Shoprite: The burning issue
With the worst behind it, Shoprite’s interim results cheered the market — now for the plan to buy Wiese’s deferred shares ...
News that Shoprite was considering repurchasing Christo Wiese’s controversial high-voting deferred shares stole most of the limelight at Tuesday’s presentation of its interim results to end-December 2018. Not that it received much attention during the presentation by relatively new CEO Pieter Engelbrecht and CFO Anton de Bruyn. Engelbrecht quickly let analysts know there wouldn’t be much discussion of the very hot issue. "We decided we would put it out there and let shareholders do what they want to do," said the CEO, who seems to be coping reasonably well with his baptism of fire. Some analysts thought the Sens announcement about the potential buyback was a ploy to divert attention from one of the worst sets of results in the group’s 50-year history. As it happened, no diversion was needed. With Shoprite having taken a hefty smack at the time of the trading update in January, the release of the actual details seemed to cheer up the market — or positions were being covered. Within h...
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