Tiger Brands: Finally Getting Its Act Together… But Can You Trust It?

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Will people still buy these products in 10–20 years?

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People will be eating Tiger Brands products 10 or 20 years from now. Not because management has discovered some secret formula for innovation—but because they sell what humans have required for centuries: basic food. That’s a far more durable advantage than any marketing slogan or product tweak. Over 90% of their 2025 revenue comes from food and beverages. That fact alone tells you something important: demand here is anchored in necessity, not fashion. And in business, necessity is about as close as you get to a perpetual tailwind. But here’s where investors often fool themselves. Durability is not the same as growth. This is not a business that will wake up one morning and discover a new continent. It will not compound by dazzling the consumer. It will grind forward—if it is well run—by doing the ordinary things extraordinarily well. And the environment it operates in is getting tougher, not easier. Consumers are stretched. They trade down. They hunt for promotions. Loyalty weakens when wallets tighten. As Tjaart Kruger puts it plainly: “We’ve got a consumer under stress… lots of our products sold only on promotion, about half of it.” That should reset expectations immediately. When the customer is counting pennies, your strategy is no longer about aspiration—it’s about survival. Premiumisation becomes a luxury. Innovation becomes secondary. Execution becomes everything. In such a business, there are only a few levers that matter: keep your costs lower than the other fellow, keep your shelves full, and be everywhere the customer might look. Do that better than competitors, and you win. Fail at any one of them, and you lose—quietly, steadily, and often permanently. The company’s strategy reflects this reality: push distribution beyond 100,000 stores toward 150,000, dominate channels, and compete on price with discipline. That is not exciting. It is, however, exactly what the situation requires. And the numbers tell you the same story: R34.4 billion in revenue, R3.8 billion in operating income, and R7.0 billion in operating cash flow. There is no magic here—just a business that converts effort into cash with reasonable efficiency. If you’re looking for excitement, you’re in the wrong place. If you’re looking for a business that can endure, this is closer to the mark. The lesson—one I’ve learned repeatedly—is this: the big money is rarely made in businesses that promise excitement. It is made in businesses that require discipline. Boring businesses don’t need brilliance. They need consistency, cost control, and a refusal to do dumb things. And in a world where many companies chase growth for its own sake, the one that simply executes—year after year—often ends up the long-term winner.

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Is management actually trying to build new products?

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Management is indeed building new products, but if you’re expecting a stroke of genius, you’re looking in the wrong place. There will be no “next big thing,” no breakthrough that suddenly transforms the economics of the business—and, frankly, that’s exactly how it should be. In a business like Tiger Brands, progress doesn’t come from bold leaps; it comes from small, sensible steps repeated endlessly. What management is actually doing is far more mundane: adjusting recipes, resizing packs, tweaking price points, and removing cost wherever it can be done without damaging volume. That may sound unimpressive, but it is precisely the kind of behavior that produces results. As Tjaart Kruger himself puts it: “I think if you look at the numbers this year, you’ll see the spend coming back into marketing. And remember, last year, I think I stood here and I said, if you haven’t fixed the business, you haven’t got your price points right, you’re probably wasting every cent you spend on marketing.” Remember who the customer is—this is not someone looking for novelty, but someone under pressure, trading down, comparing prices, and buying on promotion. In that environment, a flashy innovation is often irrelevant, but a product that is 5% cheaper or better sized for the weekly budget can move volumes in a very real way. So the game shifts: it’s no longer about creativity in the conventional sense, it’s about accuracy—hitting the exact price point, the exact pack size, the exact value perception. Miss by a little and the customer walks; get it right and you earn repeat business. That’s a very different skill—and a far rarer one—than dreaming up the next big idea. The uncomfortable truth is this: in businesses like this, innovation is largely overrated—not useless, but vastly overvalued by people who prefer exciting stories to economic reality. The companies that actually win behave differently: they make hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small improvements—none of which make headlines, but all of which, together, move the needle. Over time, those incremental gains compound, and compounding is the closest thing to magic in business—but it only works for those willing to be patient and a little boring. So if you’re waiting for a dramatic breakthrough, you’ll likely be disappointed; if instead you’re willing to back a business that improves inch by inch—relentlessly, rationally, and without fanfare—you may find yourself owning something far more valuable than the market initially recognizes.

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Is R&D actually doing anything useful?

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R&D at Tiger Brands is not about inventing the future—it’s about improving the economics of the present, and that is exactly what shareholders should want. If you come to a mature FMCG business looking for breakthrough innovation, you’re asking the wrong question. These businesses don’t win through flashes of brilliance; they win through discipline. The only test that matters is simple: does R&D improve costs and margins? At Tiger, the answer is yes, and the evidence is operational. As Tjaart Kruger puts it plainly: “It’s overhead, it’s recipes, it’s factory efficiencies… it’s everywhere in the business where we’ve taken cost out.” Management talks about “value engineering,” which in practice means improving the product without increasing cost—and ideally reducing it. You see it in real actions: packaging changes like Black Cat moving to PET, recipe and formulation adjustments across KOO, Cross & Blackwell, Albany, Tastic, and Fattis & Monis, and a 27% reduction in SKUs since FY24. None of this is glamorous, but all of it matters—fewer SKUs simplify procurement, simpler operations reduce waste, and less waste improves margins. That’s not cosmetic, it’s economic. The numbers confirm it: R525 million in savings from continuous improvement, gross margin up to 31.3%, operating margin at 11.1%, and operating income up 35% to R3.8 billion. That is R&D doing its job—quietly and effectively. And here’s what most investors miss: in businesses like this, the best R&D is almost invisible. You won’t see it in headlines or grand strategy presentations—you see it in the financials, in better margins, more pricing flexibility, and stronger cash flow. This is not creativity for its own sake; it’s precision applied at scale. A slightly cheaper recipe, a better package, a more efficient production line—none of these matter much on their own, but across millions of units they add up in a meaningful way. And this is where I’ll be blunt: most investors romanticize innovation because it makes for a better story, but in a business like this, excitement is often the enemy of returns. If R&D doesn’t show up in higher profits, it’s not an asset—it’s an expense dressed up in fine language. Or more simply: if it doesn’t improve margins, it isn’t R&D—it’s theatre.

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Can they actually sell their products well?

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Let’s strip this down to what actually matters —because there’s a tendency to dress up very simple truths in impressive language. Can Tiger Brands sell its products? Yes. And more importantly, it appears to be relearning how to sell them properly. In FMCG, there is a rule that is so obvious it’s often ignored: if the product isn’t on the shelf, nothing else matters—not branding, not innovation, not strategy decks. And for a long time, companies like this forget that; they talk about growth while their products quietly disappear from the places customers actually shop. What’s encouraging here is that the evidence is not rhetorical—itis operational: direct reach expanded to 101,9880 spaza stores (up from 91,000), on-shelf availability sits at 98.3%, and order-fill at 88.5%. That is what “selling well” looks like in the real world—not forecasts, but filled orders and stocked shelves. As Tjaart Kruger puts it bluntly: “Our consumers need the products on the shelf all the time, not when the weather is good… we can’t go and say to the shopper at the shop, we haven’t got flour for you because the Russians invaded Ukraine. That’s not an option for us. We must find flour. We must find wheat.” Management talks about purpose—“bringing affordable, quality foods to everyone,” ensuring products are “always within reach”—which sounds noble, but let’s call it what it is: a distribution strategy. And in this business, distribution is destiny. They’re pushing toward 150,000 stores, strengthening channel presence, and building systems that can move product from wholesaler to spaza within 48 hours. That’s not marketing—that’s logistics, and logistics wins markets. As he adds: “Our cost leadership is something that we’ll probably never end and the job the guys have done over the last 18 months is phenomenal. And as you can see, one big driver is logistics… we’ve got a couple of years of great savings coming out of logistics as we get these Mega DCs in place.” Because distribution compounds: the more shelves you occupy, the more consistent your volumes, the stronger your retailer relationships, and the harder it becomes for competitors to displace you. Over time, that advantage reinforces itself—the retailer prefers the product that always arrives, the consumer buys what is always there, and the competitor, no matter how clever, struggles to break in. The financials are beginning to reflect this shift: R34.4 billion in revenue, R3.8 billion in operating income, and R7.0 billion in operating cash flow suggest a business that is not just shipping product, but converting shelf space into cash. And even at the procurement level, the focus is shifting back to execution: “I think if you look at procurement… the focus is back into the business to sort out relative issues.” Now let me be blunt, because this is where many investors go wrong: in FMCG, selling is not about persuasion—it is about presence. If you control the shelf, you control the outcome. If you don’t, you can have the best strategy in the world and it won’t matter in the slightest. This is not a glamorous insight—but it is a profitable one.

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Are profit margins getting better—and are they real?

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The improvement in profit margins is not trivial: gross margin is 31.3% (up from 28.3%), operating margin is 11.1% (up from 8.5%), and operating income is up 35% to R3.8 billion. Those are the kinds of numbers that get attention—and rightly so. But numbers alone don’t tell you whether a business is getting better; they only tell you that it looks better. The real question is why. As Thushen Govender puts it: “It is a job well done with some focus from management as well as some tailwinds from soft commodities.” When management explains the drivers, we start to see something more encouraging: a significant portion of the improvement comes from actions within their control—R525 million in continuous improvement savings, value engineering in recipes and packaging, SKU rationalisation, logistics optimisation, and better factory efficiency. These are not accounting adjustments; they are operational decisions, and operational improvements, if well executed, tend to persist. And the execution is not just promised—it is delivered: “I’m sure those of you who have read the earnings announcements have seen we’re certainly ahead of targets when it comes to continuous improvement. We committed that amount to you over a 2-year period, and we’ve delivered it in a year… and you’ve seen it come through in the operating margin improvement that we’ve delivered in the current year as well.” That’s the good news. But investing is not about good news—it’s about accurate judgment. And here’s where discipline comes in: not all of this improvement is earned. Management also points to favourable input costs—particularly commodity deflation in areas like wheat. That’s important, because cost tailwinds can make any operator look smart for a while, but those benefits don’t belong to you—they belong to the cycle, and cycles have a habit of reversing at the most inconvenient time. So the proper way to think about these margins is not as a single number, but as two separate components: structural gains from cost discipline and better execution, and cyclical gains from favourable external conditions. The first you can build on; the second you should discount. This distinction matters enormously, because investors regularly make the same mistake—they take a temporary improvement and treat it as permanent, overestimating the earning power of the business and usually overpaying for it. Margins built on discipline will compound; margins built on luck will disappear. The key question, therefore, is not whether margins improved—they clearly did—but how much of that improvement will still be there when wheat prices rise, input costs normalise, and conditions turn less friendly. Or, stated more plainly: don’t capitalise good fortune as if it were strategy.

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Are employees stable, motivated, and aligned?

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In matters of people and culture you never get certainty—you get signals, and in turnarounds those signals are almost always mixed. On the surface, the indicators are encouraging: 61% of leadership roles filled internally, attrition down to 9%, faster hiring with time-to-fill at 56 days, and multi-year wage agreements secured without disruption. That combination suggests a workforce that is reasonably engaged, increasingly developed from within, and—at least for now—pulling in the same direction as management. These are not small achievements; in many struggling businesses, you don’t see them at all. But it pays to think a step further. Turnarounds demand tighter discipline, higher standards, and sustained effort, and while those conditions can improve results, they also introduce strain—and that strain is visible if you look closely: two fatalities, a still-material lost-time injury rate, ongoing references to skill shortages, and continued emphasis on strengthening leadership and wellbeing. None of this points to a broken system, but it does point to a system under pressure, and that distinction is critical. As Tjaart Kruger puts it: “But we — people at Tiger, work at Tiger, not because we pay them a lot, it’s because it’s a great place to work. That’s why people are here. We also pay them a lot because that goes with a great place to work. But you can’t just work for money. You work because it’s a great place to work. And that’s the culture we’re building in the organization, and we’re making very good progress on that.” Cultures rarely fail suddenly—they stretch first. You often see exactly what we see here: improving execution, better financial results, stronger operational discipline, all occurring alongside rising internal pressure. The danger is not what you see today딀”it’s what happens if that pressure continues to build. Many turnarounds look their best just before fatigue sets in: the organisation pushes hard, results improve, everything appears to be working—until small cracks begin to form, and then those cracks widen. So the intelligent way to monitor this is not by asking, “Are things good today?” but “Are they holding up over time?” Watch for rising attrition, deterioration in safety metrics, and slippage in execution. If those remain stable or improve, the culture is strengthening; if they worsen, the system is being pushed beyond what it can sustain. The lesson is simple, though often ignored: don’t just measure performance—measure endurance, because in the end a business is only as strong as the people carrying it, and in a turnaround those people are carrying more weight than usual.

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Is there real depth in management—or just one strong leader?

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The evidence suggests there is real depth, and that is far more valuable than it first appears. Start with the signals: succession coverage for critical roles at 31:1, 61% of leadership vacancies filled internally, and 55% of leadership moves driven by internal progression. As Tjaart Kruger puts it: “On our people side, fill 60% of leadership vacancies internally. That’s a big number. And we’ve got some great people at Tiger, and we are able to promote them into these leadership positions, having had the right programs to develop them over the last number of years.” These are not the hallmarks of a business dependent on a single individual; they are the hallmarks of a system—one that develops, promotes, and replenishes its own talent. And in business, systems endure while individuals, no matter how capable, do not. The structure reinforces this point: five empowered managing directors report to the CEO, a federated operating model decentralises decision-making, and an experienced executive committee oversees execution. In other words, this is not a one-man show—it is impossible for one person to run Tiger Brands, which is precisely why decentralising and empowering people matters. Tjaart’s philosophy is clear: support people and allow them to make decisions, rather than centralising control at the top. He believes in a hands-on approach where decisions should not be made at head office, but daily on the factory floors—at the coal face of the business—while at the same time not needing to look over his leaders’ shoulders constantly. This is reinforced by deliberate actions—he rotated five divisional heads to guard against turf protection and entrenchment, further embedding a culture of accountability and mobility. Implicit in this is a critique of the past: underperformance was, at least in part, a result of people being afraid to make decisions. Authority is distributed, responsibility is shared, and performance does not rely on one person waking up in a good mood. Contrast that with businesses built around a single strong leader—they often perform exceptionally well for a time, but remove that individual and you quickly discover whether there was an organisation or merely an extension of one personality, and more often than not, it’s the latter. What’s encouraging here is that Tiger appears to be moving away from that risk, embedding capability across layers, functions, and geographies so that decisions are not bottlenecked at the top and execution is owned more broadly. That doesn’t make the business immune to leadership change—nothing does—but it does make it resilient, and resilience, like most good things in business, compounds quietly over time. The lesson is one I’ve learned repeatedly: if one person leaving can break the business, you never owned a real business—you owned a personality. What Tiger is attempting, at least from the evidence, is to build something sturdier than that—a business that can function, adapt, and perform regardless of who occupies the corner office—and that may not be glamorous, but it is exactly the kind of foundation long-term value is built upon.

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Are they serious about controlling costs?

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This turnaround is fundamentally about cost discipline, and management says it plainly: “cost leadership” is a core strategic thrust, not a side initiative. Strip everything else away and what you see is a business that has become almost obsessive about eliminating inefficiency—cutting waste, simplifying operations, and attacking complexity at its root. The evidence is hard and operational: a 27% reduction in SKUs since FY24, R525 million in continuous-improvement savings in FY25, and a sustained push across the real levers that matter—value engineering, procurement optimisation, process automation, manufacturing footprint rationalisation, and supply-chain efficiency. As Thushen Govender puts it: “And moving on to some of the key factors that looking — when we look ahead at the Grains category. Cost leadership, absolutely crucial. The value engineering opportunity and the automation opportunity in these facilities are phenomenal. There’s still some fuel in the tank here. Yet again, as I mentioned earlier. In fact, just recently, we’ve approved end-of-line automation in one of the facilities that will deal with the pelletization. And even lightweighting of packaging, processing, as I mentioned, there’s a huge opportunity to drop the costs even further.” That is not vague “efficiency talk”; it is a deliberate, system-wide effort to remove slack. Even the organisational model supports it—a federated structure that flattens layers, decentralises decisions, and forces accountability closer to where costs are actually incurred. And management’s own language gives away the intent: to be “as cost competitive as possible” while “reducing costs and delivering more affordable products.” This is not about growing your way out of problems—it is about fixing the cost base so growth, when it comes, is profitable. The numbers confirm the shift: margins are expanding, cash flow is strengthening, and operating leverage is improving. My view is simple and I’ll be blunt: growth may be the prize, but cost discipline is the weapon—and in a turnaround like this, the businesses that win are the ones that learn to do more with less, not the ones that confuse volume with value.

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Are they thinking long-term or just chasing short-term results?

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Tiger Brands is doing both, and importantly, it appears to be doing so deliberately. Many investors want a clean answer—either a company is long-term oriented or it isn’t—but business doesn’t work that way. If you look at what Tiger is actually doing, the long-term intent is clear: investment in manufacturing upgrades, the build-out of digital systems, strengthening of supply-chain capability, and a federated operating model designed for durability. These are not quarterly moves; they are structural decisions that require capital, time, and patience, and only make sense if you’re thinking in years, not months. That’s one side of the ledger. At the same time, management is applying real short-term pressure: STI incentives heavily tied to financial performance, EBIT targets not just met but exceeded, margins pushed to 11.1%, and discretionary bonuses for strong execution during the turnaround. That is not the behaviour of a company willing to wait—it is a company demanding results now. And here’s the key point: this is not a contradiction, it is a system. The best turnarounds work exactly this way—long-term investment sets the destination, short-term pressure ensures you don’t drift. Remove the pressure and strategy becomes theory; remove the investment and performance becomes hollow. The tension between the two is not a flaw, it is the discipline. Of course, there is risk: push too hard on short-term targets and you can underinvest, exhaust people, or sacrifice durability for immediate results—that’s how businesses quietly weaken themselves. But for now, the balance appears intentional rather than accidental. The lesson is simple, though not always easy: good companies think long-term while delivering short-term results, but great ones understand that the tension between the two is not something to eliminate—it is something to manage. If Tiger maintains that balance, it has the ingredients of a durable business; if it loses it, the consequences will show up—first subtly, and then all at once.

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Are their growth plans realistic—or just talk?

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Growth plans at Tiger Brands are mostly realistic, and that is precisely why they matter. There’s nothing heroic here—no grand reinvention, no attempt to become something the business is not. The plan is almost stubbornly practical: fix the engine by investing in factories, upgrading infrastructure, automating systems, improving supply-chain planning, and tightening manufacturing execution, while at the same time expanding distribution beyond 100,000 stores and building presence across 22 African markets. That’s not a vision statement—it’s a checklist, and good checklists tend to produce results. As Thushen Govender explains: “In the past, we invested quite a bit in software solutions, but we didn’t manage the change management aspect of it well and monitor the adoption, and that points to a culture. So that’s what we’re trying to change within Tiger, have a culture that embraces new technology. On international markets, the key distributor model is well embedded. We’re moving away from that trading mindset, in particular, in our neighboring markets, where we’re looking at category management principles. We’re working on brand development and establishing our brands in these neighboring markets as really household names as well.” What’s particularly encouraging is what management is not saying: they are not chasing growth everywhere or entering unfamiliar territory; instead, they are “sharpening focus” on categories where they already lead. That’s discipline—and in business, discipline is far rarer and far more valuable than ambition. Even the distribution strategy is grounded: deepen general trade presence, improve digital commerce, and strengthen execution through better data. Nothing glamorous, but entirely sensible. Most importantly, the growth is anchored in existing strengths—established brands, scale advantages, and route-to-market reach. They are not building a new castle; they are reinforcing the one they already own. As Tjaart Kruger makes clear on capital allocation: “Then the second thing is we look at acquisitions, but — we’re not going to pay too much for something. We’re not going to buy something that doesn’t make strategic sense.” The financials reflect that approach—R34.4 billion in revenue, R3.8 billion in operating income, and R7.0 billion in operating cash flow—showing a business improving its base rather than stretching beyond it. And here’s the part that may sound unexciting but is consistently true: realistic plans are rarely exciting, but in investing, dull is often a virtue. The companies that promise the most tend to disappoint; the ones that focus on what is achievable and execute relentlessly tend to compound value over time. The lesson is simple: specific plans beat big promises, and companies that grow from strength tend to outperform those that grow from imagination—and Tiger, for now, appears to be choosing the former.

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Are they honest about problems?

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More than most management teams—and that alone sets them apart in a market where narratives are often engineered rather than earned. Tiger Brands has shown an unusual willingness to acknowledge uncomfortable truths: when margin expansion was helped by input cost tailwinds rather than structural efficiency, when certain divisions underperformed or failed to meet return thresholds, and when operational improvements were still incomplete. As Tjaart Kruger admits: “And the export recovery, we probably — when we had the nice problems in this business, in particular, we short the export markets to satisfy local markets. And that recovery is in progress. That problem also helps us with very, very efficient factories now because you can imagine those factories are running flat out and the throughput and the overhead recovery is phenomenal.” This level of candour is rare in large consumer companies, where executives typically smooth volatility and obscure weakness behind adjusted metrics. By explicitly distinguishing between what is sustainable and what is circumstantial, management reduces the risk of investors over-capitalising temporary gains into long-term expectations—a mistake that routinely destroys value. The signal here is not perfection, but credibility: honest management does not eliminate risk, but it makes risk visible, and in capital markets, visibility is often more valuable than optimism.

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Do they actually do what they say?

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The most important shift in Tiger Brands is not strategic—it is behavioural. Historically, the company suffered from a familiar corporate affliction: articulate strategy, inconsistent execution, and a widening gap between promises and outcomes. That gap has now narrowed materially. Recent periods show alignment between stated priorities—cost discipline, SKU rationalisation, supply chain efficiency—and measurable outcomes, including margin recovery, working capital improvement, and operational simplification. This transition from narrative-led to execution-led management is critical, because markets eventually discount credibility, not presentations. A company that once relied on forward-looking statements is now increasingly judged on delivered numbers, and those numbers are beginning to validate the strategy. The lesson is straightforward but often ignored: management quality is not revealed in investor decks or earnings calls, but in the consistency with which actions translate into results over time.

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Do they treat investors fairly?

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Tiger Brands has demonstrated a clear willingness to return capital through dividends and maintain engagement with shareholders through relatively transparent communication. There is an observable effort to align capital allocation with shareholder interests rather than empire-building, a discipline that is often absent in large consumer businesses with stable cash flows. As Tjaart Kruger explains the approach: “you must look at what do you do with your surplus cash? And that’s a good balance between do we drop our dividend cover — normal dividend cover? Do we pay special dividends? Do we buy back shares? And I think the guidance we’ve given is it’s a combination. As we go along, you can see we’ve paid a special dividend now. We still sit on a lot of cash. It’s the question, should we have paid a bigger special dividend? And the answer is, we are conservative. We’re getting into this in a conservative way. We don’t want to pay a special big — big special dividend and then nothing. We rather want to be — make it a habit rather than a once-off thing. So as we go forward and we keep on generating good cash, we will probably get into lowering the dividend cover of the normal dividend and look at special dividends when the cash gets to a certain level every year, every 2 years, whatever it is. And then obviously, share buybacks depending on where the share price is, we run that through the capital allocation model. We look at the valuation of the share. If the share price in our view is under valid, we’ll get back into share buybacks — into share buybacks now, but we stopped because the share price moved a bit. So that’s the model.” However, this fairness is not without friction: financial disclosures, while comprehensive, can at times lack clarity, with adjustments and segment-level complexity making it harder to fully reconcile underlying performance. This does not suggest intent to mislead, but it does introduce interpretative noise. Ultimately, fair treatment of investors is defined by two behaviours—returning excess capital and answering difficult questions—and on both counts, Tiger Brands is doing more right than wrong.

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Can you trust management with your money for 10+ years?

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Cautiously, but not unconditionally. The current management team exhibits many of the traits long-term investors look for: improved capital discipline, sharper operational focus, and a demonstrated ability to execute against clearly defined priorities. Yet the track record of consistent performance remains relatively short, and some of the recent improvement has coincided with favourable external conditions, including easing input costs and a more stable operating environment. This makes it difficult to fully disentangle skill from circumstance. Trust, in investing, is not granted—it is compounded over time through repeated evidence of good decision-making across cycles. Tiger Brands has begun to earn that trust, but it has not yet earned the right to be trusted blindly. The prudent stance is to recognise progress without extrapolating it indefinitely.

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Is the company fairly valued?

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Valuation is where narrative meets discipline, and Tiger Brands sits right in that intersection. At roughly R48.9 billion market cap and trading on a P/E of 13.4x (13.3x forward) with EPS of 2,140 cents, the market is pricing a business that has improved—but is not yet fully trusted. And when you layer in the macro reality—a 10-year government bond yield of ~9–9.2% and inflation at 3.0%—you quickly realise this is not a low-hurdle environment; equity must earn its keep. The 5.72% dividend yield helps anchor returns, but the real debate is about earnings quality and sustainability. Management is guiding to operating margins “exceeding single digits” in the near term, with a longer-term ambition closer to 15%, which is critical—because at 11.1% today, the valuation only works if margins continue to expand structurally, not just cyclically. The stock’s range (R246 to R385) and recent drawdown (~21% YTD and over 90 days) tell you the market is already questioning how much of the turnaround is durable. So what are you really buying at 13x earnings? Not growth, but execution. If cost discipline holds, ROIC remains above WACC, and margins move meaningfully toward that ~15% level, this multiple will look cheap in hindsight. But if input costs normalise and operational gains stall, the current valuation is merely fair. That is the essence of the opportunity: the market is pricing improvement, but not fully underwriting permanence—and in investing, returns are earned in that gap between what is delivered and what is believed.

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Final Take

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Tiger Brands has not transformed into a structurally great business—it has done something more subtle, and arguably more important: it has restored operational sanity. The company has moved from inconsistency to control, from narrative to execution, and from complexity to focus. Margins have improved, costs have been rationalised, and management behaviour has become more disciplined, but none of this yet guarantees durability across a full cycle. This is not a story of reinvention; it is a story of repair. And in investing, a company that stops destroying value is often far more interesting than one that simply promises to create it. From this base, however, the future looks increasingly bright for Tiger Brands. It is also worth recognising that Value Capital Partners played an important role in selecting Tjaart Kruger to lead the business—reminding us that activist investors can shape outcomes not just through capital, but through leadership. People often forget that Tjaart has a long history within Tiger Brands; this is not a temporary appointment, but a return to what is effectively his long-term home, not merely a continuation of his time at Premier Foods. More broadly, we tend to underestimate the value that activist investors like Value Capital Partners bring in identifying and backing the best leaders in the companies they invest in—because in the end, leadership drives outcomes, and choosing the right person often matters more than any strategy ever written.

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