Company News in Brief

Tiger Brands sells stake in Chilean firm for R4.4bn to focus on SAShares in South Africa's biggest food producer, Tiger Brands, jumped over 4% on Tuesday morning as it announced it is selling its 24% stake in Chilean producer Empresas Carozzi back to its parent company Carozzi for R4.4 billion as part of a strategy to prioritise the local market. "Tiger Brands' revised vision, as communicated in December 2024, is to grow as southern Africa's leading consumer goods company – placing consumers at the centre of everything through our people and with the most accessible loved brands," Tiger Brands said on Tuesday. "As such, further expansion into the Latin American region is no longer a strategic priority for the company."Tiger Brands' share price was up 4.3% by 10:20, and is up over 42% over the past one year. -FIN24 Makro owner claims 'blatant, calculated copying' of its ads by Mr D - and regulator partly agreesMakro owner Massmart believes that Mr Delivery (Mr D) imitated the signature features of its Makro Mood campaign by, among other things, hiring the same voiceover artist for a radio advertisement and asking him to speak in his "Makro-style" voice.Massmart lodged a complaint with the Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB), arguing that Mr D imitated its Makro Mood campaign in a Black Friday radio advertisement and a separate YouTube shorts advertisement.Neither party is a member of the ARB, but the regulator agreed to look into the matter as it can issue instructions to its members on whether to accept the advertising in question, even if the advertiser is a non-member.In its complaint, which was made by Massmart lawyers and summarised in the ARB ruling, Massmart explains that it has promoted the Makro Mood campaign on all its social media channels since September 2023. The campaign has been watched 20 million times on YouTube alone.-FIN24 Shoprite's core local business continues to perform, while Africa weaker than expectedShoprite's core local supermarkets business' strong growth trajectory continued unabated in the six months to December, albeit at a slower pace than the first half last year.Reporting an operational update on Tuesday, SA's largest retailer's aggressive expansion also showed no signs of slowing, opening 248 stores over the past 12 months to bring its store total to 2 485.Supermarkets RSA, which contributes about 83.7% to total group sales, reported sales growth of 10.4%, slightly down from the 14.6% it reported in the same period last year. Like-for-like sales grew 6.1%, compared with 6.3% in the same period last year. The group also passed on selling price increases of 1.9% for the period, indicating strong volume growth. Last year at the same time, inflation was coming at 7.7%.Top performances from its Checkers and Checkers Hyper, and Sixty60 on-demand platform, helped drive its performance, with a 13.5% and 47.1% surge in sales respectively. Shoprite and Checkers LiquorShop sales also gave a good account, with sales increasing 12.2%, while Shoprite and Usave reported sales growth of 6.7%.-FIN24Game-changer: SA-made locos to break coal line dependence on Chinese sparesIn what is expected to be a game-changer for export coal volumes, Transnet is progressing work to fit locally made locomotives onto the North Corridor as an impasse with a Chinese supplier of spares remains unresolved.A long-run impasse with the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), which has rendered Transnet unable to procure spares for its Chinese locomotives, has had a devastating impact on rail performance on the corridor, which moves South African coal into global markets.But a decision to introduce locally manufactured locomotives onto the line is set to break the dependency on the CRRC locos, Transnet Freight Rail CEO Russell Baatjies told News24 in a recent briefing.Alstom's 23Es are produced locally, with final assembly taking place at Transnet Engineering's facility in Durban. Already, 18 of these locos are running on the coal line, helping to boost coal export performance through the Richards Bay Coal Terminal by 10% to 52 million tonnes in 2024 (although this is still far off from the record 75.6 million tonnes in 2017).-FIN24Meta plans to invest R1.1 trn or more in AI this yearMeta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said the tech giant plans to invest at least $60 billion (~R1.1 trillion) in artificial intelligence in 2025, aiming to lead in the technology."This will be a defining year for AI," Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook page.Zuckerberg expects Meta AI to be the top digital assistant, used by more than a billion people, and for the tech firm's Llama 4 to be at the forefront of AI models, according to the post.Meta is creating an AI "engineer" to contribute computer coding to its research and development efforts, he explained.Meta will construct a massive new datacenter to power its AI ambitions and is planning $60 billion to $65 billion in capital expenditures this year related to the technology, according to Zuckerberg."This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business, unlock historic innovation, and extend American technology leadership," he said.-AFP

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