Dis-Chem CEO Rui Morais says the pharmacy group’s transformation is no longer just about strategy or market share but also about people.
While rivals bet on scale and diversification for success, Morais who took over the reins at the retailer two years ago, believes the company’s biggest success lies in reshaping its internal culture and uniting its more than 20,000 workforce behind a common purpose, he said on Thursday.
“The thing I’m most proud of is not the implementation of the strategy, it’s the culture change,” he said.
“If I can create a belief in what we’re trying to do for SA within the people who work in our brand, I can go a long way in achieving it.”
He described the company’s evolution as “a movement” of people aligned around the goal of making healthcare more accessible and affordable.
Morais took over in 2023 after being the CFO. He inherited a company already deep in restructuring, expanding its retail presence and diversifying beyond pharmaceutical, including integrating health clinics.
His strategy has been to build an integrated health ecosystem, launching the Better Rewards loyalty programme, leveraging data and digital transformation, expanding and adapting the store network, and focusing on long-term sustainability.
In his two years at the helm he has played a role in shaping Dis-Chem’s transformation underpinned by the culture shift.
He said the strategy to reduce the cost of care and expand access across SA remained the right one even as economic pressures and changing consumer habits persist and competition rises.
“The strategy was always right,” what has evolved, however, is how the company delivers on it, he said.
That includes digital integration, a stronger rewards programme and the creation of X bigly, the group’s innovation hub focused on using technology and data to improve operations and customer experience.
Dis-Chem continues to open new stores and hire staff. The company added about 17 new stores in the first half to August and created more than 2,000 jobs.
Morais said the confidence to keep expanding arose from a belief in the company’s mission and the need to operate at scale. “If it was going to break it would have broken before we got to this point.”
He said the company had done the heavy lifting to position itself for the next phase of growth.
The company sees opportunity in a consolidating pharmacy market where rivals are still absorbing independents. Morais said about half of that consolidation was still to come and Dis-Chem intended to capture its share.
While competitors leant into digital-heavy strategies, Dis-Chem wasbetting on a hybrid model that combined physical stores with digital convenience as healthcare could not be fully digitised, Morais said.
Regulations required face-to-face interaction for prescriptions and many services still needed physical consultation.
Dis-Chem’s aim, he said, was to become SA’s health authority, a brand that bridges the gap between retail and care while staying rooted in its local market.
“SA remains our main focus,” he said. “If we can keep 20,000 people believing in what we’re building,” he said, “the rest will follow.”
For the six months to end-August, group revenue rose 8.7% to R21.3bn. Headline earnings per share (HEPS) were up 9% to 73.8c and the group increased the interim dividend by 9% to 29.42c per share.
Total income grew 9.9% to R6.6bn while the group’s total income margin improved to 31.1% from 30.7% in the previous period. Expenses were up 10.1% with retail employment costs, which comprise more than half of total retail expenses, rising 8.4%.
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