South Africa's biggest grocer spent the past year doing the one thing much of the sector has been too cautious to try: opening shops, and plenty of them. In a voluntary operational update for the 52 weeks to 28 June 2026, Shoprite said it added a net 262 stores in its core South African supermarkets business, taking it to 2,839 corporate-owned and operated shops. That single-year haul is more than Pick n Pay, Woolworths and Spar managed combined in their latest financial years.
Sales up, Sixty60 flying
Group sales from continuing operations rose 7.2% to about R270.8 billion, roughly R18.1 billion in extra takings over the prior year. The engine room, Supermarkets RSA, makes up 84.5% of that and grew 7.1%, adding R15.2 billion in sales on its own. Checkers and Checkers Hyper grew 10.0%, and the flashiest number sits inside that segment: Checkers Sixty60, the on-demand delivery app, grew sales 34.5% to R25.5 billion. Newer bets are scaling fast too, with adjacent businesses and new formats such as Petshop Science, Uniq Clothing and Checkers Outdoor up more than 57%. Beyond South Africa, supermarket sales rose 11.0% in rand and 7.1% in constant currency, while the pharmacy business grew 9.2%. The group kept prices in check, with internal selling-price inflation of just 0.8%, well under food inflation of 3.9%, while like-for-like sales rose 2.0% and the rest of the market grew only 2.0% on NielsenIQ's measure.
Earnings guided higher
Shoprite also nudged the market on profit, guiding headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure JSE companies report, 9.7% to 14.7% higher for the year. The new stores were spread across formats: 115 supermarkets, 93 liquor stores and 54 new formats. There were no share buybacks in the year, and the group banked R568 million from selling its non-SA furniture business to Pepkor, with the SA furniture disposal still awaiting Competition Tribunal approval. Rivals, by contrast, held station: Spar opened 43 stores in Southern Africa in 2025 but closed 58, and Woolworths' footprint slipped year on year.
The full results land on 1 September, but the direction is already set: while rivals prune, Shoprite is still planting.
