Astral Foods has tightened its earnings guidance (JSE: ARL)
As percentages go, this is a big one!
In mid-March, Astral Foods released a trading statement dealing with the six months to March 2026. They flagged an incredible jump in HEPS of at least 435%, serving as an excellent reminder of just how crazy things can get in the poultry industry when everything goes right simultaneously.
Thanks to strong demand for poultry, increased selling prices, better margins due to lower input costs and even a lack of any significant business disruptions, this has been Astral’s time to shine.
In a further trading statement, we now have a better idea of just how brightly the company has shone. The updated range for HEPS is an increase of between 450% and 470%. This suggests interim HEPS of between R22.50 and R23.31.
The share price is around R244. Remember that the guided range is for an interim HEPS number, so you would need to annualise it to work out the P/E multiple. The challenge in poultry is that annualising is very difficult, as the industry is anything but a steady performer.
The share price is up 42% in the past year. Tasty.
Is this a sector that you are invested in?
MTN Ghana banks another strong quarter (JSE: MTN)
Growth rates are high and margins are expanding
MTN Ghana released results for the three months ended March 2026. The numbers are excellent, with mobile subscribers up 9.4% and service revenue jumping by 35.7%.
Within that revenue story, data revenue was up 52.3% and voice revenue fell by 3.7%. Even in frontier markets, voice calling is the legacy business.
With costs up 25.7%, the excess growth in revenue was enough to send EBITDA up by 42.9%. This drove a 310 basis points expansion in EBITDA margin to 61.2%.
Although depreciation was up 32.7% (a function of capex in prior periods), there was a 22.1% decrease in net finance costs. Once these are taken into account, profit after tax increased by 46.8%.
Unusually, capex excluding leases fell by a remarkable 75.9%. That’s great news for free cash flow, although such low levels of capex shouldn’t be extrapolated.
There’s been some corporate activity in the form of the separation of the fintech business. Although it trades as a stapled share on the Ghana Stock Exchange, this seems to be the precursor to an equity transaction. Why else would they go through this process? It will be interesting to see if an equity partner gets involved in the fintech operations.
For now at least, things are going well for MTN in Ghana. This is an important read-through for the broader story in West Africa.
Primary Health Properties is delivering on merger synergies (JSE: PHP)
Some corporate structuring is in the pipeline to deleverage the group
Primary Health Properties took advantage of its AGM to give shareholders and the market an update on the first quarter of the year. They sound pretty happy with how things have gone.
Organic rental growth was 3.4% on an annualised basis. That may not sound like much, but you need to keep in mind that this is a defensive portfolio earning hard currency. They are seeing positive contributions from Primary Care UK, Private Hospitals and Ireland.
This is of course the enlarged portfolio after the Assura merger. The company has bravely given the market the exciting news that they expect to run ahead of schedule on the main goals of post-deal debt reduction and the delivery of £9 million in synergies. They’ve already found £7.8 million in synergies, or 87% of the target!
Part of the deleveraging plan is to put the private hospital portfolio into a separate investment vehicle capable of attracting an equity partner. I’m not hugely surprised to see some potential restructuring work after such a large merger.
They are also working on the transfer of a further £103 million of assets into the existing primary care joint venture.
Results of yesterday’s poll:
Nibbles:
- Director dealings:
- There are more games of musical shares in the Wiese family, this time with a total return swap and associated options over Shoprite (JSE: SHP) shares worth a whopping R427.5 million. These transactions are between entities held by Dr. Christo Wiese and Adv. Jacob Wiese.
- A director of Sabvest (JSE: SBP) sold shares worth around R392k to settle debt.
- Reinet (JSE: RNI) has announced the net asset value (NAV) of Reinet Fund as a precursor to the release of the group NAV. The movement in the fund’s NAV is usually a solid directional indicator for the group NAV. The three months between December 2025 and March 2026 didn’t see much movement, with the fund NAV up just 0.02%.
- Alphamin (JSE: APH) already gave the market plenty of information about the record EBITDA achieved in the first quarter of 2026. For those interested, they’ve now released their detailed financials and confirmed the dividend of around R1.57 per share. As a reminder, the results were driven primarily by a strong upward move in average tin prices.
- ISA Holdings (JSE: ISA) has renewed the cautionary announcement related to the receipt of a non-binding expression of interest from a potential acquirer of a controlling shareholding in ISA. At this stage, the parties are still negotiating. There’s no guarantee of a firm intention to make an offer coming through.
- Sappi’s (JSE: SAP) efforts to create a graphic paper joint venture in Europe with UPM-Kymmene Corporation are ongoing. EU merger control is now moving to a Phase II process, which the company says is a normal regulatory process when certain matters require a detailed assessment following the Phase I review. I fear that European regulators aren’t in any hurry at all with the implementation of this transaction. Given the pressure on Sappi’s share price, I hope they get it across the line without any regulatory hiccups.
- RMB Holdings (JSE: RMH) has convened an extraordinary general meeting to consider the resolutions related to the election of a new board of directors. This is because the existing board is stepping down as part of the AttBid offer process. There are four names on the table as potential new directors. Andrew Brooking, co-founder of Java Capital, is one of them. Corporate law expert Professor Piet Delport, ex-Momentum group CEO Nicolaas Kruger and construction expert Dr Pine Pineaar bring the total to four potential new directors. It’s worth noting that this list of names is a shortlist put together by the Nomination and Remuneration Committee.
- Southern Palladium (JSE: SDL) released a quarterly activities report. They are working towards the completion of the Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) in the fourth quarter this year, a delay vs. previous expectations. To get there, they are busy with a number of drilling and geotechnical programmes. Psychologically, it’s probably important that they get the DFS done in this calendar year, especially as they need strong platinum prices to support the underlying economics.
- Shuka Minerals (JSE: SKA) has appointed Ox Drilling Limited as the drilling contractor for the Phase 1 drilling programme at the Kabwe Zinc Mine in Zambia. The programme will begin in mid-May 2026. The company notes that this is the first drilling at the site since the 1970s!
- It feels like just yesterday that Capitec’s (JSE: CPI) previous CEO Gerrie Fourie vacated the top job. The company has announced that he will rejoin the board as a non-executive director with effect from 1 August 2026. This is because of the required one-year cooling-off period. I don’t think shareholders will ever complain about this level of institutional knowledge coming back to the board.
- Zeda (JSE: ZZD) has appointed Deon Van Heerden as an independent non-executive director. This is interesting, because he is the Managing Partner of Artefact South Africa, a data and AI consulting firm. The board is clearly looking to beef up their understanding of that space – not a bad thing at all!
- Here’s another interesting board appointment: Impala Platinum (JSE: IMP) announced the appointment of two new non-executive directors, one of whom is July Ndlovu – the ex-CEO of Thungela (JSE: TGA). The other appointment is Lucky Kgatle, who brings plenty of experience from prior executive roles at the likes of Sasol (JSE: SOL).
- Oando (JSE: OAO) is planning a rights issue on the basis of one share for every two existing shares. In other words, it’s a biggie! They are still in the process of getting the various regulatory approvals in place across the JSE and the Nigerian Exchange.
- In case you’re following the Putprop (JSE: PPR) deals, the company has announced an amendment to the disposal of Summit Place for R26.5 million. The parties have agreed to insert a clause that gives until 30 June 2026 for the completion of a due diligence by the purchaser.
