In this edition of Ghost Bites:
- Argent Industrial lands another offshore acquisition
- Balwin’s take-private circular is out in the wild
- Capitalworks has almost fully exited its stake in Premier
- Mantengu has agreed terms for the Blue Ridge Platinum disposal
- Ninety One has shown strong growth in assets under management
- Valterra Platinum’s numbers look incredible at first blush, but be careful
Argent Industrial lands another offshore acquisition (JSE: ART)
They are acquiring an industrial business in the UK for R238 million
Argent Industrial has been strongly focused on building its offshore operations. In the year ended March 2026, the South African operations only contributed 27% of group profit before tax, with offshore doing the rest!
Although going offshore is no guarantee of success (often it’s quite the opposite), Argent has made it work. In FY26, offshore operations grew profit by 13.3%, well ahead of South Africa at 8.3%.
With the market enthusiastically supporting this strategy (the share price is up 39% over 12 months), Argent has now pulled the trigger on another offshore deal.
The company has announced the acquisition of the Ramsden Group, a UK-based manufacturer of steel drums and wooden pallets. They also recondition intermediate bulk containers. This certainly brings even more diversification to Argent’s group!
The deal is valued at around £10.8 million, which works out to R238 million. Of this price, almost R55 million relates to properties occupied by the group, The remaining R183 million is based on the profits after tax and a P/E multiple of 5.5x.
This is a Category 2 transaction, so shareholders won’t be asked to vote.
Ghost Bite: Based on the Argent share price over the past 12 months and how well this deal fits into the strategy, I doubt shareholders would vote it down:
Balwin’s take-private circular is out in the wild (JSE: BWN)
If all goes to plan, shareholders will get R4.35 per share
After a 30-year journey since being founded in 1996, Balwin has come full circle and will be leaving the public market (if this deal goes ahead).
The journey includes 11 years as a listed company. Balwin was one of the many property stocks that listed in the 2014 – 2016 glory years in the local property sector. This gives us a perfect example of why IPOs in a hot market are best avoided:
After a long and difficult road for investors, there’s the chance to be paid out R4.35 in cash. It sounds like a decent deal when you consider that the 52-week low is R2.31! It works out to a 23% premium to the 30-day VWAP, calculated before the firm intention announcement came out in May.
The circular for the deal is now available. This sets out all the details of the offer by Bidco, an entity backed by the PIC / GEPF and the core management team at Balwin. CEO Stephen Brookes is the biggest fish, with 33.07% stake in Balwin. The “reinvesting shareholders” (i.e. management) hold a combined 50.2% stake in Balwin.
Irrevocable undertakings have already been obtained from holders of 63.5% of the voting shares, so it looks likely that the scheme will go ahead. The likelihood is increased by the independent expert (Valeo Capital) opining that the offer is both fair and reasonable to shareholders. For more context, Valeo has estimated a fair value range of R3.62 to R4.29 per share. The offer price of R4.35 sits above that range.
The meeting is scheduled for 17 August.
Ghost Bite: It is very likely that this will bring Balwin’s public journey to an end. Unfortunately for investors, being focused on stamping out complexes in Joburg turned out to be a disappointing strategy in a city that fell apart around Balwin over the past decade.
Capitalworks has almost fully exited its stake in Premier (JSE: PMR)
These shares relate to the acquisition by Premier of RFG
You may recall that in 2025, we saw the acquisition by Premier of all of the shares in RFG.
This deal resulted in the previous RFG shareholders having 22.5% in the merged group. Notably, Capitalworks had a 44.5% stake in RFG before that transaction, so they would’ve ended up with roughly 10% in the enlarged entity.
After a successful accelerated bookbuild process run by RMB Morgan Stanley, Capitalworks has reduced that stake all the way down to just 0.94% in Premier – an easy enough stake to sell quietly, if they wish.
This is a good reminder that it’s very difficult to move a c.9% stake through the order book without the market noticing. When it’s clear that there’s a big seller in the system, it puts a lot of pressure on the share price. In such a case, an accelerated bookbuild can provide a far more elegant exit.
The price at which the sales happened is not disclosed, but we do know that Titan Premier Investments (part of the Christo Wiese stable) bought another 2 million shares from Capitalworks. This works out to around 1.2% in the company. The remaining shares would’ve been picked up by various institutional investors, with the announcement noting that the bookbuild was multiple times oversubscribed.
It’s worth highlighting that this doesn’t affect the company at all. No new shares have been issued. All we have is a situation where a shareholder needed to move a chunk of shares so large that it made sense to use a formal process.
Ghost Bite: Capitalworks initially invested in RFG in 2012. A total investment period of 14 years is twice as long as you would expect to see from a private equity fund. COVID did throw a large spanner in the works along the way.
Mantengu has agreed terms for the Blue Ridge Platinum disposal (JSE: MTU)
This is hot on the heels of the recently announced iron beneficiation plant disposal
Mantengu has been trading under cautionary since early June. It hasn’t taken them long to get to the point where they can announce detailed terms for the disposal of Blue Ridge Platinum to Afresources Mining.
The 70% shareholding and claims in Blue Ridge will be sold for R35 million. This is in line with the pricing guidance provided in June.
This gets rid of a monthly cost burden, as Blue Ridge is being kept alive at a cost of R2 million per month without generating any income. It also reduces liabilities by a massive R185 million.
Mantengu points out that this is why they didn’t raise a R570 million liability in the latest results, despite their auditors wanting them to do so. Nothing proves a point quite like the finalisation of a deal and the flow of cash!
The trickiest condition precedent is the section 11 approval under the Mineral Resources Development Act. This will need to be obtained within 180 days, so that shows you just how long these can take.
Interestingly, Afresources will lend Mantengu R35 million at prime plus 1% in the meantime, with the balance set off against the eventual purchase price. In other words, the cash bleed will stop for Mantengu while the deal is being finalised. The key is that all conditions are met though, otherwise the whole thing falls over.
This is a Category 2 transaction, so Mantengu shareholders won’t be asked to vote.
Ghost Bite: Mantengu has been making a lot of progress lately with asset disposals. The really big deal is the Averi Finance opportunity. The group is still trading under cautionary in that regard.
Ninety One has shown strong growth in assets under management (JSE: N91 | JSE: NY1)
And unlike Coronation (JSE: CML), Ninety One actually bothers to give us comparative numbers
As the name would suggest, assets under management (AUM) is the lifeblood of any asset management firm. AUM is the basis upon which fees are earned. If AUM is growing at a decent rate, earnings usually follow suit.
There are three ways to grow AUM.
The first is through a general uplift in market prices, something that is largely beyond the control of these firms. All they can do is launch funds that have a good chance of success, with the hope being that markets will do the rest.
The second is through attracting additional inflows, a function of a strong brand and a successful distribution network.
The third way, which certainly applies to Ninety One, is through M&A activity. Over the past year or so, we saw Sanlam (JSE: SLM) sell their active asset management businesses into Ninety One in exchange for shares in the group.
This transaction was a major contributor to the substantial growth in Ninety One’s AUM over the past 12 months. AUM increased from £139.7 billion to £184 billion – and do take note of the currency there! Ninety One is a huge operation.
The quarter-on-quarter growth is a cleaner view of things, as this excludes the impact of the acquisition. On that basis, AUM increased by 7.1% between March 2026 and June 2026. That’s still an incredibly strong outcome.
Ghost Bite: Given Coronation’s refusal to publish comparative AUM in their quarterly updates, I feel compelled to thank Ninety One for what feels like basic disclosure!
Valterra Platinum’s numbers look incredible at first blush, but be careful (JSE: VAL)
The prior period flooding at Amandelbult is making all the difference
Valterra Platinum released a trading statement for the six months to June 2026. Brace yourself for a rather bonkers percentage increase, with HEPS expected to jump by more than 1,388%!
In absolute terms, which are easier to understand here, this means an increase from R1.2bn to between R18.5bn and R22.2bn.
There were two main drivers of this result.
The first was an 85% increase in the PGM dollar basket price in dollars, equating to a 66% increase in rand.
Together with this vastly improved environment in PGMs, the second driver is that Valterra managed an 18% increase in sales volumes. But the important context is the flooding at Amandelbult in 2025, creating a much softer base than would otherwise be the case.
Amandelbult’s production was up 116% in the latest quarter. If you look at the rest of the group, you’ll find that the mines suffered reduced volumes on a year-on-year basis.
Looking ahead, guidance for full year 2026 is unchanged. The company does note that cash operating costs per ounce are expected to be at the upper end of the guided range. Given the inflationary pressure on mining costs, PGM prices will hopefully give some support to this story in the latter half of the year.
Ghost Bite: If you adjust for Amandelbult, this isn’t a particularly great outcome. The current share price of R1,080 reflects a 44% decline from the 52-week high of R1,930! The PGM sector is a wild place.
Results of previous poll:
Nibbles:
- Director dealings:
- The CEO of Marshall Monteagle (JSE: MMP) bought shares worth over R6.7 million in an off-market trade.
- In the capital raise by Supermarket Income REIT (JSE: SRI) several directors acquired shares worth roughly R4 million in aggregate.
- ASP Isotopes (JSE: ISO) had a busy day on SENS on Friday. One of the releases was the prospectus for the issuance of stock to the holders of $109 million in notes in Quantum Leap Energy. This considerable source of dilution for ASP Isotopes shareholders had already been announced, so this was just the formal release of documentation. For those who really want to dig into the detail, the company also released a retrospective update to the 2025 financials based on the presentation of Skyline as a discontinued operation. But perhaps most importantly, the company is hosting a webinar for its helium assets, as they work towards the merger with Noble Africa. The details are here.
- There is very little liquidity in the shares of Putprop (JSE: PPR), so their latest trading statement only gets a passing mention down here. For the year ended June 2026, they expect a headline loss per share of between -5.26 cents and -17.44 cents vs. positive HEPS of 60.86 cents in the comparable period. This nasty negative swing is driven by a decrease in the valuation of the property portfolio. Detailed results are expected on 16 September.
- Wesizwe Platium (JSE: WEZ) announced that agreements have been reached with all recognised trade unions at Bakubung Platinum Mine. This include AMCU, NUM and the non-bargaining unit. This has enabled progress to be made with the phased restart of the mine.
- After another small purchase of shares, Novus (JSE: NVS) now has a direct stake in Mustek (JSE: MST) of 50.68%. Together with concert parties, the stake is up to 70.97%.
