end of the market. It also announced that it will be opening new Select stores to go after Woolies among the affluent.

Comment: More on those results in this excellent summary from Trade Intelligence.

Powerful stuff from Clicks for the 12 months through August, with Group turnover growing +10.2% to R37.3bn, and operating profit up +8.2% to R3.0bn. The Group opened 39 net new Clicks stores last year, for a total haul of 782 stores, of which 80% have a pharmacy. Health and beauty continued pleasing, growing sales +8.3% to R26.3bn, which Clicks attributed to competitive pricing and differentiated ranges. Pharmacy grew +10.2% – relatively modest in the face of fewer seasonal flu and cold infections (thanks COVID) and now accounts for 29.5% of retail turnover. And the ClubCard – South Africa’s first and most iconic retail loyalty programme – now has 9.2 million members. Finally, the distribution business grew +12.3% to R17.4bn, again justifying the strategic acquisition of UPD how many years ago now? “The Group’s strength in our core health and beauty markets coupled with our proven capability to adapt to changing market conditions, to trade through difficult times and maintain volume growth, positions us to sustain financial performance,” says CEO-in-waiting Bertina Engelbrecht.

Comment: Excellent work from a business that has scarcely made a misstep since we’ve been publishing. For more detail have a look at our results summary.

In your roundup this week: Shoprite has extended the services offered by its Money Market account, which previously only enabled customers to deposit funds to pay for utilities and buy groceries, but now allows punters to send money and make withdrawals. It’s available to anyone willing and able to present an ID or passport and a cell phone number. Even better, Xtra Savings Rewards members can link their accounts to Money Market and transact with their existing cards. Over at Massmart, Game despite some shaky years, is not ready to give up the ghost, and is revamping three of its stores ahead of the Black Friday charge, with wellness areas focusing on sports, fitness and lifestyle goals, and test tracks for bikes and prams. Finally, Dis-Chem is making another power move towards both diversification and vertical integration with the purchase of a R195m stake in Kaelo Holdings, an insurance outfit which offers both gap cover to pay for hospital bill shortfalls not covered by medical aids and other basic health insurance products for people without medical aids.

Comment: The big message this week is that just because you’re a retailer, it doesn’t mean you can’t offer sophisticated financial services. Or an in-store velodrome for that matter.

Every week, it seems, we report on the doings of online retailer/tech provider Ocado, and no wonder. The business has now announced that its proprietary robo-picking technology will soon be available for very small warehouses, opening the door for its use in convenience outlets and ‘dark stores’ which double as micro-fulfilment centres, which will proliferate in the UK and around the world in the next few years. Over in the US, Walmart shoppers can now pick up Bitcoin with their cheap jeans and bulk kitchen towels, via in-store Coinstar kiosks, lowering the barrier for entry into the crypto-currency markets. Staying with Walmart for a bit, the Big Feller is gaining ground on rival Amazon in e-commerce, with punters saying they like the unambiguous pricing and the ease of pickups and returns from Walmart stores. Finally, in France Carrefour is having a rough third quarter after the failed acquisition of rival Auchan, with sales growing under +1%, even in a more amenable post-COVID environment.

Comment: Ocado demonstrates that plucky and nimble outsiders can still disrupt an industry. Walmart proves that a lumbering behemoth can still change course to navigate the promising new waters. Lessons for all of us.

A quick breeze through the manufacturers who make up a big chunk of this great industry we call home. First up, Tiger Brands, which has just got the nod to register (if that’s what you do) a secondary listing on the exciting new A2X Markets Exchange, enabling its shareholders to capture the advantages of A2X’s lower cost structure, narrower spreads and added liquidity. This will not affect its issued share capital per its primary listing on the dear old Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE). Moving on, Quantum Foods has issued a trading update to the effect that HEPS are likely to fall by as much as -42% for the year through December, in the face of a bird flu outbreak, aggressive competition and rising input costs. And sticking with the poultry industry, all our local producers – Quantum included – are waiting in nervous anticipation for the government’s progress report on the Poultry Master Plan, which will provide clarity on a number of issues facing the industry, primary among them the fate of the anti-dumping legislation local producers want to protect them from the depredations of producers from India, Brazil and Spain, inter alia.

Comment: South African poultry has long been the sacrificial pigeon on the altar of international trade agreements. It’s a huge industry here, employing millions of South Africans, and feeding tens of million more. It deserves better from the Government.

The International Monetary Fund, in its wisdom, has revised our 2021 GDP growth outlook from +4% to +5%. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the global body, which promotes international financial stability and monetary cooperation and facilitates international trade, believes that we’ll only achieve around +2.2% in 2022 – for our region as a whole they predict +3.7%, against global growth of +5% and emerging market growth of over +6% – a discrepancy it attributes to the relatively slow rollout of vaccines in sub-Saharan Africa, and (the old bugbear) our inhospitable policy environment. The civil unrest of July did us no favours with the international development set either. Unrelated, we suppose, IMF head Kristalina Georgieva was recently implicated in a data-rigging scandal relating to the World Bank’s Doing Business Report – since discontinued – in which under her tenure at that institution staff were pressured to massage data in favour of powerful countries including China and Saudi Arabia.

Comment: We could always prove them wrong. Betting against the Beloved Country is not always the winning proposition it seems to be.