Pick n Pay's Bold Break-Even Strategy: A New Dawn for South Africa's Retail Giant

New CEO Sean Summers unveils a strategy to revive South Africa's struggling Pick n Pay supermarkets. The plan includes closing 100 loss-making stores and converting them to franchises, aiming for a break-even by 2027. The Ackerman family will reduce their voting rights, boosting investor confidence and corporate independence.

Break-even targets and a new strategy for South Africa's core Pick n Pay supermarkets seem "plausible", analysts said on Tuesday, a day after the new CEO of the struggling retailer outlined his plan.

New CEO Sean Summers is tasked with reviving a business that has been losing market share to bigger rivals Shoprite and others for more than a decade. Under his new plan, over 100 loss-making Pick n Pay supermarket stores will be closed or converted to Pick n Pay franchise or Boxer stores, resulting in about 850 million rand ($46.52 million) of savings.

He also expected the core loss-making Pick n Pay business to break-even in its 2027 financial year. "While always carrying execution risk and the risk of conditions changing or things not going exactly to plan, the corporate plan to turn around the business appears plausible," Sasfin Wealth senior equity analyst Alec Abraham said.

Stephan Erasmus, investment analyst at Anchor Capital concurred, said these actions, combined with the projected rights issue and listing its discounter Boxer, "will position Pick n Pay for a more stable and profitable future." The Ackerman family, which founded Pick n Pay and is its majority shareholder, also announced on Monday that it will relinquish control by decreasing its voting rights to slightly below 50% after the planned rights offer.

"This change is expected to establish a more equitable and transparent governance framework, increasing investor confidence," Erasmus said. Casparus Treurnicht, portfolio manager at Gryphon Asset Management, said with the Ackerman family's lowering influence, Pick n Pay could operate as a more independently owned business.

"I think it was inevitable for this to happen," Treurnicht said. "This also gives Sean (Summers) more flexibility in running the operation going forward. I think the Ackerman family was too influential in the past." Treurnicht added that he wondered if Summers and the financiers "pushed for this more balanced shift of power."

Chairman Gareth Ackerman, who will step down next year, told investors that he recognised the need for composition change in the board and that "we need new blood and ideas." ($1 = 18.2717 rand)