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Shoprite’s traditional customer base of lower-income shoppers might be struggling, along with South Africa’s economy, but it’s not all doom and gloom for the supermarket giants.

Africa’s biggest grocer saw local supermarket sales rise by 10%, which is a significant increase on the 1,7% reported for the same period last year.

The Cape Town-based company said that was down to a number of factors, including store openings, reports Moneyweb:

The shares climbed as much as 6%, the most in more than three months, and traded 5.6% higher at 144.83 rand as of 10:03 a.m. in Johannesburg.

That was yesterday, and as of the time of writing, the price is now around R138 a share.

Shoprite may have grabbed headlines recently with the opening of a flagship Checkers outlet in Sandton, but it’s their hard discounter format Usave, as well as some new Liquorshop outlets, that have really helped with the turnover.

This is all great news for shareholders, and Chairman Christo Wiese also has reason to smile. Last Friday, headlines like ‘Fallen billionaire Christo Wiese faces fresh assault: Shoprite battle erupts’ were the order of the day on BizNews:

Steinhoff’s near collapse eroded Wiese’s standing as one of South Africa’s richest people, and his net worth now stands at $744m, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Shoprite moved to reduce Wiese’s influence earlier this year with the chairman’s support, but was forced to scrap the plan after investors objected to the likely R3.3bn ($219m) cost to the company in compensation. The grocer has also faced shareholder opposition to its levels of executive pay, holding extra meetings to discuss the policy…

Wiese, 78, has been chairman of the Cape Town-based company for almost three decades and has more voting rights than any other shareholder. He is standing for re-election as non-executive director at the supermarket giant’s annual general meeting next week…

“We need some forces on the board that will balance Wiese’s influence,” Shane Watkins, chief investment officer at All Weather, said by phone.

Shareholder All Weather Capital had last week nominated former Pepkor Ltd. head Jan le Roux as a director to try and reduce Wiese’s influence, but that didn’t pan out.

Le Roux received just 16% support, and IOL reports that “shareholders voted for Christo Wiese to stay on as non-executive director for another year”.

It was also reported that Wiese was reappointed as chairman at the AGM, “even after ordinary shareholders resoundingly voted against his re-election as a non-executive director”. That was in large part due to his own superior voting rights.

More than three decades at the helm, and Wiese shows no signs of letting up.

[sources:moneyweb&biznews&iol]