Target of 900 attainable

CLICKS PLANS TO EXPAND ITS STORES AND PHARMACIES IN SA. BY

LISTED health and beauty retailer Clicks plans to open more outlets in South Africa to achieve its long-term goal of 900 stores in the country.

The company said it had set aside a capital investment of R680 million for the current financial year,

R300m of which was intended for refurbishment and to expand its stores and pharmacies.

Clicks said it was well on the way to reaching the 900 milestone in the near future as it had opened another store in Johannesburg last week.

Chief executive David Kneale said Clicks wanted to make access to pharmacies easier.

“As the largest employer of pharmacy staff in the private sector in South Africa, with over 2 700 pharmacy and clinic professionals,

JOSEPH BOOYSEN

we continue to invest in capacity creation. Since 2012, the group has funded bursaries for 400 pharmacy students and provided internships for 266 pharmacy graduates.”

The group has 795 stores, with 757 in South Africa and 38 in the rest of Africa, including Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland.

Kneale said the opening of the Johannesburg store in the busy

Park Station highlighted Clicks’s commitment to making pharmacy locations convenient to customers.

“From the outset, the Clicks pharmacy strategy has been aligned with the national health-care agenda of making medicine more affordable and more accessible for all South Africans, while improving the efficiency and quality of health-care delivery,” Kneale said.

Last year Clicks opened 73 outlets as part of an outsourcing agreement with the Netcare Group to manage the pharmacies in its Medicross medical and dental centres.

Clicks has a 22.2% market share of the retail pharmacy and aims to grow this to 30% long-term.

In the year to end-august, Clicks reported results that were ahead of market expectations with a 15.4% increase in operating profit to

R1.8 billion, driven by strong retail health and beauty sales which grew by 14.7% while turnover increased by 10.9% to R26.8bn, according to Renier de Bruyn, an investment analyst at Sanlam Private Wealth, highlighting the continued market share growth in all of its categories.

Ian Cruickshanks, chief economist at the SA Institute of Race Relations, said more consumers would be drawn to large retailers offering pharmaceutical services.

“This could mean fewer smaller pharmacies in years to come. But it doesn’t mean those people won’t be able to find jobs. Instead of working for themselves, they will work for somebody much bigger.”