South Africa's Pep owner Pepkor reports 12.4% earnings rise
JOHANNESBURG, May 27 (Reuters) - South African discount retailer Pepkor Holdings (PPHJ.J), opens new tab reported on Tuesday a 12.4% rise in half year earnings, while revenue grew 12.8%.
The owner of PEP and Ackermans clothing brands said headline earnings per share (HEPS) from continuing operations rose to 84.3 cents in the six months to March 31, up from 75 cents a year ago. Normalised HEPS grew by 18.9%.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Miniso Group mulls spin-off of its pop toy business
June 6 (Reuters) - Miniso Group ( opens new tab said on Friday it was making a preliminary assessment of a potential spin-off listing of its pop toy business operating under the brand, "TOP TOY". The plan is preliminary, with no assurance of the timing, listing venue or other details, the lifestyle products retailer said in a statement. Miniso has hired JPMorgan Chase & Co. and UBS Group AG for a planned initial public offering of the unit, TOP TOY, in Hong Kong, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources. The TOP TOY brand saw a 58.9% rise in its March quarter revenue, opens new tab and an increase of 120 net new stores from a year before.
Finextra
3 hours ago
- Finextra
Money 20/20: A spotlight on the fintech reopening access to African markets
At the start of Covid, large Fortune 500 companies began to leave the African financial markets, citing too much illiquidity and uncertainty. One Ireland-based startup, featured on this year's Money 20/20 'Startup Spotlight' session, built a solution. 0 This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community. Esca positions itself as a platform that enables stability and revenue protection within volatile and emerging markets. They are interested in the African markets and the difficulties institutions and banks have faced with growth and investment in an area prone to frequent market volatility. CEO and founder, Shalom Osiadi, said: "A lot of these business were unable to actually acquire the hard currencies required to book the profits they had made in the country. For example, GlaxoSmithKline has existed in Nigeria since 1955, they generate all their revenue in the local currency: the naira. They book this revenue by a forward contract with the Central Bank of Nigeria. The Central Bank of Nigeria does not have enough foreign currencies to actually settle this debt that they have with these multinationals. And so businesses like GSK, they go to the parallel market to look for liquidity and then the parallel market is 3-500 naira above what the central bank rate base is, so they're already losing a significant amount of profit margin just by trading on the spot.' The concept of Esca is essentially to take this on-the-spot fragility and replace it with a predictable, stable platform that protects revenue and, by extension, reopens growth within the continent. Osiadi explained this: "We have understood that financial engineering really is the key to these markets, right? Once we understand how the macroeconomic environment works, how the numbers work, we can easily translate that into code. So what we're trying to do now is take our algorithms from Excel spreadsheets onto our platform." With a long-term vision to increase foreign direct investment in the continent, they recognise that it must be done in a safe, transparent, and predictable way. Restabilising investment into the area provides a number of challenges, fundamentally education and platform experience. Speaking about the platform's future, Olumide Olugbemiro, co-founder and CTO, said the user experience has to be consistently seamless: "To be honest, the more complicated it is, the more they don't understand it, the more we have to jump on calls to explain. So, I'd say making the experience as seamless as possible, as easy and explanatory as possible." On education, Osiadi explained how "one of the biggest challenges we had and we still have at Esca is educating African finance managers, CEOs, and CFOs on why currency hedging is important for their business.[...] So you have to change the mindset slightly to let them understand that long-term gain is better than short-term accumulation." Part of their approach to encouraging investment has also included making cryptocurrency accessible to non-crypto firms. This educational point has been key to this; by simplifying the complex elements and focussing on using their own experience to allow users to send, for example, fiat currency to an account and receieve cryptocurrency in a wallet tomorrow. Osiadi said "by using that experience, we've grown our business by over 300% in the last six months. We're forecasted about $6 million in revenue this year. Based off of that knowledge that we've gained from an existing product we've built, we're now translating it into complex products like derivatives."
Coin Geek
3 hours ago
- Coin Geek
Ethiopia pushes for domestic AI; S. Africa clears path for Starlink
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready... Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has called on African nations to develop homegrown artificial intelligence (AI) to propel the region's development. In his keynote address at the Ethiopian Technology Expo, Ahmed stated that Africa must shape its own technological destiny with AI after decades of adhering to Western standards. 'Africa must not be a passive recipient of AI tools developed elsewhere. We must become innovators and owners of our future, ensuring that no one is left behind in this transformation,' he stated. Ahmed is the latest to call for local AI solutions in Africa, a region whose needs are rarely addressed by Western technology. AI could exacerbate the divide even further; a United Nations report last month revealed that over 120 countries, mostly in the global south, have been left out of the global AI development, which could widen economic inequalities. 'With a clear strategic vision and bold investment, Africa can guide the development of AI on its own terms—anchored in ethical frameworks, inclusion, and sustainability,' Ahmed stated. He added that AI could usher in a new era 'that holds the promise of inclusive prosperity for our continent, driven by homegrown innovations in AI.' Africans must not rely on foreign solutions, which rarely account for the region's nuanced challenges and its diversity. Africa's AI development has been limited by poor infrastructure. A separate UN report revealed that only 5% of the region's AI developers have access to the computing power they would require to build AI applications. Starlink setting foot in South Africa Elsewhere, South Africa is set to amend a law that requires telecom firms to be at least 30% black-owned to enable Elon Musk's Starlink to operate in the country. The decision, announced on Tuesday, comes at a time when tensions between Africa's most industrialized nation and the United States are at a boiling point. U.S. President Donald Trump and Musk have accused the South African government of orchestrating a genocide against white residents, a claim that the African nation has refuted, and which one court has dismissed as 'clearly imagined and not real.' Still, Trump has persisted, and last week, the U.S. welcomed the first batch of South Africans as refugees. Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa are set to have a meeting this week in Washington, and the decision to amend the black ownership law is seen as an effort to smooth things over before the crucial meeting. 'We're not doing it for Musk' The law being amended—known as the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) law—was introduced in the '90s as South Africa abandoned apartheid, which had significantly disadvantaged the black majority. It requires companies in some industries, such as IT, telecoms, and automotive, to be at least 30% owned by black entrepreneurs. Starlink, where Musk has 79% control, was to set up operations in South Africa last year after successful debuts in 20 other African nations. However, it didn't meet the BEE threshold, and since then, Musk has ramped up criticism against the Ramaphosa government. The X and Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) CEO was born in Pretoria, the South African capital, but relocated to Canada at 17. 'I am in a situation where I was born in South Africa, but cannot get a license to operate Starlink because I am not Black,' he told Bloomberg this week. The South African government has finally bowed to the pressure and will amend the BEE law, allowing Starlink to set up in the country, home to 61 million people. Experts say the timing of the move suggests that Ramaphosa is using it to appease Trump ahead of their meeting. However, the South African government has denied the allegations, claiming it's 'part of a broader strategy to create an enabling environment for international investment and expand digital connectivity across South Africa.' The move is part of the government's medium-term plans, the Department of Communications and Digital Technologies told media outlets. However, some in the country's political landscape remain opposed to Starlink's entry. Economic Freedom Fighters, the top opposition party, says the move is unconstitutional and 'exposes Ramaphosa as willing to compromise on our sovereignty to massage the inflated ego of Elon Musk and Donald Trump,' the party's spokesperson, Sinawo Thambo stated. 'These powers are governed by national legislation and independent regulators, not the whims of one man desperate for foreign approval,' he added. The party has vowed to fight against the move 'in the courts, and on the streets.' In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek's coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI . Watch: Bitcoin Retrospective and a Focus on the Future of the Internet with Mike Hearn title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen="">
