Shoprite earnings rise on job growth
Shoprite Holdings Ltd, South Africa's largest food retailer by market value, said first-half profit rose 48 percent as employment increased and after a strike reduced year-earlier sales.
Net income in the six months through Dec 31 climbed to 683.3 million rand ($89.9 million), or 1.28 rand a share, from 462.5 million rand, or 86.5 cents, a year earlier, Cape Town-based Shoprite said yesterday in a stock exchange statement. Sales increased 22 percent to 23.3 billion rand.
Shoprite, the country's biggest publicly traded retailer, benefited from an expanding economy and rising incomes amongst an emerging black middle class. The highest interest rates in four years, rising gasoline costs and power outages may undermine future sales, making it more difficult for the company to match earnings growth in the second half, Shoprite said.
"There is no doubt that the fallout is spreading to food categories," said Syd Vianello, a retail analyst at Nedcor Securities Ltd in Johannesburg.
Agencies
(China Daily 02/20/2008 page17)
