Picking up pieces from unrest, level 3 - but also counting the cost

PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa eased key restrictions on alcohol sales and the size of gatherings, offering a lifeline to businesses and making it easier to register voters ahead of local government elections in November. Restrictions have been moved from level 3 to level 2.

RAUBEX, one of the few listed survivors of a recent downturn in the construction industry, said it had returned to profit for its six months to end-August, with a record order book underpinning a more than doubling of headline earnings per share from pre-pandemic levels.

PEPKOR Holdings is rapidly reopening stores after unrest in July caused as much as R1.3bn damage to about 550 shops, or 10% of its total. SA’s biggest clothes retailer will have resumed trading in as many as 380 outlets by end-September, said CEO Leon Lourens. By mid-November, as many as 460 will be back in business, he said.

THE retail sector took a pummelling in July as civil unrest in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng left big brands counting the cost of damaged shops and looted distribution centres, compounded by the tail effects of the Covid-19 third wave.

Retail trade sales shrank 0.8% year on year, Stats SA said — far worse than the 3.3% growth forecast by a Bloomberg poll of economists, and down from June’s revised 10.5% expansion.

CLICKS warned of poor sales in July and August as a result of the recent civil unrest and the lingering effects of the third wave of Covid-19.

The group said sales in the last seven weeks of its financial year were hit by the riots.

NEW data from Altron’s financial technology unit showed that short-term credit extension, a key financial instrument for low-income households and small businesses, fell 12.3% between the first quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of this year.