Pick n Pay closed Friday’s trade session on the JSE 1.64% higher, capping a 3.52% uptick for the seven-day period during which it announced discounted terms for its R4 billion rights offer and also awarded CEO Sean Summers 4 million performance-based shares.
Shares in Pick n Pay closed Friday’s trade session at R27.95 and have been up 47% and 32% in the past three months and six months, respectively.
Market analyst Simon Brown told Business Report that the terms laid down by Pick n Pay for its rights offer were “not bad considering that the high share price” had helped the company under its latest scheme.
There are high hopes that shareholders will subscribe to the company’s rights offer to which the Ackerman family have already said they are committed to support the scheme by following their rights for an amount of up to R1 billion.
The Pick n Pay board’s remuneration committee resolved to award Summers with 4 000 000 performance-based shares, which are are conditional on group targets under the group’s long-term plan.
“The remuneration committee has awarded the shares to Sean Summers who, with the requisite clearance received from the chair of the board, has duly accepted. The shares are issued at nil cost and may vest, subject to performance conditions being met over a period of 32 months,” said Pick n Pay.
It added that Summers’s performance conditions combine qualitative and quantitative performance indicators critical to the turnaround of the core Pick n Pay supermarket business. The Pick n Pay grocery chain has been losing market share to rival grocers, and despite stronger performance under the Boxer budget stores, Pick n Pay has been weighed down into loss-making.
In the year to end February, 2024 Pick n Pay’s supermarket business tipped into a substantial trading loss of R1.5bn. The group’s overall loss for the period amounted to R3.2bn, including asset impairments for the same period.
BUSINESS REPORT