Saturday, January 31, 2026
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Ghost Bites (ASP Isotopes | Dipula Properties | Exxaro | Glencore | Sibanye-Stillwater | Woolworths)

The Finance Ghost
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Ghost Bites (ASP Isotopes | Dipula Properties | Exxaro | Glencore | Sibanye-Stillwater | Woolworths)

ASP is already achieving better metrics at Renergen’s helium project (JSE: ISO)

Money and expertise: the magic ingredients

ASP Isotopes has released an update on the Renergen helium project. With bridge loan funding having been put to good use (including the engagement of Kinley Exploration as a drilling and modelling specialist), things are starting to look much better in terms of drilling results and other key metrics.

The plant is now processing around 60% more gas than before, although this is obviously off a soft base. They are also making progress in further monetising the LNG, with 60% of the phase 1 offtake already contracted with industrial customers. The expectation is to achieve positive operational cash flow before the end of 2026.

But of course, the big value sits in the helium. My overall read of this announcement is that ASP is focused on stopping the cash burn by ensuring that the LNG business is working properly. They are obviously working on commercial pathways for helium in the meantime as well.

It all seems sensible to me.

Dipula’s lower-income focused portfolio is doing well (JSE: DIB)

This is fascinating to read alongside recent apparel sector updates

When you read updates from the clothing retailers, they lament the extent of participation in online gambling and blame it for their troubles. I don’t doubt that there’s at least some truth to that, but it cannot possibly be the entire story. This is why it’s important to read the perspective of the landlords as well, particularly as it relates to properties situated near townships, on busy commuter routes and in rural areas.

Dipula Properties gives us a great data point, as 70% of their portfolio sits in this category. A 5% increase in total turnover in the retail portfolio for the quarter ended 31 December 2025 suggests that apparel retailers are struggling more than other retailers. Either that, or some of the listed names in apparel just aren’t managing to participate in the growth story at this lower end of the market, while also failing to appeal to a higher income audience that isn’t spending too much money on gambling. That messy middle is a tough place to play (and invest).

Anyway, back to Dipula we go. Almost all retail categories grew by between 3% and 11%, with cellular and electronics growing the fastest (we’ve also seen this at retailers like Mr Price). Services turnover fell by 2%, the only one in the red.

Provincially, KZN and the Eastern Cape were good for 10% and 8% growth respectively. Limpopo was up 6%, North-West grew 4%, Gauteng and the Free State each did 3% and Mpumalanga managed to dip by 1.5%.

By property type, urban convenience and rural centres were up 6%, while urban township centres increased 3%.

Another trend that we’ve seen among retailers is record Black Friday sales. Dipula has echoed this, noting a pull-forward of sales from December into November.

Dipula also noted that the acquisition of four properties that was announced in August 2025 has now been completed. With a total value of R713.3 million, this is a meaty acquisition. Two of them are industrial assets and two are retail properties.

Exxaro updates the market on the manganese deal (JSE: EXX)

This acquisition was first announced back in May 2025

Exxaro is in the process of acquiring manganese assets from Ntsimbintle Holdings and OMH Mauritius. Corporate deals take a long time to close, so companies tend to keep investors updated along the way.

The first transaction includes the acquisition of various stakes, including 100% in Ntsimbintle Mining, 19.99% in Jupiter and 9% in Hotazel (among other assets). These transactions have become unconditional and are expected to close before 27 February.

The Mokala transaction, which involves the acquisition of 51% of Mokala, is still in the process of fulfilling its suspensive conditions. The long stop date has been moved out to 26 February 2027. That seems very far in the future, so I wondered if this might be a typo in the SENS (it would make sense if they meant 2026).

A big finish to the year at Glencore in its copper operations (JSE: GLN)

But investors will have to be patient for a meaningful further increase

Glencore has released its full year 2025 production report. For the second year in a row, they’ve achieved volumes within the guided ranges for the key commodities. That’s a very important performance metric that the market pays close attention to.

Like all the other big dogs in the sector, Glencore is barking at every copper asset it can find. They want to become one of the largest copper producers in the world over the next decade.

With copper production in the second half (H2) being nearly 50% higher than in the first half (H1), it looks very good at first blush. As you dig deeper, you’ll see that full year production in copper was actually down 11%. Another point that cannot be ignored is copper guidance for 2026, which reflects a 1.4% year-on-year decrease at the mid-point of guidance.

They’ve disclosed significant additions to the copper mineral resource base, so hopefully this drives production growth in years to come.

Zinc production was up 7% for the full year. Momentum was good, with volumes up 8% in H2 vs. H1. This is another area where guidance for FY26 is going the wrong way, with a 26% drop at the mid-point of the range.

Steelmaking coal jumped 63% for the full year (thanks to the acquisition of Elk Valley Resources in mid-2024) and 7% in H2 vs. H1, while energy coal dipped 2% for the full year and increased 3% in H2 vs. H1. Guidance for the coal assets suggests flat production in 2026.

Special mention to silver, which is all the rage at the moment: production was up 6% for the full year and 25% in H2 vs. H1!

In terms of average realised prices, copper actually dipped 1% on a 12-month basis. Steelmaking coal fell 16.3%, while energy coal was down more than 20%. Even zinc fell by 1%. Overall, the production story is far more positive than the prices, although a 12-month average isn’t a good reflection of underlying momentum in prices.

Glencore is up 41% over 12 months based on the market’s love affair with emerging markets and anything that has copper in it.

Sibanye-Stillwater has given a detailed strategy presentation (JSE: SSW)

It feels like it’s been a while since I saw a fat deck of slides from them

A couple of years ago, Sibanye-Stillwater used to regularly release gigantic slide packs to the market that would go into tons of detail on the strategic thinking in the group and the approach to the commodity in question. Although there’s clearly been a changing of the guard in the form of a new CEO, it’s good to see that the company hasn’t completely moved away from giving such detailed presentations.

The latest such example is a great overview of the group. It includes some helpful slides on the journey of the company, including its history as a gold miner first and then only a PGM play! It also clearly demonstrates the split across primary mining, secondary mining (tailings) and recycling. Over the past three quarters, they generated 75% of EBITDA from primary mining, 19% from secondary mining and just 6% from recycling.

Aside from the usual stuff, like a focus on reducing costs in the group and being as efficient as possible, there’s a lot of talk around “unlocking value” and “portfolio simplification” – this means selling off non-core assets and focusing on the stuff that is making serious money at the moment. That’s probably the right approach, as Sibanye-Stillwater’s portfolio includes a lot of stuff that doesn’t really make sense in there.

One of the happy outcomes of such a portfolio simplification (and ongoing profits in the core operations) would be a de-risked balance sheet. They are targeting a 50% reduction in gross debt.

The full presentation is well worth checking out. You’ll find it on the Sibanye home page here.

Australia pulls Woolworths down under (JSE: WHL)

The South African businesses are doing well at least

Woolworths released a trading statement dealing with the 26 weeks to 28 December. It includes plenty of detail on the underlying performance, an approach that the market always appreciates.

What the market didn’t appreciate is the expected change in adjusted HEPS (restructure costs / forex / other distortions taken out) of between -2% and 3%. At the mid-point of the range, that’s only slightly positive. With the share price closing 6.2% lower on the day, it’s clear that the market focused on adjusted HEPS instead of HEPS as reported (up by between 7% and 12%).

If you dig deeper, you’ll find that the biggest issues are related to the usual suspect: Australia.

Let’s start with the good news story, right here in South Africa. There’s a nuance here that we need to deal with straight away: this update is for the 26-week period, not just the fourth quarter. It’s therefore not directly comparable to the other retailers in the sector who recently released quarterly updates vs. a very tough two-pot withdrawal base. These Woolworths numbers are impacted by that base, but it’s like comparing a triple-shot cocktail to a single-shot cocktail: they both have tequila, but you won’t taste it as much in the second one.

Credit to Woolworths – they do at least give an indication of trading in the last seven weeks of the period to help us make these comparisons. I’ll deal with that after the 26-week numbers.

Woolworths South Africa grew turnover and concession sales by 6.8% for the 26-week period. Within that, Woolworths Food was good for 7.0% growth, while Fashion, Beauty and Home (FBH) managed 6.2%. This tells us that both parts of the business are performing well at the moment.

The comparable-store picture is even more interesting: Food was up 5.2% and FBH up 6.4%. Price movement was 4.6% in Food and only 2.8% in FBH, implying solid growth in volumes in both businesses. They are expanding trading space in Food (up 4.3%, or 1.8% on a weighted basis) and reducing it in FBH (down 1.9%, weighted basis not disclosed).

In terms of online growth, Woolies Dash grew by a juicy 23% as South Africans chose to shop with their phones instead of their cars to get their hands on the best veggies in the market (with a side of fresh flowers). Online is now 7.2% of local Woolworths Food sales.

Irritatingly, they decided not to disclose the growth rate for online sales in FBH, forcing me to go digging to figure it out. In the comparable period, it was 6.6% of FBH sales, and in this period it was 6.4%. By my maths, this means that sales increased by around 3% (you can work it out based on the total FBH sales growth and how the contribution changed). That’s a bleak performance vs. growth of 25.2% in the prior period. Companies should disclose metrics consistently instead of cherry-picking the good ones.

Looking at momentum, the last seven weeks of the period saw sales growth of 5.3% at Food and 6.1% in FBH, in both cases a deceleration (as expected). This was despite my best efforts in buying a particularly good potato product that they now have.

Any other nuggets? Well, there’s a warning around gross margin in FBH due to inventory clearances, so we will need to wait for detailed results to see that. Another useful metric is that Beauty and Home continues to do very well for them, with those categories up 8.9% and 14.0% respectively. Fashion is a tougher place to play.

Now we need to deal with Australia, where Country Road Group continues to compete in a horrible retail market. Sales were up 2.3% for the period and 2.5% on a comparable-store basis. The last seven weeks were disappointing, with sales up just 1.0%. Despite how hard it all is, net trading space was up slightly by 0.2%, so they aren’t attempting to shrink into prosperity like they’ve done in FBH. The online sales contribution was unchanged at 27.2%, as Australia is a more mature online market.

The share price is down 4% over 12 months. There was some positive momentum recently, but the market response to this update reversed most of it. I’m looking forward to seeing the profitability in South Africa based on these sales numbers, as my suspicion is that Australia is the cause of all the issues and the disappointing growth in adjusted HEPS.

Nibbles:

  • Director dealings:
    • The CFO of Sephaku (JSE: SEP) bought shares worth R655k in on-market trades that are part of the long-term incentive scheme. This is a direct beneficial interest though, so I’m not sure how exactly this relates to the incentive scheme (something I would normally ignore as a director dealing). I’ve therefore included it here.
  • Caxton and CTP Publishers and Printers (JSE: CAT) has decided to pay a special dividend. With over R3 billion in cash at the end of the 2025 financial year, they certainly aren’t short of resources. When you consider that the normal dividend for the year ended June 2025 was only R247.5 million, there’s even more headroom. They’ve decided to put a further R353.5 million into a special ordinary dividend (100 cents per share in the context of a share price of R13.80). Capital discipline is an important thing that investors look out for, so the share price rose 4% in response.
  • Hosken Consolidated Investments (JSE: HCI) has achieved shareholder approval for the Squirewood transaction with SACTWU. It’s been quite complicated to get the structuring right, with HCI trying to help SACTWU with its investment needs, while ensuring that the company’s B-BBEE status is maintained at adequate levels.
  • Ethos Capital (JSE: EPE) has given the market further details on the reinvestment option related to the offer for the residual assets in the group. With Ethos planning to return capital to shareholders from the transaction, there’s an option for qualifying shareholders (i.e. those with at least R1 million in ammo for this investment) to reinvest into the unlisted partnership that will hold these residual assets. Such shareholders would be become limited partners i.e. would have no part in management of the partnership. If this appeals to you, then I suggest you keep a close eye on company announcements.
  • Greencoat Renewables (JSE: GCT) released a net asset value (NAV) update for 31 December 2025. Power generation was 9.1% below budget in Q4, so the variability in this business model continues to come through. They were 10.4% below budget for the full year. Still, they achieved 1.5x net dividend cover, which means that the target dividend for 2025 was met. Sadly, they are targeting a flat dividend for 2026. The balance sheet gearing ratio is 52% and they’ve been successful in extending facilities. Although the NAV per share dipped by around 2.5% for the quarter, the company has reminded the market that the internal rate of return (IRR) on the underlying portfolio is 9.4%, which is around 13% if you adjust for the current share price. South African investors are looking for dividend growth rather than pure currency hedges, so I don’t envy the management team in trying to sell this story at the moment.
  • AfroCentric (JSE: ACT) is fighting with Bonitas Medical Aid Fund. Medscheme (part of AfroCentric) currently has the administration and managed care contracts from Bonitas, due to expire on 31 May 2026. Bonitas ran a Request for Proposal process and has awarded the contracts to a different company. Here’s the thing though: in December, Medscheme filed an urgent application with the High Court (due to be heard in March 2026) to stop the finalisation of the RFP process until the forensic investigation by the Council for Medical Schemes has been completed. Bonitas has finalised the process anyway, so the court hearing in March 2026 has now become very important for all parties involved. I’m grateful that I don’t have to take any of my customers to court to try keep them!
  • Transpaco (JSE: TPC) has been busy with the due diligence related to the acquisition of Premier Plastics, a deal announced in November 2025. With the due diligence out of the way, Transpaco will not acquire the shares in Polyethylene Recoveries Proprietary Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Premier Plastics. There are no other changes to the terms of the deal and no significant new matters.
  • Trustco (JSE: TTO) is suspended from trading and therefore has to release a quarterly update to the market. They’ve been working towards clarification from the JSE on the proposed audit sign-off that would include audit opinions by firms in each of Namibia and South Africa. Based on the current progress of the audit, they expect that the financial statements for the year ended August 2024(!) will likely be completed during Q1 of 2026. This timing depends on the ruling by the JSE regarding the audit process.

Ghost Bites (Datatec | Mr Price | Vukile)

The Finance Ghost
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Ghost Bites (Datatec | Mr Price | Vukile)

Datatec concludes a bolt-on acquisition in Europe (JSE: DTC)

Slow and steady acquisitive growth is the right approach

In a world where executives love doing blockbuster deals and rolling the dice on a grand scale, it’s refreshing to see companies doing bolt-on deals that are so small that they only require a voluntary announcement.

It’s amazing how often you see this approach in a company where the founder still has a large equity stake, like Datatec. There’s a big difference between playing with Other People’s Money vs. your own money, as any banker knows.

Through its subsidiary Westcon-Comstor, Datatec has acquired REAL Security, a cybersecurity distributor in Slovenia. The idea is to get a foothold in the Balkans region, thereby expanding Westcon-Comstor’s European footprint.

As a good example of how sales strategies tend to play out in this space, REAL Security hosts an annual cybersecurity conference in the region. Acting as a thought leader in a particular market is a good indication of the quality of the underlying brand.

The acquisition was effective on 27 January and we won’t get any further details on it, as the deal is too small for there to be a full terms announcement. I see this as a positive thing. After all, a global success story like Bidcorp (JSE: BID) was built in much the same way (small bolt-on deals), albeit in the food service sector.

Mr Price grew sales at the end of 2025 – but not by much (JSE: MRP)

The base period was tough

Despite all the entirely self-inflicted noise around the NKD deal, Mr Price has a strong South African business. In fact, that’s precisely why there is so much frustration around the offshore push! This means that the performance of Mr Price is a decent barometer for the sector as a whole. We’ve already seen what a weak performance looks like, courtesy of Truworths (JSE: TRU). We now get to see what a stronger player was capable of achieving against a very tough base of two-pot withdrawals at the end of 2024.

The answer is: not much. Mr Price’s sales are in the green, but group sales were up just 3.6% for the quarter ended 27 December 2025. The base period was up 10.6%, so the two-year growth stack makes more sense (a two-year compound annual growth rate or CAGR of around 7%). Mr Price’s growth was ahead of the market in this period, so they are winning market share.

Unsurprisingly, Mr Price raises the concern around online betting. This is clearly a worry in the market and one that doesn’t seem to be going away. Overall consumer demand for apparel is weak at the moment, with total unit sales falling 1.5% in an environment where retail selling price inflation was 5.2%.

Mr Price is predominantly a cash retailer (90.9% of total sales), with cash sales up 3.7% vs. credit sales up 2.9% as the group took a cautious approach.

Another interesting element of the Mr Price model is that online sales aren’t growing faster than in-store sales. This is totally different to what we are seeing at players like The Foschini Group (JSE: TFG). Store sales at Mr Price were up 3.6% and online sales increased 3.5%. Trading space also increased by 3.5%.

As you read those numbers, alarm bells should be going off about comparable store sales. After all, the increase in trading space is remarkably similar to the comparable store sales growth. Did they actually grow in their existing space?

Sure enough, comparable store sales for apparel (83.1% of group sales) was up just 0.4%. That’s not enough to offset the inflationary impact of costs at store level.

Moving on to the performance of the brands acquired in recent years, Studio 88 is certainly one of the highlights in this story. It achieved growth of 7.7% during the period vs. a demanding base of 12.3%. Another absolute winner (in Homeware rather than Apparel) is Yuppiechef, up 10.1% this period vs. 26.5% in the base period. I’ll refrain from making bad puns about two-pot savings being spent at Yuppiechef.

The rest of the Homeware segment doesn’t have much to smile about. They actually lost market share, with management noting that they are trying to focus on profitability instead. Comparable store sales were up 1.7% in that segment. This tells us that consumer demand for homeware is stronger than apparel, albeit not by much.

The Telecoms segment, which contributes just 2.9% of group sales, increased sales by 11%. It also achieved better margins. People clearly need phones and airtime for all that online betting!

The sales growth, as light as it was, was only achieved at a lower gross profit margin. Margin fell by 20 basis points for the quarter, although management expects it to be flat for the full year ending March 2026. This will require a strong finish to avoid any stock write-downs, with Mr Price telling a positive story around stock levels.

In the first four weeks of January, sales growth was 4.2% vs. a demanding base of 16.0%. The full Q4 base is 7.6% as sales slowed down a lot at the start of the 2025 calendar year, so that should give them a year-on-year boost as the year comes to a close.

There’s nothing in this announcement to suggest that a bounce-back in apparel is likely this year.

Vukile’s Castellana offloads mature retail properties in Spain (JSE: VKE)

The idea is to reallocate capital to higher growth opportunities

Nostalgia has no place in business. When an asset has reached the point where it no longer meets the risk/reward framework applied by a company, then it’s time to go. This doesn’t mean that the journey was a failure. Quite the contrary – it often means that it was a success!

You see, there are different lenses applied to assets in terms of return requirements. This is especially true in the property game. Funds that actively manage their properties will look for opportunities to increase the value – the classic “fixer-upper” so to speak. Other funds that are just looking to allocate capital across a wide range of properties will look for opportunities that are unlikely to cause headaches. These are “mature” assets.

Vukile Property Fund is in the former bucket, as they are a REIT rather than an institutional investor like a pension fund or similar. This means that when properties have matured, they will look for opportunities to sell them at attractive prices.

This is why Vukile’s Spanish subsidiary, Castellana Properties, will be selling a portfolio of nine retail properties. This has nothing to do with a bearish view on Spain or a change in strategy. It’s merely a reflection of where these properties are in their lifecycle.

Interestingly, Castellana will provide asset and property management services for a period of 5 years and will receive market-standard fees for these services. This tells you a lot about how hands-off the acquirer plans to be – typical of mature assets.

The returns since the properties were acquired in 2017 haven’t exactly been inspiring. Thanks to numerous issues along the way (pandemic / geopolitical), the capital gain over the period has been a total of 13% despite net operating income growing by 26% over that period. It’s a disappointing outcome, but still a positive return despite all the challenges.

The selling price is €279 million at a disposal yield of 7.1% and a discount to the 30 September 2025 valuations of 2.5%. The effective date is 1 April 2026.

Once the deal is done and the money is in the bank, Vukile plans to deploy capital into various opportunities that they already have in the pipeline. They will target higher growth shopping centres that will be earnings accretive to Castellana and Vukile.

Nibbles:

  • Director dealings:
    • Nictus (JSE: NCS) announced that directors and their associates bought shares worth just over R2.5 million.
  • Independent directors churn all the time on the JSE, so I don’t mention appointments and resignations unless they reflect a change in strategic direction or relate to a change in the chair / lead independent director. At Purple Group (JSE: PPE), Happy Ntshingila has returned as chairperson after completing his pupillage and bar examinations.
  • Trustco (JSE: TTO) is suspended from trading and continues to be deep in the “never a dull moment” bucket. A significant shareholder, Riskowitz Value Fund, is trying to get rid of the current board. The latest is that Trustco has now said that the Legal Shield Holdings transaction, which led to Riskowitz being issued 200 million Trustco shares, is invalid. If they can get that legal angle right, then it would rip away voting power from Riskowitz and make everything much harder in terms of the board changes. My money is nowhere near this thing and I plan to keep it that way.

Ghost Bites (Accelerate Property Fund | AVI | Lewis)

The Finance Ghost
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Ghost Bites (Accelerate Property Fund | AVI | Lewis)

Accelerate exits another property – and at a modest discount to NAV (JSE: APF)

I remain happily long

Accelerate Property Fund is such a beautiful example of the type of dislocations that can happen in the market. I’m up 46% in this counter thanks to the gap between net asset value (NAV) per share and the share price closing over time. It hasn’t even taken that long to happen, as I waited until the release of the Portside disposal circular last year before I bought.

There’s further good news from the company in the form of the disposal of the Bosveld Bela Bela Shopping Centre for R88 million. The book value is R95 million. Sure, they need to pay commission of 3%, but that’s a discount of just 7.4% to the NAV (before fees). When a share is trading at a vast discount to NAV, a disposal like this does a wonderful job of turning uncertain NAV (property valuations) into certain NAV (cash on the balance sheet).

The disposal yield is around 8.6%, so they achieved a solid price for the sale.

Naturally, the proceeds will be used to reduce debt.

Another important point is that shareholders won’t be asked to vote on the transaction, as this is a Category 2 transaction.

The share price closed flat on the day despite this news. Currently trading at its 52-week high, more investors need to get involved here for the share price to be pushed higher. I’m confident that they will come.

Double-digit HEPS growth expected at AVI (JSE: AVI)

This is despite at least one ugly duckling in the group

AVI is a very good business in the world of branded food and beverages. They do particularly well in snacks as well. And with their I&J business, they have a household name in the seafood space – even if Mother Nature (and catch rates) doesn’t always play along.

Alas, they also have some segments that are like barnacles on their boats. Barnacles get removed because they cause damage and reduce speed. The same fate should befall segments like Footwear and Apparel, and especially Personal Care, where AVI is playing in spaces in which I don’t believe they have a right to win.

For example, the Food and Beverage part of the business (which has three sub-segments) contributed 82% of revenue in the six months to December 2025. Revenue in this area increased by an appealing 6%.

Digging deeper, we find I&J as the growth highlight, up 9.4% thanks to better catch rates and increased capacity from a vessel commissioned in February 2025. Abalone continued to struggle though, with weak selling prices and poor demand in Asia. Snackworks put in a solid performance with 5.9% growth. People will never get tired of Bakers Choice Assorted, no matter how much we care about sugar consumption! Entyce Beverages lagged with 4.5% growth, mainly due to coffee volumes amid higher prices – to the benefit of better tea demand.

As for Fashion Brands (with two sub-segments and an 18% contribution to group revenue), their revenue was flat for the period. This is because Personal Care dropped by 7.2% and Footwear and Apparel was up 3.4%.

The Personal Care result is because of struggles in the deodorant body spray category. Unlike in AVI’s food businesses, they don’t have a strong brand there. In Footwear and Apparel, SPITZ is a brand that you’ll likely recognise, although this sector is a competitive bloodbath at the moment. Much of the latest growth was thanks to a weak base with supply challenges.

Combine these performances and you get group revenue growth of 4.9%. But that’s enough of the revenue story – what about the rest?

Group gross profit margin improved thanks to margin management and the higher contribution from I&J. AVI is famous for cost management, so I’m not surprised to see that this revenue growth translated into higher operating margin.

Net finance costs were flat, with lower interest rates offset by increased average borrowing levels.

By the time we get to HEPS, we find growth of between 10.5% and 12.5%. This is a masterclass in both operating and financial leverage, with the earnings growth rate more than double the revenue growth rate of 4.9%.

Leverage is exactly what AVI is known for. I just wish they could deal with those barnacles!

The share price is up 4.2% in the past year, but the real story is the 16% increase over six months as momentum has picked up. It is trading very close to its 52-week high.

Lewis bucks the weak retail trend with a solid third quarter (JSE: LEW)

Positive sentiment towards the company will be strengthened by this update

After the year got off to a rough start in terms of local retail updates, Lewis threw the market a bone in the form of a SENS announcement detailing the performance for the nine months to December 2025. It looks as though the latest quarter was a manageable deceleration vs. the first six months of the year.

The business model at Lewis depends on substantial credit sales, so it’s important to look at both total merchandise sales (which drives initial gross margin) and total group revenue (which includes the credit and other business lines).

Merchandise sales is the metric that feeds the top of the funnel. For context, it had previously grown by 6.7% for the six months to September (8.9% in Q1 and 4.6% in Q2). The latest update is that Q3 achieved 7.8% growth, an acceleration that was aided by strong Black Friday sales.

Similarly, comparable store sales were up 4.3% for the nine-month period vs. 4.9% for Q3, so there’s a further acceleration.

Other revenue, which would be combined with merchandise sales to get to total revenue, increased by 15.2% for Q3 after growing 16.7% in the first six months. This takes them to 16.2% for the nine months year-to-date.

This slowdown wasn’t due to a lack of credit sales, as credit sales growth was 69.4% of total sales vs. 68.2% in the comparable period. I suspect that the lower interest rates in the market impacted other revenue in the third quarter.

I must flag a deterioration in the collection rate year-on-year, coming in at 78.3% (identical to the first six months) vs. 79.6% in the comparable nine-month period. They saw an uptick in debtor costs to manage the book, flagging growth in the book and overall pressure on consumers. This is something to keep an eye on.

In terms of what they can actually control (i.e. not the prevailing level of interest rates), Lewis appears to have done well. This won’t do any harm to the group’s reputation as a resilient retailer, with the share price up 23.6% in the past year.

For context, Shoprite (JSE: SHP) is down 7.6% over 12 months and Pepkor is up just 1.5% (JSE: PPH). Those are two of the very best retailers we have on the market. I won’t even mention the other apparel retailers, as they were truly slaughtered in 2025.

Lewis stands head and shoulders above the rest of the sector at the moment.

Nibbles:

  • Director dealings:
    • The CEO of Mantengu (JSE: MTU) disposed of just under R3 million in shares to a family member.
  • Libstar (JSE: LBR) has renewed the cautionary announcement related to a potential acquisition of the company’s shares by a third party. There have been a few cautionary announcements in the past few months that suggested that there was more than one potential investor at the table. At this stage, there’s still no guarantee of a firm offer. The share price is up more than 20% since the first cautionary announcement was released on 16 September.
  • The CFO of Heriot REIT (JSE: HET) has bought a unit in the company’s Fibonacci mixed use sectional title development for R1.2 million. This is a related party transaction, hence it must be announced. This pre-sale is priced in line with what other purchasers in the scheme are paying.

Davos 2026 | Navigating the new disorder

Investec Focus Radio
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Davos 2026 | Navigating the new disorder

Listen to the podcast here:

The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos offered fewer illusions, and more realism. The rules-based order is no longer assumed. Geopolitics is now embedded in balance sheets. Scale matters. Delivery matters more.

In the final episode of our Davos Debrief podcast series, Investec Group Chief Executive Fani Titi argues that the defining advantage in today’s global economy is adaptability – the ability of countries and companies to operate amid volatility without waiting for certainty. 

Hosted by seasoned broadcaster, Jeremy Maggs, the No Ordinary Wednesday podcast unpacks the latest economic, business and political news in South Africa, with an all-star cast of investment and wealth managers, economists and financial planners from Investec. Listen in every second Wednesday for an in-depth look at what’s moving markets, shaping the economy, and changing the game for your wallet and your business.

Scroll down to read the transcript of this conversation.

Also on Apple Podcasts and Spotify:

Transcript

00:00 – Introduction 

Jeremy Maggs: Hello, and welcome to No Ordinary Wednesday, an Investec podcast where we step back from the noise to examine the forces shaping the global economy.

This episode brings our three-part Davos Debrief series to a close, recorded on the ground at this week’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Switzerland.

Over the past two episodes, we’ve explored:

·      The global investment landscape with Investec’s Chief Investment Strategist, Chris Holdsworth, and

·      The AI agenda shaping growth with Lyndon Subroyen, Investec’s Global Head of Digital and Technology.

Today, we pull it all together.

Davos 2026 convened around a stark question: how do we cooperate in a more contested world?

From geopolitical fragmentation and trade realignment, to AI disruption, infrastructure constraints and climate-linked capital flows, the tone was serious and pragmatic.

And world leaders didn’t sugar-coat the moment.

  • Ursula von der Leyen argued that Europe must toughen its economic and strategic posture, while strengthening its own resilience and autonomy.
  • Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that the old rules-based global order can no longer be taken for granted and that countries will need to adapt pragmatically to a more fractured global economy.
  • And US President Donald Trump, in characteristically blunt fashion, had a strongly nationalistic economic posture, emphasising US achievements, critiquing global partners, and asserting US interests.

Against that backdrop, what does all of this mean for South Africa, for Africa, and for institutions like Investec that operate at the intersection of global capital and real-economy delivery?

To explore that, I’m joined by Fani Titi, Group Chief Executive of Investec.

Fani, welcome – and thank you for joining us for this Davos wrap-up.

02:00 – How would you summarise the mood at Davos 2026?

Jeremy Maggs: Fani, you’ve just come out of a week of intense conversations in Davos – private meetings, closed-door sessions, and some very public speeches. How would you summarise the mood of the conference, and what stood out for you?

Fan Titi: I think Davos this year was quite interesting in that the US position on global geopolitics was quite dominant. Europe was anxious to indicate that they can adjust to the new world order, that Europe can be independent, that Europe can in time defend itself. And in fact, that Europe’s economy needs to change in significant ways– that the union must have more united regulation, must be more uniform so that they can compete.

So that was the predominant theme – the American position and how America and the superpowers specifically are acting in the world. And the fact that the old rules-based order is over in this contested space where it appears that might, both economic and military, seem to dictate what happens next. How do countries and companies adjust to that? So that was that was the overall mood.

And second was just the sense that technology is developing at quite a rapid pace, in particular artificial intelligence, and how this may affect countries in terms of how workers may be displaced on the one hand and second, how innovation can be sped up as countries and companies adopt artificial intelligence.

I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t that much focus on sustainability as much as the theme of the conference talked about prosperity within planetary bounds. That alone is, as you can see, some kind of a deference to Trump because they didn’t call it sustainability as such – “prosperity within planetary boundaries”.

But overall good interactions, really leading thought and practitioners in the place. And I think we will go out of Davos with a lot more to think about and really being able to act differently.

03:54 – What is Davos telling us about the global economy?

Jeremy Maggs: Davos is often criticised as a talk shop, but markets still pay attention to its signals. From your conversations this year, what did Davos tell us about where the global economy is really heading?

Fani Titi: I think there was a sense that while the world has fractured both in terms of traditional alliances, in terms of trade and in terms of the use of power, as it were, that the global economy is still continuing to grow, that there has been a level of resilience.

We’ve seen how China has adjusted to the US tariff policies. And in fact, China has grown over the last year at about 5% or so. The US also is growing at quite a surprisingly rapid pace. We haven’t seen the level of inflation that we expected would be an outcome of the tariff policies that we saw.

I must say though, that tariff levels have settled at lower than was initially anticipated. So that may be that confidence is a little higher despite the level of uncertainty that is within the system at the moment.

04:56 – Is cooperation still realistic?

Jeremy Maggs: The official WEF theme this year was “A spirit of dialogue”, but the reality is a world that’s more fragmented. From where you sit, is cooperation still realistic, or are we simply learning how to do business in a permanently contested global economy?

Fani Titi: I think we have to take the world as it is, not as we would like to see it. So, the old order, as I said, a rules-based global system, is largely over. At the moment you’ve got what Mark Carney called the hegemons – the powerful and the super scalers like China – where you have large production capabilities, you have the scale that can overwhelm smaller markets and smaller countries. So that’s the reality in which we live.

And within that reality, I think that smaller countries and middle countries have to act differently. Understand that scale is important, understand that power is important, and in that context, I think smarter, newer, and more flexible alliances are important.

In fact, Mark Carney talked about a principle of variable geometry where you are very pragmatic, you look for friends and allies and for different outcomes, you may well have different alliances.

But you have to be pragmatic, you have to be clear about national interest, you have to be clear about where you can compete. It’s contested but I think there is still a way for both countries and corporates to do business.

06:20 – How explicitly are geopolitics influencing capital allocation today?

Jeremy Maggs: At Davos this year, geopolitics wasn’t discussed as an abstract risk – it’s being priced directly into supply chains, balance sheets and investment decisions. In your conversations with global banking peers and investors, how explicitly are you seeing geopolitics influence capital allocation today?

Fani Titi: I think you cannot be agnostic to the fact that there is a level of alignment both with respect to trade, both with respect to supply chains and of course to how capital is allocated. And we have to be smart about how we make our decisions.

In the end capital looks for safety, capital looks for returns and where there is a capacity to deliver on projects, I think capital will be able to be sourced.

So, for South Africa, for instance, and for Africa, being able to demonstrate that policies are clear and are pragmatic and reasonable, and that there is a level of delivery on projects and that investors have safety around their investments and that they can get their capital back if and when they want to, to divest of the investments that they have made.

It’s a world still full of opportunity although there is a high degree of uncertainty, and of course it is challenging just given the geopolitics of today.

07:36 – From a UK lens, is stability becoming a competitive advantage again?

Jeremy Maggs: It’s not surprising then that investors are placing a growing premium on policy stability and predictability. From a UK lens, is that stability becoming a competitive advantage again – particularly for long-term capital and financial services firms?

Fani Titi: I think the UK is placed in a rather interesting position. Firstly, the UK has a much closer relationship with the US, in fact, they have been able to negotiate a trade deal that looks fairly competitive, if you look at other trade deals that have been negotiated with the US.

The UK is working to get a lot closer to Europe again. And given that the UK is a fairly small power militarily and economically, I think being able to strike smart alliances with Europe, with Southeast Asia, with China – we saw the Chancellor going to China for some for some discussions.

We’ve actually just seen just this week that the Chinese embassy, the new Chinese embassy, has been approved in terms of a new location and, where China is able to build a much larger embassy and we hope that reciprocally in Beijing, the UK will be able to do that.

So, I think the UK is well placed, but it has to be much smarter around the alliances that that she strikes.

The UK is a very flexible country culturally and has generally been able to attract talent and its proximity to Europe obviously gives it a level of advantage.

I expect more deregulation in the UK. As the current Labour government has indicated with the direction of travel, I expect that they will continue down the policy of being more business friendly.

So, I think while policy stabilises under Labour, the UK remains an attractive investment destination.

For us as Investec, we continue to invest. We are investing in a mid-market corporate capability there, and we continue to invest in our private client strategy.

We are excited about that economy. Our market shares are small in the UK and our ability to be agile and to take opportunity of the changing landscape places us in a very good position there so we are excited about the UK opportunity.

09:43 – Sentiment around emerging markets and global portfolios

Jeremy Maggs: Against a backdrop of a weakening dollar, emerging markets are no longer being framed as “high growth by default”, but as selective opportunities. What was the sentiment around where EMs fit into global portfolios today?

Fani Titi: Look, I think you’ve seen a lot of flows into emerging markets. You’ve seen strengthening of certain currencies like the South African rand, as the economic outlook and policy certainty has moved rather positively. And I think in a world that is so contested, diversification is quite important.

As we go forward, we hope that risk premia around emerging markets will reduce allowing for better capital deployment into those economies, better growth and better allocation into emerging markets. So, we are hopeful about capital flows and investment flows into emerging markets.

10:36 – What would unlock faster capital deployment into African infrastructure?

Jeremy Maggs: Talking of emerging markets, one consistent Africa theme at Davos was that capital is available, but infrastructure – energy, logistics, digital – remains the binding constraint. From an investor perspective, what would unlock faster capital deployment into African infrastructure?

Fani Titi: I think there were lot of discussions on the continent of Africa, and I think there is within Africa a realisation that we have to have more free trade – a movement of goods and a movement of people.

Regulatory inconsistency and payment rails within the continent need to improve much more significantly.

And of course, investment in digital infrastructure. For instance, when you think when you think about cloud and you think about data centres – those require energy lots of energy and we know that Africa has a number of countries being constrained in terms of energy. So, there are a number of these constraints that have to be dealt with, but Africans are on top of it.

I was very encouraged in one of the meetings on how to improve the digital infrastructure to enable trade intra-Africa and how to strengthen the African Continental Free Trade Agreement going forward. A lot more happening.

With respect to South Africa and the continent, you have seen more investment into the continent, in fact we saw a very interesting announcement by Nedbank that they have bid to take control of a bank in Kenya. We’ve heard similar noises from our competitors in South Africa. So, I think the African opportunity is there.

Africa has the benefit of demographics. And in fact, by the turn of this century probably close to 20-25% of the workforce of the world will be African. So, if policy can develop much more rapidly, if free trade can develop much more rapidly, if infrastructure investment can develop, Africa can benefit hugely from its demographic dividend.

12:29 – In this global environment, what does good leadership look like?

Jeremy Maggs: One of the most striking things at WEF2026 was how leaders sounded fiscally, politically and institutionally. In this environment, what does good leadership actually look like? And what separates countries and companies that adapt successfully from those that fall behind?

Fani Titi: I think the answer is in the question. How do countries adapt to a changing environment? There’s a level of uncertainty. Old norms are no longer in place. So, an ability to clearly understand the changing landscape and to be clear about where as a country or as a company you are positioned, what are your natural advantages – whether it be with respect to countries, is it location? Is it natural resources? Is it technology and people talent? Understanding those and understanding how in a fractured world you can be pragmatic, you can be adaptable and you can think of self-interest within the context of a competitive world.

So, I think understanding and accepting that there is volatility, there is change, there is fast pace of change given technology that you have to be agile. That applies equally to countries as it applies to companies.

And being able to strike partnerships. As an example, for us as Investec, we have a number of technology partnerships. For instance, with Microsoft, we had a good opportunity to talk to some of the leaders at Microsoft to see how we can strengthen our partnership. We use them for cloud, we use them for a lot of our enterprise capabilities. That’s how partnership enables a company to move forward. But you have to be agile.

You have to be adaptable as you indicated in your question and really have to be courageous because in most cases you will not be certain of what is around the corner. As an example, in 2020, we thought we were onto a good path and COVID was around the corner.

In today’s, world geopolitics dominates what we have to deal with. America used to be a source of stability, it is now to a large extent a source of volatility and instability. So, understanding these changes and being ready to be pragmatic and to act with speed and with courage.

16:17 – Key takeaways from WEF2026

Jeremy Maggs: If there are three takeaways global investors and business leaders should carry with them from Davos 2026, what would they be?

Fani Titi: I suppose the fact that we are in a world that is contested where the old rules and norms that we had gotten used to, and that offered a level of protection, that those are no longer in place.

When you think about investing, either in a business or in a country, you’ve got to think quite heavily about geopolitically how that country is positioned.

Understanding how the leadership of a country, the leadership of a business is adaptable, pragmatic, and they can think clearly through the cloud of uncertainty that is out there.

Also, for countries and for companies, understanding how they’re embracing technology and how they’re harnessing the power of technology.

And for countries understanding the impact, for instance, on their populations of technology, are there education systems in countries adaptable enough and of the kind of quality that can take advantage of the change in in the landscape?

And just generally understanding whether for countries specifically whether their governance is of the right quality to ensure continued competitiveness within a challenging world.

I think it’s a world where if you are minded to see opportunity within the landscape of risk and volatility, you can do well. So, quality of leadership, the ability to adapt and being pragmatic really and striking partnerships and alliances that make sense. That will define countries that win, that will define companies that win.

Ghost Bites (Cashbuild | Pan African Resources | Spear REIT)

The Finance Ghost
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Ghost Bites (Cashbuild | Pan African Resources | Spear REIT)

Cashbuild paints a worrying picture about our economy (JSE: CSB)

Where is the consumer discretionary spending?

In theory, Cashbuild should be doing well. There’s no load shedding. Interest rates have come down (a bit). The rand is getting stronger all the time. And yet, the share price fell 6.8% on Monday in response to poor sales in the second quarter.

The metric that matters is same-store growth, which they disclose based on stores that existed before July 2024. Cashbuild South Africa is the most important business (83% of group sales), so I’ll also focus there for now. Sadly, after a 5% increase in same-store sales in the first quarter of the year, they suffered a 1% decline in the second quarter. Yuck.

It gets even worse in the other segments, with P&L Hardware clearly still struggling with a drop of 11% in Q1 and 10% in Q2. Cashbuild recently acquired Amper Alles in December, so I’m hoping that business will turn out a lot better than P&L Hardware.

With the impact of new stores included, the second quarter was up 1% for Cashbuild South Africa and for the total group. The market is smarter than that though, with same-store sales as the important focus area.

The typical relationship between inflation and volumes just isn’t coming through. Inflation was only 0.8% at the end of December, yet same-store volumes fell by 1% in the second quarter. If inflation comes down and volumes don’t move higher, retailers very quickly have a bad time.

The share price is down 26% over 12 months. It rallied nicely into the end of 2025, but this update will likely take the wind right out of their sails. There’s certainly no wind in their sales!

Pan African Resources is printing cash (JSE: PAN)

Gold production is way up at exactly the right time

Pan African Resources was the fighter that I chose in the gold sector last year. My average purchase price is R8.64 per share. Currently trading at R31.52 per share, that’s a delicious 264% return!

This isn’t just because of the gold price, although that’s obviously the main driver. I loved the fact that Pan African would be ramping up gold production significantly. My thesis at the time was that the company offered a combination of gold price exposure and production upside.

So far, so good – it’s beaten the sector over the past year, although there was money to be made everywhere:

The latest from the company is an operational update for the six months to December 2025. With gold production up by 51%, they have such a good story to tell. They expect the run-rate to improve even further in the second half.

Still, it’s not a perfect result.

The first blemish on this story is that the Mogale Tailings Retreatment operations are running at roughly 10% lower than expected in terms of production. They have increased capacity and hope to see improved recoveries.

The second blemish is that all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of production has come in way above guidance. They expected between $1,525/oz and $1,575/oz, but they’ve come in at between $1,825/oz and $1,875/oz!

The stronger rand has hurt them by a substantial $115/oz, while higher share-based payments (due to the share price performance) are responsible for another $80/oz. There were a couple of other operational factors as well. They do at least expect the costs per ounce to improve in the second half, although the ongoing trajectory of the rand won’t help.

I must of course point out that the weaker dollar and the higher gold price are linked concepts. It’s pretty unlikely that we would have one without the other right now.

Looking at the balance sheet, net debt has dropped by more than 65% to below $50 million. Such is the level of profitability at the moment that the company expects to be a debt-free mining house by February 2026, an astonishing outcome when you consider the extensive recent investment in capacity (and the record dividend paid in December).

Speaking of the dividend, they intend to pay 12 cents per share as an interim dividend. This is important because it would be the company’s first-ever interim dividend. They are making so much money that they need to pay it out twice a year!

As you would expect, there are further expansion opportunities in the pipeline. They are planning to complete a definitive feasibility study for the Soweto Cluster Tailings Storage Facilities by June 2026. At Tennant Mines in Australia, various targets for further exploration have been identified.

I am a happy shareholder.

Spear REIT upgrades full-year earnings guidance (JSE: SEA)

The Western Cape growth story continues

Spear REIT may be focused on the Western Cape, the property jewel of South Africa, but that doesn’t mean that they can afford to throw capital at every opportunity that they find. Cape Town is the furthest thing from a hidden gem, as everyone knows that it is the most desirable city in the country. This means that properties in the region carry a valuation premium that can easily catch you out if you get too hot for the deal.

This is why you’ll hear management talk about their underweight exposure to highly priced retail assets, although they are still willing to do selective deals in this space (like Maynard Mall). For the most part, Spear loves industrial assets that tap into the underlying growth in the Western Cape.

Acquisitions during the 10 months to December 2025 were made at an average acquisition yield of 9.54%. This is above their weighted average cost of capital (a good thing). It’s also a reminder of how difficult it is to make money from property without a corporate balance sheet that has a low cost of borrowing. If you ask the bank for money, you’ll be doing well to get it below 9.5%.

These acquisitions have taken the loan-to-value back to 25%, slightly lower than the 27% as at February 2025. The half-year results were an anomaly of under 14% based on the timing of major disposals and acquisitions. Operating in the mid-20s is a very healthy level for a REIT and is well below many of the other players in the market.

With occupancy rates at their highest since the pandemic, Spear is executing well. They also note that tenants reported strong trading over the festive season. This is interesting, as we aren’t exactly seeing this coming through in the updates from the major retailers thus far this year. It’s important to remember that Spear’s Western Cape portfolio isn’t necessarily representative of the performance for national chains.

Having achieved distributable income per share growth of 5.7% for the 10 months to December 2025, the fund has upgraded its full-year guidance to reflect expected growth of between 5% and 6%. I went back and checked their interim results for the previous guidance, and found that it was between 4% and 6%. In other words, the upgraded guidance is a positive shift in the mid-point rather than the top of the guided range.

Spear is trading on a dividend yield of 7% and achieved share price growth of nearly 22% in the past year. That’s been a much easier way to generate returns from the Western Cape property market than the alternative of sending out rental invoices and calling out the plumber when your tenant’s taps are broken!

Nibbles:

  • Director dealings:
    • Here’s a meaty trade: an associate of a director of Dis-Chem (JSE: DCP) sold shares worth R35.4 million. The director in question is Stanley Goetsch, not a member of the Saltzman family.
    • The CEO and CFO of Clicks (JSE: CLS) each bought shares in the company. The combined value of the purchases is almost R2 million. Will this do anything to address the slide in the price?
    • A director of a major subsidiary of Ninety One (JSE: N91 | JSE: NY1) sold shares earlier this month to the value of R1.4 million. The share price has rallied significantly since then, so that must be rather frustrating.
    • A director of a major subsidiary of Southern Sun (JSE: SSU) sold shares worth R551k.
  • Fortress Real Estate (JSE: FFB) announced that Moody’s has affirmed its credit rating and its stable outlook. Access to finance and an attractive cost of borrowing are key inputs for the economics of property funds, so this is good news.
  • Africa Bitcoin Corporation (JSE: BAC) has appointed Maxim Group LLC as its general advisor in the US. I wonder whether they feel that the best chance for the company is to sell the bitcoin treasury company story overseas – although such things already exist there, so I’m not 100% sure what their unique selling proposition would be. I guess that’s why they’ve chosen to work with an advisor! Perhaps I’m wrong and they are going to promote the credit fund instead, which is by far the most interesting business in the group. This advice from Maxim doesn’t come for free of course. The company is paying Maxim in shares, with a fee equal to around 4% of currently issued share capital, issued in various tranches in 2026.
  • Mahube Infrastructure (JSE: MHB) announced in December 2025 that Sustent Holdings would be making an offer for the shares and delisting the company. Interestingly, Mahube has now announced that an entity called Five Words Capital has taken a 5.01% stake in the company. I’m not sure what’s going on in the background here, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
  • When companies have significant development costs ahead and are tight on cash (like junior mining houses), they tend to look for opportunities to settle fees in shares rather than cash. Shuka Minerals (JSE: SKA) has taken this route with the issuance of shares to Gathoni Muchai Investments (yes, the investor that took forever to put in cash) and company executives in lieu of historical fees. A total of 6.56 million shares are being issued. The company will have 127 million shares outstanding after this issuance.
  • aReit (JSE: APO) is still suspended from trading. They are looking for a new auditor, while trying to get the previous auditors to sign off the financials for the year ended December 2023. Long-time readers will remember my somewhat blunt views on this one when it listed.

Ghost Bites (Mr Price | Reinet | Valterra Platinum)

The Finance Ghost
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Ghost Bites (Mr Price | Reinet | Valterra Platinum)

Mr Price pushes ahead with the NKD deal (JSE: MRP)

The investor presentation on 17 March is going to have a spicy Q&A session

Despite considerable criticism in the market from major institutional and retail investors alike, Mr Price is pushing ahead with the acquisition of NKD in Europe.

At this stage, the major outstanding condition is approval under the European Commission’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation. Hilariously, if that condition fails, it would probably be the best near-term catalyst for the share price!

It’s unlikely to fall through though, as I can’t see why there would be any sensitive regulatory hurdles for Mr Price in this deal. This means that investors will grill management at the investor presentation scheduled for 17th March. I sincerely hope the webcast will allow for a proper Q&A, otherwise the entire thing really is a farce.

Reinet’s NAV fell 1% in the past quarter (JSE: RNI)

The bigger questions are around the plans once Pension Insurance Corporation is sold

Reinet has been taking transformative steps in recent times. They sold their stake in British American Tobacco (JSE: BTI) in early 2025. Then, in mid-2025, they agreed to sell the stake in Pension Insurance Corporation to Athora Holding. This deal is expected to close in 2026.

What will be left, you ask? If you can imagine a bag of Liquorice Allsorts, you’re on the right track.

Based on the latest accounts, Pension Insurance Corporation is 51% of the group NAV. A whopping 32.9% of the group NAV is sitting in cash and liquid funds. Your eyes are not deceiving you – just over 16% of the group NAV is sitting in other investments (net of small liabilities and minority interests). And within that bag of sweeties, you really will find all shapes and sizes.

It’s easiest to just show you the extent of diversification by pulling this table from the latest report:

Nobody in the market is going to queue up to pay a premium valuation for such a diversified basket of random investment funds, so the real question is around Reinet’s plans for the extensive cash on the balance sheet – especially once Pension Insurance Corporation is sold.

Surprisingly (and perhaps disappointingly), there is no share buyback programme in progress. The lack of buybacks suggests that they have earmarked other uses for the cash in 2026. I hope that it will be a large acquisition that becomes the new cornerstone asset in the group.

The NAV per share of €36.24 (around R691) is significantly higher than the share price of R570. The discount to NAV of 17.5% is less than you’ll see in most investment holding companies, but that’s because such a big chunk of the NAV is sitting in cash. This discount gives further support to the argument that they should already be doing share buybacks, hence they must have something important planned for the cash as they aren’t taking that route.

Speaking of the NAV, we were given a clue earlier in the week as to the direction of travel. Reinet releases the underlying fund NAV before they release the group NAV. It’s therefore not a surprise to see a decline of 1% in the NAV per share from September 2025 to December 2025.

Valterra Platinum had a truly spectacular second half (JSE: VAL)

This is why share prices have been running so hard

All share prices are forward-looking by nature, but none more so than mining stocks. Daily moves are based on commodity prices, with financial reporting only catching up way down the line and showing us why the share price moved several months ago.

When PGM stocks started rallying in 2025, they were still releasing very uninspiring results for the first part of 2025. PGM prices were moving sharply higher, so the market knew that results in the second half of 2025 would be much better. At last, we’ve reached a stage where we are starting to see confirmation of that performance through the release of financial results.

In a trading statement covering the year ended December 2025, Valterra Platinum has flagged a jump in HEPS of between 85% and 105%. Yes, at the mid-point, that means they nearly doubled their earnings! This is for the full year, not just the second half, so it shows you how exciting the second half was. For context to just how nutty the year was, HEPS in the first half was down by 81%!

What does that look like in absolute terms? Headline earnings was R1.2 billion in the first half. In the second half, it was between R14.4 billion and R16.1 billion. Even when you think you’re numb to the effect of PGM cycles, it’s still wild to see numbers like these.

There’s an important nuance here, as the trend cannot be entirely attributed to PGM prices. In the first half of the year, flooding at Amandelbult had a significant impact on output. Although insurance proceeds of R2.5 billion were received (yet another skew to the timing), this still resulted in lower sales volumes in FY25 vs. FY24. The significant increase in PGM basket prices essentially rescued the period.

In case you’re wondering, the share price is up 178% in the past year!

Nibbles:

  • Director dealings:
    • There’s a reshuffling of the Wiese family exposure in Invicta (JSE: IVT). Adv JD Wiese’s Mayborn Investments sold R5.3 million in shares to Titan Premier Investments (a Christo Wiese entity of which JD Wiese is also a director). Some families pass the tomato sauce to each other around the table; others pass millions of rands worth of shares.
    • A trust linked to the CEO of Sirius Real Estate (JSE: SRE) received shares worth around R350k in lieu of cash dividends. This is part of the Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP) offered by the company.
  • Farewell, Barloworld (JSE: BAW) – the iconic name will be delisted from the JSE on 27 January after the acquiring company utilised the squeeze-out mechanic to acquire all the remaining shares in issue.

When bad art becomes good tourism

Dominique Olivier
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When bad art becomes good tourism

A failed restoration turned a forgotten church fresco into one of the internet’s most enduring visual jokes. What followed was an unexpected lesson in attention, economics, and how small towns make a profit from global ridicule.

You may have heard this story before: a well-meaning elderly woman in a small Spanish town tried to restore a faded fresco of Jesus on a church wall. Due to her lack of professional training, her efforts transformed the likeness of the Son of God into something that looked more like a startled monkey in a woolly jersey. 

(Images: Wikipedia)

The internet did what it always does: it laughed, it shared, it exaggerated. Within days, a botched fresco in a tiny town had become one of the most recognisable images on the web.

That part of the story may be familiar. The real surprise, as it turns out, is just how much of an effect two minutes of internet fame can have on a small town’s economy. 

How it all began

The Ecce Homo fresco in the Sanctuary of Mercy church in Borja, Spain, spent most of its life in relative obscurity. Painted around 1930 by Elías García Martínez (a professor at the School of Art of Zaragoza), it was a conventional portrait of Christ crowned with thorns, in the style commonly referred to as Ecce Homo, or “Behold, the man”. Martínez was not a resident of Borja, but frequented the town on his holidays and was therefore considered a parishioner of the church. He commented that his work was “the result of two hours of devotion to the Virgin of Mercy”. 

But by 2012, the paint was flaking and the compassionate expression that Martínez had captured so well was quickly deteriorating. Martínez himself had passed away only four years after completing his painting, but his grandchildren still lived in the area and were aware that the painting was coming apart. In fact, one of his granddaughters had just made a donation towards its restoration when the priest told her that the painting had already been “fixed” for free.

The “fixer” in question was one Cecilia Giménez, an 81-year-old untrained amateur artist and parishioner of the church. She wasn’t an art restorer by any means, but she was someone who painted as a hobby and therefore knew how to hold a brush. Moved by the fate of the disintegrating painting, she decided to intervene.

Is that… a monkey?

The transformation was immediate and startling. The delicate features of Christ were replaced by something rounded, blurred, and oddly expressive. Cecilia’s intention was to stabilise and repair, not to reinvent. She worked in the open, during the day, and maintained that the local priest knew what she was doing. Her approach was practical rather than technical: she repainted sections of the face, allowing them to dry before continuing. At some point, she left the work unfinished and went on holiday for two weeks, assuming she would return and simply complete it.

Instead, photographs of the unfinished altered fresco began circulating online. The resemblance to a monkey was quickly noted, and with that came a new name: Ecce Mono, or “Behold, the monkey”.

News outlets picked it up during the quiet August news cycle and social media quickly amplified it. Within days, an obscure church in a small Spanish town had become an international punchline. Local authorities initially suspected vandalism, but when they realised the changes were the result of a parishioner’s restoration attempt, the reaction shifted from anger to uncertainty. The priest who greenlit the restoration started backtracking at pace, even considered covering the fresco to stop the ridicule.

For Giménez, the experience was painful. She insisted the work was unfinished and said the public reaction hurt deeply. Had she not gone on holiday, she argued, none of this would have happened. But by then, the image had escaped any possibility of correction.

Fame to fortune

As the laughter spread, something less obvious followed: interest. People began asking where Borja was. Then, they began going there.

Visitors arrived first out of curiosity, then out of fascination. They wanted to see the painting in person, to confirm it was real, to take photos, to stand in front of something they had only known as a meme. The church, faced with a sudden and steady stream of onlookers, eventually decided to charge a small entrance fee.

Crucially, the fresco was left exactly as it was. Rather than commissioning a professional re-restoration (or allowing Giménez to complete her work), the church preserved “Monkey Christ” behind protective glass. What had first been treated as an embarrassing mistake was now being treated as an asset worth managing.

Within a year, Borja had received around 40,000 Ecce Mono visitors, an extraordinary number for a town that previously welcomed only a fraction of that annually. Entrance fees and donations to the church generated more than €50,000 for local charities in the first year. Over time, visitor numbers continued to grow, and with them, the town’s visibility.

There’s always room for merch

As the influx continued, Borja adapted. Local businesses benefited from increased foot traffic, and some even started selling Ecco Mono merchandise. The church hired additional staff to manage visitors. Donations were used for practical community needs, including support for a home for retirees.

In 2016, an interpretation centre dedicated to the fresco opened, formalising its status as a cultural attraction. Modestly priced tickets generated steady income, some of which funded care for elderly residents and (ironically) maintenance of the church itself. What made the situation unusual was not just the money, but the source of it. This was not heritage tourism in the traditional sense. Visitors were not coming to admire technical mastery or historical importance in the same way that they would admire the Sistine Chapel or the Eiffel Tower.  They were coming because of a story rooted in error, humour, and the internet’s refusal to let a good meme go.

Over time, even Giménez’s relationship with the episode began to change. In the immediate aftermath, the attention had been bruising: she spoke openly about how painful it was to see her work mocked around the world, especially given that the restoration had been unfinished and undertaken in good faith. But as the years passed and the tone around the fresco softened, so did her own view of what had happened.

Giménez wanted a cut

That shift in perspective led Giménez to make a more complicated claim. As merchandise featuring the now-famous image began to generate revenue, she sought a share of the profits, arguing that her intervention was the reason the painting had become valuable in the first place. She said she wanted her portion of the income to go toward muscular dystrophy charities, a cause close to home since her son suffered from the condition.

The request was not without controversy. Questions of authorship, consent, and artistic ownership quickly surfaced. The original fresco had been painted by Elías García Martínez decades earlier; the church owned the wall; the town now benefited from the attention; and Giménez had, quite literally, changed the face of the work. Untangling who was entitled to what proved difficult enough that the town’s mayor eventually stepped in to mediate, but after a lot of to and fro, Giménez was eventually awarded 49% of the merchandising profit. She died recently at the ripe age of 94, having achieved the unlikely feat of worldwide fame in the final decade of her life. 

Banking on blunder

Today, this ill-fated fresco adorns the same wall it always has, but its value no longer lies in artistic merit alone (or, one could argue, in artistic merit whatsoever). Ecce Mono isn’t really a story about art gone wrong. It’s about how institutions respond when an accident turns into an asset – and how, in some cases, the most rational move isn’t to fix the mistake, but to learn how to monetise it.

About the author: Dominique Olivier

Dominique Olivier is the founder of human.writer, where she uses her love of storytelling and ideation to help brands solve problems.

She is a weekly columnist in Ghost Mail and collaborates with The Finance Ghost on Ghost Mail Weekender, a Sunday publication designed to help you be more interesting. She now also writes a regular column for Daily Maverick.

Dominique can be reached on LinkedIn here.

Ghost Bites (Clicks | Reinet | Sasol | South32 | Truworths)

The Finance Ghost
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Ghost Bites (Clicks | Reinet | Sasol | South32 | Truworths)

Clicks’ share price put itself on special (JSE: CLS)

The trading update drove a 6% drop on the day

Clicks released a trading update for the 20 weeks to 11 January 2026. This naturally includes the all-important Black Friday and festive periods. Although growth was positive, the market had no love for the trend.

We may as well deal with the problematic number first: same-store sales increased by 3.7%, a much softer outcome than 5.9% in the comparable period. Although a 110 basis points decline in selling price inflation was part of the reason (coming in at just 2.4% vs. 3.5% previously), the most likely culprit that set hares running in the market is the slowdown in growth in volumes from 2.4% to 1.3%.

If inflation was lighter than before, then volumes growth should be accelerating rather than decelerating.

One of the reasons for this odd outcome is a warehouse management systems issue that affected retail sales by around R120 million, particularly in the Western Cape. The group didn’t disclose total retail sales for this period, but did disclose group turnover of R19.5 billion. This systems issue therefore affected group turnover by around 0.6%. Once you split out retail turnover, it’s likely that the systems issue is the major reason for the lost ground in volumes growth. Importantly, this situation is expected to be fully rectified during February, at which point Clicks needs to claw back that market share.

As Clicks has been expanding its footprint, the total retail sales growth of 6% looks better than the aforementioned same-store sales number. Pharmacy turnover was a particular highlight, up 9%. But the market is smart enough to place greater importance on same-store sales.

There’s also a concern around margins, with Clicks flagging “aggressive competitor discounting activity” over the festive trading period. They also had record Black Friday sales. I doubt that gross margin has a happy story to tell over this period.

On the wholesale side of the business, distribution turnover was up by an encouraging 11.4% (vs. 9.5% in the comparable period). This was boosted by the strong Clicks pharmacy turnover result of course, as well as non-Clicks pharmacies that are supplied by UPD. They did lose two contracts with bulk agency distribution clients though, leading to managed turnover falling by 0.2% for the period.

Interim results for the six months to February 2026 are due for release on 23 April. In the meantime, investors will have to weigh up a Clicks share price that is currently at its 52-week lows:

Reinet’s NAV looks to have dipped slightly (JSE: RNI)

The direction of travel for Reinet Fund gives us a good hint

Reinet Investments (the listed company) always releases the net asset value (NAV) of Reinet Fund as a precursor to the release of results for the holding company. Although there are other assets and liabilities at holding company level, the fund holds the major investments and thus typically drives the direction of travel for the group NAV.

The fund’s NAV per share dipped by just over 1% between September 2025 and December 2025. It’s worth reminding you that the portfolio these days (post the exit of the long-held stake in British American Tobacco in early 2025) is just Pension Insurance Corporation and various odds and ends spread across diversified portfolios.

The share price has been choppy over the past few months, reflecting the effects of currency and geopolitical shifts rather than material changes in the value of the underlying portfolio. Investors will now wait for confirmation of the listed company NAV.

Sasol punters are celebrating (JSE: SOL)

Will it last?

There are many local investors that find themselves in an abusive relationship with the Sasol share price. The volatility is incredible, which means the good days are great and the bad days are terrible. For example, the 52-week low is R53.01 and the 52-week high is R129.09!

Sasol closed at R114.46 on Thursday (a casual 14% higher) after the release of business performance metrics for the six months to December 2025. Much of the joy is thanks to the destoning plant reaching beneficial operation in December, which means that coal quality is improving. This allows them to operate the previously closed low-quality mining sections, driving 6% higher production at Secunda Operations on a quarter-on-quarter basis. If you look at the year-on-year numbers for the six-month period, production was 10% higher!

This was accompanied by a better performance by Natref in the quarter, leading to higher fuel volumes in South Africa at better margins. This fuel performance is exactly why the Sasol share price is up 31% in the past year despite oil prices being sharply lower.

Of course, it would be too easy if everything was going well at Sasol. For example, a dip in gas supply from Mozambique has led to a significant downgrade in gas production guidance for the year.

There are also bigger problems, like the important chemicals business suffering a decline in revenue thanks to weak pricing. Chemicals Africa’s revenue is down 3% quarter-on-quarter, while Chemicals America fell by a nasty 9% thanks to an outage at Louisiana in the quarter. Chemicals Eurasia fell by 11% quarter-on-quarter due to lower volumes and prices. The picture internationally is less severe if you look over six months rather than just the latest quarter, but the reality at Sasol is that the volatility in the share price is a reflection of the volatility in the operations!

This is therefore very much a fuel volumes story, with Sasol upgrading guidance for FY26 from expected growth of 0% – 3% to a new range of 5% – 10%. They are certainly doing their best in a hostile oil price environment.

With the first half behind them, South32 has maintained production guidance (JSE: S32)

And of course, they have the magic word: copper

South32 released an update dealing with the quarter ended December 2025. This marks the halfway point of their financial year. The overall story is that production guidance for FY26 has been maintained, with operating costs on a per-unit basis also in line with guidance.

There’s a small caveat here: guidance for non-operated Brazil Aluminium is under review as there were lower quarterly volumes than planned.

On the plus side, the hottest of hot assets (copper) is doing well, with Sierra Gorda currently performing ahead of FY26 guidance. They haven’t taken the step of updating guidance yet, but things are clearly heading in the right direction.

Another highlight that caught my eye is a 58% increase in manganese production as Australia Manganese returned to normalised production rates and the South Africa Manganese operations completed their planned maintenance.

Alumina production increased by 3% for the period and aluminium was up 2%. Remember that there is an issue coming down the line, with Mozal Aluminium set to be placed on care and maintenance in March 2026 due to an inability to secure an economically viable electricity supply.

Commodity pricing has been all over the place over the past year. Although payable copper was up by a delightful 45%, alumina prices were down 22% at Worsley Alumina and 37% at Brazil Alumina. Aluminium prices were up by between 7% and 10%, depending on which operations you look at.

Helpfully, operating costs on a per-unit basis are looking good. They are generally in line with or below current guidance.

There are a number of important projects underway at South32. Aside from corporate activity like the completed divestment of Cerro Matoso in early December 2025 (nickel in Colombia), they are also busy with construction at Hermosa’s Taylor zinc-lead-silver project, as well as exploration work at the Clark battery-grade manganese deposit.

South32’s share price is up 17% over the past year. Recent momentum is very strong though, up more than 30% over 90 days.

Truworths is going from bad to worse locally, while Office UK is doing all the heavy lifting (JSE: TRU)

The Truworths Africa decline has perfectly offset the Office UK growth

The year is 2030. Office, a JSE-listed retailer, has released results. They talk about how they are just finishing off the disposal of the charred remains of that once-great South African retailer, Truworths. But it’s really just a footnote, as the group has been renamed to make sure that investors only pay attention to the Office UK business.

Cheeky? Sure. Impossible? Not in the slightest. Based on the recent trajectory of the two major segments in Truworths, this is a plausible outcome.

For the 26 weeks to 28 December 2025, a period that avoids that awkward week after Christmas where nobody knows who they are or why they are, Truworths’ group sales were flat year-on-year. That’s right folks, flat!

But if you dig deeper, you’ll see that the segmental performance continues to tell a story of divergence.

Truworths Africa suffered a drop in sales of 3.6%, although gross margin was at least slightly higher. Management continues to give primarily macroeconomic commentary, as though they are merely passengers on the South African journey. They certainly aren’t being paid like passengers, that much I can tell you.

Account sales in Truworths Africa were down 2.7% and cash sales fell by 5.8%. They talk about being disciplined with credit, yet cash sales still fell faster than credit sales. The only highlight is that online was up 23.3%, now contributing 7.4% of Truworths Africa’s sales (vs. 5.8% previously).

Perhaps worst of all, this result was suffered despite a 1% increase in trading space for the period. Not good.

In Office UK, Truworths is bucking the trend of local retailers being obliterated offshore. Sales were up 6.4% in British pounds and 7.1% in rands. As this market is far more mature in terms of omnichannel retail, online sales were up 7.5% and contributed 45.7% of segmental sales (vs. 45.2% in the prior period).

Trading space is expected to jump by between 10% and 12% for the full 2026 financial period, so they are investing heavily in space. If they are increasing space by double digits, then one would hope to see a similar increase in sales, otherwise trading density is dropping.

Surprisingly, flat group sales were enough for group HEPS to be up by between 0% and 2% for the interim period. They clearly weren’t joking about the improved margins in Truworths Africa.

Expectations for this stock are so low that the share price closed 5% higher on the day. It’s still down by nearly a third over 12 months:

Nibbles:

  • ArcelorMittal (JSE: ACL) is still in negotiations with the IDC regarding a potential transaction. One wonders where those negotiations lie on a spectrum of purely commercial deals through to thinly-veiled government bail-outs. Only time will tell, with no guarantee at this stage that a transaction will be announced.
  • RMB Holdings (JSE: RMH) renewed the cautionary related to the non-binding indicative proposal received from Atterbury Property Fund. The parties are still negotiating the terms.
  • Southern Palladium (JSE: SDL) made a whoopsie in its recent presentation at the Future Minerals Forum. Slide 9 in the presentation gave updated forecast financial information for the Bengwenyama Project based on a basket price of $2,000 per 6E oz. That’s a substantial 30% higher than the $1,557 per 6E oz used in the optimised pre-feasibility study. Although market prices have certainly moved up, the company isn’t allowed to do this unless there’s an updated pre-feasibility study. After getting a rap on the knuckles from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), the company has retracted those sections of the presentation and referred shareholders back to the original pre-feasibility study.
  • Labat Africa (JSE: LAB) is on the radar of many local investors this year as a potentially lucrative speculative punt. The company has applied to list R52 million worth of shares at 14 cents per share. That’s more than double the share price before the announcement, but is still well below their view of underlying asset value (25 cents per share).
  • 4Sight Holdings (JSE: 4SI) has released the circular dealing with the proposed repurchase of R10 million worth of shares from Silver Knight Trustees at a price of 55 cents per share. The current share price is 75 cents, so that looks like a decent deal for 4Sight shareholders. It’s very difficult to get out of illiquid holdings like these, hence the discount that Silver Knight was clearly willing to accept.

Ghost Bites (Coronation | Karooooo | Quilter)

The Finance Ghost
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Ghost Bites (Coronation | Karooooo | Quilter)

Coronation’s AUM is still on the up (JSE: CML)

When markets are hot, asset managers are cooking

Coronation doesn’t make it easy when it comes to their assets under management (AUM) disclosure. They never give comparatives in the SENS announcement, an approach that I struggle to understand. At least they are consistent – whether the news is good or bad, they still don’t do it!

A fishing expedition through their SENS history reveals that AUM stood at R786 billion as at December 2025, up 16% from R676 billion as at December 2024. They’ve also grown nicely since the September 2025 number of R761 billion.

The company produced strong results in the year ended September 2025 and the momentum seems to be continuing. It certainly helps that the JSE had the best year that anyone can remember!

AUM is the driver of earnings and an increase in asset prices is the easiest way for these companies to grow in South Africa where we struggle to achieve meaningful investment flows from our cash-strapped consumers.

Karooooo is growing, but this quarter wasn’t great for margins (JSE: KRO)

When results are released quarterly, it’s a challenge for companies during a period of investment in the business

The business journey isn’t linear, especially for fast-growing companies that need to expand and then grow into the bigger shoes before expanding once more. Karooooo has always indicated to the market that margins can vary by a few hundred basis points, but that doesn’t mean that the market is forgiving when margins go the wrong way.

For the third quarter of FY26, which covers the three months to November 2025, Karooooo grew its subscription revenue by 20% in ZAR and 27% in USD. The world is still getting used to a situation where the rand strengthened against the dollar over the year!

That’s a strong revenue story, supported by a record number of net Cartrack subscriber additions and a 16% uptick in the total number of subscribers. Look, the company has to achieve record net additions on an ongoing basis to support the growth rate, but it’s still good to see.

Accompanying this result is an upgrade to the mid-point of FY26 revenue guidance – another good sign.

But the share price closed 3.9% lower on the day, so clearly all wasn’t well.

Adjusted earnings per share increased only 11% year-on-year as Cartrack’s operating profit margin compressed from 30% to 28%. They attribute this to the investment in “incremental sales capacity” and “acquisition-related expenses to support accelerated growth” – in other words, expenses and income don’t increase at the same rate in every quarter.

Although absolutely tiny in the group context, operating profit at Karooooo Logistics increased by 7% and the margin contracted from 8% to 7%.

The group is focused on driving both sources of revenue growth: the number of subscribers and the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). The latter is achieved through selling additional solutions to the existing customer base, like Video and Cartrack Tag solutions.

The guidance for FY26 adjusted earnings per share is between R32.50 and R35.50. The share price at ~R757 is therefore a three-month forward earnings multiple of around 22.3x. This is a demanding multiple, with the share price down 12% in the past 12 months. It hasn’t helped that founder Zak Calisto sold a sizable number of shares over the period as part of a (well-deserved) process of taking value off the table.

Quilter caps off a fantastic year (JSE: QLT)

The most important metric (core net inflows) looks fantastic

In the same way that mining companies are judged on production (as they can’t control commodity prices), large asset and wealth management houses are judged on net inflows. This is because they can’t control broader market prices, so the main driver of assets under management and administration (AuMA) that they can control is net inflows from clients.

In that regard, Quilter’s report card would definitely earn the company an ice cream from its parents (as I think back to my once-a-term Magnum as a kid). For the full year, core net inflows came in a whopping 75% ahead of the prior year. They represented 8% of opening AuMA, a significant improvement from 5% in 2024.

Things admittedly slowed down in the fourth quarter, with core net inflows up 21% vs. the comparable period, but a growth rate as high as 75% simply cannot be maintained into perpetuity.

Remember, core net inflows tell you about the rate of growth attributable to client moves, not total asset prices in the market. The growth rate that actually drives revenue growth is the movement in total AuMA, which in this case was 18% for the year. Again, that’s very good.

The Affluent segment did the heavy lifting, with strong growth rates across both the Quilter channel and the independent financial advisor (IFA) channel. Quilter has been working hard on distribution, and the results speak for themselves. In business, distribution is one of the most powerful assets you can have. Additional good news for profitability is that sales per Quilter adviser in the Quilter channel grew 12% year-on-year.

The High Net Worth segment was a less enjoyable story, with a fourth quarter net outflow based on how clients are positioning themselves ahead of the UK Budget. The UK government is pretty hostile towards its wealthiest residents at the moment. For the full year, net inflows in this segment still increased 15% year-on-year and represented 2% of opening AuMA.

The share price closed over 4% higher in appreciation, taking the move over the past year to 17%.

Nibbles:

  • Director dealings:
    • An associate of a director of Dis-Chem (JSE: DCP) sold a casual R36 million worth of shares. That’s a meaty trade.
    • A Richemont (JSE: CFR) executive (or director – we don’t know for sure) sold shares worth R8.5 million.
    • A director of a major subsidiary of Southern Sun (JSE: SSU) sold shares worth R406k.
    • Astral Foods (JSE: ARL) announced that the CEO bought shares worth R308k.
  • Numeral (JSE: XII) released results for the nine months ended November 2025. It remains a very small company, with revenue of just R1.9 million for the period. At least they make a small operating profit! They are taking steps to do far more with the listed structure, having recently recovered its stake in Cryo-Save and then moving it higher to a 51% controlling position.
  • Astral Foods (JSE: ARL) announced that the acting CFO for the month of February will be Henry Enslin. It really is just for the month, as Johan Geel is the incoming CFO with effect from 1 March.

WEF2026 | AI: from hype cycle to hard choices

Investec Focus Radio
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WEF2026 | AI: from hype cycle to hard choices

Listen to the podcast here:

AI has moved beyond experimentation. It now sits at the centre of decision-making. At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, the conversation is clear – how can leaders use AI to drive growth, manage risk and reshape work. 

In episode 2 of our Davos Debrief series, Jeremy Maggs speaks to Lyndon Subroyen, Investec’s Global Head of Digital & Technology, on why AI is a platform shift, not a passing trend, and what that means for strategy, talent and long-term competitiveness.

Hosted by seasoned broadcaster, Jeremy Maggs, the No Ordinary Wednesday podcast unpacks the latest economic, business and political news in South Africa, with an all-star cast of investment and wealth managers, economists and financial planners from Investec. Listen in every second Wednesday for an in-depth look at what’s moving markets, shaping the economy, and changing the game for your wallet and your business.

Scroll down to read the transcript of this conversation.

Also on Apple Podcasts and Spotify:

Transcript:

Intro

[00:00:00] Jeremy Maggs: Artificial intelligence is no longer a future debate. It’s a leadership decision. And in Davos at this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting, artificial intelligence is being discussed as a driver of growth, competitiveness and long-term value creation with direct implications for how organisations invest, operate, and attract talent.

Hello, I’m Jeremy Maggs. This is No Ordinary Wednesday, Investec’s fortnightly podcast on the forces shaping business, markets and economies. And this week we’re in the middle of our special three-part Davos debrief series, hearing from Investec leaders on the ground in Switzerland. Today’s conversation is about technology, AI and the future of work.

Topics that are central to the programme at Davos as leaders grapple with how innovation can deliver growth without leaving people behind. But rapid innovation also raises tough questions. How do companies capture value from AI while managing risk? How do we invest in people so that the future of work is not one of displacement, but opportunity?

And what does all of this mean for business strategy and long-term competitiveness? And today, to help us answer some of those questions we have Lyndon Subroyen, who is Investec’s Global Head of Digital and Technology. Lyndon, welcome to episode two of this Davos Debrief.

So, Lyndon, this is your first time at the World Economic Forum in Davos. How are you finding it so far?

[00:01:36] Lyndon Subroyen: I mean, it’s just been absolutely profound. It’s been a day and a half for me so far. There are well 3000 people here from 149 countries. There are 200 politicians of which 65 of them are heads of state and there’s 850 chairs and CEO’s of companies. So it is a very, very influential group of people sitting around here.

And the opportunity to listen and learn has been amazing for me. And that is the theme of Davos this year, which is “A spirit of dialogue”. So super excited.

[00:02:00] Jeremy Maggs: One of the most talked about topics this year is artificial intelligence, as I’ve referenced. Conversations spanning from ethics and governance to economic impact and productivity.

Are there sessions or speakers that have caught your attention?

[00:02:13] Lyndon Subroyen: Look, so I’ve only been able to attend a few sessions in AI. So far. Probably the best that I’ve been in has been with Satya Nadella and Larry Fink, where Satya is the CEO of Microsoft and Larry Fink, who everyone will know is the chair and CEO of BlackRock, and their conversation was really centered on the economic prosperity that we think we will find as a result of AI.

But as we are going through this process of AI shifting fundamentally from being experimental to foundational, there’s recognition that AI is a platform shift for the world, and we’ve been through many platform shifts like this before, beyond my lifetime certainty. Things like the steam engine, electricity, these were platform shifts.

The internet connected the whole world, and each of these transform society. And we’re going through that one more time

[00:02:54] Jeremy Maggs: Now Lyndon, in business, the conversation often swings between AI as a transformative efficiency tool and AI as a disruption risk. What then is your take on how leaders should be thinking about AI this year?

[00:03:09] Lyndon Subroyen: Look, I think it’s easy to get caught up in either the hype where you have a utopian view of the world, or you get caught up in a negative spiral where you’ve got a dystopian view of the world. I think it’s got to be balanced, but the world has gone through these shifts before, you know, if you track the arc of computation over a long period of time, it’s a similar pattern that we’re going through now.

So we’ve proven that if you can get to the point where you can digitise something; artifacts, people, place, things – put into some kind of information format, you power it with information technology, you can build analytical power on top of that, and it starts to create new opportunities, new jobs, new industries.

So, each of the paradigms before this, if we think about in business with mainframes and PCs and servers, mobile and internet, that did exactly the same thing and we’re going through that paradigm right now.

So, I would encourage business leaders to just try and learn from history and look at what happened and we’ll go through the same shifts all over again.

If we go back to your point around disruption, I would guess 40, 50 years ago in big companies, you had pools of typists whose sole job it was to just type, and now every day 4 billion people wake up and they start typing. That didn’t create job destruction. It created more opportunity and more industries.

So, I think more of that is going to happen.

[00:04:22] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, Lyndon, the balance then between opportunity and risk comes up a lot. So how then should businesses think about balancing the urgency to innovate with the need to manage risk?

[00:04:33] Lyndon Subroyen: The key point there is very much balance. One of the talks I was in this morning, somebody likened human nature being a pattern that always goes in repeat, and he likened what he is concerned about with AI to the development of cars.

He described it quite simply, as you know, at first humans built cars, then we made them go really fast, then we had a crash, and then we realised we needed safety measures. He was concerned that we’re going to do the same thing with AI. We had great breakthroughs, now we’re going to try and make it go faster and be more powerful and we’re going to have a crash and then we’re going to try and implement safety measures.

So I think everyone is erring on the side of trying to be more balanced so we don’t default to the human behaviour that we normally would like building fast cars and then realising way after we need seat belts and airbags.

[00:05:12] Jeremy Maggs: So, when you look at AI and how it’s being adopted, are companies investing in the right capabilities or do you think many are still chasing the hype?

[00:05:22] Lyndon Subroyen: Look, there’s this idea that for new technologies to really have an impact, they’ve got to go through this process of diffusion into society. And there are three main players in that. There are the people who are bold, in this case, the people who are building and designing the models and training them and making really smart AI.

Then there are people who build infrastructure and the providers, all of this. And then there are the people who use it, the individuals and the companies. At the moment obviously most companies are on the side of being consumers of this technology. The technology won’t get to scale and add value if it doesn’t go through this full diffusion into society in the way that I’ve just described, where the frontier builders, the infrastructure providers and the users all understand where to prioritise the investment and how to use all of this safely.

And it is going to come down to learning skills and education.

[00:06:06] Jeremy Maggs: Now our central theme at Davos this week is investing in people, building resilient workforces and upskilling. So, in a world of AI, what should in your opinion, leaders be prioritising when it comes to workforce strategy and talent investment?

[00:06:21] Lyndon Subroyen: Technology intersects with investing in people in two ways. One is in skills and the others in jobs. So, AI will displace some jobs, but it’ll also create new ones. A major point now is, for me, it’s about retraining programmes. So, what we are hearing a lot in Davos at the moment in the sessions I’ve been in is the focus should be on how to prepare workers for an AI-augmented economy.

So, the idea of humans plus AI working together is where we need to direct our attention. So, if I give a practical example, that’s universally applicable, if you had a doctor who could spend more time with his patients because he’s got an AI agent alongside him capturing the notes, updating all the medical history, providing the input and the right codes into the medical claim system.

The entire ecosystem of medical servicing becomes better, and doctors get to spend more time with the patients. Patients get a much better service. So that kind of very simple idea of augmenting people with AI, with universal impact is how I think jobs will start to evolve going forward.

[00:07:16] Jeremy Maggs: So, Lyndon, if we look ahead to an AI-augmented workplace, which skills do you think will matter most?

[00:07:23] Lyndon Subroyen: I’m always going to say creativity and critical thinking because I think what we are finding now very clearly is the technology is able to do what we needed to do pretty accurately.

So, I remember a conversation with Bill Gates many, many years ago where he described his attempt to try and understand the difference between a Word document, a webpage and an application, and as somebody who builds software and somebody who’s built a lot of the computing capability, he couldn’t understand why these things had such different paradigms. Where we are today is you can describe something in a Word document and realise you actually want that to be interactive.

You ask the AI to convert that to a webpage and it’ll do it, and then you want it to be much richer. You can then ask it to convert the webpage into an application. So, this is all going to be powered by your creativity, and I think that’s the kind of skill that we need to be harnessing because the actual STEM skills are going to become easier to deploy now with AI. It is really a democratisation of technology in a way that we have never seen before.

[00:08:17] Jeremy Maggs: How do organisations then avoid scenarios where tech progress outpaces people’s ability to actually engage with it?

[00:08:26] Lyndon Subroyen: I think we’ve always run this risk of technology progressing faster than people can adopt it, but we’ve always found a way to catch up.

I think there’s always going to be some frontier technology, some leading-edge technology that’s being built that through the normal curve of adoption: you’ll have some early adopters, you’ll have people will be fast followers, people will then bring it into the mainstream and you’ll have some laggards.

So, I don’t think this is any different to that. I think there are some nuances today in that the world is more technologically savvy. I remember I grew up in South Africa and there was a direct correlation between your ability to be skilled in tools like Excel and a computer and your ability to therefore get a good job.

When mobile came about, that became pretty ubiquitous. There wasn’t such a correlation any longer, and the technology was adopted much quicker. So, I think the pace of this technology adoption is improving, and I think we’re seeing that with AI as well.

It is going to become more ubiquitous. It will be adopted faster, but there will always be a segment of the technology that’s outpacing mainstream human adoption, and I think that’s okay cause that’s what development progress is all about. We want that.

[00:09:23] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, let’s move on. Another long running debate, and one that I think is front and centre at Davos is the future of work. So, beyond jobs lost or created, do you have a view on how businesses need to adapt their operating models to succeed in this fast-evolving environment?

[00:09:43] Lyndon Subroyen: I think it’s fair to say all successful companies continue to evolve. They wouldn’t be around today if their culture didn’t evolve, if their operating models didn’t evolve based on the context in which they’re operating. So, the geopolitical climates, the technology advancement, the need of the consumers, the customers, their clients. If businesses don’t evolve, they don’t stay alive. This is going to be a similar challenge.

I like to draw comparisons to very simple scenarios to help me understand this on my own. So if I think about many of the senior leaders who are here at Davos this week, no doubt, 5, 7, 10 years ago, probably two years ago, in their preparation for it, they would have had a series of meetings lined up, lots of one-to-one engagements with different counterparts. For each of those counterparts their teams would be producing briefing notes for them. I’m pretty certain today these C-Suite executives are producing their briefing notes for themselves and they’re sending it to the rest of their teams.

You know, “I’m meeting so and so from this company. Here’s all of our bilateral interactions with each other. Here’s their strategy. Here’s where our strategy intersects with theirs, and here’s what my conversation’s going to be”.

That can be created now pretty easily. So, you see an inversion of the flow of information where you used to have this bottom up flow up to the C-suite. You now have a pretty flattening of the structure where the information could flow around, and we can start to think about different value creations.

So that’s an example of an adaptation of companies as AI starts to infuse itself into the organisations. There’s going to be job displacement. Let’s not kid ourselves about this, but in every major technology advancement with job displacement has come massive new job creation. You can look back in history going back a hundred years, and you’ll see that take place.

The same is going to happen here, so we already can see new skills that are required for today, not even the future, for today, in order to just keep our companies competitive. In an AI-driven world that is so heavily dependent on technology that requires a much more secure estate. You know, one of the things we haven’t spoken about, you and I here, is the threat that comes with technology advancements.

But all of these create new opportunities for roles and jobs and people to develop new skills.

[00:11:44] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, let’s discuss those threats then. What’s important for leaders to understand about the risk side of rapid technological advancement?

[00:11:51] Lyndon Subroyen: Look, what we do know, every major technology advancement creates an opportunity for threat actors, criminals to also adopt this technology and use it for their benefit.

One of the big themes of Davos this week is cyber-crime and cybersecurity and what we know for sure is that it has shifted now from a focus on cyber as a tool for crime to cyber as a tool for disruption and espionage.

So the intersection of the conversations taking place in the sessions I’ve been in so far, and I’m sure will continue, is the intersection between the advancement of AI, the geopolitical landscape today and how those two are becoming drivers for heightened cyber activity, cyber-attacks, and therefore how we’ve got to leverage all of those together to try and ensure we stay secure.

You know, cybersecurity used to be a technology-focused area. Now it’s very much a boardroom issue. It used to be for a while where certain industries paid attention to it. Now it’s a societal issue. You know, there is no society today if we can’t keep all of our infrastructure secure, and that’s the world we live in. And so I’ve been in a few sessions on it this week, and I’m sure it’s going to continue for the rest of the week.

[00:12:58] Jeremy Maggs: There’s a strong governance thread running through AI discussions this week, as I understand it. Ethics, accountability, transparency, regulation. From your perspective, what’s the right approach to risk and governance when deploying AI at scale?

[00:13:15] Lyndon Subroyen: If we go back to earlier on, I spoke about the diffusion of AI into companies and society -the three major plays in it, the people who produce these advanced AI models, the frontier models; the people who then build infrastructure in which these things run on; and then the consumers of it. I think the ethical and secure use of AI has to be applied in all of those layers. We’ve got to have security built into it. We’ve got to have good ethical boundaries built into it. We’ve got to have kill switches built into it. And at each of those layers, we’ve got to make sure that we don’t just rely on what was there before.

We layer even more guardrails on top of it, which is how we think about it in corporates. And I would encourage everyone across public, private, and in private, the producers and the consumers to think about how they can collaborate across all of those areas to make sure that we advance safely.

[00:14:01] Jeremy Maggs: Investors are increasingly looking at technology, not just as a productivity tool, but as a growth engine. So where do you see the most compelling opportunities right now, not just for tech firms, but for businesses embracing technology more broadly?

[00:14:15] Lyndon Subroyen: We are in the middle of probably one of the most consequential moments in the world.

If I take the geopolitics and put that aside, if I take the fact that economic and trade boundaries are being redrawn and put that aside, I think technology advances right now, both, I’ll use the term “threatened prosperity and pain”. So I think if we look at the upside and the downside of us getting this right or wrong, it’s no wonder that there’s so much focus on investors on how to get the best out of it because we need to get the best out of it.

In the last 12 months alone, one and a half trillion dollars have been invested in new technology. If this is applied in the right way, it is going to be the driver for growth over the next decade.

I don’t think you’re going to see the same kind of capital expenditure continue for the second half of this decade, but the fact that we’ve put in place all of these foundational capabilities now the focus is how to leverage it safely, how to deploy it, how to diffuse it, I keep using that term, into societies in the right way. That will be the driver for economic growth, and I remain completely optimistic that that’s the outcome we’re going to get.

[00:15:11] Jeremy Maggs: So, a follow up to that, are there particular sectors that are especially well positioned to benefit from the AI transition?

[00:15:20] Lyndon Subroyen: I can’t think of a sector that is not positioned well to benefit from this. Whether you’re working in the medical sphere, in retail, in manufacturing, and financial services and technology, every one of those are being not just disrupted but advanced faster than ever before because of this.

[00:15:36] Jeremy Maggs: And when it comes to emerging markets, particularly here in Africa, do you see them primed to leapfrog or is there a risk that they will fall further behind?

[00:15:47] Lyndon Subroyen: A term that I’ve heard quite a lot over the last few days is the Global South, which is, I guess a friendlier way to describe emerging markets these days. The investment being made by the large technology providers spans not just the developed world, but into the emerging markets as well. I have seen the adoption of this keeping pace in emerging markets.

Certainly, in the countries that we operate in, and I suspect because they have less legacy, they have an opportunity now to leapfrog some of the more developed economies because they don’t have to go through the same learning processes and infrastructure buildouts to get to where developed economies are today.

So, I suspect that they will likely leapfrog a couple of steps in their own development and get to the point where they are cutting edge, bleeding edge. I really like what’s happening out in the Middle East where they’ve made conscious decisions that they’re going to be leaders in AI and because they had no other legacy behind them. They just went straight to the outcome they wanted, and my hope is that that is what continues to happen in emerging economies.

You’ve got consumer bases that are large, they are modernised, they are completely digital in most cases because of mobile phones and the ubiquity of the internet, and they’re not afraid to adopt these technologies.

I think it’s up to governments and business leaders to help drive the change in society.

[00:17:04] Jeremy Maggs: So, as Davos unfolds then with sessions on AI, people-centered innovation and the future of work, what’s the single question  you think that leaders should be asking themselves as they head back to their organisations?

[00:17:19] Lyndon Subroyen: So, at the start, I said the theme for Davos this year is “A spirit of dialogue”. I think business leaders, public sector leaders, will have to understand how as AI diffuses into society, they will need to evolve. So, the way that we work and workflow will change. That means that firms and government societies will have to change. That means education systems will have to change.

But the best way to understand the change that is needed here is by having these conversations with each other. So, I’m a big proponent of the public-private collaboration to try and get these changes through. And in the spirit of dialogue, I think them working together will come up with the best answers.

[00:17:59] Jeremy Maggs: Lyndon Subroyen, Global Head of Digital and Technology at Investec, thank you so much for your insight from Davos.

In our next episode that drops on the 23rd of January, we’ll wrap up our series with the key takeouts from this year’s meeting. Until then, thank you so much for listening to this edition of No Ordinary Wednesday, and remember to follow Investec Focus Radio SA wherever you get your podcasts.

And if you like the channel, please take a moment to rate it and share it as this is going to help us reach more listeners. Until next time, goodbye from me, Jeremy Maggs and the entire focus radio team.

[00:18:38] Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the contributors at the time of publication and do not necessarily represent the views of the firm and should not be taken as advice or recommendations.

Investec Limited and subsidiaries, authorised financial service providers, registered credit providers, and long-term insurer.

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