Today's edition
Cart Blanche
Good morning. Some things look unstoppable right up until you ask what’s actually keeping them moving.
Today’s stories are full of momentum - businesses racing ahead, markets suddenly finding their feet, and technology getting smarter by the week. But underneath all that progress are a few dependencies, questionable decisions and rather expensive catches. Let’s get into it.
MARKETS
SPECIAL DELIVERY
Shoprite's Sixty60 is now a R25 billion business, outrunning its own aisles
Shoprite just gave investors a look at its year to June, and the headline is a tidy 7.2% rise in group sales to about R270.8 billion. The real story is the line item buried inside it. Checkers Sixty60, the on-demand app that delivers straight from Shoprite's own shelves, sold R25.5 billion of groceries over the year - up a whopping 34.5% and growing close to five times faster than the supermarkets behind it. That makes the delivery arm worth roughly 9% of the whole group, big enough to be its own listed retailer. This week Shoprite pressed the advantage, handing Sixty60 an AI shopping assistant that can even read a photo of your handwritten list.
What's in the cart:
- Sixty60 sold R25.5 billion this year, up 34.5%, now about 9% of group sales.
- It delivers from Shoprite's near 3,000 stores, so the shops double as ready-made delivery depots.
- Its new AI helper, Pixie, takes typed messages, voice notes or a snap of your shopping list, and remembers your preferences.
It is a direct answer to Pick n Pay asap!'s Penny, launched in July. Full results land on 1 September, and by then the question is less about the shelves than the app riding on top of them.
BORROWED WEATHER
The rand hit a five-month high on a tailwind borrowed entirely from America
The rand is having its best run in months. On Wednesday it firmed to about R16.14 to the dollar, its strongest since early March, while foreign investors bought a net R23.1 billion of local government bonds in the first week of August, the fastest pace since January. It looks like a vote of confidence in South Africa. It isn't. The spark was a single number out of Washington: America's July inflation came in tame enough to keep the US Federal Reserve on hold and knock the dollar back, supercharging the carry trade that pays investors to hold higher-yielding rand assets.
This month that trade has returned 2.5%, the best of 22 developing-nation currencies Bloomberg tracks. The catch is where it came from: traders still see a real chance the Fed raises rates next month, which would pull the same money straight back out. The number to watch is not in Pretoria, but in Washington.
BAGEL BITE
Approximately what percentage of an adult’s total body weight is the brain?
A. 2%
B. 3%
C. 4%
DOING THE ROUNDS
Claude is about to leave a mark on everything it writes. Anthropic has started weaving an invisible, machine-readable watermark into the text its Claude chatbot generates, so software can later flag it as AI-made. The company says it has little choice: the mark is how it meets a new European transparency law that took effect on 2 August. But because the tag survives copy and paste, some users have called it unethical, while Anthropic counters that a detected mark is not fully conclusive and washes out under heavy editing. Full story →
Foschini's owner picked the worst possible moment to buy its own shares. In late 2025 TFG borrowed more than a billion rand for the first buyback in its history, snapping up about 3% of its stock at an average R105.87. Ten months on the shares trade near R55, so that stake is worth roughly R553 million, about half what it paid. The buyback nudged per-share earnings up a touch, but the debt behind it costs around R58 million in interest every year until it is repaid. Full story →
Standard Bank just posted its best six months ever. Africa's largest bank by assets grew earnings 10% to a record R26.1 billion in the six months to June, and pushed return on shareholders' money up to 19.8%. Bad-loan charges fell 12% as the economy steadied, while fee and trading income climbed and costs stayed in check. The board rewarded all of it with an interim dividend of 902 cents a share, also up 10%, and left full-year guidance unchanged. Full story →
Buy now, pay later works right up until customers can't pay. Weaver Fintech, the JSE-listed group behind PayJustNow and the HomeChoice retail brand, grew revenue 10% to R2.8 billion in the six months to June, but earnings still slipped as bad debts bit. Bad-debt costs jumped 62% to just over a billion rand, so the group skipped its dividend, tightened who it lends to, and blamed a debit-order glitch that made some paying customers look like defaulters. It says the worst has passed. Full story →
WEATHER
BAGEL GAMES
Have you got what it takes to win today's Wordle? Play here →
THE ANSWER
As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: A. 2%
The average adult human brain weighs roughly 1.3 to 1.4 kilograms, which is only about 2% of total body weight for an average adult. Despite its relatively small size, the brain uses around 20% of the body’s energy and oxygen at rest. It contains roughly 86 billion neurons, which communicate through vast networks to control movement, memory, emotions, senses and countless automatic body functions.
That's your Friday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.
