Major South African chicken producer doubles profit

Rainbow Chicken has delivered another set of stellar results, setting the chicken producer’s 2026 financial year off to a strong start.

Rainbow is a fully integrated broiler producer, with operations across the chicken production value chain, including feed milling, processing and distribution.

This means the company plays a significant role in the national supply of chicken, overseeing every stage of production from farm to fork.

Its products are sold under brands such as Driehoek Feeds, Rainbow, Farmer Brown, Simply Chicken, and Epol.

For the six months ended 28 December 2025, Rainbow reported strong results, with profit doubling.

Its revenue from contracts with customers increased by over 11% to R8.79 billion, driven by stronger demand, enhanced channel and product mixes, and improved pricing.

These factors also helped Rainbow Chicken’s margins, with its EBITDA margin improving from 7.4% to 12%. The company reported EBITDA of R1.1 billion, marking an over 81% increase from the prior year.

Its profit for the period was R663.84 million, marking a 109.4% jump from the first half of its 2025 financial year.

Rainbow’s basic earnings per share more than doubled, increasing by 110.2% to reach 74.79 cents.

The company’s return on invested capital improved by 10 percentage points to 22.6%, driven by stronger performance and prudent capital allocation.

Rainbow also invested heavily in its business over the six-month period, recording capital expenditure of R296.4 million.

However, this was partially offset by depreciation and amortisation charges of around R188.1 million.

On the back of these strong results, Rainbow declared its maiden interim dividend, its first since being unbundled from its former parent company, RCL Foods, and listing separately.

The company declared an interim dividend of 15 cents per share.