Checkers Sixty60 gamechanger in South Africa

Shoprite continues to push its digitisation strategy, and thousands more products are expected to be added to Checkers Sixty60.

In its interim results for the six months ended 29 December 2024, Pieter Engelbrecht, CEO of Shoprite, focused extensively on the technological advancements at the company.

This includes its technology team completing a seamless installation of a new point-of-sale system rollout across its 2,450 stores, with 60,000 hours of work at night while stores were closed.

The ShopriteX digital team, alongside the Checkers store operations and Pingo team, also delivered millions of orders via Checkers Sixty60.

The team also concurrently re-platformed the Checkers Sixty60 tech stack to upgrade functionality and incorporate same-day general merchandise delivery into its on-demand offering.

Engelbrecht said that this enormously complex task was done ahead of the Black Friday and Christmas trades.

“We remain incredibly humbled by the brand advocacy from Checkers Sixty60 customers who continue to demonstrate their love of Sixty60 in the most priceless ways possible,” said Engelbrecht.

Despite being in the early days, the CEO said that the addition of over 10,000 general merchandise products to its re-platformed Checkers Sixty60 app will bring major changes.

Over time, it is expected to bolster its contribution from this category and continue to reshape how South Africans shop for food and everyday general merchandise.

In a seperate statement, the group also announced that it was expanding its Sixty60 delivery service to Shoprite stores as well following a successful pilot.

The group also noted that its in-house Freshmark fresh produce business benefited from thousands of customers choosing Checkers as their Discovery Vitality HealthyFood partner.

This led to a step change in its fresh produce growth, participation and market share.

Looking ahead, Engelbrecht also said that it will continue to expand its new adjacent formats, such as clothing, baby, outdoor and pet.

Notably, Petshop Science, which is now at 129 stores, saw its sales in the interim period increase by 56.9%.

The group also opened eight Uniq clothing by Checkers stores, taking the total to 30, as well as four Checkers Outdoor stores to total 26.

“Whilst presently small in the Group context, our expansion into these categories are meaningful in the universe of everyday purchases for our customers and important in terms of the role they play
in our ecosystem.”

The group’s customers also benefited from R8.9 billion in savings via its Xtra Savings rewards programme.

Financials

The group delivered strong financial results in the period, with sales increasing by 9.6% to R128.6 billion, which was underpinned by its core Supermarkets RSA segment.

Checkers and Checkers Hyper, including Checkers LiquorShop, increased sales of merchandise by 13.6% to R47.6 billion, which contributed 44.2% to the Group’s core Supermarkets RSA segment’s sales.

Checkers Sixty60 increased sales by 47.1% in the period (H1 2024: 63.1%). The number of stores offering the service also increased from 505 in H1 2024 to 601.

The group’s trading profit increased by 13.5%, which resulted in a trading margin of 5.7% The group’s EBITDA also improved by 16.7% to R11.7 billion.

During the interim period, the group opened 205 stores, expanding its continuing operations footprint to 3,417 stores.

After adding 2,989 new jobs, the group now employs just over 163,000, making it the largest private sector employer in South Africa.

When looking at continuing operations, the group’s basic earnings per share increased by 10.5% to 667.9 cents per share, and headline earnings per share jumped by 9.9% to 662.3 cents per share.

The board thus declared an interim dividend of 285 cents per share, which represents a year-on-year dividend per share growth of 6.7%.