Times are tough – but you’re still buying Woolworths’ premium products
South Africa’s Woolworths Holdings Ltd raised sales 45.4 percent to just over R58 billion for the year to June and increased headline earnings 6.1 percent to 369.7 cent per share.
This as its well-heeled customers continued to shop resiliently despite tough economic times, it said in a statement on Thursday.
“We believe that economic conditions in South Africa and Australia will remain constrained, especially in the lower and middle-income segments of the market. The upper-income segments in which we operate continue to show some resilience.
Trading for the first eight weeks of the new financial year has been positive,” said Woolworths, whose stores sell gourmet foods and high-margin clothing labels.
The group, which will pay a dividend of 247 cents per share against 240 cent a year earlier — said that the transformation and integration of Australian department store David Jones, acquired in 2014, was progressing well.
Woolworths reported that clothing sales and general merchandise sales grew 9.6 percent overall and four percent in comparable stores, including its high-end Country Road brand.
The sales of children’s wear and women’s footwear also improved despite under-performing earlier in the year.
Gross profit margin for clothing and general merchandise edged 0.7 percent higher to 47.4 percent.
The group’s food business saw sales grow 13.5 percent with sales in comparable stores up 6.6 percent. Gross profit margin grew a slight 0.4 percent to 25.7 percent.
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