Takealot turns a profit by plugging into the Chinese supply chain, which South Africa is busy taxing

businessincameroon.com stopblablacam.com togofirst.com bankable.africa wearetech.africa     --> Team News-Letters Publisher French Portuguese Home Public Policy Finance Agro Energy Mining Transport Tech Training Search_Loupe Home Public Policy Finance Agro Energy Mining Transport Tech Training Search_Loupe  News Services Takealot turns a profit by plugging into the Chinese supply chain, which South Africa is busy taxing Tuesday, 30 June 2026 11:20 email facebook linkedin twitter Whatsapp Takealot books its first profitable year in 15 years—but on adjusted, non-IFRS metrics the Naspers board itself still treats with visible caution The turnaround runs less on beating Temu than on ads, subscriptions and logistics-for-hire—Amazon’s playbook—plus an opening to Chinese sellers The paradox: Pretoria taxes cross-border Chinese parcels to shield local industry, while its own champion onboards those same vendors onto its marketplace South African technology group Naspers announced on June 29 that Takealot, its local e-commerce business, had posted its first annual operating profit since its launch in 2011. The company reported an adjusted operating profit (aEBIT) of $11 million for the year ended March 2026, compared with a $13 million loss a year earlier. Revenue rose 18% to $1 billion, while gross merchandise value (GMV), the total value of goods sold across its platforms, reached $2 billion. Takealot.com remained the group’s main business, generating $906 million in revenue, serving 6.2 million active customers and processing more than 60 million orders, alongside the Mr D food-delivery service and the Takealot Fulfilment Solutions (TFS) logistics business. The result is framed as a show of resilience, coming as competition has sharpened on every front. Amazon launched its South African marketplace in May 2024 and has been expanding its Prime subscription service with lower-cost delivery. The company has also pledged to source more than 60% of its local catalogue from South African small and medium-sized businesses. Chinese discount platforms Shein and Temu are estimated to have generated around 7.3 billion rand in sales in 2024, accounting for more than a third of South Africa’s online clothing market. Shein has operated in the country since 2020, while Temu entered the market in early 2024 under PDD Holdings, the parent company of Pinduoduo. Rather than fight a price war it cannot win, Takealot chose to borrow the Chinese players’ own weapons. The Naspers board does not yet quite believe its own recovery The triumphant narrative needs immediate qualifying. The headline figures—aEBIT and aEBITDA, the latter up 86% to $78 million—are not standardized accounting measures. They are adjusted metrics that Naspers uses to determine executive compensation and its dividend policy. By design, they exclude a range of charges and are therefore not directly comparable with other companies’ reported results. Profitability, in the strict sense, pre-tax and under IFRS, only just crossed the line, swinging from a loss of roughly 214 million rand to a profit of about 181 million, according to figures relayed by tech publication MyBroadband . More telling is the signal the release does not lead with. Despite a record year, the Naspers board declined to reverse a 5.9 billion rand impairment previously taken against Takealot. The residual goodwill on the balance sheet stands at just $51 million. Naspers also applies post-tax discount rates of 17% to 21% when valuing the business. Those rates sit at the high end of the group’s range, suggesting it remains cautious about its own forecasts. A turnaround year was not enough to convince Naspers the business is worth what it once thought. The real engine of the swing also deserves to be named accurately. Naspers attributes the wider margins to a shift in product mix toward higher-margin categories, to growing on-platform advertising (retail media), and to the paid TakealotMORE subscription, which now accounts for 27% of Takealot.com’s GMV. Add to that the conversion of TFS into a standalone business, its revenue nearly doubling (+93.5%) as Takealot rents out its warehouse and courier network to third parties. This strategy—built on loyalty programmes, advertising and monetizing logistics infrastructure—owes more to Amazon’s playbook than to Temu’s. Bringing Chinese sellers onto the marketplace broadens the catalogue and helps retain customers. But that is only one part of the model, whose profitability depends primarily on high-margin services. When the local champion adopts the supply chain the state is trying to wall off This is where the real tension sits, largely absent from the dominant story. Since July 1, 2024, the South African Revenue Service (SARS), the country’s tax and customs authority, has ended the preferential regime that low-value parcels enjoyed. The 2007 concession, which allowed shipments worth less than 500 rand to enter under a flat 20% duty with no VAT, was scrapped. All imports are now subject to the standard 15% VAT in addition to customs duties. The National Treasury has also made the change permanent by including it in its 2025 draft tax bills. The stated aim is to restore fair competition, local retailers having long borne up to 45% in duties plus 15% VAT while Shein and Temu split orders to slip under the threshold. The stakes are not symbolic. A study commissioned by the Localisation Support Fund (LSF), which supports the development of local value chains in South Africa, estimates that Shein and Temu have cost the country more than 8,100 jobs that never materialised. The two platforms are estimated to account for 37.1% of the country’s online market for clothing, textiles, footwear and leather. Without intervention, the study says, the number of lost jobs could exceed 34,000 by 2030. Yet the strategy that makes Takealot profitable consists precisely of bringing more Chinese merchants onto its own marketplace. The paradox is head-on: the state taxes Temu’s and Shein’s cross-border parcels to protect domestic producers, while the local champion folds those same low-cost vendors into its catalogue. South African merchants, the supposed beneficiaries of the customs reform, find themselves facing Chinese competition inside Takealot’s own shop window. And when a product arrives late, turns out to be of poor quality or looks like a knock-off, customers do not blame the third-party seller. They blame Takealot, which carries the reputational risk for margins it only partly controls. A continental shift that inverts the development promise The move is not isolated. Jumia, the other African e-commerce giant, listed in New York and long held up as the continent’s technology showcase, has made exactly the same turn. After more than a decade of losses, Jumia, led by CEO Francis Dufay, shifted its focus from the aspirational middle class to lower-income consumers—World Bank notes that around 85% of Africans live on less than $5.50 a day. By September 2025, Jumia had about 24,000 China-based sellers on its platform and later opened a sourcing office in Yiwu, one of the world’s largest wholesale hubs. The company is targeting profitability in 2027. Its exit from South Africa in October 2024, then Tunisia and Algeria, follows the same efficiency logic. Two African champions, one conclusion: the fight against Chinese marketplaces is not won by building a better platform, but by plugging into the same supply chains. For investors, that is a rational commercial response. For policymakers, it exposes a blind spot. The original promise of African e-commerce was to build local supply chains, create jobs and support domestic industries. Instead, national platforms are increasingly becoming distribution channels for Chinese goods, just as governments are trying to curb those imports through customs measures. Several uncertainties remain. The durability of Takealot’s profitability is not assured. Amazon Prime’s price pressure will only intensify, and Naspers’s refusal to reverse its impairment signals deliberate caution. The net effect of the SARS measures on Chinese flows is still to be measured, given the many logistical workarounds. And the question of quality and after-sales service, inherent to low-cost imports, will eventually test the trust that has been Takealot’s main asset for fifteen years. The profit has arrived; what remains to be seen is the ground it stands on. 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