Clicks has bumped up its profit forecast: it now expects its headline profit for the year to end-August to be between 15% and 18% higher than in the previous year. Previously, it forecast a rise of 10% and 15%.

Clicks saw a "strong retail performance" in the past six months and said that its medicine distributor United Pharmaceutical Distributors (UPD) secured new contracts. In addition, the company saw further improvements in working capital management across the business.

In the first half of the financial year, its headline earnings rose 13%.

Clicks has around 680 shops, with 528 pharmacies. Clicks increased its share of the retail pharmacy market from 23% to almost 24% at the end of February 2019 and plans to grow this to 30% in the long term. UPD saw its turnover grew almost 22% to R10.2bn.

Clicks said it results will be released on October 24th.