So, Telkom has managed to overtake Cell C as the third largest mobile operator in South Africa, although that’s a bit like beating your granny at the 100m sprint. Cell C has never turned a profit and has shed over 4.5 million subscribers in the last year alone. Cell C says that it would rather focus on profitable customers than …
View PostI love a good investment megatrend. Your chance of success is so much higher when you invest in a growing industry rather than trying to find the last surviving fish in a shrinking pool. Back in July, I wrote here that gaming was doing incredibly well over lockdown and that the trend may continue. Whenever a large group of people …
View PostOne of the themes in the latest raft of corporate earnings is that the automotive sector’s engine is starting to rev again. The driver of the recovery is China, with the horrors of lockdown seemingly long forgotten. Western nations are dealing with renewed pandemic issues, as countries like the UK get locked down again. The purchase of a new car …
View PostDespite the negative cloud that we typically find ourselves under in South Africa, we still boast world-class technology and manufacturing capabilities in a number of industries. Aspen Pharmacare has had a really tough few years on the JSE, having struggled with a debt-funded globalisation strategy that hasn’t worked out. However, the market cheered the news that Aspen has entered into …
View PostMicrosoft released Q1 earnings this week. No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Whilst the current earnings season is called the “Q3 season” by most people to align with the calendar year (i.e. covers the period July – September), companies with year-ends other than December won’t be calling this Q3. Microsoft’s year-end is July, so this is a Q1 result …
View PostDividends have been thin on the ground this year. Remember, a dividend is a cash distribution of profits to shareholders. Dividends are typically declared twice a year, coinciding with the release of interim and final results. In an average year on the JSE, the average company might return say 12% in share price growth and 3% in dividends. It’s therefore …
View PostNetflix is the N in FAANG – but I maintain that it’s not the potential cash cow that the other Big Tech companies are. Perhaps N should stand for Nervous, a fair description for shareholders at the moment. Netflix is the only FAANG company that I don’t directly hold shares in. This is because I don’t buy in to the …
View PostA listed company, for example on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), allows its shares to be traded publicly on the exchange. This enables anyone to put in a bid for the shares which could match with an offer from an existing shareholder and… …BINGO magic happens. Shares have been traded, there’s a new shareholder on the shareholder register and the …
View PostLiterally minutes after I first posted this article, the headline broke that Finance Minister Tito Mboweni has asked for a postponement of the medium-term budget speech. He’s asked for a week’s delay but it’s still a really bad sign. We now wait and see whether the speech will be on October 21st as originally planned, or kicked out to October …
View PostThe Nobel Prize in economics has been awarded to Americans Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson, whose work in the field of auctions genuinely shaped the way private sector entities bid for natural resources from governments and regulators. This includes things like radio frequencies and oil mining rights. Auctions affect you directly in more ways than you realise. There’s the obvious …
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