Pretoria News 2022-07-01

HELIUM and methane miner Renergen said “a few weeks delay” in the commissioning of its Phase 1 plant was “a small price” to reduce the risk of catastrophic failure, chief executive Stefano Marani said in an update yesterday. The commissioning of Phase 1 of the Virginia Gas Project, the first onshore gas project in South Africa, which is expected to produce helium and methane, has attracted significant investor interest on the JSE and has helped to propel Renergen’s share price 89 percent over 12 months to the R36.32 it traded at yesterday. Kela Securities predicted recently in report that Renergen has a few catalysts that could see its share price rise in 6 to 12 months, of which the July commissioning of the helium plant had been expected to…

AS PSG GROUP released its “swansong” annual report, marking the end of an era, the JSE-listed entity could have a shareholder fight on its hands over its plan to unlock value in the group, which involves a share buyout. The group, with a market cap of R19 billion, announced on March 1 it planned to unlock value for its shareholders via a restructuring plan that should be concluded by the end of August and subsequently delist from the JSE. PSG Group was founded in November 1995 by Jannie Mouton and Chris Otto, with a dream of building a financial services conglomerate. The annual report, released late on Wednesday, focused on PSG’s restructuring, which was done in light of the significant discount at which PSG Group has been trading to…

The JSE All Share Index also fell 2.1 percent to 66 284 points, its lowest since June 23 THE RAND FELL to its lowest in 19 months yesterday while stocks at the JSE slipped into a one-week low as the markets closed in the red after Eskom extended its severe power cuts amid fears of global recession. By 5pm the rand was bid at R16.37 to the dollar, 13 cents weaker than the prior day at the same time. Eskom yesterday implemented Stage 6 load shedding for the third day in a row following multiple plant breakdowns due to labour protests over wages. The struggling power utility said load shedding would also be implemented at Stage 6 today, while a minimum of Stage 4 would be…

WILSON-BAYLY Holmes-Ovcon (WBHO) has maintained a liquid balance sheet after deconsolidation of its Australian subsidiary, with R3 billion in cash reserves on May 31, the group said in a trading statement yesterday. This balance was also after an outflow of A$75 million (about R834m) post the WBHO Australia deconsolidation date. WBHO’s earnings per share and headline earnings per share were expected to be at least 1.1 percent worse and 3.6 percent lower respectively, for the year to June 30, compared with the previous year. “Liquidity in each region has been forecast to the end of June 2023. WBHO is acutely aware of the remaining impact of deconsolidating the Australia group and has forecast these negative cash flows,” the group said. Cash reserves in the UK…

THE R17 BILLION of cancelled road construction tenders are now scheduled to be awarded in September after a new bidding process and after South African National Roads Agency Ltd (Sanral) cleaned up the corporate governance processes in the five tenders, said Sanral acting chief executive Themba Mhambi. Sanral also announced yesterday that the Development Bank of Southern Africa had been appointed as an independent public entity to handle Sanral’s large-scale procurement and oversight of the tenders. Sanral’s board on May 23 declined to award the five tenders due to lapses in the due process – turning a blind eye would have exposed the roads development agency to irregular expenditure and possible litigation that might have held up the projects in courts for years, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula said at…

PWC HAS REVISED South Africa’s economic growth prospects for 2022 on the back of domestic and international upheaval, which has been exacerbated by the current energy crisis and the war in Ukraine. At the start of 2022, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC’s) downside economic scenario suggested real gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 1.6 percent this year and an average inflation rate of 5.6 percent. PwC yesterday said that its current baseline outlook was for 1.8 percent growth and 6.3 percent inflation, which is not far removed from this downside view from January. PwC chief economist Lullu Krugel said there were still many industries lagging behind in spite of the first quarter GDP growth returning the economy to its pre-pandemic size. Krugel said their baseline scenario for the country…