Pretoria News 2022-06-27

Southern African fast-moving consumer goods services company CA Sales Group’s (CA&S’s) debut on the JSE’s main board today could be a prelude to substantially more listings in the second half of this year, although much will depend on market conditions. There were eight new listings on the JSE last year, and this year there have only been two others: the secondary listing of Southern Palladium this month and the listing in March of aReit, aw hospitality and medical focused leasehold property group. By contrast, there were 25 delistings last year due to mergers and acquisitions, but many companies also cited the high administrative and financial burden of maintaining a listing among their reasons for delisting. Some of the companies that have announced plans, but no dates, to list on the…

RMH plans to dispose of its stake in Eastern Europe-focused Atterbury Europe Holdings to Brightbridge Real Estate, in a R1.75 billion cash and shareholder loans deal that is likely to be passed on to shareholders by way of special dividend. ”The company will aim to maximise the value returned to shareholders, likely in the form of another special dividend,” RMH said in a statement on Friday. The cash price, excluding shareholder loan claims, is 32 percent below Atterbury’s net asset value of the shareholding – this value equates to about R2.23bn based Atterbury’s full net asset value of R5.97bn as at March 31. RMH’s share price climbed a sharp 10.97 percent to close at R1.72 on Friday. In one of the more unusual conditions precedent for such…

Group should be particularly sensitive to provide the market with accurate information TONGAAT Hulett had been far from candid to the market by claiming it had terminated its underwriting agreement with Magister because of delays in the regulatory approval for the proposed R5 billion rights issue, a shareholder said on Friday. “It was the Takeover Regulation Panel (TRP) that ended the Magister underwriting agreement with their ruling of June 2, 2022. Tongaat chose not to appeal this ruling even though the circular allowed for the June 30, 2022 long stop date to ‘be extended on one or more occasions’ unilaterally by Tongaat,” Opportune Investments chief investment officer Chris Logan said. “Extensions are standard provisions often used by companies, in the event of regulatory or other delays. In a company…

South Africa’s tentative economic growth for the second quarter has been left in tatters as Eskom ramped up its rotational power cuts to a higher level after workers downed tools at nine power stations. The struggling power utility on Friday implemented Stage 4 power cuts – being stepped up from Stage 2 – throughout the weekend, due to the ongoing unprotected labour action. Thousands of Eskom employees have embarked on unprotected strike action following a deadlock in wage negotiations on Tuesday. The power utility said it was compelled to take precautionary actions to conserve emergency generation reserves as many activities at power stations had to stop, including the manual loading of coal. Eskom workers are demanding 15 percent wage increases across the board on a one-year agreement, a R1…

Steinhoff International's share price took an almost 6 percent dip on Friday, despite it increasing its core profit, as the retailer warned that the markets within it operates are likely to remain volatile in the near term. The shares traded at R2.69 after the company said the core profit increased by 13 percent for the six months to end-March bolstered by the easing of Covid-19 restrictions. The counter closed at 5.24 percent at R2.71. The core profit increase was driven by Pepkor's robust performance. Group revenue from continuing operations grew 12 percent to €5.15 billion (R85.86bn), compared to the previous year’s €4.6bn in the corresponding period. “The markets within which the group operates are likely to remain volatile in the near term, due to…

Some shareholders are unhappy that Fortress real estate investment trust (Reit), the commercial property group that includes a large logistics portfolio, is planning to collapse its A and B share structure into one class of shares, saying that it is currently the only way to preserve its Reit status. Business Report on Friday asked Albie Cilliers, an activist investment manager at Cilandia Capital, what he thought of the move after commentary on social media, which showed discontent around the planned move. On Twitter, social media used raised the issue that management was overweight on the A shares in value and questioned the board’s decision in light of incentives they get. Cief executive Steven Brown holds 2 865 750 B-shares, but only 809 700 A-shares. The previous…