Foschini-owner TFG says unprecedented load shedding in September cost it R400 million in lost sales and plunged it into temporary dip for the first time since the hard lockdowns at the beginning of Covid-19. | News24_Business
The Foschini Group will open 200 new stores in the current financial year ending in March 2021 and another 1 000 in the next three years, and most won't be in the big malls.Stage 6 load shedding cost TFG R400m in lost sales in its half-year to end-September, but it still grew its profits by almost a quarter.As part of its power strategy, the company has become the largest single South African customer of Tesla's Powerwall batteries.
"To put this into perspective, we were growing at strong double digits for the first half of September and then went into negative growth for the second half of the month, the only time we’ve been in negative territory since the first two months of Covid. Then we bounced back to double-digit growth for October, when we had lower levels of load shedding."
Thunstrom told News24 the group had taken a scientific approach to its backup power rollout, looking at protecting the stores that produced the greatest turnover and profit.A deep dive into the big business story of the week, as well as expert analysis of markets and trends."We basically bought up pretty much every Tesla battery and alternate batteries and lithium batteries that were available in South Africa. That was actually the limiting factor.
"And even beyond that, particularly with the higher levels of load shedding, consumers don’t want to get in their cars, they don’t want to sit in traffic when traffic lights aren’t working and they’re not sure if stores will have power or not so a lot of them just stay at home."
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