Shoprite Nigeria Bullish Sales Results in Spike of 60% in Revenues

Africa’s largest retail Supermarket chain, Shoprite Holdings released its 2016 full year results on Tuesday, showing headline earnings per share rose 15.5% to R45. Profits were also up 19% to R3.9 billion or N93.5 billion as sales from within and outside Africa strengthened during the year. Revenues were also up to R71.29 billion or N1.7 trillion.

Nigeria is one of the many Africa countries where Shoprite has huge operations and as expected, this helped push revenues despite Nigeria’s economic recession and difficulties in accessing foreign exchange. Here are highlights from its operations in Nigeria;

• Of the 14 countries in which it trades outside the borders of South Africa, Angola and Nigeria performed particularly well.
• The company said it was able to overcome the foreign currency shortage in Nigeria and Angola and unlike other traders, managed to keep shelves fully stocked.
• Nigeria and Angola both devalued their currency last year.
• Revenues from Nigeria jumped up by 60% and 155% in Angola. Shoprite doesn’t reveal its numbers from Nigeria beyond these percentages.
• The company also claims local currency cash and short-term deposits of R1.3 billion about N31 billion  are held in Angola and Nigeria.
• In a demonstration of growing strength of Nigeria’s internet market, Shoprite also claims it has 3 million followers on social media, with more than 1.2 million of them in Nigeria. This is helping them extend expertise in the area of digital marketing.
• Shoprite also revealed how much emphasis it lays on Nigeria’s huge economic potential which helped mitigate some of the challenges it encounter with the import restrictions, capital controls and lack of foreign exchange.
• Shoprite also claims it now buys, depending on the time of year, almost 40% of its vegetable requirements from local growers in Nigeria.

Shoprite opened its first store in Nigeria in 2005, and has since expanded to several stores across the country now owning about 19 retail outlets in Nigeria. . Shoprite in 2013, was named the largest retailer in Africa by Deloitte. The Nigerian economy went into its first recession in almost thirty years in 2016, and has seen all tiers of government struggle to meet both current and capital obligations.