Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 28 2012 07:53
The City of Cape Town has spent R175m running the Myciti bus service since the Soccer World Cup compared to an income of R35m, a report says.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
Johannesburg - Retail group Foschini on
Thursday reported that its diluted headline earnings per share for the six
months to September 2009 were at 231.9 cents, up 1.8% from the 227.7 cents
reported in 2008.
The directors declared an unchanged interim ordinary dividend of 118
cents per ordinary share.
Retail turnover at R4.1bn was up 7.9% from the R3.8bn
reported before.
Operating profit was at R890.2m was up 6.4% to R836.5m.
"Trading conditions in the first half of this year have been difficult
and volatile, displaying no consistent trading pattern," said Foschini.
"In our latest annual report we anticipated that 2010 would be a
challenging year as no clear trend in trading patterns was discernible."
"Although interest rates and inflation had continued to drop, we
indicated that because of the lag effect, we expected the economy to start
improving but only from the last quarter of our financial year," it said.
The group said in line with its strategy of investing for the longer
term, it continued to grow trading space in certain of its formats that were
under-represented.
"Notwithstanding the difficult trading environment, all our trading
divisions remain in good shape and are well placed to maximise any upturn in
the economy," said Foschini, noting that same store turnover grew by 1.2%,
while product inflation averaged approximately 8% for the period.
Credit sales as a percentage of total sales increased to 63.7% from
63.2%.
Looking ahead Foschini said retail turnover for the first five weeks of
the second half remained difficult with turnover growth of 4.8%.
"The anticipated pick-up in the economy has not yet started and we
expect that the retail environment will continue to be difficult for the
remainder of the year."
"The second half of the year is heavily dependent on Christmas trading
which will largely determine the performance of the group in the second half
and for the year as a whole," it said.
Doug Murray, Foschini Group CEO, said the retail environment was expected
to continue to be difficult for the remainder of the year.
"As always the second half of the year, which is heavily dependent on
Christmas trading, will largely determine the performance of the group for
the year as a whole," said Murray.
- I-Net Bridge