Johannesburg - Massmart says its pre-tax profit and headline earnings will show an improvement in the first half of the year, despite the current lacklustre economic situation.
South Africa’s economy is not expected to grow this year.
The listed retailer, majority owned my Walmart, says its pre-tax profit, excluding a once-off gain, will be between 8.4 percent and 15.9 percent higher than the R685.2 million it reported for the 26 weeks to June.
Retailers count their periods in full weeks, hence the apparent anomaly between their period end and that of other companies.
In a statement issued on Monday, the company said its results for the 26 week period to June 2016 were favourably affected by an insurance gain arising from the excess of the insured replacement value over the net book value of the assets destroyed by the fire at the Jumbo Crown Mines store in February 2016.
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That gain will bolster pre-tax profit by as much as 22.1 percent and earnings by 29.2 percent, it says.
The company also added that currency movements across Africa remained volatile and mostly negative and so the likely net foreign exchange loss is slightly higher than that reported for the comparable 2015 period.
Despite this, it says it benefited from an improved tax rate.
IOL