Dis-Chem’s regulatory headaches may hurt its M&A strategy
Dis-Chem had a rough few months in the court of public opinion. The company wanted special concessions from landlords, even though it was one of the few retailers allowed to remain open. That paled in comparison to the reputational damage from the allegations of hiking the prices of masks. Thankfully for Dis-Chem, Clicks had a real “hold my beer” moment …
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Aspen gives South Africa a booster shot
Despite 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 …
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MTBPS: the deficit is deafening
Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) – just reading it out loud is more of a mouthful than Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s finest roast chickens on Twitter. This is different to the annual budget speech which presents the country’s finances for the next financial year. The MTBPS gives context to the budget speech for the forthcoming year, giving the market details …
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Leverage: the driver of margin
Have you ever read a results announcement and wondered how revenue can grow by perhaps 7%, yet profit before tax somehow grows by 20%? It seems like an innocuous question, yet the answer holds the key to why many companies are successful and others fail. Top-line growth (i.e. revenue growth) is obviously important, but as revenue growth starts to reach …
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Leverage: the driver of margin
Have you ever read a results announcement and wondered how revenue can grow by perhaps 7%, yet profit before tax somehow grows by 20%? It seems like an innocuous question, yet the answer holds the key to why many companies are successful and others fail. Top-line growth (i.e. revenue growth) is obviously important, but as revenue growth starts to reach …
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Adapt-ing to accounting standard issues
Adapt IT is a JSE small cap operating in the IT industry. The company is worth around R390m which is unremarkable. The remarkable news is that it was worth only R160m at the end of September. This is the thing with smaller companies on the JSE: they trade sideways for extended periods and experience significant jumps or drops based on …
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Adapt-ing to accounting standard issues
Adapt IT is a JSE small cap operating in the IT industry. The company is worth around R390m which is unremarkable. The remarkable news is that it was worth only R160m at the end of September. This is the thing with smaller companies on the JSE: they trade sideways for extended periods and experience significant jumps or drops based on …
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Dividends make a comeback
Dividends 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 …
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Steinhoff fine: punishing the wrong people
Steinhoff misrepresented its accounts by literally billions of Euros. It was a scandal that rocked the market when it was uncovered in 2017, putting the Christo Wiese empire into a tailspin and sending shockwaves through the accounting profession. Sentiment of entrepreneurs towards listed companies turned sour. If they couldn’t trust the Steinhoff financials, why should they trust the financials of …
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Being listed isn’t always a gas
A 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 …
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