Half Year 2026 Mr Price Group Ltd Earnings Call Transcript
Key Points
- Mr Price Group Ltd (MRPLY) achieved a revenue growth of 5.4% to 18.5 billion, with retail sales up 5.5%, outperforming the market's growth of 5.3%.
- The company maintained a strong cash position with cash and cash equivalents growing to 3 billion, up 38% from the previous year.
- The apparel segment, contributing 78.5% of retail sales, grew 5.3% and outperformed the competitive market, which grew only 4.7%.
- Mr Price Group Ltd (MRPLY) expanded its store network by adding 91 new stores in the first half, contributing to a weighted average space growth of 3.5%.
- The company reported a gross profit margin increase of 30 basis points to 40.0%, driven by gains across all trading segments despite a highly promotional environment.
- Consumer confidence remained negative, and household expenditure growth was subdued, impacting overall sales performance.
- The company faced challenges from a highly promotional retail environment, which could pressure margins if competitors continue aggressive discounting.
- Credit sales growth was slightly behind cash sales growth, and the net bad debt ratio increased to 8.9% due to a deteriorating consumer environment.
- The homeware sector, while showing profit growth, continued to experience market share losses.
- The company is cautious about pushing credit aggressively due to past experiences with consumer credit health issues, which could limit growth in this channel.
Morning everybody. I'm Mark Blair, the CEO of the Mr. Price Group, and thanks for joining us while we take you through our interim results to the 27th of September 2025.
I'm going to be talking a little bit about the operating environment. Preneeil Nnumar, the CFO will take us through the detailed group performance. And then I'm going to share the longer-term thinking with you and also the short-term outlook.
So moving into the operating environment.
And I think there's already been much said about this. There's been other retailer presentations, so I probably don't have to say too much except to say I think these graphs tell the full picture.
Since Covid-19, there's been a prolonged period of negative real wage growth, rising debt service costs, and obviously inflation has been more elevated, but it seems to be improving now.
But if you look at that graph on the left hand side, there you'll see the negative wage growth in 2022 and 2023.
Started picking up a bit
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