Cape Times 2024-04-24

CAPITEC’s share price surged 7.79% yesterday after reporting strong earnings growth of 16% to R10.6 billion for the year to February 29. South Africa’s biggest mass retail bank had benefited from three years of diversification and from increasingly moving its clients into the digital space, CEO Gerrie Fourie said yesterday. The final dividend was raised by a fifth to R33.45 per share. Fourie’s executive pay and incentives increased 5.8% to R65.79 million. He said despite the tough economy, second-half growth was particularly strong at 25%. The R6.3bn that had been invested in products, new businesses, platforms and IT over three years had diversified the business from its early reliance on credit, and non-interest income now contributed 72% of total income. The share price closed 7.79% higher at R2…

SASOL’S share price fell sharply by 10.85% yesterday after it said there had been operational headwinds in the Mining and Secunda Operations (SO) in the nine months to March 31, and full-year production was expected to be lower than expected. The chemicals and fuel from coal group said in a production and sales update yesterday that its energy business had benefited from higher basic fuel prices along with improved refining margins in the quarter to end-March 2024. The share price closed at R135.51 on the JSE yesterday. Mining productivity had improved, but at a slower pace than antici- pated. Fatality and operational challenges had a negative impact on productivity in the quarter, and “consequently we are tracking towards the lower end of our guidance range of 975 to 1…

WORKER representatives have called for greater legislation governing the employee share benefits schemes in South African mining companies to be regulated by the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) for the greater benefit of workers. This comes as the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition (dtic) yesterday held an inaugural conference to provide a platform for advocacy for the Employee Share Ownership Plans (Esops), celebrating their successes, raising awareness and exploring possible collaborative solutions. Esops are an employee benefit plan that gives workers ownership interest in the company in the form of shares of stock. National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) representative Seipati Malema said they wanted to see the rules set by the High Court judgment change to state as law what companies were required to do to empower…

HEADLINE inflation was only expected to return to the midpoint of the target band in the last quarter of 2025, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) said yesterday in a biannual Monetary Policy Review. South Africa’s inflation target range is 3% to 6%. The SARB has left its repo rate at 8.25%, unchanged since May 2023, which “remains broadly consistent with persistent inflation, the uncertain domestic and global outlook, and getting back to the 4.5% midpoint over the forecast timeframe”. The report said that amid slower- than-expected disinflation in food and volatility in fuel prices, headline inflation had fluctuated in the range of 5% to 6% over the past six months. “More recently, services inflation has risen sharply as some components normalised. These setbacks suggest that the path back…

PHEMBANI Group co-founder and chairperson, Phuthuma Nhleko, has urged African private capital and venture capitalists to look into establishing regional blocs to consolidate ways of capital formation, especially for technology and digital sectors. Nhleko yesterday said the fragmentation in raising venture capital in Africa was letting down a number of tech companies that could change the face of the continent in the next generation. He said that the digital leaps should be the centre stage of the African economy as much as Asian tigers want to be economies for African countries in 2024, (12:44) forgetting that those “Asian Tigers” were a product of a particular era as American and European companies were all offshoring. As a result, Nhleko said that venture capitalists should start leveraging Africa's rapidly growing and young…

AS CAPITEC shot the lights out with its stellar annual results yesterday, it is a beacon of hope that the South African banking landscape is changing and it is possible to challenge the top five players. The lunch of ye old South African monopolistic banking playground – dominated by Standard Bank, First- Rand, Absa, Nedbank and Investec – is up for grabs. This has been in the works for years, but a plethora of new entrants to the South African landscape is giving customers more choice and if they have a beef with one lender it is easy to swop to another. Standard Bank, for example, the country’s biggest bank by assets, has more than 18.8 million customers and a market value of R283 billion. Since opening for business on…