MTHULISI SIBANDA
JOHANNESBURG- HEALTH and beauty retailer, Clicks Group, has marked 20 years of listing at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange by generating shareholder value of R33 billion since its debut on the stock market in 1996.

New Clicks Holdings, as the company was known, listed at R3.70 with a market capitalisation of R915 million. In 2016 the share price reached an all-time high of R130,50, with the market capitalisation exceeding R30 billion, representing share price growth of 3 870 percent.

The group’s turnover in the first year after listing was R1.8 billion and this has grown to R24.2 billion. The first post-listing dividend of 6 cents per share has increased more than 45 times to 272 cents in 2016.

Chief Executive, David Kneale ,said not only has the scale of the group shown phenomenal growth over the past 20 years but the business has changed fundamentally, as at the time of listing the group was not yet active in the retail pharmacy or wholesale pharmaceutical markets.

“Clicks only entered the pharmacy market some eight years after the listing when legislation changed to allow for corporate pharmacy ownership in South Africa. It was around this time that the group purchased pharmaceutical wholesaler UPD to provide the healthcare supply chain channel for Clicks,” he said.

Clicks is the country’s leading retail pharmacy chain with 400 in-store pharmacies and is South Africa’s foremost pharmaceutical wholesaler and distributor.

The company name was changed from New Clicks Holdings to the Clicks Group Limited in 2009. This coincided with the transfer of the listing from the General Retailers sector to the Food and Drug Retailers sector on the JSE to reflect the increasing contribution of healthcare to the group’s earnings.

Kneale complimented the JSE for its high corporate and regulatory standards which he said had contributed to the Clicks Group attracting extensive foreign investment, with 70 percent of the shares currently held by offshore fund managers.

– Guardian