Tiger Brands CEO resigns

Tiger Brands CEO Noel Doyle is resigning following a joint decision between himself and the board.

“During his tenure as CEO, Noel and his team were required to navigate the challenges of Covid-19, civil unrest, global supply changes and high levels of inflation,” the group said.

“In this period, the company’s underlying operating profit trajectory was stabilised, and there have been many significant improvements in key internal operating metrics.”

Tjaart Kruger will take the reins from 1 November 2023. He is a CA with over 30 years of leadership experience in some of South Africa’s biggest FMCG companies.

“He sharpened his career through previous experience at Tiger Brands, where he fulfilled the role of managing director of the pharmaceuticals and grains divisions over the period 2001 – 2007 and his most recent leadership role serving as CEO of Premier Foods over the period 2011 – 2021, where he successfully led Premier Foods’ expansion and growth strategy,” the group added.

Tjaart has been handed a 26-month-long contract, which the group said will provide certainty to the company and key stakeholders and speed up the group’s value-creating strategy.

Doyle will remain available until 31 March 2024 to ensure a smooth handover.

“The Board will commence a process to identify a suitable successor for the CEO role in due course to ensure an orderly transition at the end of Tjaart’s tenure,” the group said.

Financials

The leadership changes come amid a challenging time for the group as per its voluntary trading statement for the year ending 30 September 2023.

“The ongoing challenges of fully recovering higher input costs persisted in the second half, resulting in marginally lower volumes,” the group said.

“This, together with the year-on-year impact of incremental retrenchment costs of approximately R100 million, proved too significant to be offset by the group’s cost reduction initiatives, which will end ahead of the R460 million target previously guided.”

“Good performances from Beverages, Home & Personal Care, Tiger Food Services Solutions (previously Out of Home), Exports and Deciduous Fruit were more than offset by poor performances in
Rice, Bakeries (despite recording volume growth), Groceries and Snacks & Treats, with the latter two businesses operating in categories marked by absolute volume declines.”

With this in mind, the group expects earnings per share (EPS) to drop by -9% and -2% (or between -159 cents and -35 cents) from the 1,762.2 cents reported in FY22.

Additionally, headline earnings per share (HEPS) from total operations are expected to differ between -5% and +2% (or between -85 and +34 cents) from the 1,702.4 cents.

It said that the variation between EPS and HEPS is due to the underlying non-recurrence of certain
capital profit items accounted for in EPS were excluded from HEPS in FY22.

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