TFG has identified 300 underperforming and marginal stores across its network and closed 100 in the year to 31 March. CEO Anthony Thunström frames it as a strategic recalibration: the group held back R600m in capital expenditure and pushed through short-term savings across Africa, Australia and the United Kingdom after its cost base grew faster than sales.

What makes the closures possible is Bash, the e-commerce platform launched in February 2023, which grew 49% year on year at gross margins equivalent to the stores business.

The full-year numbers explain the urgency: Group revenue rose 7.2% to R67bn, but operating profit fell 22% to R4.9bn, headline earnings per share dropped 33.5% to 675.4c, and basic EPS fell 58.1% to 411.2c once brand impairments landed.

TFG Africa's gross margin contracted 100 basis points to 41.6%, and segmental EBIT fell 14.7% on negative operating leverage. Two details worth getting right: online reached 10% of TFG Africa sales in the fourth quarter specifically, while the full-year contribution was 8.2%.

And the 300 stores span the whole group, not just South Africa, which matters because TFG Africa's like-for-like sales grew 3.5% in FY2026 while Australia's fell 3.4%. Finance costs have nearly tripled in five years to R2.05bn, largely on acquisition debt.

Daily Investor reports annual profit has fallen from R2.91bn in 2022 to R1.32bn, and that Project Vela will fold marginal brands into leaner operating structures. TFG's own results put TFG Africa at 68.3% of group turnover against Australia's 13.5%, while Moneyweb notes a deteriorating second half and non-cash impairments across the international portfolio did most of the damage.

The most useful number Thunström gave is the extra R1.1bn in Bash sales would have needed more than 100 new stores and roughly R500m in capex and inventory to produce through the old model. Once online margins match store margins, a shop becomes an expensive way to buy the same rand of revenue, and every retail lease in the country eventually gets repriced against that logic.

Identified is not closing, and TFG has published no list, no timeline and no job numbers, so treat 300 as a planning envelope. And the group's actual bleeding is offshore: Australia is going backwards on a like-for-like basis while South Africa grew, so framing this as an SA story inverts the geography.

The signal for landlords and independent retailers is that anchor tenants now model floorspace against fulfilment cost. If your lease renewal falls inside three years, that negotiation has already changed.

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