Pot of gold at the end of the Rainbow

Rainbow Chicken has reported another strong set of results for its 2025 financial year, as the chicken producer’s turnaround plan bears fruit. 

The company also declared its maiden dividend to shareholders and outlined a new strategy, ‘Future Perfect Rainbow’.

Rainbow is one of South Africa’s largest processors and marketers of chicken, playing an integral part in the country’s national supply.

It processes, distributes, and markets fresh, frozen, value-added, and further-processed chicken and produces animal feed. 

Rainbow was unbundled from consumer goods giant RCL Foods and listed on the JSE’s main board in June 2024.

Like many local poultry producers, Rainbow experienced severe pressure in 2023 and part of 2024 as it had to contend with a devastating avian flu outbreak and frequent load-shedding.

This significantly impacted the company’s operations and, therefore, its financials.

However, Rainbow has been implementing a turnaround strategy that has been highly successful so far, the effects of which can be seen in the company’s latest results.

On Thursday, 28 August, Rainbow released its results for the year ended June 2025, which showed a strong performance.

These results are Rainbow’s first set of full-year results released as a separately listed entity, which also marks a major milestone in the execution of its turnaround strategy.

Revenue grew by 9% to R15.8 billion, while earnings jumped by 216.9% to R571.2 million.

The company recorded a 216.3% increase in earnings per share to 64.04 cents, while headline earnings per share rose 223.6% to 65.57 cents.

Rainbow also saw its return on invested capital shoot up to 16.3%, significantly higher than the 6.5% recorded in its 2024 financial year.

The chicken producer generated R1.9 billion in cash from its operating activities, up 63.6% compared to the prior period.

This strong cash generation also allowed the company to significantly decrease its finance costs, which shrank by R179.7 million during the period.

This is also due to a reduction in gearing following the company’s debt-to-equity loan conversion from RCL FOODS, which was executed in February and May 2024. 

Rainbow attributed these strong results to the success of its turnaround strategy, which has made significant progress since commencing in 2021. 

“By enhancing feed quality, refining farming practices, and streamlining processing, Rainbow has improved its core operations to lower costs and boosted efficiency across the entire value chain,” the company explained.

During the 2025 financial year, Rainbow also thoroughly analysed market trends, socio-political and economic conditions, evolving industry dynamics, and the potential impact of climate change on agriculture.

This formed the development of a robust, forward-looking strategy titled ‘Future Perfect Rainbow’.

The company expects this strategy to drive improvements across agricultural key performance indicators, optimise feed formulations, and upgrade facilities to improve efficiency and cost performance.

On the back of these strong results, Rainbow declared a maiden dividend of 20 cents per share.