Shoprite is up 19% this year and Woolworths has lost a third. Your trolley is the reason

About R49.

That is what one share in The Foschini Group, the company behind Foschini, Markham, Jet and @home, cost on Wednesday. A year ago it cost about R110.

This year alone, a Shoprite share has gone from about R270 to more than R320.

The two companies sell to the same people, often in the same malls. TFG is closing shops while Shoprite opens new ones faster than any rival.

Investor and keynote speaker Vusi Thembekwayo laid out this split in a talk that has passed 400,000 views since 26 September. He calls it one of the most dramatic divergences he has seen in years. He also says upfront that TFG is a client of his firm.

His point is simple. The closer a shop sits to food and everyday basics, the better it is doing. We checked his story against the latest share prices and company results, and the gap turns out to be even wider than he says.

Which South African retailers are winning in 2026?

This is how the big listed retailers' share prices have moved since 1 January.

Share price on 31 December 2025 compared with 8 October 2026, rounded. JSE prices via Yahoo Finance.

Thembekwayo says TFG lost roughly R24 billion in value over a year. He puts Woolworths down in the mid-teens and Shoprite roughly flat to slightly up.

The latest prices are harsher on the losers and kinder to the winners. Woolworths is down about a third since January. Shoprite is up almost a fifth.

One surprise is Pepkor. Pep is the king of cheap, and its sales still grew 5.4% in the ten months to July. But Pepkor sells mostly clothes, shoes and homeware, and the company itself said people are spending less on all of them.

Why are people buying less at TFG and Woolworths?

Because the money runs out before the month does.

Petrol in Gauteng crossed R30 a litre in October, and a big slice of that price is tax. On 23 September the Reserve Bank raised the repo rate to 7.25%, its second hike this year. That makes home loans, car payments and store cards dearer.

When a household is squeezed, the bread stays in the trolley and the new jacket goes back on the rail.

Woolworths shows this inside one company. In the year to June, its food revenue grew 5.6%. Profit before tax in its fashion, beauty and home business fell by 46%. In a July update, Woolworths said shoppers were going for promotions and essentials.

TFG's profit per share fell by a third in the year to March. In the 21 weeks to 22 August, sales in its African stores grew by just 0.2%.

Photo: Nick-D / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Then there are Shein and Temu. A 2025 study for the Localisation Support Fund found the two shopping apps took 37% of South Africa's online clothing sales in 2024. Thembekwayo adds second-hand clothing to the list of things eating into mall fashion sales.

Is TFG closing stores?

Yes. TFG plans to close about 280 stores in Africa by 2029, BusinessTech reported on 2 September. About 80 go in the year to March 2027, then about 100 in each of the two years after that.

R83.95Dec 25

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

R49.318 Oct

See the numbers

Dec 25	R83.95
Jan	R84.43
Feb	R87.22
Mar	R70.57
Apr	R69.94
May	R56.87
Jun	R61.30
Jul	R56.58
Aug	R51.06
Sep	R48.02
8 Oct	R49.31

JSE closing prices in rand. Source: Yahoo Finance.

It already shut 85 stores and opened 25 in the 21 weeks to 22 August. Over the same time its online sales jumped 54%, mostly through its Bash app. TFG says it is closing shops that no longer pay their way.

Cosatu has asked TFG to stop the closures, warning that workers will end up unemployed. TFG has not said how many jobs are affected.

Pick n Pay is cutting too. After its financial year ended in March, it started a section 189A process with store staff. That is the legal process a company must follow before large job cuts.

What happened to Edgars and Jet?

Thembekwayo holds up Edcon as the warning. Edcon owned Edgars and Jet, two of the biggest names in South African clothing.

It went into business rescue in April 2020, after the Covid lockdown wiped out its sales. It owed suppliers, landlords and other creditors about R6.7 billion.

Edgars was sold to Retailability, a privately owned clothing group. TFG paid R480 million for 371 Jet stores. Most stores left out of the two deals closed. The Financial Mail reported that many of Edcon's suppliers would have to write off 96% of what they were owed.

Thembekwayo blames years of heavy debt and private equity owners. That is his view. Whatever the cause, a clothing chain with big debts has no cushion when shoppers stop spending.

Photo: Discott / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why is Shoprite doing so well?

In the year to June, Shoprite sold R270.8 billion worth of goods, up 7.2%. Its own price increases in South African supermarkets averaged just 0.8%, well below inflation.

Sales on its Checkers Sixty60 delivery app rose 34.5% to R25.5 billion. The group opened 232 stores, created close to 5,500 jobs and handed shoppers R18.3 billion back through Xtra Savings.

Thembekwayo says Shoprite's retail media arm, which sells advertising to brands using what it knows about shoppers, is now a billion-rand business. Shoprite has not published a full-year figure for it.

He also mentions a pet business. We found no pet company bought by Shoprite. It built its own chain, Petshop Science, which now has 185 stores. It also runs Uniq clothing stores, and it is buying the coffee chain Vida e Caffè.

How did Boxer get so strong?

Boxer used to sit inside Pick n Pay. It listed on the JSE on its own in November 2024.

Thembekwayo says Boxer was once the brand people mentioned in the boardroom to make a joke. Now, in his words, it is "boxing above its weight".

In its first full year as a listed company, to 1 March 2026, Boxer's revenue rose 9.6% to R47.1 billion. Profit rose 12.5% to R1.56 billion. It opened 51 stores, reaching 576, and created 3,400 jobs.

Boxer stocks about 3,000 products, Daily Investor reported, against about 11,000 at Shoprite. A short shelf list keeps its costs and prices low.

Pick n Pay, which still owns about 53% of Boxer, shows the other side. Its own supermarkets made a trading loss of R1 billion, and it now expects them to break even only in its 2029 financial year. It sold R4.7 billion of Boxer shares to pay for its turnaround.

What does this mean for you when you shop?

Expect more house brands. Thembekwayo points to private label, the store's own brand, as one of the winners' weapons. These products are usually cheaper than the big names, and stores earn more on each one.

Expect your supermarket to do more. He says stores are becoming mini malls, where you can buy groceries, send money, buy airtime and pay accounts at one counter. Shoprite has just bought a majority stake in R&A Cellular, a phone and payments business, and its pet shops and coffee deal point the same way.

Photo: Husskeyy / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Expect fewer clothing shops in some malls. If TFG's plan goes ahead, some of its stores near you will close.

The squeeze on your budget comes from more than the till. There is another round of medical aid increases on the way, and our look at what is really inside a municipal bill shows where the rest goes.

Who wins when money is tight?

Thembekwayo's bottom line is value. If you can deliver something cheaper, better and faster, he says, you win in any industry.

The share prices back him up. Shoprite CEO Pieter Engelbrecht says the goal is to be "your everyday store". In a year of R30 petrol and rising interest rates, that is exactly what South Africans are paying for.

Every rand you shift to a cheaper brand is a vote. Right now the biggest retailers in the country are counting those votes, and rebuilding their stores around them.