Lewis plans to open up to 200 stores over five years as consumer demand for credit continues unabated.
The owner of Beares, Best Home & Electric and UFO, grew its store base to 918 stores with the opening of 33 new stores and an additional 16 stores acquired through the purchase of cash retail bed specialist, Real Beds.
Lewis will add 20 new traditional retail stores — Beares, Lewis, Best Home & Electric — and 20 specialist bed stores — Bedzone and Real Beds, in the 2026 financial year.
“We do not believe we will lose steam and we will be adding no fewer than 200 stores in five years,” said CEO Johan Enslin.
The plan is to saturate South Africa and other countries where we have a presence
— Johan Enslin, Lewis CEO
Heavy focus will be on Real Beds and Bedzone as Lewis aims to take market share from competitors.
Enslin said he also saw “a lot of room for the expansion of Beares and Best Home & Electric brands”.
During the year, 170 stores across the portfolio were refurbished to ensure they remained modern and appealing.
Enslin said Real Beds and Bedzone had a footprint in Gauteng and “all other provinces are still there for us to explore. In the case of Best Home & Electric and Beares, there are opportunities to expand in Gauteng, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and, to a lesser extent, certain areas in the Eastern Cape”.
In the short to medium term, “the plan is to saturate South Africa and other countries where we have a presence. It will keep us busy for five years. When we get closer to that point, we will start looking for opportunities outside the country.”
Enslin said base sets remained the biggest sellers, but growth was recorded in fridges, stoves and washing machines.
Lewis reported a 66.9% increase in operating profit to R1.2bn for the year to March, driven by strong credit sales, expanding margins and robust growth in the debtors’ portfolio.
Merchandise sales increased by 9.2% to R5.1bn. Lewis, Beares and Best Home & Electric sales increased by 8.5% and accounted for 89.5% of sales. The speciality segment — UFO, Bedzone and Real Beds — generated merchandise sales of R532.8m.
Enslin said while UFO had turned the corner, “there is still work to be done before we start expanding.”
About R3.4bn of merchandise sales at traditional stores were done through credit, while R1.1bn were in cash. At speciality stores, R23.2m of sales were on credit, while R509.6m were cash. Credit sales now account for 68% of total sales.
Enslin said there was still an increased demand for credit in the market, and Lewis would be “actively mining 3.7-million Facebook followers to ensure more of those come and spend their money in our stores”.
Lewis has 588,856 “satisfactorily” paying customers and 87,324 slow payers.
“Debtors' book is in the best shape it has ever been in. Non-performing accounts are at a record low of 4.1% from 5.5% last year,” he said.
Sales in the stores outside South Africa, which represent 15.7% of the store base, increased by 11.9% and accounted for 18.3% of group merchandise sales.
Enslin said the “challenging environment has slowed the country’s economic recovery and dampened growth prospects, with a sustained turnaround in retail spending now expected to take longer to materialise than previously anticipated”.
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