Business

These are the 5 biggest retailers in South Africa

Staff Writer

 ·23 Jan 2018

Professional services group Deloitte has published its annual Global Powers of Retail report for 2018, ranking the 250 biggest retail groups across the world – including five from South Africa.

The ranking is based on publicly available data for FY2016, covering fiscal years ended through June 2017. Deloitte analyses a company’s performance across geographies, sectors, and channels.

US mega-retailer has held onto its title as the world’s largest retail group, and is no danger of losing the crown with sales revenue four times larger than its closest competitor, Costco.

The top 10 retailers, which account for 30.7% of total revenue generated in the top 250, have remained largely unchanged, with only one new entrant, the CVS Health Corporation, taking over from Tesco in the UK, which dropped to 11th.

The biggest growing star, however, was Amazon.com, which climbed four places to be the 6th largest retailer in the world.

According to Deloitte, Amazon’s growth was fueled by a constant stream of product and service innovations, which has pushed double-digit growth since its inception in 1994.

“Near 20% year-over-year retail revenue growth once again propelled the e-tailer up the leader board, this time leapfrogging four retailers along the way to take the No. 6 position, up from No. 10 on the previous list,” Deloitte said.

“Amazon’s aggressive push into grocery, including the 2017 acquisition of natural bricks-and-mortar grocer Whole Foods Market, should continue to propel the company forward. Ranking 186th in 2000 when it first entered the Top 250, Amazon is poised to ascend several more spots in the coming years,” the group said.

The world’s biggest retailers

South Africa’s biggest retailers

As was the case in 2017, five South African retailers made the list of top retail groups, led by Steinhoff, with Shoprite entering into the top 100.

Because Deloitte’s ranking is compiled on the full-year 2016 data, Steinhoff’s inclusion in the South African rankings does not take into account the recent accounting scandal which has rocked the group, forcing its CEO Markus Jooste to resign.

Before the late 2017 scandal hit, the retail group’s expansion into international markets was well underway, with what Deloitte described as a “buying spree” in late 2016, where it acquired US-based Mattress Firm, UK single-price value retailer Poundland, SA’s Tekkie Town footwear retailer, and Australian furniture retailer Fantastic Holdings Limited.

In the wake of its accounting problems, however, the company has issued statements saying that its financial reports for 2016 and 2015 (and potentially beyond even that) cannot be relied on. We have included the Steinhoff data as per the Deloitte report, but with a caveat.

Steinhoff aside, South African retail groups Spar and Woolworths are also listed by Deloitte as the 27th and 28th fastest-growing retailers among the top 250, with the former achieving a compound annual growth rate of 19.1% in revenue since FY2011, while the latter has seen a CAGR of 18.9% over the same period.

Read: Steinhoff plans to raise $620 million from second PSG stock sale