South African (SA) retailer Woolworths Holdings reported a 9.6% rise in half-year headline earnings this Wednesday, benefitting from strong demand for \u200cits upmarket food products over Black Friday and the festive season and the revamping of its fashion units.<\/p>\n
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Headline earnings per share rose to 167.4 cents in the 26 weeks ended December 28 from 152.8 cents in the prior period. Adjusted earnings before \u2060interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 3.2% to R4.6 billion ($277.27 million).<\/p>\n
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“The group’s interim results reflect the ongoing progress in various strategic initiatives, with improving performance in the apparel businesses and continued above-market growth in the food business,” the retailer said.<\/p>\n
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This is notwithstanding a constrained trading environment across both the companies’ key markets SA and Australia, with its \u200cAustralian \u2060fashion business trading in a highly discount-driven retail sector.<\/p>\n
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Group turnover and concession rose 5.4% to R42.5 billion ($2.56 billion), or 6.1% in constant currency terms, buoyed by positive sales growth in all \u2060segments of the business.<\/p>\n
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Gross profit margins across Woolworths’ businesses have, however, been under pressure, due to a combination of long-term capacity investment, \u2060stronger growth in lower margin categories and channels such as online shopping and increased promotions to clear excess inventory \u2060in the fashion businesses, Woolworths said.<\/p>\n
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The retailer declared an interim dividend of 118 cents, up 10.3%.<\/p>\n
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–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":27659,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-27658","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"SA retailer Woolworths Holdings reported a 9.6% rise in half-year headline earnings this Wednesday","published_date":"2026-03-04 08:40:49","news_description":"SA retailer Woolworths Holdings reported a 9.6% rise in half-year headline earnings this Wednesday","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/27658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/27658\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27660,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/27658\/revisions\/27660"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=27658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}