Premier Group, the JSE-listed food producer behind household names like Blue Ribbon bread, Iwisa maize meal, Snowflake flour and Super C sweets, has flagged a bumper year. In a trading statement ahead of its full-year results on 17 June, the company said it expects basic earnings per share to climb between 20% and 30%, to somewhere in the range of 1,123 to 1,217 cents. Headline earnings per share are tipped to rise by a similar margin.
A old name with momentum
Premier traces its roots to a bakery founded in 1824, making it one of South Africa's oldest continuously operating businesses — and, on these numbers, one of its more spry. The group expects mid-single-digit revenue growth for the year, a respectable showing given that global grain prices have been deflating. Cheaper wheat and maize squeeze the top line a little, but they also lower input costs, and Premier appears to have banked the difference as fatter margins.
Bulking up
The earnings upgrade comes as Premier presses ahead with an ambitious move to acquire rival RFG Holdings — owner of brands such as Rhodes and Bull Brand — through a share-swap deal that has already cleared the Competition Tribunal. If completed, the tie-up would significantly broaden Premier's reach into tinned goods, ready meals and groceries, stretching it well beyond its milling-and-baking heartland.
For consumers, a well-run staples producer matters: bread and maize meal sit at the centre of millions of South African shopping baskets, and the companies that make them are a useful barometer of where food inflation is heading. For investors, Premier's update is a reminder that some of the steadiest returns on the JSE come not from glamour stocks but from the unglamorous business of feeding a nation. The full results, due 17 June, will show whether the trading statement's optimism holds.
Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by BusinessTech and Premier's SENS trading statement.
