Cape Times 2024-05-27

VODACOM’S bid in the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg, to have a 2022 decision by industry regulator the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) to allow its competitors to pool spectrum could have consequences for the entire industry. A legal expert in the field, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case was before the court, said on Friday that the entire matter “could turn into a broader fight, regarding all the mobile network operators’ (MNOs) spectrum, which will be a consequence of the regulator taking so long to auction the radio frequency.” Telkom has consistently asked Icasa, including as part of the 2022 spectrum auction preparation process, to review all spectrum sharing and pooling deals, as these have the potential to skew competition. It took 15 years for Icasa…

US TREASURY Secretary Janet Yellen said on Friday she was trying to save a part of the global corporate tax deal focused on highly profitable multinational firms, but India was refusing to engage on issues important to US interests. Yellen said in an interview on the sidelines of a G7 finance leaders meeting in Italy, that China also had been “all but absent” in the negotiations to finalise “Pillar 1” of the OECD corporate tax deal reached in principle in 2021 that involves 140 countries. “We are actively engaged in this negotiation,” to meet an end-June deadline for the deal, Yellen said. “We’re committed to doing everything we possibly can to make it work.” Earlier on Friday, Italian Finance Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti told reporters that the Pillar 1 negotiations were…

BILLIONAIRE tech mogul Elon Musk has told investors he plans to build the largest-ever supercomputer, called the “Gigafactory of Compute”, to support the development of his artificial intelligence startup xAI, an industry news outlet reported on Saturday. Musk wants the supercomputer – which will string together 100 000 Nvidia H100 chips – operational by the second half of 2025, and “will hold himself personally responsible for delivering it on time”, according to media company The Information. The planned supercomputer would be “at least four times the size of the biggest GPU clusters that exist today”, such as those used by Meta to train its AI models, Musk was quoted as saying during a presentation to investors this month. Since OpenAi’s generative AI tool ChatGPT exploded on the scene in…

THE STATE-OWNED Central Energy Fund (CEF) has bought the Sapref Refinery just south of eThekwini, South Africa’s biggest fuel refinery, from BP Southern Africa (bpSA) and Shell Downstream South Africa (SDSA), a spokesperson said Saturday. The CEF has, according to reports, bought Sapref refinery for R1, but substantial investment will be required in future to restart the refinery and upgrade to meet new environmental standards. Sapref, which has been shut temporarily since the end of March 2022, has continued to service SDSA and bpSA market fuels requirements via imported fuels. Shell announced earlier this month that it planned to divest all its businesses in South Africa, following a comprehensive review of its businesses across all regions. According to a statement released on Saturday, bpSA and SDSA had reached an agreement…

The South African Reserve Bank (Sarb) will be announcing its latest decision by the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) later this week on the repurchase rate (repo rate) for the country. Hot on the heels of underwhelming inflation data that was released last week, which was well below the Sarb’s target range, it is likely that consumers will not be getting a reprieve with a rate cut. Data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) this past week showed that headline inflation softened to 5.2% in April year-on-year, down from 5.3% in March and 5.6% in February, as general food inflation slowed except for vegetables, fruit and hot beverages. Nedbank chief economist Nicky Weimar said some upside risks to the inflation outlook also faded over the past month as global disinflation broadly continued.…

QUANTUM Foods Holdings did really well to turn its 13% decline in half-year revenue into a whopping 320% increase in operating profit to R61 million after trading conditions improved for poultry producers, in spite of the impact of avian flu. Headline earnings a share (Heps) increased by 651% to 21.7 cents, from 2.9c in the prior corresponding period. Earnings per share increased by 664% to 22.1c, from 2.9c. Nevertheless, no interim dividend was declared, the same as at the halfway stage last year. Further avian flu outbreaks were reported by SA producers, including at Quantum’s layer farm operations in the northern provinces during the six months to March 31. The value of the birds affected was about R37m versus nil in the prior comparative period. Operational costs were reduced…