Billionaire Christo Wiese, who last week unexpectedly sold nearly R1bn of Shoprite shares, says the move was merely part of his family business doing some housekeeping ahead of his retirement.
This comes after retail group Shoprite on Friday told shareholders that Wiese had sold 3.83-million ordinary shares on Wednesday at R245 a share through a subsidiary of his company, Titan Premier Investments.
The move by the 82-year-old to offload the shares caused widespread speculation about the reasons for the former chair’s disposal of the shares. Shoprite’s share price slumped after the announcement, closing 2.63% lower at R237.09 on Friday.
“It’s internal restructuring and we retain our voting rights,” Weise told Business Day. “I’m nearing retirement age and I’m restructuring things to work correctly.”
Titan Fincap Solutions is a subsidiary of Wiese’s Titan Premier Investments. The total of the transaction was R938.64m.
The retail tycoon backed the expansion and growth of Shoprite strongly for the past three decades. He also has stakes in the investment firm Brait, industrial products company Invicta Holdings and property group Collins. There were murmurings on social media that Wiese might be looking at bolstering his stakes in his other investments.
However, Weise was quick to say that “we’ve got sufficient funds to do whatever else we want” without necessitating the need for a sale of shares.
“It’s just internal restructuring as family offices do ... it has nothing to do with any plan to do anything.”
SA is grappling with an outbreak of a high-pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI), which spreads rapidly in an infected chicken flock and leads to a high death rate. Producers have warned of chicken meat and egg shortages in coming weeks.
While Shoprite has not been unscathed amid the shortages, the group is yet to impose strict quantity limitations as competitors Woolworths and Pick n Pay do.
Despite also being hampered by load-shedding, which saw it spend R1.3bn on diesel in the year to July, Shoprite remains upbeat about growth prospects. It allocated R8.5bn in 2024 for shop upgrades, new stores and more warehouse space after a healthy set of results
The retailer, which owns Checkers, USave, OK and Computicket, topped R200bn in sales for the first time in the year ending July 2 as it gained record levels of market share and increased profits and dividends.
It reported that the Checkers Sixty60 online shopping delivery service has also been stealing market share from competitors, with sales rising 81.5%. The service is likely to continue to challenge the Spar neighbourhood convenience model when it launches unlimited deliveries for R99 a month.
The Shoprite board declared a final dividend of 415c a share, compared with 2022’s 367c a share.
Update: October 15 2023
This story has been updated with new information throughout.
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