The Foschini Group (TFG) is making a big play into e-commerce and the mobile shopping space in South Africa, promising ‘big things to come’ from its Bash shopping platform.<\/p>\n
Presenting its interim results for the six months ended September 2022, the group talked up the fashion and lifestyle platform that it launched into beta in June of this year.<\/p>\n
The Bash platform – South Africa\u2019s largest omnichannel fashion and lifestyle shopping platform – brings all of TFG’s popular brands and products into one virtual mall.<\/p>\n
At launch, it offered over 200\u00a0brands from popular South African stores, including Foschini, @Home, Markham, TotalSports, Sterns, and American Swiss, across 400 categories. At full launch, the group says over 100,000 items will be available for sale.<\/p>\n
Over time, the group envisages the platform contributing R10 billion to turnover, noting that ‘big e-tail’ has started becoming more prominent in South Africa.<\/p>\n
This includes increased search activity for Chinese platform SHEIN, buzz around the expected launch of Amazon.com locally, as well as inroads made by US wholesale giant Walmart, which recently acquired the remaining share of Massmart.<\/p>\n
Bash is part of TFG’s bigger push into becoming a true omnichannel retailer.<\/p>\n
In the interim period, group online retail turnover was up 2.6% to R2.1 billion, contributing 8.9% to total group retail turnover. In TFG Africa, the growth in online has been massive, with online growing 18.8% over the six-month period.<\/p>\n
However, this still only contributes 3.1% to overall turnover in TFG Africa – approximately R500 million.<\/p>\n
Financial performance<\/strong><\/p>\n TFG reported a solid set of results in the face of strong economic headwinds – in South Africa and abroad.<\/p>\n Group revenue was up 23% to R25.1 billion, with headline earnings up 17.9% to R1.5 billion.<\/p>\n Group retail turnover was the largest contributor to revenue, up 23.5% to R23.3 billion.<\/p>\n Headline earnings per share grew 18.1% to 464.6 cents (HY2021: 393.4 cents). The group declared an interim dividend of 170 cents per share.<\/p>\n TFG said that it has been experiencing a robust post-pandemic recovery, showing resilience in consumer spending despite high rates of unemployment, reduced consumer confidence and pressures on spending.<\/p>\n However – as with everyone else in the country – extended blackouts due to Eskom’s load shedding had an impact on operations.<\/p>\n “During the current period, we have seen a spike in load shedding, which has resulted in 132,000 lost trading hours during H1\u20192023. This impacted all provinces in South Africa and was 2.6 times greater than the lost trading hours from load shedding absorbed during the prior period,” it said.<\/p>\n The group said that initiatives are being put in place to mitigate the loss of trading hours due to load shedding, including added investment in battery backup power solutions, and the rollout of mobile point-of-sale devices to enable trade during load shedding.<\/p>\n “These initiatives will protect approximately 68% of turnover in South Africa,” it said.<\/p>\n Looking ahead, it said it expects trading conditions and consumer confidence to remain under pressure, exacerbated by lost footfall due to load shedding in South Africa. Despite this, it is anticipating sales growth heading into the end of the year.<\/p>\n “As always, the second half of the group\u2019s financial year is heavily dependent on Black Friday and Christmas trade, which will largely determine performance for the full year,” it said.<\/p>\n
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