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We’re in the endless twilight of a season of interims and trading updates – 19 weeks here, 26 weeks there except for Christmas, Boxing Day and Gogo’s birthday – and next up is Shoprite, with as crisp a set of interims as one could hope for in these troubled times. Sales up +7% to R81.2bn for the six months through December, with Checkers and the Hypers growing sales by a stellar +11.2%. Beyond the borders, sales grew +4.8% in constant currency terms, but declined -3.1% in rand terms. A big downside was profitability though: excluding hyperinflation, trading profit was up +7%. Taking hyperinflation into account, it was down -3.9% to R4.0bn. Back to the bright side: Checkers’ Xtra Savings Rewards Programme has been a howling success, with 3.8 million punters signing up since it launched in October, and the new one-hour grocery delivery service, Sixty60, is also showing signs of promise. For our snappy summary of the results, click here.

Comment: “Ex Africa semper aliquid hyper”, as Pliny the elder was fond of remarking.

Interims from Woolies last week, with turnover up +3.8% to R40.9bn for the 26 weeks through December. Retail sales growth was just +1.2% though over the period, its weakest in a decade, and you kind of know what’s coming: adjusted profit before tax down was down -12.3% to R2.4bn, with HEPS, a perhaps more accurate measure of profitability, down -17.7%. As a result of all of this, the dividend has been cut in half, and the share price was down a touch over 4% on the news. Among the factors Woolies are blaming for the results are load shedding, a poor Black Friday performance, shakiness in clothing, particularly womenswear, and a generally iffy economy. Things they are not blaming include Food, up +8.1% with Food online sales up +22.3%. Have a look at our one-pager summary here.

Comment: It is fondly to be hoped that the arrival of Roy Baggatini sees the beginnings of a turnaround on the fashion side of the business.

A trading update from Dis-Chem, for the (almost entirely random) 22-week period through to 2 February. Tidy numbers though: revenue up +10% to R10.3bn, and +9.2% for the retail business to R9.4bn, and they report that they’re growing market share in “core categories” but do not specify what these are. They are happy with the recently gazetted +4.53% increase in the single exit price for pharmaceuticals, which allows businesses like theirs to increase the width of the honest rind they earn by their daily toil. A busy period, footprint-wise, with 12 new stores up and running, adding R145m to revenue. Wholesale also saw good growth, with revenue up +18.3% to R7.1bn. Success they attribute to their “pharmacy focus, everyday low price strategy coupled with focused promotional campaigns and availability of choice”.

Comment: Couldn’t of put it better ourselves.

Telling it like it is this week would be Massmart’s New Guy Mitch Slape, who has put retail landlords on notice that they are, how should we put this, engaging in predatory escalatory practices vis-à-vis the rental, upping the price of square meterage at the rate of +6-7% per annum, at a time when inflation is close on half that and the economy crawling along at 1%. “Ridiculous” was the word the diplomatic Mr Slape used to describe. Right about now, every bit counts for Massmart, which is shortly to turn in a full-year loss of around 1.4bn ront. Massmart’s not the only one struggling with high rentals though – it seems that a number of retailers will be downsizing and rationalising their space, and this, inevitably, will lead to a decline in the rent, to the tune, say some experts, of -10%. In other Massmart news, the business is taking Game back to its roots, whipping out fresh fruit and veg and filling that space with inexpensive apparel.

Comment: Tough times, for Massmart, but it’s exciting to see so thorough an overhaul in progress.

In further evidence that retail property is not the welcoming environment for your investment bucks that it might once have been as more and more punters move online, property giant Hammerson – listed right here on the JSE – is selling off seven of its retail parks for the low, low price of £400m to Orion European Real Estate. Also in the UK, consumer research outfit ‘Which?’ (uhm yes… that’s their name) has named Waitrose as number one in its annual supermarket satisfaction survey, where the posh super scored five stars in almost every category. ASDA was bottom of the heap. Woolies’ inspiration Marks & Sparks scored fives on the quality of their own brand range and fresh produce, while German discounters, Aldi and Lidl, both scored fives for value. Morrison’s and Sainsbury’s brought up the solid middle, followed by Tesco.

Comment: Quality and value remain the watchwords for consumers everywhere.

Parmalat SA has, as of 1 February, changed its name to Lactalis South Africa, in a move which shouldn’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. Parmalat SA has been part of the Lactalis Group since 2011, when the dairy giant bought them out globally. Lactalis is the world’s biggest dairy group with 250 production sites in 50 countries and more than 90,000 staff in 94 countries. The South African business will continue to bring to market such popular and trusted brands as Parmalat, Melrose, Président and SteriStumpie, Bonnita, PureJoy, Galbani, and Aylesbury, in categories, ranging from cheese, yoghurt, milk and custard, to flavoured milk, cream, drinking yoghurt, maas, fruit beverages, butter and ice cream.

Comment: In all honesty, we’d forgotten about the acquisition ourselves; the renaming is a timely reminder of how consolidated the dairy industry is at the global level.

OK, final trading statement for the week, we promise, this time from Sea Harvest, which anticipate that its headline earnings – a solid measure of profitability – are likely to increase between 42% and 52%, or R395m and R422m respectively. This on success in its fishing operations, and the acquisition of the Ladismith Cheese business in January last year. Sea Harvest, it might be timeous to remind ourselves, produces Cape hake, mackerel, pilchards, anchovies and a number of farmed species from its South African operations, and king and tiger prawns from Australia. It runs 43 trawlers off South Africa’s majestic coastline and 11 in the turbid waters of the Antipodes. The R527m Ladismith acquisition was a canny move to diversify into the lucrative natural-fat market.

Comment: Good to see someone is making a buck. Don’t fish too hard though people – the world’s oceans need our help.

“The toughest budget yet” says Moneyweb, and we’d have to agree. Spending will be cut by R261bn over the next three years to help make up the deficit of R370.5n. Of particular interest to our industry is where exactly in their wallets the punters will get hit. While Minister Mboweni intends to broaden the corporate tax base, the little guy will get some love: a teacher taking home around R460k a year will get to keep around R3,400 extra of that. And despite our prognostications last week, VAT stays where it is. The fuel levy, though, will go up 25c in the litre, and the tax on plastic bags 13c. And sin taxes, oi vey. 20 Rothmans will cost you 74c more, and a bottle of bubbly 61c extra. No increase on sorghum though, an industry just begging for the artisanal treatment that has changed the face of beer in the last decade. Finally, best botanical reference in perhaps any budget speech ever, in the history of the world: “Our Aloe Ferox can withstand the long dry season because it is unsentimental. It sheds dead weight, in order to direct increasingly scarce resources to what is young and vital.”

Comment: Too much to get our heads around at once, more no doubt next week.