South African retailer Truworths International Ltd. announced on Thursday, 3rd August 2020 that it will advance a funding of US$8.62M to its British footwear unit- Office as part of a rescue plan.
Retailers worldwide have been hit hard due to the COVID-19 pandemic and same is the case with The Truworths group. It sells clothes, jewellery and homeware, as well as shoes. The pandemic has led to many of its store closures due to the lockdowns.
The funding has been announced for restructuring plans for Office that include redundancies and renegotiating store leases. According to the company statement, the fresh funding will be taken from existing group cash reserves in a phased manner over the next 15 months.
“The store portfolio remains a key focus point and management continues to engage with landlords on lease negotiations. Loss-making and marginal stores will be closed as leases come to an end,” said Truworths referring to its subsidiary, Office.
Truworths International is an investment holding company, whose companies or subsidiaries are engaged in the retailing of fashion apparel and accessories. Truworths International Ltd. is headquartered in Western Cape, South Africa. There are 119 companies in its corporate family. Its subsidiary Truworths is one of the leading fashion retailers of South Africa. It has over 728 stores in South Africa and 49 in rest of Africa.
The group retail sales of Truworths International fell by 9.2% to US$ 1.01 billion as Truworths was not able to trade from stores or online in South Africa for five weeks due to the lockdown. The debt collection from customers who buy on credit also fell down significantly. The credit sales of the Truworths Africa comprise 70% of the retail sales in that unit.
In UK, the Office continued selling products online but there was only 8.8% growth in online sales which was not enough to cover a 16.4% decline in sales there.
Truworths recently declared a final dividend of 31 South African cents per share down from 135 cents. ($1 = 16.7806 rand)
We try our best to fact check and bring the best, well-researched and non-plagiarized content to you. Please let us know
–if there are any discrepancies in any of our published stories,
-how we can improve,
-what stories you would like us to cover and what information you are looking for, in the comments section below or through our contact form! We look forward to your feedback and thank you for stopping by!
