Spar’s Brexit blues may weigh on JSE on Wednesday
The grocery chain slumped 5.2% to R174 on Tuesday after reminding investors that Brait was not the only JSE-listed group to invest in UK retailers at a bad time
When investors think about JSE-listed companies that suffered from the pound’s plunge after the Brexit vote, they tend to think of Brait, Capital & Counties and Intu. Grocery chain Spar slumped 5.2% to R174 on Tuesday after reminding investors it too entered the UK market by acquiring the acquiring the Irish franchise of its parent group. Although its Irish business increased Christmas sales by 1.5% measured in euros, it suffered a 2.6% sales decline measured in rand. Spar’s trading update for the 13 weeks to end-December included its Swiss acquisitions for the first time, and investors appeared to have been expecting a better than 16.9% jump in the group’s sales to R25.6bn. The retailer’s South African operations grew sales 5.8%, dragged down by its hardware chain Build It. Excluding Build It, South African sales increased by 6.2%, with internally measured price inflation of about 8.3%. The group’s liquor sales remained robust in SA, with sales growth exceeding 11.3%, Spar said in ...
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