INTERIM RESULTS
Shoprite share hits spectacular high
Like-for-like sales at supermarkets not in South Africa fall 6.4%, which group CEO Pieter Engelbrecht blames on tough conditions in Angola
At a few stages on Tuesday, Shoprite’s repurchase of former CEO Whitey Basson’s 8.68-million shares looked like a spectacularly good deal for the company. On September 15, 2017 the company paid Basson R1.74bn for a block of shares that were worth as much as R2.4bn just five months later. The Shoprite share reached a high of R274.33 on Tuesday before easing back to a still demanding R266, before closing at R263.43. The spike followed the release of interim results that were good but, according to some analysts, not spectacular enough to justify the dizzy levels to which the share soared. At R266 Shoprite was showing a profit of R500m on the transaction and Basson was down the same R500m. There is still the R144m annual interest charge on the loan needed to fund the repurchase, which could partly be set off against dividend payments on those shares. But whatever way you look at it few would have expected the Shoprite share price to have surged to the levels it has in the past few mont...
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