Walmart doubles down in SA as veteran CEO leaves

Walmart is strengthening its commitment to its South African unit, with chief executive officer Mitchell Slape, the Walmart veteran tasked with turning Massmart Holdings around in 2019, preparing to be replaced.

The global retail giant plans to buy all of the shares it doesn’t already own for R62 apiece, a 53% premium to the last closing price, and delist Massmart from Johannesburg’s main bourse, where it has a market value of about R8.9 billion.

Read: Retailer margins being squeezed by inflation

Jonathan Molapo, who joined Massmart in January as chief operating officer, will take over as CEO a year after he came to the company. He’s held various leadership positions in South Africa and internationally and was most recently the CEO of Astron Energy. His most significant retail experience has been developing retail forecourts at gas stations.

Read: Embattled Massmart expects bigger headline losses

Walmart bought a majority stake in Massmart in 2011 for R16.5 billion. Since the end of 2019, Massmart’s share price has dropped 21% and it has had to close a number of stores.

Read: Massmart: Still no hard evidence of the turn around

Slape’s job

Slape, who has worked for Walmart for 27 years, was sent to arrest a slump in profit at the Johannesburg-based company. While he’s faced a string of difficulties ranging from pandemic-induced supply chain problems to a week of deadly South African riots a year ago, Slape has struggled to show signs of a turnaround at household-goods chain Game, even after broad cost cuts.

Read: Massmart doubles down on everything but horror-show Game

Massmart on Monday also reported a first-half loss of R1.03 billion, narrowing from a loss of R1.07 billion a year earlier.

Read the Sens here.