Choppies gets chopped from Botswanan borse

Botswanan supermarket chain Choppies has missed another deadline to publish its annual results (for the 12 months to June 2018), prompting the Botswanan Stock Exchange (BSE) to suspend trading in its shares.
In a statement, the BSE stated that trading in Choppies’ shares “will remain suspended until the company complies with BSE listings requirements or until further notice.” Before this suspension, shares in Choppies had lost around three-quarters of their value since the beginning of the year. Having expanded aggressively over recent years, the chain now has more than 200 stores across eight African markets.
We previously discussed Choppies’ accounting problems (click here) when it missed its own September deadline for publication and warned that its profits for the year would decline by at least 20%. While the chain is embroiled in a row over the ownership of its 33 stores in Zimbabwe (click here), this on its own is insufficient to explain the delay. More likely is that one or more skeletons are waiting to tumble out of its accounting closet.
If you want a detailed analysis of Choppies’ growth, operations, strategy and outlook in African grocery retail, Sagaci Research has just published the Choppies Retailer Profile. If you want to know more, click here