Long before racing circuits, luxury sedans, and million-dollar dealerships, there was one woman who quietly steered the Mercedes-Benz brand into the world’s imagination. Her name was Bertha Benz, and she was the first person to attempt a long-distance drive in a motorcar.
Bertha Ringer was born on 3 May 1849 in Pforzheim, in what was then the Grand Duchy of Baden. She was the third of nine children in a wealthy household. Her father, Karl Friedrich Ringer, made his fortune through carpentry and real estate speculation, while her much younger mother, Auguste, managed their bustling home.
As such, Bertha grew up surrounded by comfort and opportunity. She attended boarding school for a decade (an unusual privilege for girls at the time), where she developed a sharp mind and a keen curiosity about science and technology. Yet, like so many ambitious women of her time, her path was limited by law and custom. Universities were barred to her, and engineering was a closed door.
Still, Bertha was determined to be more than a housewife or a pretty society ornament. And while that determination was frowned upon at the time, it would later prove to be historic.
Enter Carl Benz
On a summer excursion in 1869, Bertha’s brother introduced her to a man named Carl Benz (his preferred spelling of Karl). He was five years older than her, penniless, and obsessed with machines. Bertha fell in love immediately. While Carl wasn’t smooth with words of love, he could talk endlessly about engines and mechanics. Where others saw a dreamer on the verge of failure, Bertha saw a man that she wanted to build things with.
In 1870, before they were married, Bertha invested part of her dowry into Carl’s struggling iron construction company. At that time, German law allowed an unmarried woman to make such decisions, but once married, she would lose that right. The investment kept Carl afloat and gave him room to pivot toward his true passion, which was building a “horseless carriage”.
When the two married in July 1872, they became more than husband and wife. They became co-inventors and business partners.
A dream in motion
The Benz’s early years were anything but easy. As their family grew, the couple lived under constant financial strain. In 1875, when Bertha was pregnant with their third child, debt collectors emptied their workshop overnight. Yet they persevered, and on New Year’s Eve in 1879, the breakthrough came when Carl and Bertha managed to get a two-stroke engine running. After years of tinkering, trial and humiliation, they were finally closer to realising Carl’s dream.
By December 1885, the first Patent-Motorwagen was complete – a three-wheeled contraption with a single-cylinder engine, spoked wheels, and a folding top. Carl secured a patent the following year for what would later be recognised as the world’s first automobile.
But there was a problem: nobody cared.
Carl Benz was an inventor, not a salesman, and his car looked fragile, noisy, and impractical. Wealthy Germans preferred their elegant carriages, pulled by reliable horses. Meanwhile, Gottlieb Daimler was emerging as a competitor with his own designs.
Carl was discouraged. Bertha, however, was not.
The forbidden journey
On 5 August 1888, 39-year-old Bertha quietly rolled the Model III Patent-Motorwagen out of their workshop in Mannheim. She set off at dawn without telling her husband, with only her two teenage sons, Richard and Eugen, to accompany her. Their destination was her mother’s home in Pforzheim, 106 kilometres away.
Officially, she was visiting family. Unofficially, she was staging the greatest marketing stunt of the century.
Up until that point, motorcars had only been tested in short loops, always close to workshops and with mechanics on hand. Bertha’s audacious idea was to prove the Motorwagen could handle a real journey through towns, over hills and across the countryside, and that it could be operated by anyone – even a woman (a big deal in those days).
Of course, the going wouldn’t be easy, but fortunately Bertha was a top class problem solver. Instead of a fuel tank, the Motorwagen had only a tiny carburettor with a 4.5-litre capacity. When it ran dry, Bertha stopped at a pharmacy in Wiesloch to purchase ligroin, a petroleum solvent. The apothecary that sold it to her unwittingly became the world’s first petrol station. When a fuel line clogged, Bertha unclogged it with her hat pin. When wiring needed insulation, she used her garter. A small-town blacksmith was enlisted to mend a broken chain, and when the wooden brakes wore thin, she persuaded a cobbler to nail on strips of leather, thereby creating the world’s first brake linings.
The car’s two gears weren’t enough for steep inclines. On hills, her sons had to get out and push. The engine’s cooling system demanded constant refills, so they collected water at every stop.
On top of all of that, the roads themselves were hostile. Designed for four-wheeled wagons, they rattled the Motorwagen’s narrow front wheel over stones and tufts of grass. With no road signs in place, Bertha navigated by memory and instinct. The trip was technically illegal, since she had no permit to test the vehicle, and incredibly dangerous.
And yet, after a full day’s journey, Bertha and her sons arrived safely in Pforzheim at dusk. She promptly sent her husband a telegram announcing their safe arrival. Days later, they drove the Motorwagen back to Mannheim, triumphant.
A turning point
The impact was immediate. Newspapers both local and international picked up the story, and crowds gathered wherever the Motorwagen appeared. Suddenly, people could imagine what this noisy, smelly machine might mean: a carriage that didn’t need horses, a vehicle that could carry families across distances, a new era of mobility.
Bertha’s field test also revealed a host of practical improvements. She had made detailed notes during her journey, and assessed that more gears, better brakes and more durable materials were required. Carl took Bertha’s suggestions seriously, and the car evolved. Most importantly, sales began.
Within a few years, Benz & Cie. was the world’s largest automobile company. By 1926, it merged with Daimler and Maybach to form Daimler-Benz, home of Mercedes-Benz. The global automotive industry owes much of its existence to Bertha and her daring drive.
Recognition at last
Carl Benz lived long enough to see the success of his invention. He died in 1929, during the Great Depression, just two years after the Daimler-Benz merger. In his memoirs, he credited his wife with saving not just his company, but his spirit:
“Only one person remained with me in the small ship of life when it seemed destined to sink. That was my wife. Bravely and resolutely she set the new sails of hope.”
Bertha herself lived to the ripe age of 95. On her birthday in 1944, she was named an Honorary Senator of the Technical University of Karlsruhe – the same university that had barred her from study as a young woman. She died just two days later, in her home in Ladenburg.
It took decades for the world to fully acknowledge her role. Carl was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1974. Bertha followed only in 2016, 42 years later. But history has caught up. Today, the Bertha Benz Memorial Route traces her historic journey through Baden-Württemberg, celebrated by motorists retracing the path where the first long-distance drive once rattled over cobblestones.
Carl Benz may have built the car, but Bertha Benz put it on the map.
On that August morning in 1888, she did more than visit her mother. She proved that the automobile had a future. She marketed it, tested it and improved it, all in one audacious journey.
In honour of International Women’s Day in 2019, the Daimler company commissioned a truly excellent four-minute film dramatising portions of Bertha Benz’ 1888 journey. You can see it here:
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.
The Bytes share price chart is an incredible way to be slightly down year-to-date (JSE: BYI)
Talk about a rollercoaster ride!
If someone told you that they were down 2.8% year-to-date in a stock, you probably wouldn’t expect to see something quite like this:
Those who managed to get in at the bottom have done nicely, although there was a scary dead cat bounce just after the precipitous drop. Trading is fun, but hard.
Underneath all this, we have Bytes Technologyas an example of a broken growth stock. It’s not really a broken company of course, but it’s certainly broken in terms of the growth expectations that the market used to have.
They are dealing with structural changes to their business that have led to words like “resilience” when describing the performance in the latest half-year trading update – not the kind of language that growth investors want to see.
The update notes that gross invoiced income for the six months is expected to be around £1.33 billion, which is ahead of £1.23 billion in the comparable period (not that the announcement bothers to give comparatives – you have to go digging). The problem is that despite this growth, gross profit is expected to be “not less than £82 million” (i.e. not less than what they managed last year) and operating profit is expected to be not less than £33 million. The prior year was £35.6 million, so there’s chance of a small dip in profits.
When a company needs to rebuild trust with the market, an announcement that just gives numbers without comparatives or a reminder of the guidance at the AGM isn’t good enough. Given the previous management scandal at Bytes and now the lack of growth under new management, they should be falling over themselves to make things easy for investors to understand, even when it’s a tough message to deliver.
Finbond swings into profits (JSE: FGL)
Yay for an early trading statement!
Finbond has released a trading statement for the period ended August 2025. Results are due to be released on 31 October, so they’ve done the right thing here and released a trading statement that gives investors plenty of advance warning.
It’s easier of course when you know that there’s a huge move in HEPS, but that’s exactly the point with a trading statement – the bigger the move, the earlier the trading statement should come out.
In this case, HEPS has increased by more than 100%, swinging from a loss of 2 cents per share to positive earnings of at least 0.5 cents per share.
Lighthouse adds the hypermarket at Espacio Mediterraneo to the deal (JSE: LTE)
Initially, it looked like the current, separate owner would be keeping it
Back in June this year, Lighthouse Properties announced the acquisition of Espacio Mediterraneo in Spain, adding to the portfolio in the Iberian Peninsula. The property has a large hypermarket in it (currently occupied by Carrefour) that was excluded from the deal due to its separate ownership.
Lighthouse has managed to persuade the owner to part with the hypermarket for €19.5 million, which is a net initial yield of 7% (excluding transaction costs). I can understand why owning the entire mall is much easier from a management perspective than having a separate owner of the hypermarket unit.
Despite the name, SA Corporate Real Estate holds various property types – even residential (JSE: SAC)
And the interim results tell a positive story
The property sector seems to be a pretty consistent source of growth at the moment. Most companies are growing their distribution at a rate above inflation, while some have achieved outstanding growth at much higher levels. The sector would’ve loved to see an interest rate cut this week, but alas it seems as though the SARB loves watching South Africans live life on hard mode.
In the meantime, the property sector (like all South Africans) must keep grinding away. SA Corporate Real Estate has a diverse property portfolio that managed like-for-like net property income growth of 4.9% in the six months to June 2025, along with a 7.5% increase in the distribution per share. This increase was partially due to the payout ratio being 92.5% vs. 90.0% in the comparable period, so just be aware of that – there’s only so far that a payout ratio can be pushed.
The loan-to-value ratio improved from 42.0% as at December 2024 to 40.3% by June, assisted by a significant asset disposal programme. Combined with a decrease in the weighted average cost of funding, this boosted earnings.
Perhaps the most unusual thing about SA Corporate Real Estate is the residential portfolio. Along with the types of properties that you’re used to seeing in listed funds, the company has what can only be described as buy-to-let at scale – and my head hurts just thinking about it, particularly as these are inner city properties in places like Joburg. While enjoying the rental income in the meantime, they are looking to sell over 3,000 units over the next three years. The sales thus far have been 60% above cost and 20% above book value, so they will hope for this trend to continue.
Here’s an interesting nugget from the results: “The redevelopment of Montana Crossing is now complete, with the introduction of Checkers Fresh X, Checkers Liquor and Petshop Science as anchor tenants replacing Pick n Pay. The Group anticipates a 30% uplift in the rental income of Montana Crossing for the 2026 financial year as a result.”
If you look at the property funds, you learn so much about retail. Whilst Pick n Pay (JSE: PIK) may shrink into a sustainable business, my view is that they will never regain the lost ground. Shoprite (JSE: SHP) is just sailing off into the sunset from a market share perspective.
Finishing off with SA Corporate Real Estate, the fund expects distributable income per share growth for the full year of between 4% and 5%. Thanks to the higher payout ratio, the distribution per share is expected to be between 7% and 8% higher.
Nibbles:
Director dealings:
Des de Beer bought more shares in Lighthouse Properties (JSE: LTE), this time to the value of R5.4 million.
The chairman of Sibanye-Stillwater (JSE: SSW) bought shares worth R174k and an executive director bought shares worth R1.9 million.
The chairman of KAP (JSE: KAP) bought shares in the company worth R50k.
Keen to learn more about Datatec (JSE: DTC)? The management team presented at the RMB Morgan Stanley Off Piste Conference this week and the company has made the presentation available here.
Here’s something worth keeping an eye on: Tiger Brands (JSE: TBS) has repurchased around 3% of its shares since the AGM in February 2025. That’s an investment of R1.5 billion in the company’s own shares at an average price per share of R278.61 (current price is R315.77). They can repurchase up to a total of 10% of the shares that were in issue at the date of the AGM. The benefit of repurchasing shares is that it boosts HEPS, as the pie is effectively being cut into fewer pieces to feed the remaining shareholders, hence each shareholder gets a bigger slice!
Remember Wikus Lategan from Calgro M3 (JSE: CGR)? Having resigned as CEO of Calgro M3 a while ago to pursue other opportunities, he’s now popped up as an independent non-executive director of Safari Investments (JSE: SAR). The announcement notes that Lategan is the co-founder of ION Holdings, a property investment firm. It will be interesting to see what he gets up to! Safari announced that corporate and commercial attorney Conrad Dormehl has also joined the board as an independent non-executive director, so the board has certainly been beefed up.
Vunani Limited (JSE: VUN) has released a bland cautionary, which means a cautionary announcement that is low on details (flavour). All we know is that a wholly owned subsidiary has entered into negotiations of some kind. We have no idea whether this is for an acquisition or disposal.
Shuka Minerals (JSE: SKA) has updated the market on a further delay to the funds due to be received from Gathoni Muchai Investments to facilitate the acquisition of Leopard Exploration and Mining Limited and the Kabwe Zinc Mine. It’s never good when weird things like payment delays start happening, particularly when they aren’t rectified timeously. The funder expects to resolve this problem by the end of September. Thankfully, the sellers of the assets remain supportive of the transaction.
Assura (JSE: AHR) has confirmed that the delisting of its shares from the JSE is expected to take place on 3 October, followed by the delisting in London on 6 October. This is because of the successful offer by Primary Health Properties (JSE: PHP) that achieved sufficient acceptances to allow the company to follow a squeeze-out process to mop up the remaining shares.
MTN Zakhele Futhi (JSE: MTNZF) released results for the six months to June 2025. They don’t really matter though, as the company is in the final stages of being wound up and the June NAV is now a very outdated number based on the distributions to shareholders. I’m purely mentioning it for completeness.
Note: Ghost Bites is my journal of each day’s news on SENS. It reflects my own opinions and analysis and should only be one part of your research process. Nothing you read here is financial advice. E&OE.Disclaimer.
In March, Metrofile released a cautionary advising that it was in discussions relating to the potential acquisition of the Company. This week the parties released a joint firm intention announcement in respect of Main Street 2093’s offer to acquire Metrofile (excluding the treasury shares) for a cash consideration of R3.25 per offer share for an aggregate R1,37 billion. Shareholders accounting for 52.81% of eligible shares have committed to supporting the deal. The Long Stop Date has been set at 15 April 2026.
Anglo American, through its 50.1%-owned subsidiary, Anglo American Sur S. A. (AAS), has entered into a joint mine plan with Codelco for their adjacent copper operations. The agreement is expected to unlock at least US$5 billion of value from Los Bronces and Andina copper mines in Chile. The joint mine plan has been developed to unlock an additional 2.7 million tonnes of copper production over a 21-year period once relevant permits are in place, currently expected in 2030. The 120,000 tonnes per year will be shared equally, with c.15% lower unit costs relative to the standalone operations and with minimal incremental capital expenditure. The transaction is expected to generate a pre-tax net present value uplift of at least $5 billion, to be shared equally between AAS and Codelco. Both parties will maintain the flexibility to develop separate standalone projects, including the advancement of underground resources, during the term of the joint mine plan.
In June 2025 Espacio Mediterràneo, a shopping mall in Cartagena in the province of Murcia, was acquired by Lighthouse Properties for €135,4 million, reinforcing its strategic positioning in Spain. At the time the hypermarket unit was under separate ownership and excluded from the transaction. Lighthouse has now entered into an agreement with Frey Mediterraneo to acquire the Hypermarket for €15,5 million reflecting a net initial yield of 7%.
As part of its ongoing strategic repositioning and restructuring programme Accelerate Property Fund has disposed of the commercial property 73 Hertzog Boulevard, situated in The Foreshore, Cape Town. The property has been sold to Amrichprop 2 Properties for an aggregate R68 million. The transaction is classified as a Category 2 transaction for Accelerate and as such does not require shareholder approval.
In a detailed cautionary announcement Ascendis Health notified shareholders that it had initiated a process regarding a potential delisting of the company from the JSE. Shareholders wishing to dispose of Ascendis shares will receive R0.97 per share in a conditional offer – to be accepted by shareholders holding not more than 20% of the shares in issue. In November 2023, CAN Capital IHC-led consortium offered shareholders R0.80 per share to take the Ascendis private but the transaction lapsed following an investigation by the TRP initiated due to complaints received.
OUTsurance has reached binding terms to dispose of 83% of the Group’s 14.4% interest in Entersekt. The transaction is expected to close by December 2025. The information was released in its AFS.
Visual International has received a non-binding offer from private investment and development company Serowe Industries for the acquisition of a minority stake of up to 34.9% in the company. The potential subscription of a minority stake is for an indicative subscription consideration of R60 million. The non-binding offer incorporates a request for exclusivity, of which 40 days has been granted. Visual will however issue shares for cash for R2 million by way of a bookbuild – details of which will be released separately and in which Serowe may participate.
Libstar has received non-binding expressions of interest from parties regarding the potential acquisition of all Libstar shares in issue. This follows the company’s announcement in March that the Board would assess potential strategies through which to deliver meaningful value unlock for stakeholders, alongside continued execution of Libstar’s ongoing operational and strategic initiatives.
In early September Shuka Minerals informed shareholders that the finalising of the acquisition of Leopard Exploration and Mining (LEM) and the Kabwe Zinc announced in July 2025, had been hindered due to the delay in the remittance of funds in the form of a loan from Gathoni Muchai Investments (GMI). The loan is necessary to satisfy the US$1,35 million balance of cash consideration due to the LEM vendors. GMI has confirmed that the matters are expected to be resolved by the end of September 2025 and have further confirmed their financial capacity to meet these obligations.
While the key scheme conditions for the acquisition by ASP Isotopes of Renergen have been fulfilled and the parties are optimistic that the remaining conditions can be met by 30 September as per the Circular, the decision has been taken to extend the fulfilment date to 28 November 2025.
In October 2024, Nampak announced that it would sell its 51.43% shareholding in Nampak Zimbabwe to TLS for a maximum consideration of US$25 million. This week shareholders were advised that the circumstances for TSL in motivating the transaction to their shareholders had changed and had, as a result with the agreement of Nampak, withdrawn from the proposed transaction. The plan to dispose of the stake in the Zimbabwean operation remained in place.
Unlisted Companies
African global telematics and fleet asset management business Ctrack has received a R406 million investment from Sanari Capital, through its 3S Growth Fund, (R250 million) and 27four Investment Managers (R156 million). The investment builds on Ctrack’s strategic acquisition of Inseego’s international telematics business in 2024.The transaction, which was supported with a follow-on investment by Convergence Partners, consolidated Ctrack’s global footprint and expanded its presence in key international markets. The new investment will further accelerate this global expansion and support innovation on Ctrack’s unified technology platform.
In a move to further increase its exposure to SA Corporate Real Estate (SAC), Castleview Property Fund acquired 125,252,618 SAC shares at an average purchase price of R2.80 per share for an aggregate consideration of R350,71 million. Following the conclusion of the latest transaction, Castleview holds a 21.13% stake in SAC.
OUTsurance is to pay a special dividend of 33.1 cents per ordinary share payable on October 20, 2025.
Fortress Real Estate Investments is offering shareholders the opportunity to elect to receive a dividend in specie of ordinary shares in NEPI Rockcastle (NRP) in respect of all or some of their Fortress B shares in lieu of the cash dividend. Fortress currently holds 108,292,699 NRP shares constituting 15.2% of the total issued shares capital of NRP. Publication of the results of the dividend in specie will be announced on 21 October 2025.
Naspers has finalised the dates in respect of the amendments to its existing share capital structure through the pro rata subdivision of the N ordinary shares and A ordinary shares. The subdivision will be effected in the ratio of five-for-one for reach respective class of issued shares. After the split there will be 7,5 million authorised A shares and 1,5 billion Ordinary shares. Naspers will suspend its repurchase programme temporarily from 25 September to 2 October 2025 with the subdivision effective and implemented on 6 October 2025.
Altvest Capital’s name change to Africa Bitcoin Corporation has been registered by CIPC and will trade under the new name from 23 September 2025.
Assura shares will be suspended on the JSE from 3 October 2025 and the company’s listing on the LSE and JSE will terminate on 3 and 23 October 2025 respectively.
The JSE has advised shareholders that Labat Africa has failed to submit its condensed financial statements withing the three-month period stipulated in the JSE’s Listing Requirements and risks the threat of suspension if these are not submitted on or before 30 September 2025.
This week the following companies announced the repurchase of shares:
Over the periods 12 March to 9 May and 23 July to 16 September 2025, Tiger Brands repurchased 5,420,969 shares representing a 3% stake in the issued share capital of the company. The shares were repurchased at an average price of R278.61 per share for an aggregate R1,51 billion, funded from available cash resources. The shares will be delisted and cancelled. The company may repurchase a further 6.994% (12,6 million shares) of its shares under the general authority granted at its AGM.
South32 continued with its US$200 million repurchase programme announced in August 2024. The shares will be repurchased over the period 12 September 2025 to 11 September 2026. This week 794,183 shares were repurchased for an aggregate cost of A$2,09 million.
Momentum repurchased a total of 44 million shares at an average price of R31.43 per share during the financial year to end June 2025 for an aggregate cost of R1,4 billion. 42 million shares were cancelled prior to year-end. The Board has approved a further R1 billion for the buyback programme subject to Prudential Authority approval.
Investec ltd commenced its share purchase and buy-back programme of up to R2,5 billion (£100 million). On 10 September 2025, Investec ltd purchased on the LSE, 163,676 Investec plc ordinary share at an average price of £5.8099 per share and 108,844 Investec plc shares on the JSE at an average price of R137.3015 per share. Over the same period Investec ltd repurchased 31,207 of its shares at an average price per share of R136.7294. The Investec ltd shares will be cancelled, and the Investec plc shares will be treated as if they were treasury shares in the consolidated annual financial statements of the Investec Group.
The purpose of Bytes Technology’s share repurchase programme, of up to a maximum aggregate consideration of £25 million, is to reduce Bytes’ share capital. This week 600,000 shares were repurchased at an average price per share of £4.11 for an aggregate £2,47 million.
Glencore plc’s current share buy-back programme plans to acquire shares of an aggregate value of up to US$1 billion. The shares will be repurchased on the LSE, BATS, Chi-X and Aquis exchanges and is expected to be completed in February 2026. This week 9,3 million shares were repurchased at an average price of £2.99 per share for an aggregate £27,77 million.
In May 2025 Tharisa plc announced it would undertake a repurchase programme of up to US$5 million. Shares have been trading at a significant discount, having been negatively impacted by the global commodity pricing environment, geo-political events and market volatility. Over the period 8 to 12 September 2025, the company repurchased 20,195 shares at an average price of R21.85 on the JSE and 242,308 shares at 92.51 pence per share on the LSE.
In May 2025, British American Tobacco plc extended its share buyback programme by a further £200 million, taking the total amount to be repurchased by 31 December 2025 to £1,1 billion. The extended programme is being funded using the net proceeds of the block trade of shares in ITC to institutional investors. This week the company repurchased a further 483,542 shares at an average price of £41.25 per share for an aggregate £19,94 million.
During the period 8 to 12 September 2025, Prosus repurchased a further 1,217,622 Prosus shares for an aggregate €65,6 million and Naspers, a further 98,011 Naspers shares for a total consideration of R570,23 million.
Two companies issued profit warnings this week: Oceana and Choppies Enterprises.
During the week four companies issued or withdrew a cautionary notice: Ascendis Health, Libstar, Metrofile and Vunani.
Nasan Energies Namibia has agreed with Vivo Energy Namibia to acquire 53 Engen and Shell-branded fuel service stations. In May 2024, Vivo Energy completed the purchase of Engen Limited from Petronas, which included the Engen Namibia business. However, as part of the regulatory process, the Nambian Competition Commission determined that Vivo Energy would have to sell a number of its service stations to uphold a fair and dynamic market. Following a thorough evaluation process that assessed both technical expertise and financial proposals, Nasan Energies was selected as the preferred bidder. The value of the deal was not disclosed and is subject to approval by the Namibian Competition Commission.
The Norwegian government’s investment fund for business development in developing countries Norfund, has announced an undisclosed debt investment in Mohinani Group to support the expansion of its rPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate) initiatives in Ghana and Nigeria. The investment in the form of a loan aims to reduce waste, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and create jobs in two of West Africa’s largest economies. The Mohinani rPET facilities in Ghana and Nigeria, managed by Polytanks Ghana Limited and Sonnex Packaging Nigeria Limited, respectively, have the capacity to produce 15,000 tons of recycled PET resins each annually.
Metier, through its Capital Growth Fund III, has invested with Watu Group, a non-deposit taking microfinance institution focused on financing income-generating assets for underserved communities across sub-Saharan Africa. Founded in 2015, Watu has a strong presence in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, and expanding operations in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, and South Africa. Watu’s mission is to meaningfully improve employment and economic opportunity for individuals facing the greatest barriers to accessing financial services. Watu provides financing for income-generating assets, supporting access to mobility (2/3-wheeler ICE and electric vehicles) and connectivity (smartphones) assets for underserved and underbanked communities. The company employs over 2,800 people with more than 1.4 million active clients.
Amethis Fund III announced the acquisition of a minority stake in BH Holding, a Moroccan player in the packing and export of high-value fruits. BH Holding is a structured family-owned group with a key position in the sector, thanks to its full integration across the value chain – from production to export – and its distribution under both premium proprietary brands and private labels. The group primarily exports citrus fruits, cherry tomatoes, and red fruits to North America and Europe. It relies on modern agricultural practices and demonstrates a strong commitment to sustainability and technological innovation. Financial terms were not disclosed.
Adiwale Fund I acquired a minority stake in Codex SA, a Senegalese lifting services provider, for an undisclosed sum. Codex SA operates the largest fleet of mobile cranes in Senegal, with over 120 equipment, including cranes, forklifts, aerial platforms, and semi-trailers, and a 11,000 m² operational base located 35 km from Dakar. The company serves a diverse client base, particularly in the energy (oil & gas, wind, solar), industrial (refineries, chemical plants, etc.), and mining sectors. The capital will support the acquisition of new equipment to meet rising market demand and the mobilisation of resources to implement the company’s regional expansion programme.
In Egypt, Duaya, a digital transformation company in the healthcare sector, has acquired EXMGO, a provider of SaaS solutions for pharmacies and medical businesses, in a six-figure investment deal (value undisclosed). Founded in 2021, Duaya offers a platform that connects suppliers with pharmacies, clinics, hospitals, and labs. Following the deal, EXMGO was rebranded as Duaya Go, offering branded apps and websites for pharmacies to manage online sales, inventory, and payments.
Premier Credit Uganda, a subsidiary of The Platcorp Group, has secured a US$1,5 million investment from Enabling Qapital, a Swiss-based impact asset manager. The investment will enable Premier Credit Uganda to scale operations, innovate its services, and extend access to finance to underserved communities across Uganda.
The global food industry has experienced significant transformation in recent years, driven by evolving consumer preferences, technological advancements and economic factors. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have become pivotal strategies for companies seeking to enhance their market position, diversify product offerings and achieve economies of scale.
According to data from S&P Global, 50 transactions were announced in the food and beverage industry in the first quarter of 2025. This marks a 34% quarter-on-quarter decline in transaction volume, making it the lowest quarterly deal count since the second quarter of 2015.
Higher levels of activity appear to have continued into the second quarter of 2025, with notable transactions including Unilever’s £230m acquisition of Wild, Müller’s £100m takeover of Biotiful, and the merger of Greencore and Bakkavor. Despite this activity, Grant Thornton’s Head of Consumer Industries, Nicola Sartori notes that mounting economic uncertainty may impact dealmaking in the second half of the year due to increased global market volatility.
In developed markets, M&A trends in the food sector are being driven by a strong focus on health and wellness, cost efficiency and technology adoption. Consumers are placing more value on organic, sustainable and healthier food options, prompting companies to pursue acquisitions that align with these preferences. At the same time, rising inflation and supply chain disruptions are placing pressure on margins, encouraging companies to consolidate operations to reduce costs and improve profitability. Technology is also playing a growing role, with traditional food companies acquiring tech-savvy start-ups to enhance production processes, streamline supply chains and expand their online presence.
In African markets, M&A activity in the food sector is accelerating due to a different set of growth drivers. Population growth means an increasing demand for food products, while rapid urbanisation is changing consumer habits and driving interest in processed foods, prompting traditional companies to modernise and scale up through strategic mergers and acquisitions. In addition, Africa’s emerging markets present attractive opportunities for international investors seeking to enter or expand within the continent’s food sector.
Legal trends
The legal landscape surrounding M&A in the food industry is complex and varies across regions. However, several common trends have emerged and are reshaping the food industry’s legal landscape. One of the most significant is increased regulatory scrutiny. Competition authorities are taking a more active role in reviewing M&A transactions to prevent the creation of monopolies and to ensure fair competition. In the United States of America (USA), for example, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice review M&A activity under antitrust laws. In South Africa, the Competition Commission plays a similar role. These regulatory authorities can block or require modifications to proposed mergers that threaten consumer choice or market integrity. For instance, the FTC recently blocked a proposed US$25bn merger between Kroger and Albertsons due to concerns over reduced competition and potential price hikes. Cross-border M&A deals face additional regulatory hurdles as authorities and enforcement agencies assess compliance with global standards, which can delay or derail deals.
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations are also becoming more prominent in M&A decision-making. Although individual ESG elements have long featured in due diligence processes, there is growing pressure on acquirers to demonstrate broader alignment with sustainability and social responsibility goals. Acquiring a company with strong ESG credentials can enhance brand reputation and appeal to socially conscious consumers and investors.
Due diligence remains a central component of any M&A transaction. Legal due diligence typically involves reviewing contracts, employment and labour matters, intellectual property and regulatory compliance (including licences and land rights). This legal review is conducted in tandem with financial, tax and operational due diligence to identify potential risks that could influence negotiation strategies, risk allocation and purchase price adjustments. The insights gained during due diligence are key to shaping negotiation strategies, allocating risk, adjusting the purchase price (where necessary) and, ultimately, ensuring that the transaction delivers long-term value.
Key considerations
When assessing M&A opportunities in the food industry, businesses must take several factors into account. It is essential to assess whether the target company aligns with your strategic objectives, whether that means expanding your product line, gaining access to new markets, or acquiring technological capabilities. A comprehensive financial analysis will help determine the target’s profitability, debt levels and potential for sustainable growth. Planning for integration is equally important. Companies need a detailed approach to merging operations, harmonising supply chains, managing culture, and aligning systems across the combined business. Risk management should also be prioritised, with clear strategies in place to address potential risks, such as regulatory barriers, market volatility and operational disruptions.
While M&A activity in the food industry offers significant opportunities for growth and diversification, these transactions are not without legal and operational complexity. Success depends on a clear understanding of evolving market trends, strong legal and regulatory awareness, and thorough preparation throughout the deal process. By staying informed and taking a strategic, risk-aware approach, companies can navigate this evolving landscape with confidence and position themselves for long-term success.
Gopolang Kgaile is a Partner and Zinhle Gebashe an Associate | Webber Wentzel
This article first appeared in DealMakers, SA’s quarterly M&A publication.
For all the geological potential East Africa offers, the region’s junior miners remain caught in a familiar bind: promising assets, ambitious growth plans, but a stubborn lack of risk capital to bring projects to scale. Over the past three years, a handful of juniors with projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia have tested the market, often relying on small equity placings, shareholder loans or piecemeal project-level deals to stay afloat. The result is a funding landscape that is still shallow and episodic, limiting the pace and scale of development.
Micro-raises and shareholder dependence
For most East African juniors, listings or dual listings on exchanges or their sub-markets is the most accessible route to capital. These are typically accompanied by small equity placements, often heavily reliant on existing shareholder support.
East Africa-focused Caracal Gold plc, for example, has leaned on this approach. Since 2023, the company has completed several modest equity raises, typically under £1 million each (RNS, April 2024). Proceeds have funded resource expansion and, more recently, restart plans following the suspension of production in early 2024. Yet Caracal’s market capitalisation hovers between £3-5 million (LSEG Market Data, 2025), underscoring the difficulty of scaling through micro-capital injections.
In Tanzania, Katoro Gold plc, an early-stage explorer in the Lake Victoria Goldfields, has walked a similar path. Its most recent £350,000 placing in Q2 2025 (AIM News, May 2025) follows a string of micro-placements stretching back to 2023, each just enough to fund incremental exploration and corporate overheads.
While these equity raises provide essential lifelines, they limit project advancement and keep most juniors in a cycle of dilution and underfunding.
Consolidation as an exit
By contrast, larger, cash-generative African producers are taking a different approach to East African gold. Perseus Mining’s A$260 million acquisition of OreCorp in 2023 gave it control of the 3Moz Nyanzaga project in Tanzania, now one of the most advanced gold developments in the region. Perseus gained a pipeline asset it could fund directly from internal cash reserves (ASX announcements, September 2023). Subsequent early works at Nyanzaga have been financed entirely from operating cashflow, avoiding external debt or equity dilution (Q3 FY25 Results, June 2025).
This is an advantage few juniors can hope to match. As such, acquisitions are another viable option for undercapitalised juniors with quality assets.
Project-level funding
Some juniors in the region are also exploring project-level financing structures tied to offtake or prepayment arrangements. For instance, Katoro Gold has publicly disclosed ongoing discussions with potential offtakers to fund its next phase of resource drilling (RNS, 12 June 2025). Similarly, Caracal Gold is evaluating offtake-backed financing structures to support Kilimapesa’s restart plans (RNS, 28 March 2025).
While East Africa has yet to see a large-scale streaming or royalty deal for a junior mining project, the concept is gaining traction in boardrooms as successful stories emerge from other parts of the continent, like the Pan African Resources’ $20 million gold prepayment facility for its Mintails project in South Africa (FY24 Results, August 2024) that has shown how offtake-linked structures can bridge the pre-production funding gap.
Hybrid approaches and creative structuring
Ultimately, juniors will need to employ innovative and hybridised models to bridge funding gaps. Shanta Gold, an East African producer, offers a useful case study. In 2023, the company raised approximately US$20 million via a convertible loan note to advance drilling and feasibility work across its portfolio, including the West Kenya project (RNS, June 2023). Shanta continues to leverage its DSE listing and free cashflows from its New Luika and Singida operations for funding flexibility (Q2 Operational Update, July 2025). While Shanta benefits from production scale that juniors lack, its use of blended capital structures points to the kind of creative solutions others may need to pursue.
Another example is East Africa Metals, which is pursuing a project-generator model. Instead of focusing on fully developing a single asset, the company has built a portfolio across Ethiopia and Tanzania, advancing projects like Harvest and Adyabo. This model involves identifying and acquiring promising mineral properties to initially explore, and then optioning or selling these projects to partners. This approach reduces balance sheet strain while keeping the project pipeline moving.
DFIs may also play a bigger role in bridging the capital gap. Institutions like the African Finance Corporation and Afreximbank have shown increasing appetite for resource-sector infrastructure and development-stage funding, albeit more commonly for larger-scale projects. Their evolving mandates may open new pathways for East Africa’s juniors, particularly as projects advance toward feasibility stage.
Crossing the chasm
East Africa sits atop world-class gold geology and global demand for critical minerals and precious metals remains strong. Yet without access to deeper pools of risk-tolerant capital, be it private, institutional or strategic, many of the region’s juniors risk staying stuck in exploration limbo.
Bridging East Africa’s junior mining funding gap will require more than incremental raises and patchwork financing. It will require a structural rethink: greater use of project-level and hybrid capital, stronger engagement with strategic partners, and a more active courting of global capital willing to invest in the region.
Noreen Kidunduhu is the Founding Principal | Noreen & Co and is an ILFA Alumni
This article first appeared in DealMakers AFRICA, the continent’s quarterly M&A publication.
Choppies puts some concerns around Botswana to rest (JSE: CHP)
HEPS has moved in the right direction
Choppies released a trading statement for the year ended June 2025. Full results are due for release next Monday, so they’ve given investors only a few days of warning here. At least the results are in a different week to the trading statement, so there’s time for investors to digest it before the full results come out. It would still be good to see more daylight between the trading statement and the release of results.
The numbers are full of distortions related to the sale of the Zimbabwe business, forex impacts and other once-offs. There’s even a significant change to the effective tax rate due to losses in Namibia for which they haven’t raised deferred tax.
This is why profit after tax from total operations will drop by between 25% and 35%, while HEPS from total operations will increase by between 15% and 24%!
It’s encouraging that adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations was up by between 6% and 16%, as that’s about the closest we can get to a view on the core operations right now. Given all the concerns around the economy in Botswana at the moment, it’s good to see this. It will be important to wait for the full details before reaching any strong conclusions though.
At long last, Metrofile shareholders receive an offer (JSE: MFL)
And the market liked the price
Metrofile has been trading under cautionary for several months now. That doesn’t tell the whole story, as the market has been hearing about potential offers and take-privates for years now.
Finally, there’s an actual offer on the table from Mango Holding Corp (a Delaware company held by WndrCo LLC, James Simmons and his family) at R3.25 per share. We are talking about a stock with a 52-week low of R1.17 around February this year! To make it happen, the offeror has had to furnish a bank guarantee of almost R1.4 billion to show that they can afford the deal.
The deal takes the form of a scheme of arrangement, which means the acquirer wants to get their hands on all the shares in Metrofile. This also explains the premium of 99% to the 30-day VWAP to 25 March (the date before the first cautionary) and the premium of 25% to the 30-day VWAP to 16 September.
Unsurprisingly, this premium is enough to get strong support from a number of major shareholders who have given irrevocable undertakings to say yes to the Mango Holding dress. Holders of 52.81% of shares will support the offer, including MIC Investment (39.2%) and another name you’ll recognise: Sabvest (JSE: SBP) with a stake of 4.97%. The scheme will need 75% approval to be binding on all shareholders.
The circular will be distributed to shareholders in due course, including the independent expert opinion and the recommendation by the independent board. I think the extent of irrevocable undertakings already obtained tells you that the price is good.
Immense growth at Momentum (JSE: MTM)
The company has had a spectacular year
Momentum’s share price is up 19% in the past 12 months. Strong as that is, it doesn’t seem to tell the full story of a company that grew HEPS by 50% and the dividend per share by 40%.
But here’s the metric that it probably does reflect: diluted embedded value per share grew by 15%. I suspect that this anchored the share price performance in the same way that net asset value per share does it for banks.
It’s not surprising at all to see that one of the contributors to the positive result was a better underwriting result at Momentum Insure. This is in line with the narrative we’ve seen across the short-term insurance sector, although Momentum Insure’s normalised headline earnings more than doubled and thus put in a particularly great performance.
The largest segment is Momentum Corporate, which achieved 37% growth in normalised headline earnings. Momentum Retail is the second largest and posted growth of 22%. When your two largest segments are growing like that, it’s hard for the group results to go wrong. Notably, operating losses in India decreased significantly.
Interestingly, the present value of new business premiums (PVNBP) dipped 3% and the value of new business fell 20%. Momentum explains this as being partially due to a focus on quality rather than overall volumes, but they also acknowledge that the value of new business needs to be addressed.
In a group this size, there’s always something to work towards improving. But with return on equity up to 21.2% from 15.5% in the prior year, shareholders aren’t complaining.
Mustek’s earnings will be slightly up (JSE: MST)
Here’s another trading statement released too close to results
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m now making a point of highlighting companies that release trading statements at the last minute before releasing full results. Trading statements should be an early warning system for shareholders and the market at large, not merely a tick-box exercise just before the numbers come out.
Mustek is the latest culprit, releasing a trading statement for the year ended June 2025 on Wednesday, with full financials due to be released just two days later. That’s not good enough.
HEPS will move by between 0% and 10%, so that implies mid-single digit growth at the midpoint. A trading statement is triggered by a move of at least 20%, but not just in HEPS – the test is also applied to Earnings Per Share (EPS) which doesn’t make adjustments for large once-offs in the same way that HEPS does. This is why EPS is expected to be between 85% and 95% higher.
HEPS is the right measure of performance, so it was a period of modest growth for Mustek. But more importantly, it’s time that listed companies stopped treating trading statements as a joke. I find it hard to believe that clarity on such a huge increase in EPS (vs. the test of 20%) was achieved in the same week that a fully baked set of results will be presented to the market.
Orion Minerals’ share price shoots for the stars (JSE: ORN)
Nothing like a 26% jump in a single day!
Orion Minerals announced the news of a non-binding term sheet for a financing deal with a subsidiary of Glencore (JSE: GLN) and the market showed its appreciation, with a 26% increase in the share price. Worryingly, the share price is up 85% over 5 days. I get the argument around momentum traders and how they can amplify a move as they chase unusual volumes, but this is one of those classic cases where I hope the JSE will examine the trades before this announcement to make sure that there wasn’t any nonsense of someone trading based on a whisper they heard at a golf course. Sigh.
Back to the deal: provided that all goes well in the deal conditions, Orion has locked in financing of between $200 million and $250 million for the Prieska Copper Zinc Mine. They’ve also secured concentrate offtake as part of the deal.
The funding comes in two tranches. Tranche A is worth $40 million and will be used for the “Uppers” at Prieska. The remaining funding comes in Tranche B and will be used for the “Deeps” – descriptions that do what they say on the tin. As for the offtake, Glencore will take 100% of the bulk concentrates from the Uppers for 5 years, along with 100% of the copper concentrates and 100% of the zinc concentrates from the Deeps for 10 years.
Glencore still needs to complete a due diligence, so the funding isn’t guaranteed yet. These funding facilities will bear interest at “market rates” and will become cheaper once commercial production is declared. Glencore has some of the sharpest minds in the sector, so I have no doubt that they pushed Orion hard on the funding cost. The new management at Orion have done well here though, as the company desperately needed to show the market some meaningful progress in obtaining funding.
They hope to reach binding agreements over the next four to six weeks.
As share price charts go, you can add this to the “might inspire contemporary art” bucket:
Supermarket Income REIT managed only the slightest growth in the dividend (JSE: SRI)
The UK market isn’t a land of milk and honey right now
Most of what I read about the UK economy at the moment isn’t particularly encouraging. I’ve also heard reports from the ground on how difficult it is to grow businesses there. If I look at the results for Supermarket Income REIT, it once again looks like achieving meaningful growth in the UK market is difficult.
Net rental income may have been up 6% for the 12 months to June 2025, but EPRA earnings per share dipped by 2% and the dividend per share is up just 1%. The portfolio valuation increased by 1.9% on a like-for-like basis and the net asset value (NAV) per share was down 1% on an IFRS basis. The highlight is the improvement to the loan-to-value ratio, which decreased from 37% to 31%.
The company talks about the effect of cash drag on the earnings, as they recycled quite a bit of capital in this period. This, along with the effect of other initiatives (like the internalisation of the management company), creates the potential for more growth going forwards.
But here’s the problem: the FY26 target dividend is at least 6.18 pence per share. I’m afraid that’s only 1% higher than the FY25 dividend, which isn’t encouraging when the company is talking about how they are poised for growth.
An associate of a director of a subsidiary of eMedia Holdings (JSE: EMH | JSE: EMN) bought N ordinary shares worth R47k.
Castleview Property Fund (JSE: CVW) has further increased its stake in SA Corporate Real Estate (JSE: SAC). They now hold 21.1% of the shares in issue thanks to selling derivatives worth R95 million and then buying shares worth R351 million (a significant net investment).
Omnia (JSE: OMN) is presenting at the RMB Morgan Stanley Off Piste Conference this week. They’ve taken the opportunity to make their presentation available, giving a handy overview of the company and the outlook. They are aiming for a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in earnings of 12% to 17% over the next 3 years. That’s a brave target!
Frontier Transport Holdings (JSE: FTH) announced that Ulandy Gribble will be the new CFO with effect from 1st October. This is an internal promotion, which is always good to see.
Note: Ghost Bites is my journal of each day’s news on SENS. It reflects my own opinions and analysis and should only be one part of your research process. Nothing you read here is financial advice. E&OE.Disclaimer.
Anglo American recently announced a blockbuster deal in the form of the proposed merger with Teck Resources to form Anglo Teck. They are trying very hard to convince everyone that this is a merger of equals, even though the numbers tell a different story. Anyway, copper sits at the heart of that strategy, with the latest news from Anglo American reflecting further progress in the underlying copper business.
Anglo American and Codelco have agreed to a joint mine plan for the adjacent copper operations (Los Bronces and Andina respectively) in Chile. This is expected to achieve additional copper production of 120,000 tonnes per year (shared equally), with 15% lower unit costs vs. standalone operations.
They believe that this unlocks a pre-tax net present value of at least $5 billion, shared equally between the firms. It’s important to note that Anglo’s stake in Los Bronces is in a 50.1%-held subsidiary, so Anglo shareholders are basically getting half of half of $5 billion in value uplift – in theory. These gains are all on paper at the moment.
If they get it right, the incremental production gain would take the combined production numbers into the top 5 copper mines globally. Currently, if you just add the mines together without the incremental gain, there’s a top 10 production base to work from.
It’s important to not fall into the trap of actually seeing this as a combined asset, as each company retains its separate ownership and can advance the underground resources as they see fit. This is really just a joint mine plan that hopefully goes well.
Attacq’s recent corporate activity has paid off in the form of much higher earnings (JSE: ATT)
You won’t often see these kind of growth numbers in a property fund
Attacq has released results for the year ended June 2025. Distributable income per share was up 25.6%. It’s possible in a period of heavy dealmaking to see an increase in overall distributable income of that amount (as funds can simply go out there and acquire earnings), but it’s very rare to see it on a per-share basis.
Powering this performance is growth in net operating income of 14.0% (a particularly impressive two-year stack as the prior year was 8.1%), along with the benefit of development activity at Waterfall City and the first full-year impact of deals at Waterfall City with the GEPF and the acquisition of the remaining 20% of Mall of Africa.
It’s easy at times to forget that Attacq has a substantial portfolio outside of Waterfall City. They are focused on dominating the precincts they are invested in, so you won’t find them owning random buildings in an incoherent strategy. Instead, they build out centres of excellence in various places, with Waterfall City as the precinct that they are best known for.
Looking deeper into the portfolio, we find a like-for-like valuation increase of 5%. The retail portfolio was the most impressive at 6.8%. It’s great to see the office portfolio (Attacq calls this the “collaboration hubs”) up 2.3% in value thanks to 6.1% net operating income growth. Its been a long, hard road for office property, as evidenced by this chart:
The fund is in great shape, which enables them to continue with the development strategy (including speculative logistics developments with lumpy effects on occupancy, as is also visible in the chart above).
Guidance for FY26 is for growth in distributable income per share of 7% to 10%, with an 80% dividend payout ratio. The FY25 payout ratio was 80.3%, so the distributable per share growth should be very close to distributable income per share growth.
Ethos Capital flags a significant uptick in NAV (JSE: EPE)
Optasia and the Brait exchangeable bonds have boosted the value
Ethos Capital has released a trading statement for the year ended June 2025. They do things the right way in terms of how they report performance, which means they use net asset value (NAV) per share instead of HEPS like some investment holding companies do. Full results are coming on 25 September, so they’ve also given shareholders more than a week of advance warning of what’s coming. That’s not amazing, but not too bad.
The good news for shareholders is that the net asset value per share is expected to be between R8.45 and R8.60, which means an increase of between 20% and 22% without adjusting for the Brait ordinary shares that were unbundled in July 2024. With that adjustment, the increase is between 28% and 31%.
The main driver of the increase is the value of Optasia (around 50% of group assets as at March 2025), along with positive valuation moves at Vertice, e4 and Primedia in the unlisted portfolio. In the listed space, the Brait exchangeable bonds also increased in value.
Hyprop’s dividend per share growth was just below the double-digit level (JSE: HYP)
And guidance for the coming year is higher
I’m still frustrated with how the Hyprop capital raise for the attempted acquisition of MAS (JSE: MSP) was handled. It probably says more about the cost of debt in South Africa than anything else, with institutional investors happy to throw money at property funds on the off-chance that they do a good deal, with reduction of debt as a palatable plan B. The cost of debt being so close to the cost of equity explains a lot about how hard it is to grow a business in South Africa.
For the year ended June 2025, Hyprop achieved very strong growth of 24% in distributable income in the Eastern European portfolio, along with 11% growth in South Africa. Distributable income was up 7.5%, but distributable income per share was up 2.3%. The per-share number is where you see the effect of the additional shares in issue.
Hyprop had enough flex in its payout ratio to make sure that the dividend per share tells a better story, up 9.9%. We will have to see what they do with the payout ratio in FY26, with guidance for distributable income per share growth of between 10% and 12%. This is on the assumption of interest costs remaining at current levels, so any decrease in global rates should help.
In the South African portfolio, Hyprop tenants enjoyed a 5.5% increase in turnover despite the economic pressure and growth trend in eCommerce (foot count was up just 0.1%). The reversion rate was positive at 4.3%.
In Eastern Europe, turnover growth was even better at 6.6% (in euros) despite a decline in foot count of 0.8%. Reversions were positive 9.1%.
Touching on debt reduction again for a moment, the group loan-to-value (LTV) ratio improved from 36.4% to 33.6%. The average cost of borrowings also reduced. This combination always does wonders for distributable income.
Table Bay Mall, which in my opinion Hyprop overpaid for, has a vacancy rate of 2.1%. That’s higher than Canal Walk (1.4% retail vacancy), Somerset Mall (0.6% vacancy) and CapeGate (0.9% vacancy) as Western Cape peers. The foot count at Table Bay Mall was just 5.6 million over 12 months, which is way off CapeGate at 10 million despite Table Bay Mall having only slightly less GLA. I know the area well and I don’t doubt the long-term growth, but it feels like they paid for all of it upfront.
Libstar might be headed for the exit (JSE: LBR)
And at a time when earnings are finally moving higher
Libstar has had a pretty rough journey as a listed company. That journey might be coming to an end, with the results announcement accompanied by a cautionary regarding non-binding expressions of interest received from parties who are looking at acquiring all the shares in Libstar. If that happens, it would obviously mean a delisting of Libstar. The discussions are at an early stage and there’s no guarantee of an offer coming through (or at what price), but that didn’t stop the market from taking the share price 14.5% higher.
Moving on to the results themselves, Libstar’s performance for the six months to June 2025 reflects a very helpful increase in revenue from continuing operations of 6.7%. This was accompanied by a 90 basis points increase in gross margin to 21.6%. Normalised operating profit came in 16.7% higher and normalised HEPS grew by 15.4%, so things are firmly on the up. This would’ve also supported the share price move.
As for all the normalisation adjustments, this includes what Libstar describes as “non-recurring, non-trading and non-cash items” – and hence a healthy dose of skepticism is a good idea. The great news is that normalised HEPS growth of 15.4% is actually much lower than HEPS growth (without adjustments) of 23.7%, so the normalisation adjustments are telling a more modest story. That’s a much better situation than the other way around.
Libstar only declares final dividends rather than interim dividends, so there’s no dividend at this time.
The outlook is one of a weak consumer market and a need for Libstar to focus on operational efficiencies in its business. They’ve been doing a pretty good job of that lately!
After the latest share price move, here’s what the chart looks like:
Premier Group achieved excellent earnings growth (JSE: PMR)
This is the kind of trading statement that the market loves seeing
Premier Group has released a trading statement for the six months ending 30 September 2025 – yes, they’ve done it before the end of the period! Great as that is, I don’t think the dates of the RMB Morgan Stanley Off Piste conference (17th and 18th September) are a coincidence. This trading statement at least gives management the ability to talk to conference attendees about just how well the business has done, without giving away non-public material price sensitive information.
Premier is achieving mid-single digit revenue growth and is on track to turn that into an increase in HEPS of between 20% and 30%. As leverage goes, that’s exceptional. It also explains why the share price closed 4.4% higher to take the 12-month increase to 57%.
RFG Holdings is battling tough sales conditions (JSE: RFG)
The market seemed to like the update anyway, presumably because of margins
RFG Holdings released a trading update for the 11 months to August. This is essentially a pre-close update by another name. The share price closed 7% higher in response, despite some clear challenges being faced by the business.
Revenue was up just 2.4% for the 11 months, which is even slower than the 3.5% growth in the interim period. A deceleration in revenue off a low base is concerning. Management has stated that they “remain committed” to achieving the operating profit margin target of 10%, although the announcement isn’t explicit on by when. The interim profit margin was 8.5%.
The deceleration in revenue is actually worse than it looks, with RFG noting that July and August showed particularly weak trading in South Africa. The regional segment (local sales) has been the only thing keeping RFG in the green, as the international segment has been experiencing a drop in revenue due to an oversupply of deciduous fruit products and now the uncertainty on tariffs as well.
For the 11 months, revenue in the regional segment was up 5.1% and the international segment was down 8.4%. This compares to interim growth of 7.6% and -17.2% respectively, so the international business actually clawed back lost ground in recent months while the regional segment slowed down even more.
It’s a tough business with exposure to numerous external factors, with the share price down 23% year-to-date and up 4.3% over 12 months.
Nibbles:
Director dealings:
A senior executive at Quilter (JSE: QLT) has sold shares worth around R5.7 million.
An independent non-executive director at STADIO (JSE: SDO) bought shares worth R40.6k.
Nampak (JSE: NPK) needs to find a new buyer for Nampak Zimbabwe. The disposal of its 51.43% stake in Nampak Zimbabwe for up to $25 million to TSL Limited has fallen through despite a successful due diligence and competition authority approval process. TSL has elected to withdraw from the deal for strategic reasons and Nampak has agreed to this. Nampak remains committed to an exit from this asset.
Visual International Holdings (JSE: VIS) announced that Serowe Industries has submitted a non-binding offer to acquire up to 34.9% of the issued shares in the company via a subscription for equity of R60 million. The 34.9% shareholding is just enough not to trigger a mandatory offer to all shareholders (35% is the threshold for that). Serowe has an exclusivity period of 40 business days for the due diligence. In that period, Visual can’t negotiate with anyone else regarding equity, other than for a R2 million bookbuild that will be executed during that period (and in which Serowe will be invited to participate). Visual’s current market cap is R44 million. The pre-money valuation implied in this process is R112 million, which you calculate as R60 million / 34.9% = R172 million post-money valuation. Take off the R60 million in new equity and you get to R112 million pre-money, or 2.5x the current market cap! It’s little wonder that the share price doubled on the day on exceptionally strong volumes (by Visual’s standards, as this is a highly illiquid stock).
MAS (JSE: MSP) – the company that dominated headlines for a few weeks as you may recall – has announced that four new independent non-executive directors have been appointed, along with a non-executive director (not of the independent variety) in the form of Martin Slabbert of Prime Kapital. Dewald Joubert, Nevenka Pergar, George Mucibabici and Yovav Carmi are the four independents who will join the board. Notably, the current independent chairman (Werner Alberts), lead independent non-executive director (Claudia Pendred) and chair of the audit and risk committee (Vasile Iuga) have all tendered their resignations with immediate effect. The replacement chairman hasn’t been announced yet and neither have the reconstituted committees. You won’t often see wholesale changes to a board like this, but then again you don’t usually see corporate activity like we saw at MAS.
If you wondered whether Truworths (JSE: TRU) CEO Michael Mark is finally headed for retirement, then the latest announcement of share awards at the company should put those worries / hopes (depending on your view) to rest. The performance shares are worth R16.5 million and the vesting profile is such that they all vest in year 3 (subject to performance conditions).
Southern Palladium (JSE: SDL) is presenting at the Resources Rising Stars Gold Coast Investor Conference this week. They’ve made the presentation available, with slides ranging from an overview of the PGM supply-demand expectations through to the optimised prefeasibility study at Bengwenyama. You’ll find the presentation here.
Note: Ghost Bites is my journal of each day’s news on SENS. It reflects my own opinions and analysis and should only be one part of your research process. Nothing you read here is financial advice. E&OE.Disclaimer.
With a background in law and economics, Obaratile (OB) Semenya’s approach to property includes exposure at practically every part of the value chain.
From developing high-end residential projects through Legaro Property Development to driving sales at his real estate agency, Natural Property, he’s mastered the full property journey.
And with extensive experience working closely with Balwin, OB also knows his way around the biggest developments around.
On episode 3 of The Finance Ghost Plugged in with Capitec, he talks about building the world he wants to see around him, all while ‘nerding out’ on the business and sector he loves most.
Episode 3 covers:
The risks and rewards of the property sector
Lessons from working across the full value chain
Insights from balancing development and real estate sales
Why passion for what you do often makes the rest fall into place
The Finance Ghost plugged in with Capitec is made possible by the support of Capitec Business. All the entrepreneurs featured on this podcast are clients of Capitec. Capitec is an authorised Financial Services Provider, FSP number 46669.
Listen to the podcast here:
Read the transcript:
Intro: From side hustles to success stories, this is The Finance Ghost plugged in with Capitec, where we explore what it really takes to build a business in South Africa. This podcast features Obaratile Semenya, a property entrepreneur with experience across the value chain from sales to development.
The Finance Ghost: Welcome to this episode of The Finance Ghost plugged in with Capitec. This is a wonderful podcast series in which I get to speak to some really interesting entrepreneurs. I get to dig into their backstory. I get to understand more about what they’ve built and why they are still building it. And of course, we get to learn along the way, which is something that I really enjoy because entrepreneurs are such inspiring and interesting people. And of course, my thanks to Capitec Business for making this possible.
And on this episode, I am grateful to be able to speak to OB Semenya. OB is a property entrepreneur. This man has got a lot of things going on. I’m not sure how he remembers which business to work on, on which day! The fact that he’s wearing a branded hoodie of one of the businesses tells me that maybe he just matches his outfit to what he’s working on that day. I guess we’ll find out shortly. OB, thank you so much for doing this podcast with me. You’ve got so much to share about the world of property, and I’m really looking forward to digging in with you.
Obaratile Semenya: It is an absolute honour. Thank you, Ghost, for the invitation. I appreciate it. I just hope that I can rise to the occasion for you.
The Finance Ghost: So spill the beans. Does that sweater that you’re wearing there, that hoodie, does that remind you what you need to work on today? It feels like you’re wearing your diary on your chest, basically.
Obaratile Semenya: Sort of! You’re not wrong. Today is very much a real estate day. There’s a sale that was closing this morning, so that’s the hoodie that we’re wearing today, but it will change late in the day meeting. So, yeah, not wrong.
The Finance Ghost: I love that. The life of an entrepreneur with a finger in many pies. And we’ll obviously dig into that, definitely.
But I think before we do, let’s just understand more about the backdrop of what got you into property, when this started for you, because it’s really interesting to understand the background of entrepreneurs and what gets them to the point they’ve gotten to today. I mean, in the last episode of this podcast series, which I would encourage listeners to go check out, I got to speak to Rabia Ghoor and she started swiitchbeauty when she was 14, dropped out of high school two years later, and 10 years after that she’s sitting with this wonderful eCommerce business.
So was property an early thing for you, OB? Was this something where even in school you were interested in it, or was it something that happened later? Because what’s fascinating with property is I find when I meet people who are property people, that really is what they are, right? Their whole career kind of sits in property because it’s such an interesting and specialist space. It’s not like, oh, you know, today I work in retail and then tomorrow I go and work in a different kind of client-facing business. People flit around other sectors a lot in their careers, but it feels like once you’re in the property stream, you’re in it. Has that been your experience?
Obaratile Semenya: So I think you’re not wrong. The more my journey into property develops, the more I find that to be a very common theme among people who if property is what they do, property is what they love, property is what they eat. Because of, I guess, the all-encompassing nature of the industry.
For me, actually, I wish I could say it’s the same, but it’s really not. I never even considered myself a property person per se. If I had to think about when my journey into property started, it started way before I was in school. My perspective even today about property mostly comes from my reality. I mean, I was born, geez, I don’t want to give myself away here, but I was born, what, 1990. So, I was born on the cusp of understanding the notion of property. The first home I can remember is one that I remember my dad buying in Kelvin with a CC, right. And him constantly reiterating to me how ridiculous it is that we live where we live. Because he’s a dad, right?
But my understanding of property has just been infused throughout my life as a discussion about, well, what does this country now look like? And I think that’s partly because of when I was born, but also because I come from a family of lawyers. So my property understanding actually comes from the law. And I only find myself being a property person later in my life, but it definitely is my passion.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, that’s incredibly interesting. And obviously it talks to the history of South Africa and how property has been a really hard thing for a lot of people historically. And obviously we live in a very different country now and thank goodness for that. And as you say, born 1990 – that was right on the cusp of – I love the way you put it, where property starts to become a concept you can actually attach to. It’s actually such an incredible way to describe it really.
And interesting as well that you’ve come at it from a legal angle as opposed to more of a finance angle. I’ve got to say, some of the best people I worked with in my corporate finance career were attorneys by profession. Lawyers are very capable of great dealmaking, definitely. And it’s just interesting to see that, really.
So I think let’s get a lay of the land, of what it is that you’ve built, because if you need to, as I said, change your clothing based on which business it is that day, then there’s clearly a lot going on there. And I know from the discussions we had as the build up to the show, you do have your finger in very many pies in the property game and also at different points in the value chain, which makes this extra interesting.
We will obviously talk through some of the more detailed projects in the development space, etc. But I think just give us the sort of elevator pitch of OB the property entrepreneur. What do you have in the stable?
Obaratile Semenya: So me today, now, as you rightly point out, I’ve always been a generalist. I just enjoy property as a sector. So that’s reflected in the things that I own. It’s not for financial reasons primarily. It’s mostly because I’m fascinated about where property intersects with people’s lives. The hoodie that I’m wearing now would be one of the first places that I engage, which is Natural Property, which is a real estate agency that I own with my partner, Slade Brooks. It is nothing but a real estate agency.
It’s one that we built three years ago – actually turned three, two weeks ago. Natural Property does nothing but sell. It’s an agency. But the depth – the depth and intricacies of what it takes to run a real estate agency, property is a really deceiving industry because it’s accessible, but it’s also ridiculously inaccessible if you actually try to do anything more than sell or buy.
So that’s the first pie I would say, is that I own Natural Property, which is a real estate agency that’s doing very, very well. It is the primary seller for Legaro as a developer as well as does a lot of Balwin sales and it does a lot of private sales. That’s one of the pies.
The others would be the developers. That’s what takes up a lot of time. And Legaro is a big part of my life. It’s a private property developer. We do largely estates, homes and we did do a little bit of commercial, but we stick to residential in Gauteng, Joburg and the Western Cape. Our largest developments are now in Hyde Park and in Paarl. So that takes up a lot of my time because it’s a private company, it’s a small team of passionate people and what we try to do is large developments with too little people, if you ask me, but passion makes up the difference. That would be one other place that I find myself.
And then Balwin, which is a different kind of animal, takes up the rest. Those are the three big pies that I find myself engaging with on the day to day. But I do own a lot of smaller businesses, but they’re all nonetheless related to property.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, it’s really interesting. So there’s some involvement there in what is essentially a listed company in the form of Balwin, which is a great big throughput machine of residential properties. You’ve got Natural Property there, which is, as you say, a sort of vanilla real estate agency, which is actually kind of cool. And I want to talk about that a bit more. And then Legaro, which is your property developments, primarily residential, some really high-end stuff, which is very cool.
So something I wanted to ask you about Natural Property and you made that great comment there where it’s almost talking it down a bit to say, well, it’s just an estate agency, but of course there’s a really interesting concept here and I think entrepreneurs, they almost kill themselves trying to think through what makes my business incredibly unique or incredibly different. Like what is that key differentiator? Sometimes I feel like just great execution is a differentiator. And that’s something that I wanted to ask you because an estate agency, a real estate agency in and of itself is not a unique business model, as you said, but if you do it to a very high standard, you can still build yourself a really great business. Not everything has to be this ultra innovative, unique play. So is that part of what you focus on in that space is to just do everything really well and then make sure you’re competing adequately in that market?
Obaratile Semenya: So that’s actually a very good point. And what I like about an estate agency, it’s one of those weird businesses in which there isn’t a correct answer. I’m blessed enough to know a bunch of people in a bunch of sectors and property and real estate is one of them.
There are people, for instance, like Jonathan Tagg, who is one of Pam Golding’s primary sellers and he operates out of Mauritius – a very good friend of mine who would be adamant about why would you start your own real estate agency, OB? And he raises great points in that it’s one of those industries you can do by yourself. You can be a sole proprietor, you can be an estate agent, you can go and get a license and you can legally sell the same properties that an agency could. And on the other side of that scale, you can go and build an entire agency, have the overheads, the infrastructure, the expenses, the costs, the human resources management, and find yourself backwards to a sole proprietor.
It really lends itself to: what is it that you’re trying to do? If you don’t actually have a very specific goal that I would suggest is catered towards your niche, where do you have value-add? As you pointed out, an agency is a meaningless term without that because there’s just too many properties and too much competition for you to just do a vanilla agency without it being hyper-focused on what it is that you have an advantage in.
Natural Property is just that. We were the developer. I was the developer and I felt that I will go through this slog of creating an agency in order to claw back the 4% or 5% that we might have been giving away to other agencies. I clearly don’t care about my time, but I had an advantage. It’s not just an agency.
The Finance Ghost: Sorry, I’m laughing because not caring about your time is just such a great point. I feel like most entrepreneurs suffer from this overarching affliction. How many years have you been at this for actually, in terms of being this busy would you say? Like specifically this busy?
Obaratile Semenya: So it’s interesting because my entire life is about the law. This is what’s interesting. It’s not about property. But my father, who’s somebody who I actually credit a lot of my decisions to, not because he wanted me to get into property, but because he’s always – the nature of what he did, is an advocate. And my father was chairman of the Johannesburg Bar Council for a very long time and was also very instrumental in our property and constitutional clauses and how our property regime works in a democratic dispensation.
Every dinner was an inescapable conversation for me because I’m “his boy” in a sense. And my dad has always been passionate about rights. Given his history and given our history and how that relates to your lived experience. So how I got into property per se was me abandoning becoming an advocate, right? Which, much to my dad’s chagrin, that’s something I would say, eleven years ago – oh no, I was dead to him. We get along great now. But his dad was a lawyer. My dad is a lawyer, my sister’s a lawyer. Everybody around me are very experienced advocates. So I’ve only ever been in property conversations that were from a legal perspective.
It’s only when I started the journey of Natural Property, sitting with the developers and abandoning the law and clearly my time, that property properly started for me. But I’ve always been in property. I can’t describe to you – pretty much my entire life and that I credit to my dad.
The Finance Ghost: Your dad sounds like a champ. Very, very cool person to be able to learn from and then disappoint for a short while and then impress later on in life. That does feel like the father-son story arc actually for so many!
But well done. It is a very cool story and it’s interesting you talk about abandoning your time because the incredible irony of this is that property is actually one of those sectors where you can build a business that is independent from you, which is something that entrepreneurs struggle with tremendously. Much as it’s abandoning your time, the truth of it is that advocates sell time quite literally, whereas actually what you sell over time is (1) you’re building an agency which exists without you – I mean, you’re not even on the website, I know because I’ve looked – and (2) property developments, where those properties literally last forever.
That’s kind of the brand promise, right? Is that these things have lasting value. You sell them, it’s done, you move on to the next one. It’s very different to my world, my business relies 100% on me, literally me, so I’m in this boat where I’ve also given up my time terribly. But it’s not ever going to actually get better and I don’t really mind because I absolutely love what I do, so it’s fine. But I think with you it’s, yeah, it’s not quite a time treadmill.
It’s just an interesting dynamic of “I’m not an advocate, I gave up my time” – I almost feel like long-term it’s going to be the other way around. You’re not billing by the hour.
Obaratile Semenya: That’s true. I’m not billing by the hour. That actually frames just so much of how you think. I don’t think one is better than the other. I just think that those are two completely different ways of thinking about the exercise of industry. And because, like I say, I come from a family of professionals. My mother’s a chartered accountant, my father’s an advocate. By nature of their success, they did well, and so by extension, they own – but what they own has never been itself a business.
So by just that structural dynamic by itself, I ended up becoming somebody who concerns himself more with, okay, well, now what do we now do with property? Which you’d be surprised how much your viewpoints about that is informed by how it is that you make your money in the first place.
My dad and I probably still couldn’t agree about a patio, let alone a building, but I don’t think it’s because we don’t like each other or we don’t get along. It’s I genuinely think a mindset thing in which I think they’re both important. He’s good at what he does and he earns a lot for what he does. I like to be the person in the background. I don’t like being the face of anything. And I like to build businesses that are able to work without me. My time’s not something I would like to sell. I like to use as much of it as possible to do what I love, which is property.
The Finance Ghost: Makes perfect sense. Kudos to your mom, fellow CA. There are too many accountants and lawyers on this podcast and in your immediate vicinity, I think. But it’s cool, it’s amazing to have those influences around you in your early life. Later on, it’s amazing how much of a difference it makes, the influences we have around us. Both previous guests on this podcast series, very similar story in terms of how early influence makes a huge difference on what they do later in life.
I don’t know if you have kids, but I do and I take a lot of that on board. I think to myself, what experiences do I need to give them early in life to try and just expose them to these things and figure out what they’re good at and everything else? It’s amazing to see the difference that makes later on. I think to the parents listening to this podcast, you’re not overthinking your kids. The desire to try and give them all this exposure really makes a difference later on.
Obaratile Semenya: Absolutely. And I think the difference between my father and I iterates that more than anything. I knew that I was passionate about development and property where the first time I watched my dad build a home – now, my dad was, what, born in ‘59. My dad is a very important person and I’m not trying to say that to flatter him, but I say it more to say it’s always been fascinating to me that, well, if this is his experience, imagine what an ordinary South African experience is like.
And watching him build a home was the most fascinating experience I could see. His younger brother is a civil engineer who got his qualification from P.W. Botha allowing him to go to Wits because he was the top student. I watched these two men fumble their way into building a home, they had no one to ask and so I’ve always been acutely aware of the privilege that I’m exposed to. I primarily gotten to go to good schools in which I could just ask Russell’s dad or Dennis or – I was never too far away from somebody who was in some way related to the built environment, which is just something I can’t be grateful enough for. Because watching my father, as talented as he is, also exposed me to the notion of okay, actually, where would this guy get a quantity surveyor? It’s a very good point.
The Finance Ghost: I love that.
Obaratile Semenya: I truly see property as like a calling for me rather than a passion. I don’t see it as a business. I see it as, wow, I’m actually just really lucky that I get to be exposed to information, knowledge, and education that my parents would never have been able to.
The Finance Ghost: Would you say that financial success almost becomes the by-product of that journey? Because again, I think it’s pretty consistent across successful entrepreneurs is you’re going to be spending so much time on this thing and taking so much risk on it and dedicating such a big chunk of your life to it – you have to be passionate about it. It cannot just be a job that makes you money. It obviously needs to make money, because otherwise something’s wrong and you can’t pay for basic life expenses with something you’re passionate about all the time, unfortunately, if you’re really lucky then you can.
But do you find that money kind of just comes with doing something really well and then learning where that niche is and the economics kind of fall into place? Or do you feel like within the property sector, you actually picked out places where it looked as though there was definitely money to be made?
Obaratile Semenya: If I’m being honest, money was not the motivating factor for me. And I’m not trying to sound humble. It definitely is a by-product. But property is an arduous long trek. For a lot of people, I think it would take you – it would be shorter for you to be a doctor than to try to be a developer, right? And I don’t say that to discourage people. I say that so that you plan your life around that kind of journey. I don’t have kids, for instance. I’m not married. And I’d say that’s a deliberate consequence of my decision to be in property. I can’t see how I would have done that. I can do that and I hope to do that now.
Definitely, I think you’re right when we say things like that – financial success is something that I wouldn’t expect or put as a pressure on myself, but must be ever-present on that journey and understanding. I think of property like trying to be a doctor. I think when people are near residency, they don’t say, oh, I’ve wasted my time. As long as you’re just deliberate about understanding that you’re trying to do something that by its nature, buildings take 10 years to go up. You can’t expect in less time than that to be good at them.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we haven’t talked much about the development side yet, and maybe that’s a good opportunity to just jump into some of those points. And one of the words you used earlier, because I wrote it down while you were talking, was “inaccessible” – and I would imagine that at least part of that is probably just access to balance sheet, because from a property development perspective, that’s quite a thing.
But what do you find it is about South Africa at the moment, where property development is still a relatively inaccessible game?
Obaratile Semenya: So he might be upset – no, he won’t be – if I bring up his name here. But Steve Brooks is such an important person to me and in my personal journey and in my life because his approach to development in the climate that we live in is, if he was anybody else, insane, right? But such is his devotion to both the country and his craft that I’ve been fortunate enough to get to engage in development at its absurd level. Even at the smaller level, you’re correct – balance sheet, balance sheet, balance sheet. But while a balance sheet might allow you to get to do something, it really, I think, beguiles people – well, if you have credit, you can go and develop. And I think that’s why it’s such an emphasis on that first half is because it’s one of those industries you can literally go bust on a single development after having worked so diligently, consistently, methodically and cautiously your whole life.
So the balance sheet is necessary to get there. But I think knowing when and what to strike on is way more important because property is just not one of those things you can just, oh, well, I made a mistake. We’ll just recover here. It’s really something – you want to rather spend your time at smaller scale, understanding your skills, your expertise, resources before you worry about when you get that balance sheet. You don’t want to get it too early. You don’t want to get help too early before you understand what you’re doing.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, absolutely. And for those who maybe don’t know the name Stephen Brooks, if you go and do some googling of Balwin and who has built that business, then you will find that answer.
And I think that’s great. I mean, it’s fantastic to have access to, I suppose, not just a mentor, but also a partner who can help you kind of break into these things. And you’ve also referenced some of the risks there, which are really valid. And it’s one of the things I wanted to ask you. I feel like on the risk-reward spectrum, property development is about as far along the risk spectrum as just about anything. You are literally only as good as your last project. As you say, if something goes wrong, if the stuff doesn’t sell. I guess if you had some kind of big construction issue, if there’s an issue with the properties after the fact, I mean, there’s so much that can go wrong. It reminds me, I’m going to age myself now – and you’ve only got two years, you’re two years younger than me – but I always think of that, remember that 50 Cent album? Get Rich or Die Tryin’? I always think the name of that album – I feel like there are sectors that are very much the 50 Cent sector, it is Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Because it’s this binary outcome – you either do really well or something goes really wrong. Would you say that’s a fair statement about development?
Obaratile Semenya: It’s a very, very fair statement. And I think while Steve is by no means the only developer in the town, I think the types of development he does gives the most fast-tracked insight into the absurdity of how developments can go, particularly in a developing country. I mean, as Balwin, we found ourselves often going all the way into doing the municipal work right, way outside the scope of when you planned. Because when you decide you’re going to do something, it’s five years before you’ve put bricks down, and possibly nine, ten years before you have something to sell. The economy has born and reborn twice in that period. So it’s something that you, I think you have to have kind of like a feel for. And so access to the kinds of people who’ve done that is priceless. I think more than balance sheet, more than balance sheet – I think that’s what’s important is exposing yourself to developments that have happened.
And luckily, we live in an era where you can Lightstone, you can CMA, you can do your homework. There is absolutely no excuse not to understand the trends, the patterns, the costs. We’re very lucky to live in an information age, and there are a few people who have done the noble work of risking themselves to the stars for the rest of us to kind of understand or what’s plausible in this country.
Would I do that? Okay, maybe I would, but I think it’s not something that’s for everybody. Nor do I want people to think that you have to be an insane person to try to be a developer. It’s a spectrum. But all of them are risky. Absolutely. All of them. I think anyone who’s built a home will tell you.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, absolutely, to your point, the balance sheet is just one ingredient, right? If that’s all it took, then all you would have is a situation where the richest people in South Africa would be the best developers and there would be nothing else. So obviously that’s not true. It’s only one part of the equation.
You are obviously quite a natural risk taker. And is it – interestingly enough, is it only in your commercial life, does that get you the full kick or are you like riding jet skis on every Saturday and bungee jumping on Sundays?
Obaratile Semenya: I’m a risk taker, but I taught economics at the University of Cape Town, and I was telling – I was actually, my degree was an economics and law, and at some point I taught the PDPA class at the graduate school. So I don’t want to sound like I’m a property person who just has an adrenaline rush for nearly going broke, more that I feel that it’s important that I take risks, because while I might be a risk taker, and here is my opinion, I find my people, black people, which is where my framework comes from, and understandably so, to be almost absurdly cautious, right? And I understand, I completely understand. It’s built into cultural norms. You see, even the notion of private property is foreign to most black people in this country. That’s not – that idea still blows my dad’s mind that someone can own land, right?
So that conservatism can be lethal in and of itself. So while, yes, I am very – I don’t actually take risks, I genuinely don’t think I take risks. I don’t put large amounts of capital down into projects on the hope that people will buy it. But I am a massive risk taker in that I believe in the stability of a property market anchoring an economy. So most of the things that I do, I do behind the backs of elephants that allow me to stay safe. That’s why I keep reiterating that I feel very grateful for the kinds of people who – I’d say it’s like launching rockets. There are some people who are like, well, okay, I don’t mind losing six on the way so that everybody else can learn how to tweak a booster. That’s how I see the Stephen Brooks, the people who are willing to constantly risk their personal fortune in order to play the game. But I personally don’t have an adrenaline rush about it.
I have an appreciation for how acutely lucky I am to get to participate in something that I have no business affording. Anyone who looks like me has no business affording. I might have done well for myself now, but without the banks and those sorts of people, the economy would grind in terms of the property sector.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, yeah. It’s legacy balance sheets, the amount of money you actually need to be able to do the really big property stuff is big, big, big, big, big balance sheets. And obviously for many decades that was simply just not possible to build in South Africa for groups of people and thankfully now it’s changed. It’s great – I enjoyed the – whenever you speak to entrepreneurs about risk and people think that entrepreneurs are these crazy maverick risk takers because they’ve gone and read one Richard Branson book or they’ve seen a video and they kind of ascribe these one or two really niche case entrepreneurs who look like they basically just rolled the dice and just rolled a six every day for 30 years and there are one or two people who have done that. But actually good entrepreneurs are not necessarily people who get a kick from risk. They just understand how to take risk and they understand where the safety nets are.
And, again, if I refer back to the last couple of podcasts that I’ve done in this series, they were young entrepreneurs. So both Makomborero Mutezo, who did TheHungryMute, and then Rabia Ghoor who did swiitchbeauty, both started young and that helps a lot, definitely, in terms of the amount of risk you can take. Rabia made this great comment about someone in her family who said if you’re going to play with a bomb, take it outside. Which I thought was such a great analogy because – don’t go and blow up the house you’re in, don’t go blow up the thing that’s looking after you. Go take the risk and then do it in a safe way and that’s entrepreneurship. One of the books that I always recommend to people is to go and read Shoe Dog by Phil Knight because he worked as an accountant while he was getting Nike off the ground. It wasn’t just cool, let me quit my job and then see what happens next month.
And I often have friends who will say to me: “I’m thinking of leaving corporate and I’ve got this idea” and I’m like, no, whoa, let’s just stop right there. There’s no thinking of leaving corporate and I kind of have an idea. Do it as a side hustle for nine months first and see that this is the life you want. And then maybe, just maybe, you then need to think about taking a risk on it. So, yeah, it’s – the point is risk is not the goal because otherwise you are going to blow yourself up. It’s going to happen. Then you’re not taking risk for the right reasons, right?
Obaratile Semenya: Absolutely. So I would equate property development to farming. I look at farmers and I think they’re insane. To dedicate that much land to sometimes a single crop is objectively, from the outside, an absurd thing to do, right? You’re literally praying upon the gods to favour you a year in advance.
The Finance Ghost: I think there’s a reason why religion tends to be strong in rural communities. I think that’s exactly why.
Obaratile Semenya: I think that’s why! I still drive on farms and I get shivers because I just go, oh, please don’t go wrong, right? But I think a farmer would say: I know corn. I might not understand everything else, but one thing I know is corn. And if people can start to think of property like that, rather than look at it as though it’s one thing, it’s not – there are just so many tranches, subgroups, categories, classes in property that nobody can be that – even someone like Steve Brooks is particularly good at the particular products that he particularly builds. And disciplined people stick to that, right? They don’t take wild, irresponsible risk and blow up the home. So similarly, I don’t think a corn farmer is going to wake up tomorrow and say, you know, beetroot looks nice. I don’t think you do that.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, let’s do grapes. Let’s do grapes. Exactly. That’s such a great point.
Obaratile Semenya: Yeah. So it might look from the outside like an insane thing to do. If you properly go into those people who are successful, you’ll realize that they’re conservative too. They’re just hyper-confident in what they know. And if you step them outside of that, they’re any other person. So I don’t want people to feel like this, this industry is inaccessible. It just looks that way.
But you find your niche, find what it is that you’re passionate about and that you would nerd out on, and you’ll see that the risk is really a lack of information, a lot of it. Most of it can be mitigated with just knowledge.
The Finance Ghost: I love the nerd out point. So that’s exactly what it is, right, when you have your own business. You need to be willing to nerd out on whatever it is you do, because you’re going to have to be the best at it of anyone you know. That’s what you’ve got to aim for. That’s the amazing thing with business – sportspeople get all of the fame and all of the glory because they are one of the 10 best people in the country at a certain thing, or 15 best or 20 best or whatever it is. It doesn’t matter. But actually, if you’re going to make it big in a specific sector, there’s a really good chance that you’re going to be one of the 10 or 20 best in the country at a specific niche. And to make it really big, you’re going to need to be one of the top five. It’s just that niche isn’t on TV and we don’t all wear jerseys of that person’s job. But that’s what’s required if you really want to make it big. You’re going to have to nerd out to that level where you chase actual greatness, right?
Obaratile Semenya: Absolutely.
The Finance Ghost: So I think, while we’ve still got time, let’s maybe move on to one of the things we did talk about, which is to say that whilst the balance sheet might not be the only thing you need to make this work, it is obviously one of the ingredients. And at the end of the day, this podcast is made possible by Capitec and that’s because Legaro, at least as I understand it, is a Capitec Business client.
What I really want to ask you is the high-level question, which is from a debt perspective, whether from Capitec or elsewhere, that is a very important ingredient in property, especially because the thing about the property sector is that debt is used all the time to juice up those returns. And that is certainly true whether it’s a Real Estate Investment Trust – you go and look on the JSE and it’s a structure that’s built for renting out property, they use tons of debt, the loan-to-value ratios there are a key part of the analysis.
In the property development space, I can imagine the debt is even scarier in some respects because there you don’t have such certainty on your cash flows. If you’ve got a huge portfolio of 100 properties that you’re renting out, you kind of know that you’re going to get this much rent every month. And so the bank and you can feel quite good about how that debt works. In the development game, you’ve got to have a really close relationship with your bank because you need them to understand the risks and you need to structure stuff accordingly.
So what do you find works well in terms of know what makes a good banking partner, specifically in the development side of the property sector?
Obaratile Semenya: Absolutely. And this is again when we go back to that statement that you made that the balance sheet isn’t everything. When it comes to development, unlike you trying to buy your house, the bank truly is your partner, right?
So more importantly than getting access to the capital, you really want to have a banking partner and this is why Capitec have been so fantastic for Legaro. You really want a banking partner that understands what you’re trying to do, that you’re not just a simple number, which Capitec are fantastic at doing, that understands development itself rather than just being financiers. Because you are going to go through bumps, you are going to go through unexpected shortfalls, you don’t have control of a lot of those variables. And what you don’t want from your banking partner is somebody who’s skittish or actually ill-informed about, well, what does this particular moment look like in the scale of the broader property market? What does it look like in terms of the time of the year? It’s June, relax, for instance. If you don’t have a banking partner that understands development itself, which we’re very lucky to have Capitec, you’re going to struggle because you’re going to find yourself at odds for reasons that actually objectively aren’t really problems. So that’s why it’s invaluable to have somebody who understands that.
But then on top of that, you are correct – at the end of the day, it’s their money. Developments are just way too expensive for individuals to finance. It’s just not going to happen. Ideally, you would structure your developments well. You would make sure that, for instance, you have some control of the land, that you’re able to put in enough that you can at least hold the land cost yourself. There’s good hygiene that you can do to mitigate against the risk, but nothing will help you escape that you do need a good credit partner. And that’s where the banks are really the engine of the property market. And we’re really grateful for them.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, it’s that old banking joke that I loved from my investment banking days: OPM, Other People’s Money, and the fact that OPM sounds a bit like opium, I think is just a nice coincidence, I’m sure, in the world of banking.
But yeah, it’s an important concept, which is that you’ve got people who are capital providers in the markets and then you’ve got people who are risk takers and who can go and generate a great return on that capital both for themselves and the capital provider. That is capitalism 101, right? That’s how it works. That’s how free markets work. That’s why we can all go and invest in almost whatever we like, really, with variable outcomes. And it’s a very important and wonderful ecosystem. And it’s what develops our economy at the end of the day – we need more of it, not less of it.
Obaratile Semenya: Absolutely, absolutely. And with the housing shortfall that we have in this country, we just – I’m really grateful for banks like Capitec who are proactive about helping developers, particularly in things like that we do like which are high-density developments, tackle that problem because it’s expensive. And I don’t take that for granted that they are putting their necks on the line every time they believe in us.
And it really is a partnership, it’s not simply a transaction. And so there are some just fantastic people at Capital, from the marketing team all the way through to credit, all the way to accounts, they really will listen to you. And it’s not just because you owe them. Trust me, they’ll let you know that you owe them, but they’re really there to help you.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, it really is great. So maybe let’s start to bring it home then with talking about the current projects keeping you busy. If someone wants to see a good example of a Legaro project, maybe they’d like to come and buy a property from you, talk us through current on-the-go projects. What’s keeping you busy at Legaro? What are they called? Where can people find out more?
Obaratile Semenya: So today. Well, on this podcast, I’m at home right now and I live in a Legaro development. So if that’s putting your money where your mouth is, I hope that says that. Currently Legaro is focused on two large developments. One is in Joburg here in Hyde Park. It’s The Emerald. We sell one, two and three bedrooms and now penthouses. They’re sectional titles in a fantastic area. It is upmarket, but they rent incredibly well.
And this entire development has been powered by Capitec through and through. We’re about 185 units into this development, which is well past halfway.
The Finance Ghost: I can see the learnings from Balwin coming through – if there’s one Steve Brooks instilled in you, it’s a willingness to take on big projects!
Obaratile Semenya: Yeah, yeah. And at this point he’s more my dad than my mentor! And I don’t want to again downplay how incredibly lucky I am to get to be in these developments. And that’s why I live there. But yeah, that’s our Joburg development. It’s largely where I’m at most of the time. It’s a fantastic ecosystem in a great area. And I’m glad that areas like this are starting to have accessibility for people who otherwise would have absolutely no chance of living anywhere here. Like I said, we have one bedrooms, two bedrooms, three bedrooms and penthouses. In fact, we just sold a penthouse last week.
And then the big monster that Legaro is tackling is the Western Cape, Paarl. We are building a development there called Drakenzicht, again with Capitec. The first phase has already been sold out. It’s on phase 2 of Drakenzicht 1. There will be a retail centre there. It’s there in the valley by Val der Vie. And it’s absolutely gorgeous. Yeah, it is upmarket but what I love about Legaro is that it’s able to piggyback off I think a lot of the school fees that Balwin would have had to have learned over its nearly 30 years.
Being able to use those relationships to do it at – it’s big, but compared to Balwin, at a smaller scale, and really provide a really premium product at a competitive price, what you’re getting. And that’s the benefit of having the experience of the likes of Balwin in building this journey.
But at Legaro, we have a financial director, managing director, the agents and I’m there. And so really it’s individuals who put in the time and effort to apply that into those developments. But those are our two current developments.
We do have another development coming up in the Hyde Park area, which is Hyde Park Square, which is set to launch next year. But we’re trying to focus on residential. We’re tapering off a little bit of the commercial portfolio that we had. But what we do is we sell really good-looking homes and I’d love for people to come and look at them, thanks to Capitec. Really good-looking homes that thanks to density and price point are in good areas where people can realistically afford them.
The Finance Ghost: That’s what I wanted to say. So I’ve been looking now at The Emerald Hyde Park website here on my other screen, obviously, because I also actually really like property for what it’s worth. I don’t think I’d ever be an investor in it, I’ve got to tell you. But I think your environment around you will dictate your mood, the way you live your life, to a gigantic extent, it really will. So property is great. But if I look at your Emerald website, I mean it’s fascinating, right? So the one bed, one baths from just over R2 million, like R2.1 million. And then that penthouse was like R11 million.
It just shows how in one space you’ve built such an interesting development where there’s an accessible layer for young Joburg professionals or whatever the case may be. This reminds me a little bit of my old life in Joburg. It’s very cool. Maybe that’s why I like it. And then you’ve got those penthouses which by all accounts that’s a seriously big number for what is a really beautiful property for that Joburg lifestyle and kind of all in one place as this integrated living environment. So yeah, very cool. It’s really nice to see stuff like that.
Obaratile Semenya: It is, and like I said, it accommodates almost everybody, from families to individuals. And it allows an accessibility to happen that I say would have been impossible. I mean, I’m walking distance from the President, which is something that I don’t take for granted. Something that should be more the case as we start to open up traditionally gated areas without compromising surrounding property values, then that’s the trade-off, right?
And I think The Emerald, thanks to the wonderful design that Enrico Daffonchio put into this place, no expense was skimped in making sure that the traditional area is still respected whilst allowing for people to take their first steps into the mobility, into the property market. And these developments, I think, are important for the broader economy for people to be exposed to what property will look like.
So I feel incredibly grateful. I’ve gone in The Emerald from one bed to two bed, all the way up.
The Finance Ghost: I love that. And Hyde Park is such an aspirational area. I have the most wonderful memories when I was a kid – nowhere near Hyde Park, I definitely did not grow up in that segment of the property market – but I remember my dad and I used to go to Look and Listen to – that’s really aging me now – at the Hyde Park Shopping Centre to go and buy CDs, aging myself again, when I was in high school. And then my dad always used to take me on this drive through Hyde Park to be like here’s how the other half live. look at these homes. I remember driving through Houghton and those old Rand Lords kind of areas in Joburg, Westcliffe. you just see these beautiful, beautiful properties. That’s why I say, I’ve always had a great love for how these things look. They really are beautiful. It’s art. It’s just an art that is also something you can live in.
OB, let’s finish this up with the question that I ask all the guests that I’ve had thus far on this wonderful podcast series. And here it is: your biggest mistake on this journey. I know it’s the most cliché question in the world for an entrepreneur, but hopefully everything else we’ve talked about is not cliché, so I’ve got to get one in.
And that is, as I say, your biggest mistake in building everything you’ve built. What would you say that would be?
Obaratile Semenya: It’s going to sound soppy, but underestimating the value of a partner. I think I’ve been lucky to have a fantastic partner through the journey that is property. It’s a tumultuous hair-ripping-out experience. And it’s only in retrospect that I realised that there’s actually no ways I think that I would have navigated that if it wasn’t for a good support system. I’d say my biggest mistake is probably not appreciating that enough, which I do now.
My biggest mistake is not incorporating and including the people in your life as you go down an entrepreneurial journey. It can be a rabbit hole. It can be this tunnel that you go down and you do yourself no service by depriving yourself the people who are most there for you.
So to those people that have that, I hope that they don’t downplay. I’m lucky enough to have a best friend who’s been there for me from the beginning in it. So that would have been my biggest mistake, but it’s not one that I would make now. In retrospect, don’t do it alone would be the best way to answer that question.
The Finance Ghost: Very cool. Very, very nice. I love that. OB, this has been a stunning conversation. Thank you. Really wishing you all the best with everything you’re doing. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you through this process, and you’re doing some really, really cool stuff. So congrats. Well done. It’s a very inspiring story. Keep at it, man. It’s lovely to see.
Obaratile Semenya: Alright. Thank you so, so much. Have a great, great, great, great, great week.
The Finance Ghost: Thanks, OB. Ciao.
Real stories and real people. Yours could be next, plugged in with Capitec. Capitec is an authorized financial services provider, FSP 4669.
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