Resilience in the Aisles: Choppies Grows Sales to BWP9.8 Billion

In a year when the shine came off Botswana’s diamonds and consumers across Southern Africa pulled back, Choppies Enterprises Limited did something that might seem counterintuitive: it kept opening doors.

Twenty-seven of them, to be precise.

The dual-listed grocer, a fixture of urban high streets and rural trading posts alike, reported that group retail sales climbed 7.9 percent to BWP9.82 billion in the year ended June 30, 2026, up from BWP9.11 billion a year earlier. Each week, roughly 2.3 million shoppers now move through its 314 stores across seven formats and three countries – a footprint the company expanded even as the macroeconomic weather turned against it.

“The Board remains confident that Choppies is positioned for sustainable growth and improved shareholder returns,” the company said, striking a forward-leaning note in results that, beneath the headline pressure on profit, told a story of a retailer playing offense.

Top line up, balance sheet lighter

Total revenue rose to BWP9.89 billion from BWP9.17 billion. Gross profit advanced 6.5 percent to BWP2.02 billion, from BWP1.89 billion the year before — a gain the company delivered “despite the competitive and challenging economic environment,” even as the gross margin eased slightly to 20.5 percent from 20.8 percent.

Perhaps the most consequential move of the year never appeared on a shop shelf. In January 2026, Choppies settled in full the consortium debt it had raised back in 2021 – closing a chapter that had weighed on the group for half a decade. Management tightened the operating machine around that milestone: inventory days fell to 30 from 33, receivable days to four from five, and payable days eased to 33 from 35. Operating activities still generated a healthy BWP578 million in cash.

The auditors at Forvis Mazars signed off with an unqualified opinion.

A tale of three countries

If Choppies is a single company, its results read like three separate campaigns.

In Zambia, the group had its breakout year. Sales surged 42.6 percent in Pula terms – and a still-robust 15.1 percent in local Kwacha – with like-for-like growth of 42.5 percent in Pula. Five new stores opened during the year. A strengthening Kwacha imported deflation that trimmed reported profit, but the underlying demand story was unmistakable: shoppers were buying.

In Namibia, sales jumped 23.2 percent, with like-for-like growth of 14.9 percent. Government subsidies on staples such as maize, pilchards, soya, rice and oil supported food security and funneled customers through the doors, even as they compressed margins. The company’s message was blunt and ambitious: the market “needs more stores to achieve scale and its full potential for the brand in this country.”

In Botswana, the home market absorbed the full force of the diamond downturn. Sales dipped just 0.7 percent to BWP5.62 billion – a performance management rightly framed as resilience rather than retreat. Seven new stores opened. And despite softer profitability, the company pointed to “good in-store execution, improved customer engagement and enhanced availability due to inventory optimisation” as evidence that the fundamentals were being sharpened for the recovery to come.

Turnarounds taking shape

Two of the group’s trickier businesses showed the first green shoots of a turnaround.

Liquorama lifted its gross profit rate to 13.1 percent from 12.4 percent on the back of better promotional discipline, and grew EBITDA to BWP17 million from BWP14 million even after opening 10 new stores. The broader “Rest of Choppies” segment — which houses the profitable milling and manufacturing operations alongside the hardware business – swung its adjusted EBIT to a BWP28 million profit, from BWP21 million a year earlier.

Management was candid that the hardware arm, Builders Mart, needs roughly another 12 months to complete its turnaround. But the direction of travel is set, and the company is pairing patience with expansion.

Headwinds, named and faced

Choppies did not sugarcoat the environment. Reduced consumer liquidity tied to the diamond-market slump, a deliberate devaluation of the Pula, government austerity, an inflationary cost base, the rollout of a living wage in Botswana and new stores still climbing their maturity curve all pressed on profitability.

Those pressures showed up below the gross-profit line. EBITDA slipped 7.4 percent to BWP574 million, operating profit (EBIT) declined 23.6 percent to BWP243 million, and profit after tax from continuing operations came in at BWP74 million, down from BWP151 million, as costs grew faster than Pula gross profit. Basic earnings from continuing operations were 4.1 thebe per share.

Yet the group’s total profit of BWP74 million sat alongside a total comprehensive profit of BWP113 million, buoyed by favourable foreign-currency translation — a reminder that a diversified, multi-country footprint can cushion as well as complicate.

The road ahead

The Board opted to retain earnings for now, preserving liquidity for core operations and growth, while signaling that it “remains committed to shareholder returns” and will resume dividends “as the Group delivers sustainable earnings growth and achieves financial stabilisation.”

Its strategic priorities are deliberately unglamorous: consolidate profitability in Botswana, Namibia and Zambia; finish the Builders Mart and Liquorama turnarounds; hold the line on financial discipline; and advance ESG initiatives. A corporate tax rate rising to 24.5 percent from 22.0 percent in the 2027 financial year is already baked into the group’s planning.

For a retailer that fed 2.3 million customers a week and employed more than 11,000 people through one of Botswana’s toughest economic stretches in years — all while retiring legacy debt and planting 27 new flags across the map — the message to the market was less about the single year’s profit than about the position being built for the years that follow.

In retail, as Choppies’ financial year made plain, the winners are often decided not when the sun is out, but in how a company stocks its shelves through the storm.

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