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HERE'S A NICE HINT: retail kingpin Christo Wiese seems to think there's plenty more spark in the food retail sector despite strong competition among the big players - Shop-rite, Pick n Pay, Spar and Woolies - and fears of more interest rate increases.
We draw that conclusion from the fact that Wiese was seen stuffing his Christmas stocking last week with Shoprite shares worth R171,8m. That takes his stake in Shoprite's ordinary share capital to just more than 15%. However, he also owns 276m "deferred" shares, which gives him voting control over the company.
This further demonstration of confidence in South Africa's economy comes soon after Wiese spent R39m on Stellenbosch-based financial services group PSG last month. Just pause to reflect a moment: that's more than R210m invested by one individual in just over a month. But that got us thinking: Where is this cash coming from?
Wiese's major listed investments are Shoprite, PSG and Invicta, which have all paid dividends recently.
There's also Tradehold - but you can ignore that company for now, given that its operating subsidiaries in Britain are struggling to make a profit in the heated competition in that market.
Shoprite has just paid out a final dividend of 66c/share, paying Wiese nearly R52m for his 77,9m shares (before his latest acquisition). Wiese will also have received just under R6m from Invicta's interim dividend and around R4,2m from PSG.
What we can't know is what sort of return Wiese is making out of Pepkor, which was delisted in 2004 in a buyout led by Brait but with the backing of Wiese. The buyout left Wiese with around 33% of Pepkor, which owns Pep Stores and Ackermans in SA and Best & Less in Australia.
Wiese's other major investments (that we know of) are the Lanzerac and Lourensford wine estates, but we suspect that those are more likely to be absorbing cash in the notoriously difficult wine business.
