Dis-Chem not ruling out listing

Johannesburg - Pharmaceutical retailer Dis-Chem will consider listing on the JSE, Business Report said on Tuesday.

It cited as its source director Saul Saltzman.

The Dis-Chem group was set up in 1978 and is still owned by its founders.

"Rumours that we are listing soon are just that, but we are not ruling out this possibility in future," Saltzman told Business Report.

The newspaper said retail analysts believed the move would elbow in on the territory of listed rival Clicks and claimed that Dis-Chem might even get a better rating than its contender.

According to Chris Gilmour, a retail analyst from Absa Asset Management, Dis-Chem was far more focused than the Clicks group and its stores generally had a wider range than its rival.

"But Clicks excels on the wholesale pharmaceutical side," he said.

Excluding its franchise stores, Dis-Chem has about 40 outlets nationally but has plans to expand.

"Dis-Chem's most recent move was the roll-out of its first three franchised stores-- in Nelspruit, Port Elizabeth and East London," Business Report said.

These franchised stores were the first of 11 planned nationwide.

Other sites for Dis-Chem's franchise stores included KwaZulu-Natal's South Coast, Pietermaritzburg and Welkom.

According to Saltzman, the group was even looking to spread itself across South Africa's borders and expanding into Namibia and Botswana was the next likely step.

Retail analyst Syd Vianello of Nedcor Securities believed the franchise model would give Dis-Chem huge momentum but he ruled out the possibility of a listing right away.

"If they were thinking of listing, the depths of a recession is certainly not the time," he told Business Report.

Gilmour said a lot of investors would like to see Dis-Chem listed, believing at some point that its founders would "cash in their chips and take it to the market".

- Sapa