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After marching through the endless, uncertain desert of interims and trading updates, here’s the fresh green oasis of actual results from Pick n Pay for the year through February. Group turnover up +8.9%, with sales through South African supermarkets growing a more modest +4.3%, partially because of the disruption related to the Ekuseni restructuring currently underway. However, the stores converted to Pick n Pay QualiSaves have already achieved an uplift of more than +10% in sales growth post-conversion. The fact that there is growth at the lower-to-middle income end of the market is borne out by the results of Boxer Superstores, which grew sales a rambunctious +20.2%, with 60 new stores opening this FY. Clothing was also a crowd-pleaser, growing +15.3%. And online came positively screeching through at +72%. What’s the bottom line? Profit before tax declined -15.1% to R1.67bn in the face of a worsening energy crisis, with around half a billion going in diesel for the FY in question. The share price declined -9% as the reality of retailing under impossible conditions dawned on punters. For more on the numbers, have a look at our summary here.

Comment: Our retailers can hold their own among the best in the world, trading as they do under already difficult circumstances. How any of them will survive the present unscathed remains to be seen.

Massmart has not been without its travails these past couple of years. But one area where it has retained a laser-like focus has been e-commerce, until now under the direct stewardship of Senior Vice President of e-commerce, Sylvester John, seconded from Walmart. With the appointment of Thembani Biyam to the position of Vice President: Group E-Commerce for B2C platforms, the business is set to bed down its omnichannel presence for continued growth. Biyam comes to Massmart with a background rich with such appointments as Country Manager for OLX, and CEO of South Africa’s first food delivery app, Orderin. One area where Massmart enjoys an advantage over its traditional retail competitors is in general merchandise. “Massmart is the market leader in general merchandise,” he avers. “Pairing that with a strong omnichannel offering through our extensive store footprint is what will set us apart from our competitors.” His first priority will be to optimise returns from the newly revitalised digital platform, which encompasses a new Game website and Makro app and the revamped Makro website.

Comment: With only 4% of the South African market currently in hand, there is plenty of room for growth in online shopping. Massmart is wise to make its play early.

OK, so there was a mouse in some Woolies chicken. Get over it, this stuff happens around food. Moving on, a partnership between Futurelife® and the Dis-Chem Foundation that has provided more than 2 million highly nutritious meals to preschool children in need over three years has expanded to include Nivea and Octodec to enable 2.4 million nutritional meals to be served to children in just one year. The meals are distributed by NGO HOPE worldwide. “Their extensive national Early Childhood Development network means that our meals can be served across seven provinces at 36 sites, reaching thousands of children daily,” says Futurelife® MD Mark Bunn. Next, the chill wind of human mortality blows from the direction of Takealot, whose ‘Retail Therapy’ WhatsApp campaign uses AI to power its chat commerce platform, with the AI acting as a virtual shopping assistant. Ugh.

Comment: We wonder if AI will ever put itself out of a job, just like we seem to be doing to ourselves so ably right now.

In the US, where anti-competitive legislation rests on an increasingly shaky foundation, the expected merger of Kroger and Albertsons is anticipated to lead to the divestment of at least 500 stores across that admittedly vast country, where 19 million people, or 6.1% of the population, live in low-income areas with few grocery stores – i.e. food deserts. Mergers among the giants also tend to be harder on regional and independent retailers, exacerbating the situation. Enter – perhaps – Amazon. “To have a larger impact on physical grocery, we must find a mass grocery format that we believe is worth expanding broadly,” wrote CEO Andy Jassy last week in his annual shareholder letter. It’s possible that Amazon itself might look at grabbing some of the 500 stores in question. To Israel now, where we seldom go, and where Carrefour has opened its first 50 stores, in partnership with Israel’s Electra Consumer Products, for a price tag of around $70m. Israelis are hoping the move will dilute that historical geography’s overly concentrated food retail market and bring down the cost of living. As many as 100 stores could be in place by the end of the year.

Comment: Sometimes the solution to consolidation really is a massive multinational…

Is it a brand? Is it a retailer? No, it’s Avon, perhaps the most venerable of the world’s network marketing schemes. Avon Justine, as it’s known, has aspirations of real-world footprint, and will accordingly franchise stores at selected shopping centres to attract new customers, enter high-income areas and grow revenue, having opened its first standalone Justine store at the Mall of the North in Polokwane, last year. MD for Turkey, Middle East and Africa, Mafahle Mareletse, says having a retail presence will help consumers who are unable to access representatives or do not want to buy online – an omnichannel offering if you will. “The goal is to achieve greater brand awareness and further establish our brand as one that offers quality products at an affordable price to the everyday woman while building a future-fit organisation that is agile and sustainable,” says Mareletse.

Comment: Definitely worth a try. Certainly, it’s been our experience that upmarket brands have a more difficult time exploring the arcane world of network marketing.

Congrats to PepsiCo South Africa on the appointment of Riaan Heyl as CEO, stepping into the capacious shoes of Tertius Carstens. Heyl joined the business – then Pioneer Foods – in 2000 and led the essential foods portfolio from 2017. More movement, this time from Gordon’s Gin, the rights to distribute of which have been sold by Capevin, the specialist liquor business controlled by Remgro, to the brand’s global owner, Diageo. Next up – the latest in a flurry of delistings from the JSE is likely to be Premier Fishing and Brands, subject to a buyout from Sekunjalo Investment Holdings. Onto more serious stuff now, as poultry giant Astral Foods warns that HEPS, a reliable indicator of profitability, is likely to drop 87%-92% YoY for the six months to end March. This as a superstorm of factors, including record high feed input costs, the national electricity debacle and the decay of municipal infrastructure sends costs through the roof and impedes day-to-day operations. Late last year, the business announced that it would be investing R200m into alternative energy and water storage resources to mitigate the impacts of load shedding.

Comment: Further evidence, if more is needed, of the near impossibility of doing business under the circumstances to which wilful incompetence and criminality have bought us.

Have you attended a Trade Intelligence e-learning course? Or sent your team on one? Perhaps you should. But don’t listen to us – hear from just one of our attendees. “It was great to learn about the different retailer formats and their respective strategies. This will also allow me to make better decisions when dealing with our customers and build stronger relationships with them,” says a Customer Strategy Planner at Unilever. “It was good learning about the shopper insights. I think this was the most interesting part for me as this will allow me to make better decisions in my current role. It taught me how to look from a consumer perspective and how to influence their buying behaviour.” And all this, you can achieve at the comfort of your own desk, or indeed deck.

Comment: For more on our e-learning platform, have a look here.

What on earth is the use of hard cash these days, you ask, as the Reserve Bank unleashes our new-look bank notes and coins, including a natty new 10c piece with a bee on it. Turns out 40% of South Africans will not truckle with other currency, withdrawing all their cash from an ATM once a month and exclusively using the hard stuff for their purchases. “So while on the one hand we have a digitisation strategy, on the other hand we know that notes and coins are going to be around for a long time,” says Kuben Naidoo, a deputy governor at the Bank. He points out that 10c pieces are often distributed as change, and that R10 will get you a taxi fare. In other news from the fiscus, Allan Gray, that behemoth of private asset management, predicts that both interest rates and inflation are going to stay higher for longer than most people expect, with two 25-basis point hikes pretty much baked in in the next six months, although most other analysts expect that inflation will soften.

Comment: But these are, after all, economists we’re talking about.