Recorded Tuesday 20 October 2026 for release 21 October 2026. Topics: French 10-year yields, Boxer vs Shoprite, Amazon trade of the week.

**Simon Brown (00:01)**
WorldWideMarkets this week is Boxer, the next Shoprite. What’s happening to French yields and time for a bit of Amazon.

Simon Brown, welcome to WorldWideMarkets episode 699. this is for 21 October, and we are recording Tuesday lunchtime, 20 October. WorldWideMarkets, powered by Standard Bank Global Markets Retail and Shyft, the global money app that puts travel, shopping, payments, and investments in the palm of your hand. Enjoy the cheapest forex rates anytime, anywhere. Shyft powered by Standard Bank.

Thanks to Shyft, thanks to Standard Bank. Let’s kick off with France. So my chart for this week is gonna be the French 10-year yield, because it is getting quite wild. Now, to be clear, there I mean that there are riots happening in France, there are curfews going down. It’s not about immigration, it’s about economics. And to be clear, the French like a good riot. I I mean, I don’t know about you, but we were learning about these things in school. They were doing it in the 1700s.

this is what France tends to do. There’s some great pictures, not from this ride, but from earlier ones, because they do it a lot. I think it was Bordeaux. You know, you’ve got the the rail tracks through the city where the tramway goes. So they put wheels on, they put a bry, and they’re out there doing their march and brying at the same time because France. Anyway.

So here we go. we’ve got current yields are back at sort of early two thousands, two thousand and one, two thousand and two. This is on the tenure, just below four point eight percent. Weird. US tenure is higher than this. So I mean, by simple math, the the market is saying US is is riskier than than this.

And there are a lot of reasons. So I mean we’ve France has got a presidential election next year. Seems no chance of a centrist getting in. It’s gonna be left or right. Some of the candidates are saying, let’s abandon French debt, let’s, you know, default on debt, et cetera. It is a mess. There are Le Pen is talking around putting limits in place, et cetera, et cetera. As I said, Odd Lots had a really great podcast last week on what’s happening in France.

It is well worth having a look. They were also in the lead up to the pandemic and then through to as recently as 2021, they were running negative yields on their tenure. In other words, you were being you were paying to give France money. You’d give them money and then they would give you back less money. What we have seen is a massive sell-off in the last little while. I mean, as recently as July, the yield was trading at let’s call it 3.5.

Now trading at let’s call it 4.8. That is a 30, almost 40% sell-off in the last little while. And this tends to focus minds. And if we go back to just Jan of last year, we’ve gone from 2.3 to 4.8. It is doubled. Now remember how this works. It’s not the existing 10-year that’s the problem. It’s that as France issues new 10-year bonds, and they have to because, well, like every other country in the world, they have a debt pile. As they issue those new bonds.

They now come in at the much higher rate, which then gives you that negative feedback loop, right? So you, your, your, your, debt goes up, so you issue more bonds, but it’s at a higher rate. So your interest bill goes up, so your debt goes up. So you issue new bonds, but it’s at a higher rate. Negative feedback loop. We’re seeing it in developed markets the world over.

South Africa, interestingly, is a positive feedback loop. That’s probably going to get a lot more. We’ll hear a lot more about that in the MTBPS for Wednesday. But in the meantime, this is a horrible picture for France. They need to make a plan. And yeah, the rights is one thing, make no mistake about it. But it’s a lot more than just that. It is a financial system that’s currently just not working. And that is what matters in that regard. And it matters, it absolutely matters hugely. You can’t just sort of say, well, hey, you know,

High yields we can learn to live with it. I mean, I suppose you can learn to live with it, but it’s not something you want to learn to live with. That is not a good plan by any stretch.

We have our October power hour this week. In fact, Thursday, 5 30, 22nd, in person at Rosebank, or you can catch the webcast. I’m looking at the actively managed ETF wave. There’s been like 50 of them suddenly arrived, most of them with very little assets under management. Most of them, as it says in the sticker, active. Are there any good? There are some that are. There’s some sectors that are. justonelap.com/events for more information and bookings.

So next get to is Boxer the next Shoprite? Disclaimer up front. I hold some Shoprite shares. I do not hold Boxer. The size gap in and of itself says a lot, right? Box is around 600 stores. Shoprite is 3,700 odd. Boxers 12-month turnovers 48.1 billion. It’s about 18% of the Shoprite group. although 21% of supermarkets RSA and about 40% of Shoprite and USave.

And that’s an important distinction. And I’m gonna come back to it lots. But when we say Shoprite, there are actually three primary grocery brands within that. They’ve got USave, they’ve got Checkers, and at the and and in the middle sits the Shoprite. So as customers are shopping up, the group can catch them. As they’re shopping down, the group can catch them. They can get everyone at all different levels. Boxer doesn’t have that. Boxer just has that one single brand, and that is important. But

Box was actually more profitable per rand of sales than Shoprite. Trading margin is 5.6 versus Shoprite’s 6%. But it’s lighter lease book and net cash means pretax margin is 4.6 versus 4.1 at Shoprite. and headline earnings are 3.4 cents of every one rand of sales versus 3.1. So it’s actually, and I gotta say, those numbers surprised me.

Box is actually a little more profitable per one Rand through the till. I didn’t expect that. It comes back to Boxer has Boxer, it has liquor, it has some hardware. Shoprite has Sixty60, which in itself is 25 and a half billion. Remember, Boxer was doing, where does it say my numbers? 48 billion. So Sixty60 is half of Boxer already. They’ve also got the extra savings, the loyalty. They got money market. They got pet shop signs. So they got unique. How do I pronounce it? I said unique.

I was told I was pronouncing it wrong, but then no one told me how to pronounce it. They got MediRite, okay, franchise, Computicket, seven African countries, and as I said, three distinct brands. I don’t think Boxer can become Shoprite, but that’s a different story. Market is certainly pricing Boxer as a growth story. Trading on about 23 times trailing HEPS, Shoprite 21 and a half. Not a lot of dis distance in that, but Shoprite did grow HEPS faster: 12.2 versus 9.2.

And pays a slightly better yield, 2.6 dividend versus 1.7. But boxer’s obviously putting money into growth, and that matters. There’s also the matter that Pick n Pay has the overhang. Fifty odd percent of boxer is held by Pick n Pay. When that did the last sale, they promised no more sales for three hundred and sixty-five days. Takes us to some point next year. At some point, Pick n Pay gets rid of boxer in its entirety. Surely. I mean, it absolutely does. so

For now, the big tale, Boxer is cleaner, it’s simpler, it’s more focused, with lots of runway. Shoprite is a platform. I’ve spoken about this before. when I chatted with Peter Engelbrecht around results, first of September, and I said to him, You know what? I can see what you’re doing. You’re getting the coffee peeps, you’ve got the the the pets, you’ve got all the w basically going through my credit card statement and saying, Well, I want that to be in my app, I want that to be in my app, I want that to be in my app. And Peter was like, Yeah.

I want to be the super app. So he’s clearing about that. so Boxer gives you simplicity and runway, Shoprite gives you platform. Truthfully, for a little bit less. Boxers also got that hangover. 800 stores from Boxer, 347 are supermarkets, 221 boxer liquor. I did not know that it was that few supermarkets and that many liquor. That was a surprise.

And most of those liquor are of course attached to a superstore and sorry to a to a box and then the thirty-two boxer build hardware stores. Shoprite is three thousand seven hundred and ten stores. That is six X. RSA alone, two thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine. of these, a thousand six hundred and forty-one are supermarkets. Shoprite is seven hundred and fourteen and USave five hundred and forty-five. So let’s put let’s put Shoprite and USave together.

And that gets us to about twelve hundred and sixty odd, which is about three times in a bit more than where box is sitting. Because that really is boxes market to a degree is growing into. Box is not coming for Checkers, it’s coming for Shoprite, it’s coming for for USave. And then of course it’s the other bits and pieces. Side by side. So yeah, box is 18% of Shoprite at straight revenue, kind of actually makes a bit of sense in that regard.

Sales growth, Boxer was a little bit slower. Shoprite was doing 7.2, supermarkets RSA 7.1 versus 6.3. We got a bit of a disconnect here because of period ends, right? we we got a a full year for for Shoprite, a half year for boxer. Shoprite and USave is 4.3. So actually slower than boxer. like for like boxer 1.4, Shoprite 2.7, internal saling inflation minus 2.4, and negative in Shoprite and USave.

Boxer is cutting prices harder. And I wonder if that’s the lack of a loyalty. Boxer’s argument is that they give everyday prices that are cheap. And that’s a fair argument. I can’t argue with that. Everyday prices that are cheap. Shoprite says we’ve got a great loyalty program that tells us a ton. It does mean that Boxer’s constantly cutting prices, and the consumer is smart to that. so gross margins, Shoprite’s ahead on that. other income Shoprite’s also ahead of that.

and trading expenses. box is a leaner business, 17.1% versus 20.1%. That doesn’t massively surprise me. and as I said, your pre-tax margins, your headline earnings growth, all of those, we get that dividend growth. pick Shoprite is slightly ahead of that. Shoprite also pays out a higher dividend, about 57%, whereas box is paying out 40%. Again, boxes in that growth space.

again, inventories. Inventories is percentage of sales. Box is nine point one, Shoprite is eleven point seven. Box is just a leaner business. It’s turning quicker, it’s going through its stock a whole lot quicker. Lease liabilities is a pick of sales, eleven percent, eighteen to Shoprite, smaller stores, cheaper stores, cheaper locations for their stores as well, which is hugely important. So there really is a story here of two different

brands more than anything else. So Boxer or formats, and this really, really surprised me. Boxer’s doing about 80 about eighty million per store in sales. Okay. Shoprite eighty one million. That so Shoprite supermarket RSA. In other words, within the same market, they spot on. I I that absolutely boggled me. They’re doing same revenue per store for supermarket RSA, Shoprite and then Boxer.

Checkers and Hyper X liquor is 254 million. That top end is so very, very valuable. And it’s why Boxer, to my question, is not going to be Shoprite. and then of course Liquor does incredibly well. Average revenue per store, almost identical if we look at Boxer and supermarket RSA. If we look at Shoprite and USave, it’s 86 million a store versus Boxer 80. Again, practically the same. Shop Boxer is doing it.

on slightly smaller and cheaper stores and we don’t get full details from from Shoprite around that but fair enough valuations pe 23 and 21 and a half boxer versus a Shoprite you said that already your pegs are 2.5 and 1.8 dividend yields 1.7 and 2.6 for Shoprite again it’s that mature business versus the this is significant business so that really really makes a thing

Boxer, you’re paying a premium on almost every measure, and you’ve got the the headway. But it’s gonna take some time, I suspect, before we really start to see that absolutely coming through. the the prize fight is DNA is is is boxer directly with Shoprite, directly with USave. It’s not worrying about Checkers, it knows where it’s got it and it’s fighting them, and we see that in the price deflation. And then of course

Liquor right next door. sixty four percent boxer liquor, sixty four percent of their superstalls have so two thirds have got liquor. Shoprite it’s f just under half. USave and Checkers about ninety-two. So so sorry, Checkers liquor is ninety two, Shoprite USave is just under half. So liquor’s a big part of that as well. boxer grew store count only nine point seven percent, whereas Shoprite RSA grew store count ten point two.

It’s staggering off that base. It’s almost a store a day. Almost a store per day opening. They’ve got some other bits, retail, media, data, et cetera. so the the key thing is that that Shoprite is segmenting the market left, right, and center. They’ve got the Sixty60, they’ve got loyalty, they’ve got their adjacent businesses, and they’ve got the the the the the the other bits and pieces, okay, franchises, Red Star catering, seven other countries. Box has got thirteen stores in Eswatini.

fundamentally different. boxer’s still running payments through Pick n Pay. That needs to stop. It will at some point. And private label, box is not yet really into the the private label. So does boxer catch up? Well here’s the math. Compounding at 10% a year, Boxer catches Shoprite and USave in ten years. It catches Shoprite Group in eighteen years. But that assumes Shoprite stays still. So if Boxer grows at 10 and Shoprite grows at seven, fair enough.

60 years to catch up. 60 years to catch up. The short answer is they don’t catch up. They’re absolutely number two. And and you know, number two is not the worst place. It’s a very efficient number two price fighter, mass grocery, Shoprite, USave type business in about 10 to 15 years. If execution holds, I think execution can hold. Absolutely, I can, but let’s see how it it really goes. key point boxer earns more per random sales.

Then Shoprite at the bottom line. Didn’t expect that. single brand discounter and as opposed to Shoprite, which is multiple different brands. Absolutely. We’ve got Shoprite’s Q1 twenty tw financial year twenty-seven, maybe late October. Oct AGM is six November. So probably ahead of the AGM. Boxer goes extive on November.

And we’ll get more guidance from Boxer. we’ve had the latest set of results from that. So to be clear, same but different. I hold Shoprite. I’m a very happy Shoprite holder. I in essence have a boxer-like business within Shoprite, a a boxer-like business that I still think probably has growth. But to be clear,

The better and faster growth is probably going to come from Boxer. That overhang slightly bothers me, and you are paying a little bit more for that growth. But I don’t think you’re paying that much more. I don’t think you’re paying that much more. For me, the bigger worry is that overhang of 50 odd percent coming through from Pick n Pay. At some point they they get rid of it. since listing, it was listed at 54 Rand, trading at 83 for for Boxer. It’s not bad. Do we have some price targets coming through? We probably do.

So boxes trading at 83. we’ve got four holds and four buys. The lows eighty-one, the average is ninety-three twenty-five, and the highs 118. I think it’s probably in these eighties. I think boxes about fair. I think if we see some weakness, boxer might be worth a a grab some boxes in in that regard. And if we then look at Shoprite, what do we get with Shoprite? we have six buys and two strong buys.

Interestingly, eight analysts on both, but we’ve got four holds on boxer. low price target is 327, Shoprite is 329, average is 358, and high is 370. It tends to hang around that low. I think Shoprite’s probably fairly priced at current levels. It’s had a really good time of it recently. and if we have a look at its performance chart, it absolutely has broken higher, as it tends to do often. And that 330, 340.

I think is probably about a fair value. So would I be buying either? No. Would I be looking to add Shoprite? Always. On cheaper valuations, that PE goes down to around 18, which it does from time to time. When that happens, you definitely want to be buying yourself some Shoprites. and I mean, we’ve had that PE down at yeah, yeah, 18 or so earlier this year. So opportunity most definitely, and last year. Boxer on the the story that it it is the the better growth.

It’s also in a market. Remember, we’re we’re a poor country. To be clear, Boxer is a brand champion. And I’ve said it before, consumers know this. They absolutely know this. you’re not going to catch the consumers napping by any stretch. So early this year, back in February, I bought some Dell shares. And I think we I spoke about it on this podcast. It was one of the first things I had used my my AI agents for in terms of research. And I paid $120 in there.

Went over 500. I have sold half, which gives me two positions I can open. So be here’s my thinking. Let’s say my positions are 10,000, right? I buy it at at 120, it goes to 480, I sold half. I’ve now got 20,000, right? Because it grew to 40,000 in value, went up four X, sold half, I got twenty thousand. So that gives me two positions I can take. I’m putting one of them into Amazon. I absolutely am. I’ve chatted around Amazon in this show before. What’s my story with Amazon? Robotics and and Andy Jassy has said this.

Robotics is going to fundamentally change Amazon. Not drivers and stuff like that, warehouses. They are going to cut back on staff left, right, and center. They’re going to get 247, 365, 52, whatever. Tw just basically continue operations coming through out of their warehousing. the stock is not massively cheap. Forward PE is weirdly actually higher than it than the current.

It is slightly cheap. It’s trading at a price to book. you know, the mean over the last decade is 14.2, standard deviation 7.6, and price to book is currently 5.1. that kind of makes some sense. And if we zoom that out even further, we get a mean price to book of 29. Because you remember way back in the days, that price to book was 479 in July of 2000. Yeah, scary days. So the stocks looking not bad at all. Analyst expectations.

lows two thirty, average three thirty, high four five, it’s trading two sixty. I think we might see a bit of weakness. 42 buys, 16 strong buys, and two holds. No sells. I wish we could see more sales. I like the story, I like the future for it. I actually spoke about this, I think, late last year or perhaps early this year, at around the 180, no, around the 200 odd level. Didn’t pick any up. Now 260 odd.

If it gets back to around the two forty, I’ve got some bids in there. I will buy some at around this point. And then if it gets a little cheaper, I’ll pick up more around there. I like the story, I like the business, I like AWS, I like what they’re doing in terms of robotics. I weirdly have never used Amazon SA, but be that as it may. So our our trade for the week is some Amazon stock that I will be picking up. I I haven’t yet because price could be a little bit cheaper and I don’t want to front run the listeners. So yeah.

WorldWideMarkets powered by Standard Bank Global Markets, Retail, and Shyft, the global money app that puts travel, shopping, payments, and investments in the palm of your hand. Enjoy the cheapest forex rates anytime, anywhere. Shyft powered by Standard Bank. So we’ve been doing lots of deep dives at individual stocks or maybe collectors of stocks or sectors. We’ve done Shoprite and Boxer today. We’ve done tech stock, not tech, sorry, education stocks. we’ve done some of the the vehicle companies.

And and the response has been phenomenal. The the the traffic has gone up ten X, eight X, whatever the case may be. But let us know what stocks you’d like me to cover. Local, JC, give me a shout. Let me know what’s interesting for you. We’ll leave it there. My name is Simon. As always, we will chat again next week. And until then, look after yourself and if you can, look after somebody else as well. Cheers all.