Alphamin had a strong year – but it could get much better in 2026 (JSE: APH)
The company has flagged the momentum in tin prices
Alphamin has released results for the year and quarter ended December 2025. Production for the year was up by 7% and EBITDA jumped by 25%.
Here’s the really juicy part though: they acheived that EBITDA increase at an average tin price of $34,373/t for the year. The current price is more like $50,000/t. In other words, the exit velocity from 2025 is very exciting for shareholders.
To give you another data point, the average tin price in Q4’25 was $37,995/t. At that price, EBITDA was 13% higher than in Q3’25 when the price was $33,878/t. Yes, that’s a 13% increase on a sequential basis, not a year-on-year basis!
It’s also worth remembering that this annual result was achieved despite the security issues in March / April 2025 that led to the cessation of operations for a few weeks.
The risk of this happening again is always there, so the company focuses on what is within its control. Production guidance for 2026 is 20,000 tonnes, up from 18,576 tonnes.
If prices remain high and if there are no significant disruptions, the company should generate serious cash in 2026. The share price is up 57% in the past year, so those who bought the sell-off during the period of security concerns in 2025 have done very well.
Harmony Gold’s dividend more than doubled (JSE: HAR)
The same can’t be said for earnings
Harmony Gold released results for the six months to December. The company has been taking steps to diversify its business and get involved in the copper race. In a recent poll in Ghost Bites, respondents showed strong support for that strategy, even if it leads to near-term pressure on earnings due to the costs of this diversification.
In this interim period, Harmony grew revenue by just 20%, with operational challenges leading to a drop in production of 9%. This took the shine off the increase in the average gold price over the period.
When you add in the costs of the copper initiatives, headline earnings only grew by 13%. This is way behind sector peers in 2025.
Despite the timid growth in earnings, Harmony has changed its dividend policy and ramped up the cash payments to shareholders. This is why the interim dividend has more than doubled from 227 cents to 530 cents per share.
The share price is up 29% in the past 12 months. That’s good when viewed in isolation, but it represents substantial underperformance vs. gold rivals.
HCI and Deneb sell off non-core properties (JSE: HCI | JSE: DNB)
We are seeing this capital efficiency theme play out across the group
Investors don’t like it when operating companies own non-core properties. It just muddies the waters, as property as an asset class carries less risk (in theory) and thus lower returns than operating companies. It’s also a capital-intensive asset class, so you can easily end up with a “lazy” balance sheet that investors punish in the form of a lower valuation.
The Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) stable has recognised this issue and is doing something about it. To add to the other transactions we’ve seen along this theme, the company has now announced the disposal of Kalahari Mall for R800 million.
The property is held by a subsidiary in which HCI has a 64.78% interest, so don’t get too excited about that big juicy number. The subsidiary also owes debt on the property of R249 milion. Before any other costs, this means that HCI looks set to receive around R350 million in proceeds from the sale.
In a further example of this strategy playing out in the broader HCI group, separately-listed subsidiary Deneb is selling Deneb House in Cape Town. It seems that a property can be non-core even when it has their name on the door!
The price for Deneb House is R120 million, with the net proceeds to be applied towards settlement of debt and general corporate purposes. They expect transfer to go through by the end of July 2026. The net asset value of the property as at March 2025 was R112.5 million. New lease agreements will be concluded as part of this deal.
Overall, investors are enjoying this commitment to reducing the property exposure in HCI and its broader group.
The V&A Waterfront is still Growthpoint’s gem (JSE: GRT)
They are investing a fortune in further developing that property
Growthpoint has released results for the six months to December 2025. Although distributable income per share was only 2.3% higher, the company has ramped up the payout ratio and increased the dividend per share by 8.5%. This takes the payout ratio from 82.5% to 87.5%.
The net asset value per share dipped by 2.2%, with the stronger rand as one of the factors here. Growthpoint holds offshore investments in countries like Australia.
South African revenue (excluding trading and development) increased by 2.2%, with lower vacancies and the completion of major refurbishment projects. Thanks to cost initiatives, net property income increased by 2.8%.
Looking at the underlying segments, it’s good to see that all three property types in South Africa performed well. Net property income grew by 6.3% in Retail, 5.6% in Logistics & Industrial, and 5.8% in Office. Before you get too excited about the Office portfolio, reversions in that space were negative 9.6%.
SA finance costs were down by 14.6% thanks to lower average borrowings and a reduced cost of debt. The loan-to-value ratio was 33.2%, an improvement from 34.5%.
The V&A Waterfront always gets a separate mention and with good reason, as the property is flourishing. Like-for-like net property income increased by 8.7%, with increased tourism as a major driver. But because of the development pipeline and the increased borrowings, Growthpoint’s 50% share of distributable income from the property was only up by 1.2%.
The largest offshore investment in the group is Growthpoint Australia, where the distribution was essentially flat in Australian dollars. But once converted to rand, it came in 9% lower year-on-year.
The strategic priority for the group remains the same: exit lower quality properties in South Africa (especially in the Office portfolio) and focus on the best areas. They are also taking a precinct-focused approach now, instead of a spray-and-pray approach based on owning properties all over the place. You can guess which one of those approaches is the official company term vs. my cheekiness.
For FY26, the company expects distributable income per share to grow by between 3% and 5%. The dividend per share is expected to be between 6% and 8% higher.
What is your view on the V&A Waterfront plans?
Will Metair’s luck ever change? (JSE: MTA)
I’m hoping that they’ve now run out of things that can go wrong
The Rombat fine is such an ugly situation for Metair. The European Commission imposed a fine of €20.2m on the company, of which Metair is jointly and severally liable for €11.6m. Worst of all, this relates to market conduct that predates Metair’s acquisition of the company.
This slipped right through the due diligence process conducted at the time by a third party, so you can imagine the kind of emails that have been flying around since the fine was imposed.
Metair has fully provided for the fine in the numbers for the year ended December 2025, which is why they indicate results including and excluding the fine. If you include the fine, the headline loss per share was 21 cents. If you exclude the fine, HEPS was 191 cents. You can therefore see just how material this fine is.
What makes it even more frustrating is that Metair has actually made some progress in its core business. At Hesto for example, revenue increased by 8% and the EBIT margin jumped from 4.6% to 7.6%. The improved vehicle manufacturing volumes at local OEMs have been a major boost.
Sadly, the balance sheet remains a very messy situation. When there’s an entire slide dealing with how the debt is structured and whether covenants have been met, you know it’s tough. At the moment, they’ve met all covenants in the SA Obligor and Hesto packages. But it’s a precarious situation.
Aside from the many risks in the business, it looks as though the AutoZone turnaround plan is running way behind schedule. They took a chance by acquiring the operations out of business rescue. With an EBIT loss of R46 million in AutoZone, they reckon that they are 6 to 9 months behind the recovery plan.
The share price is down 22% over one year. The real story is told over three years, with a precipitous decline of 81%.
OUTsurance had a solid year overall, even if Australia had a wobbly (JSE: OUT)
The South African business is doing exceptionally well
OUTsurance released results for the six months to December 2025 that reflect a 36.2% increase in the interim dividend to 120.7 cents. There’s also a special dividend of 30.3 cents based on monetisation of non-core assets. Talk about getting something out!
The iconic South African short-term insurance arm continues to grow incredibly well. OUTsurance SA achieved normalised earnings growth of 68.9%, which means it added R808 million in earnings. That’s just as well, as Youi Group in Australia took a nasty knock from natural peril claims, with a 43% drop in normalised earnings (a decrease of R519 million). Swings and roundabouts were the order of the day here.
OUTsurance Life put in a flat result (normalised earnings of R143 million), while the start-up losses in OUTsurance Ireland increased to R263 million. OUTsurance plays the long game by building businesses from scratch. It requires patience, but in my opinion this is a better strategy than doing large offshore acquisitions.
It’s important to remember that these businesses roll up into OUTsurance Holdings, which isn’t the listed company. The listed company is in fact OUTsurance Group Limited, which holds 92.8% in OUTsurance Holdings.
Aside from the impact of the non-controlling interest in OUTsurance Holdings, this means that there’s also the effect of treasury and other movements in OUTsurance Group.
Once these are all taken into account, we can see that normalised earnings per share increased by 7.3% at listed company level.
You can therefore see that an increased dividend payout ratio is at play here, as 36.2% growth in the dividend isn’t reflective of the maintainable growth rate in earnings.
Still, with return on equity of 32.3% and the core business in South Africa doing so well, these are solid numbers. The Australian performance is irritating of course, but the insurance game means that you have to retain some of the risk on your balance sheet in order to earn a return. If the spiders and snakes in Australia don’t get you, it seems like the storms just might!
Rainbow Chicken’s HEPS more than doubles (JSE: RBO)
These are the joys of operating leverage – when it works in your favour
The poultry industry is famous for operating leverage. This means that there are high fixed costs in the system, so a good period with strong revenue can be really lucrative for investors. Conversely, a poor period can be disastrous.
It’s also famous for having very low margins, which means that small changes at the top of the income statement can drive substantial percentage movements in net profit.
These sector quirks are clearly visible at Rainbow Chicken in the six months to December 2025. Revenue increased 11.3%, EBITDA jumped by 81.4% and HEPS more than doubled – up 109.9% to 74.81 cents!
EBITDA margin increased from 7.4% to 12.0%. As another indication of just how much better things were in this period, Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) jumped from 12.6% to 22.6%.
Management feels confident enough to declare an interim dividend of 15 cents per share. There was no interim dividend in the comparable period.
As a quick note on the segmentals, it was the Chicken division that did all the heavy lifting here. Operating profit was up by 183.9% in that segment! The other major division, Animal Feed, had flat earnings. There is also a very small Waste-to-Value division that achieves marginal profitability while helping the group achieve sustainability and other goals.
The threats are always just behind the door in this sector, with avian flu as an eternal concern. And just for some additional spice, the Competition Commission is busy with a full inquiry into the concentration in the industry. Rainbow Chicken points out that scale is key to efficient production, so hopefully the regulators will reach the same conclusion.
Just 1% dividend growth at Supermarket Income REIT (JSE: SRI)
Welcome to the joys of hard currency growth rates
Supermarket Income REIT operates in the UK. This means that they earn a currency that tends to avoid falling out of bed in the morning. Although the rand has been a star recently, let’s not forget what happened in the 20 years before that.
For the six months to December 2025, the company achieved dividend per share growth of just 1%. To give you a sense of how little growth is actually available in the retail property market in the UK, the dividend growth target is 2% per annum from FY27 onwards. This is truly a game of inches.
There’s no shortage of debt in these developed market structures, with the loan-to-value jumping from 31% to 45%. The economics of property deals in the UK are just completely different to the South African market.
Nibbles:
- Director dealings:
- Guess who’s back? Des de Beer has bought R484k worth of shares in Lighthouse Properties (JSE: LTE). When he starts buying, he usually pulls the trigger on a daily basis for a while. Let’s see what happens.
- With a market cap of just R255 million, Putprop (JSE: PPR) sits among the smaller names on the JSE. In a trading statement for the six months to December 2025, the company noted an expected decrease in HEPS of between 13% and 17%. Results will be released on 18 March.
- Remgro (JSE: REM) announced that they have continued to reduce their stake in FirstRand (JSE: FSR). By June 2025, they had already reduced their stake to 1.64% in the financial services giant. For context, they owned 3.92% in 2020. They’ve now sold further shares to the value of R3.9 billion. This looks like roughly half of the remaining stake.
- RMB Holdings (JSE: RMH) announced that the circular related to the AtTBid offer has been delayed. The TRP has granted an extension that gives the company until 8 April 2026.
- JSE Limited (JSE: JSE) announced that the SARB has approved their special dividend. They can now go ahead and pay in line with the originally announced timetable.
- PSG Financial Services (JSE: KST) announced the appointment of Dr. Christopher Loewald as an independent non-executive director. Loewald was previously the Chief Economist of the SARB and served on the Monetary Policy Committee until his retirement on 1 March 2026. That’s an appointment that is worth noting!
- Nigerian energy company Oando (JSE: OAO) is experiencing a delay in the release of financial statements. They attribute this to the migration and integration of legacy ERP systems. Whatever the reason, regulators don’t have much patience for this kind of thing. The company plans to file the 2025 financials by the end of May, with the goal that this won’t be more than 45 days after the reporting deadline.
- Another name in the naughty corner is Sebata Holdings (JSE: SEB), suspended from trading and miles behind on financials. They still need to release the report for the year ended March 2025! They hope to get this done by the end of March 2026. The delays relate to the accounting complications of the Inzalo Transactions.
