Kalahari, Takealot merger is a go

Any info on how the deal was structured. 50/50 owned by Naspers and Takealot owners or did one buy the other one?
 
Chevron said:
51 Takealot/ 49 Naspers IIRC.
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Wasn't it equal share - i.e. 41% each and I think the rest is owned by TGI (Tiger Global Investments) - no cash changed hands (although some insiders said that Kalahari had to pay in as they were undervalued compared to Takealot).
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
....

Last thing to remember: UPS and Fedex (and in due course then all the other couriers) are introducing dimensional weight pricing which means that international courier fees will go up. This will affect about 30-40% of courier parcels and will obviously see courier costs go up - so Amazon/eBay/Alibaba (in addition to the current USD exchange rates) will become even more expensive.
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All the couriers already base shipping on dimensional weight, which only affects parcels where dimensional weight is greater than actual weight.
FedEx website clearly states

Dimensional weight in kg = length x height x width in cm / 5,000

If I courier is not charging on dimensional weight it's because they have an agreement with a client. But the big couriers are definitely using dimensional weight.
 
reactor_sa said:
All the couriers already base shipping on dimensional weight, which only affects parcels where dimensional weight is greater than actual weight.
FedEx website clearly states

Dimensional weight in kg = length x height x width in cm / 5,000

If I courier is not charging on dimensional weight it's because they have an agreement with a client. But the big couriers are definitely using dimensional weight.
Click to expand...

I know the local couriers do. I have never shipped anything, so I assumed that this announcement (https://www.shipwire.com/w/blog/fedex-ups-dimensional-weight-changes/) is new.
 
The report from the competition commission: http://www.gov.za/sites/www.gov.za/files/38539_gen202.pdf

The Commission found that the proposed merger will lead to about 290 retrenchments which will lead
to public interest concerns. The Commission engaged the merging parties on how to ameliorate the
effect of the propose merger on employment. The merging parties made submissions on how to best
alleviate the employment concerns raised by the proposed merger. Firstly, the merging parties
revised the number of employees likely to be retrenched from 290 to 200 employees. Furthermore,
the merging parties have offered to assist affected employees in various forms. Lastly, the merging
parties have undertaken to establish a training fund which will contribute a maximum of R30 000 per
each employee. Please refer to `Annexures A and Al' for the full conditions. The Commission is of
the view that these remedies are sufficient to alleviate employment concerns raised by the proposed
merger. There are no other public interest concerns raised by the proposed merger.
Click to expand...
 
MagicDude4Eva said:
Also remember that not a single international competitor (Amazon, Alibaba or Ebay) has entered locally and once this happens it will become really exciting. I think all those stories about "brick and mortar shops will die" are sensationalist - in most cases a consumer will still want to touch/feel/look at a physical product before buying it. Brick-and-mortar stores can follow the click&collect model (what Makro is currently building out) - but even international studies have shown that click&collect does not improve efficiencies (i.e. the study across Macy's, Walmart and others has shown that it is only 90 seconds faster for click&collect vs you physically buying/paying for the product in store).
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It's less likely they'll enter, given our shirty ROI given the state of our economy, little spending money, most people being poor and ZAR being worthless - so investments to get a less valuable currency back? Never mind that there will be a ton of BEE regulation for EBay/Amazon to abide by.

Note that Ebay need not even enter SA. SA could turn out to be another Japan with you - you're Bidorbuy guy - should know that Yahoo Japan has kept people on it domestically. Same could happen with BidOrBuy. YJ! is a service which requires subscription fees for buyers and sellers, unlike ebay which is free for buyers. It's very profitable and Ebay was dead in Japan from the moment go.

Also remember that both Kalahari and Takealot use the same distributors and over the years aggressively sold at cost and some times below cost - this already caused issues with some brands as they felt that it devalued the product value. For me a more logical option would have been to bypass local distributors and bulk-import (Walmart style) directly from the manufacturer. Right now everyone sells the same products with more or less the same margins. Returns are still bottlenecked through your local distributors and fulfilment is really only efficient in metro-areas.
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This is nice. But considering how I've been chewed out by people for buying a UK PS4 on Orange maybe you'll get death threats in your private message box for suggesting this.

Last thing to remember: UPS and Fedex (and in due course then all the other couriers) are introducing dimensional weight pricing which means that international courier fees will go up. This will affect about 30-40% of courier parcels and will obviously see courier costs go up - so Amazon/eBay/Alibaba (in addition to the current USD exchange rates) will become even more expensive.
Click to expand...

What do you mean? This has been the case previously. Dimensional weight. It's just that sellers like Amazon Global, EBay (Pitney Bowes), B&H, MacSales, etc have this worked out already, or get special deals. When I go through Buyee.jp or Noppin I have to take this into consideration, same with forwarders like MyUS.
 
Space_Chief said:
It's less likely they'll enter, given our shirty ROI given the state of our economy, little spending money, most people being poor and ZAR being worthless - so investments to get a less valuable currency back? Never mind that there will be a ton of BEE regulation for EBay/Amazon to abide by.
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This is true, but also think that now with the 1USD = R12 and 1EUR = R13 and taxes having just gone up and the looming petrol price hikes as well as further costs of all the SOE bailouts will make it very difficult for us tax-payers to actually shop around for luxuries. This will add substantial pressure to the retailers with stock churning - you see this already where high end 55" LEDs dropped by over 50% YoY purely because it has become "old" stock (at least in South African terms) and more manufacturers will dump their old stock onto our market. A lot of the local e-commerce outlets will not be able to compete on price and either will have to fold or reinventing themselves by introduced "housebrand" products (i.e. the "Kalahari sandwichmaker"). Many people forget the formidable power a Makro with the Walmart backing has and I would be surprised if Massmart does not already have an elaborate plan (at least they already have the distribution footprint, which no-one else has). Equally "food-retailers" such as Pick'n Pay should not be underestimated - it is very easy to turn them into full-fledged online-order-and-pick-up-in-store-outlet (it's just a staff competence issue).

Space_Chief said:
Note that Ebay need not even enter SA. SA could turn out to be another Japan with you - you're Bidorbuy guy - should know that Yahoo Japan has kept people on it domestically. Same could happen with BidOrBuy. YJ! is a service which requires subscription fees for buyers and sellers, unlike ebay which is free for buyers. It's very profitable and Ebay was dead in Japan from the moment go.

This is nice. But considering how I've been chewed out by people for buying a UK PS4 on Orange maybe you'll get death threats in your private message box for suggesting this.
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I am actually glad that we do not participate in the retailer "blood-bath". I think you will find over the coming months more and more B&M-stores shifting into our marketplace purely because they need to push volume and they lack the audience. Kalahari tried the market place and they failed and anyone else will go through the same pains as we did when it comes to deal with individual sellers. Most traditional platforms will struggle competing with us in the untraditional verticals and would have to spend a lot of cash to just catch up.


Space_Chief said:
What do you mean? This has been the case previously. Dimensional weight. It's just that sellers like Amazon Global, EBay (Pitney Bowes), B&H, MacSales, etc have this worked out already, or get special deals. When I go through Buyee.jp or Noppin I have to take this into consideration, same with forwarders like MyUS.
Click to expand...

I am actually not quite sure, rumour on the ground was that local couriers will start levying "extra fulfilment costs" but I think they gave up, seeing that SAPO is busy collapsing and fulfilment shifts to the local guys. For what it's worth, think about the one courier Naspers has which with the merge of Kalahari will be standing alone (since Takealot has Mr. D and would not consider taking them in). The same applies to their payment engine, so there will still be a lot of consolidation coming around September with many more little guys folding as they are burning a lot of cash just to maintain their pride :whistling:
 
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