{"id":825753,"date":"2025-05-27T14:03:25","date_gmt":"2025-05-27T12:03:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=825753"},"modified":"2025-05-27T14:03:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-27T12:03:30","slug":"major-retailer-opening-hundreds-of-stores-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/825753\/major-retailer-opening-hundreds-of-stores-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Major retailer opening hundreds of stores in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Retail group Pepkor is rapidly expanding its store base, with the company on track to open between 250 and 300 stores in the current financial year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite downward-trending inflation, reduced load shedding, and the start of the two-pot retirement system, the market remains subdued and highly competitive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Structural challenges such as high unemployment and low economic growth persist, and consumers are financially constrained. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the challenges, the group\u2019s retail space increased by 2.1% year-on-year, with 168 new stores during the six months ended 31 March 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes 32 stores from the newly launched Ayana, 79 net, and expands the total store footprint to 5,978 stores. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PEP also saw like-for-like sales growth of over 10%, with market share increasing across all product categories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The PEP store base was expanded by 43 new stores, extending the base to 2,649 stores. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ackermans also continued its recovery, with like-for-like sales growth of nearly 10%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Market share gains were also seen in the babies, kids (including CUBE) and wear categories. The store base was expanded to 1,018 stores, as 19 new stores opened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Elsewhere, the group\u2019s speciality store base, which includes Tekkie Town, Shoe City, Refinery Junior and Ayana, increased to 972 stores. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lifestyle sector also delivered 6.3% like-for-like sales growth, with strong trading momentum in Home, supported by a greater product range and increased spending power from the two-pot system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group\u2019s cellular market share also expanded further, now selling eight out of every 10 prepaid handsets in South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group said it is well on track to open between 250 and 300 new stores in FY25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This comes shortly after Pick n Pay CEO Sean Summers said that South African retailers are opening too many new stores, putting their financial viability at risk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you\u2019ve got retailers who are prepared to just open stores at any cost, then a shopping centre works. But I would question the medium-to-long-term wisdom of the strategy,” said Summers<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In contrast to Pepkor’s rapid rollout, Pick n Pay is currently restructring and right-sizing its store network, which has seen the group close loss-making outlets and converting others to Boxer stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other retailers, like the SPAR Group, have adopted similar strategies with a focus on core operations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, however, other retail segments within these brands \u2014 such as PnP Clothing \u2014 are showing store growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at Pepkor’s financials for the six months ended 31 March 2025, the group saw its revenue increase by 12.8% to R48.8 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group\u2019s total earnings per share also increased by 23.3% to 83.1 cents per share, while the headline earnings per share jumped 8.5% to 84.3 cents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financials<\/strong><\/td>H1 FY24<\/strong><\/td>H1 FY25<\/strong><\/td> %<\/strong> Change<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Revenue (Rm)<\/td>43 264<\/td>48 809<\/td>+12.8%<\/td><\/tr>
Profit for the period (Rm)<\/td>2 474<\/td>3 053<\/td>+23.4%<\/td><\/tr>
Total basic earnings per share (cents)<\/td>67.4<\/td>83.1<\/td>+23.4%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Opportunities<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Pepkor said that the current uncertain global tariff environment gives South Africa the opportunity to benefit from increased global product supply capacity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group said that the South African and Brazilian macro environments, with a muted South African economic landscape, remain challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said that its business model and strategy remain focused on identifying, executing and monetising customer needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will be done through maintaining the performance of existing traditional retail brands, integrating newly acquired businesses and also being disciplined with its cost management.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pepkor is undergoing a massive store upgrade despite the challenging economic environment. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":818014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[10345,22657,959,4076],"class_list":["post-825753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-ackermans","tag-ayana","tag-pep","tag-pepkor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825753","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\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825753"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":825829,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825753\/revisions\/825829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}