The board decided to moderate the annual dividend cover to 1.5 times headline earnings per share. The interim dividend of 14.80c a share was 0.3% up on the prior year.
The gross profit at R5.5bn showed a 0.4 percentage point improvement in margin at 18.1% of turnover‚ which Pick n Pay said was due mainly to cost savings and supply-chain efficiencies.
The trading margin‚ at 1.1% of turnover‚ improved by 0.2 percentage points.
Chief executive Richard Brasher said he was encouraged by evidence that customers were responding positively to the decisive action that the business had taken in a number of areas over the past six months.
The company opened 44 new stores across all formats - more new stores over this six-month period than at any other time in the past decade.
Pick n Pay's internal food price inflation for the period was 4.2%‚ compared with 7.5% in the comparable period last year. The official consumer price index food inflation rate is 6.4%.
The company grew its online business by 24% and increased the number of online shoppers by 16%.
The total number of customers grew by 3.3%‚ with 380m customer transactions going through the tills. Like-for-like sales grew 4% against 3.2% last year.
On a comparable basis‚ Pick n Pay's Africa division increased revenue by 32.8% to R1.6bn for the period under review. It said this division continued to grow steadily‚ with store openings in Zambia‚ Mozambique‚ Namibia and Zimbabwe during the period.
The company said that over the course of the past six months it had delivered an improved performance‚ built a stronger business and agreed on a clearer plan for the future.
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