Star 2023-03-27

NEWLY-appointed Minister of Electricity Dr Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has assured South Africans they will not have to suffer power cuts higher than stage 6 load shedding. This comes as Ramokgopa continued with his visits to all 14 Eskom power stations across the country to engage with the management, workers and unions on solutions to the ongoing energy crisis. The minister on Friday and Saturday visited the Ankerlig open-cycle gas turbines, the Koeberg Nuclear Power station, and the Palmiet pump station in the Western Cape. The Palmiet storage is a hydro-electric pump storage scheme which contributes 400MW to the national grid. “I want to give the South African public the assurance that I don’t foresee us moving to higher stages of load shedding,” Ramokgopa said. “When I say higher I mean…

PREMIER Group’s listing price of R53.80 provides a good entry point to invest in the group compared with its peers, CEO Kobus Gertenbach said on Friday morning, speaking after the listing of the country’s biggest food manufacturer. Gertenbach said it had been a great morning; volumes traded had not been as high as expected, but the share price was trading above the IPO price of R53.82. It closed at R60. He said the lower share trading volumes were, however, not unexpected as the group’s free float was low, with major shareholder Brait, the private equity firm, still holding 47% of the shares, and much of the other shares were taken up by institutional investors in the IPO. He said he expected Premier’s free float would increase once Brait started to…

The debate is whether this will be the laste rate hike in the current cycle IT’S ALMOST a foregone conclusion that the cost of borrowing will increase once more as the SA Reserve Bank (SARB) is forecast to follow the US Federal Reserve (Fed) and raise its benchmark lending rate. The raging debate among many economists, however, is whether this will be the central bank’s last rate hike in the current cycle. The SARB’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will this week announce its second interest rates decision this year, after raising rates by 25 basis points in January, in a split decision. The January hike was the eighth consecutive increase since November 2021, taking the repo rate from 3.5% at that time to the current 7.25%, with the prime lending…

THE BATTLE between the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) and AYO Technology Solutions Limited (AYO) has come to an end, after the companies announced on Friday that they have reached a settlement. This follows the PIC heading to court, looking to dissolve and recoup its R4.3 billion investment in AYO. The PIC is the custodian of more than 80% of the Government Employees Pension Fund’s (GEPF’s) portfolio. The GEPF describes itself as Africa’s largest pension fund, with more than 1.2 million active members, more than 450 000 pensioners and beneficiaries, and assets valued at more than R1.61 trillion. On Friday, in a joint statement, AYO and the PIC said they settled the proceedings instituted by the PIC against AYO in the Western Cape Division of the High…

GRAND Parade Investments (GPI), which has mainly gambling interests in the Western Cape, lifted headline earnings a share to 9.9 cents in the six months to December 31, from 4.8c in the prior period, as the recovery in the hospitality sector gained momentum. In GPI’s investment portfolio sits SunWest, which owns 100% of GrandWest Casino and Entertainment World, Sun Slots and Worcester Casino. The company declared an interim dividend of 12c per share on September 30, 2022. In the prior period an 88c a share special dividend was declared. Revenue from continuing operations fell by R4.6 million to R3.8m. Group central costs fell 10% to R13.2m excluding legal and transaction fees. Taxed profit increased to R42.7m from R17.5m. Directors said GPI had performed well, driven mainly by…

ALMOST all people experienced a time in their lives when they wished they could turn back the clock. Sometimes it is to change certain poor decisions that have been made, fix a mistake in the past, to relive special moments of joy, or to properly say goodbye to a loved one. Although the ability to turn back the clock has long been embraced by science fiction and debated by theoretical physicists, it is impossible in the classical physical world. We are all too familiar with the directionality of time and that all events follow a unidirectional path. Once an event has occurred, it cannot be reversed because we are not able to manipulate time as an entity. However, an international team of scientists claim that they have succeeded in speeding…