{"id":665695,"date":"2023-02-17T11:15:46","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T09:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=665695"},"modified":"2023-02-17T11:15:46","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T09:15:46","slug":"dis-chems-load-shedding-bill-climbs-to-r36-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/665695\/dis-chems-load-shedding-bill-climbs-to-r36-million\/","title":{"rendered":"Dis-Chem’s load shedding bill climbs to R36 million"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retail pharmacy group Dis-chem showed a robust trading performance amid challenging economic headwinds, with group revenue\u00a0increasing by 8.7% for the six months that ended 5 February 2023.<\/p>\n

In a trading update on Friday (17 February), Dis-Chem noted a 7.5% increase in retail revenue over the period, excluding vaccines and Covid-19-related lines, while external wholesale revenue growth was up 18.7%.<\/p>\n

However, the group noted that, due to load shedding over the six months, diesel costs across its stores had increased by 54% to R36 million.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite this, the group’s strategic early investment in generator capacity has resulted in minimal disruption to its ability to trade, it said.<\/p>\n

Retail revenue showed a 3.1% increase over the corresponding 2021\/22 period – attributable to a strong performance in beauty and household, confectionary, electronics and appliances sales.<\/p>\n

“During the period, Dis-Chem continued to increase its dispensary market share, extending its position as South Africa’s largest retail pharmacy group by dispensary market share,” said Chief executive Ivan Saltzman.<\/p>\n

“The group experienced a strong recovery in the beauty category ahead of market recovery. The group continues to advance its ambitions in the baby category with steady improvement in baby-focused trade, specifically in Dis-Chem Baby City stores, highlighting the destination status of the brand,” he added.<\/p>\n

Saltzman noted that the normalisation of the category mix is total income margin supportive, which continues to support the trajectory of earnings delivery.<\/p>\n

The table below shows the retail revenue growth by category.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

** includes household, confectionary, electronics and appliances<\/p><\/div>\n

Regarding wholesale, revenue increased by 8.6% for the period compared to the corresponding period, with sales to its own retail stores increasing by 7.0%, while external customer revenue grew by 18.7%.<\/p>\n

External wholesale revenue from sales to independent pharmacies increased by 16.3%,\u00a0attributable to a 6.6% increase in the number of customers and was supplemented by greater
\nsupport from existing customers.<\/p>\n

“Despite the challenges, Dis-Chem continues to maintain its healthcare and nutrition market share and market leadership position,” said Saltzman. He added the group now has a store base of 312 stores, comprising 258 Dis-Chem and 54 Baby City stores.<\/p>\n

The Baby Boom stores acquired on 1 March 2022 have all been rebranded to Dis-Chem Baby City and contributed R27.6 million in baby revenue for the period.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Load shedding costs Pick n Pay R60 million a month \u2013 the ‘permanent new reality’<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dis-Chem’s latest trading statement shows resilience despite the huge costs of load shedding in South Africa. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":665741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[11649,26],"class_list":["post-665695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-dis-chem","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665695"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":665761,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665695\/revisions\/665761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}