Dis-Chem 'losing ground to Clicks' as it issues muted update - analysts

Pharmacy group Dis-Chem released a muted trading update on Friday that showed retail sales volumes may be coming under pressure, with analysts suggesting that it could be losing ground to its main rival Clicks in some of its key segments.

At the same time the JSE-listed pharmaceutical retailer noted in an update for the period 1 September to 5 February that it was increasingly seeing a normalisation of shopping patterns, with customers scaling back on the vitamins and health supplements they bought at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

CEO Ivan Saltzman said in a statement accompanying the update that this normalisation was "particularly notable in the healthcare and nutrition category where selected commoditised lines (like Vitamin C and Zinc) were more frequently shopped by consumers during the Omicron variant months between November 2021 and January 2022".