The Trans Hex write-down has hurt Astoria (JSE: ARA)

The rest is a mixed bag at the moment

Investment holding company Astoria is one of the victims of lab-grown diamond disruption. The group has fully written down the value of the investment in Trans Hex and Marine Diamond Operations, which were collectively valued at R72 million as at the end of December 2024. That’s around 10% of the NAV at that date, so it hurts. The silver lining is that the management team has chosen to rather walk away from giving further support to this asset vs. the alternative of throwing good money after bad.

With the NAV down 9.1% from December 2024 to June 2025, the diamond write-down explains the negative move. The rest of the portfolio has some ups (like Leatt and Goldrush) and downs (Outdoor Investment Holdings).

The largest asset by far is Outdoor Investment Holdings, in which Astoria has a 40.2% stake. It now represents over 60% of the NAV thanks to the disappearance of the diamond values. Recent turnover growth has been modest and margins have taken a knock, leading to a 4% decline in the value of that stake.

After the investment in Leatt (R84.7 million), the third largest asset is now cash and receivables (R63.1 million) thanks to the disposal of the stake in ISA Carstens. This means that nearly 10% of the NAV is in cash.

Speaking of the NAV, Astoria’s NAV per share is R10.65 and the share price is R7.90.

Collins Property does it themselves in the Netherlands (JSE: CPP)

They’ve bought a substantial portfolio of properties with DIY tenants

Collins Property Group has taken the route that a number of other South Africans have taken in the past few years: looking for opportunities in the Netherlands. Perhaps they really like the colour orange, or Max Verstappen. I suspect that above all else, they like earning euros.

Collins (part of the broader Christo Wiese stable, as you may recall) is acquiring a portfolio of 8 properties for €31.5 million. Adjustments might take the price as high as €32.8 million. The tenants are DIY stores that are being sold to a new owner, so Collins is swooping in and doing the property leg of the deal.

Although this does introduce the risk of the tenants being under new ownership, Collins would’ve done their homework here. They’ve already got exposure in the country, which would’ve assisted with the due diligence. The leases are also structured as triple net leases, which means there is low variability of expected income – provided that the tenants pay, of course.

But now for the most important part: the acquisition yield. Based on the forecast net profit attributable to the properties, the yield after tax is expected to be 3.3%. You can’t compare this directly to net initial yields on most property acquisitions, which are before tax. I’m not sure why Collins doesn’t disclose net initial yield in line with market practice. I’m also not sure why they don’t indicate the level of debt associated with the deal and whether that is impacting the expected profit after tax.

Collins currently trades on a dividend yield of 8.7%, so this transaction will be dilutive to that yield. Will South African investors give enough credit to offshore exposure? Or does Collins even care? There’s an argument that because the shares are tightly held, the underlying exposure is managed in such a way that mainly suits the anchor shareholders.

Glencore hopes for a better second half in copper (JSE: GLN)

And either way, there’s a self-help strategy around costs

Glencore has released its financials for the six months to June. They had a rough time, with flat revenue and a 14% drop in adjusted EBITDA. There’s once again a net loss that shareholders need to stomach, except this time its gone up from $233 million to $655 million.

Before you panic, the loss isn’t an indication of cash flows. They generated $3.15 billion in funds from operations. Still, that’s 22% lower than the prior year. There are a bunch of other moving parts on the balance sheet, including the receipt of proceeds from the sale of Viterra. If you include those proceeds (received just after period-end on 2 July), then net debt to adjusted EBITDA is at 1x. So, the balance sheet is healthy, hence why Glencore is able to press on with share buybacks while the share price is at depressed levels.

The problems in the first half of the year were mainly thanks to lower coal prices and a drop in copper production. There’s nothing that they can do about the former. In terms of the latter, Glencore is looking ahead to a much better expected copper output in the second half of the year. They are also looking at $1 billion in recurring cost savings (measuring vs. 2024 as a baseline), which they expect to fully deliver by 2026. They plan to be 50% through the savings by the end of 2025.

There’s a lot riding on the second half of the year, with Glencore’s share price down 19% year-to-date.

Jubilee Metals updated the market on its copper business (JSE: JBL)

And with plans to sell everything else, this is the important bit

Jubilee Metals has a few irons in the fire when it comes to copper in Zambia. They have their mine-to-metals business, which is the Sable refinery combined with nearby copper mines. They also have the Roan concentrator, which processes third-party copper feedstock. Finally, they can process surface stockpiles and tailings that they’ve been acquiring.

The Roan concentrator has had a lot of focus recently, with an upgrade that is now fully operational and exceeding targeted monthly production. That’s just as well, as production in the first half of the year was severely impacted by power and infrastructure issues. It was so bad that Roan was placed under care and maintenance!

The open-pit mining is much earlier in the process, with Jubilee undertaking drilling work. As for the tailings, Jubilee is trying to prioritise its capital spending by selling the tailings that it considers non-core. They are also looking to dispose of their chrome and PGM operations in South Africa, with a circular expected to be distributed this week for that deal.

Jubilee only managed to produce 2,211 tonnes of copper units in FY25. Their guidance for FY26 is 5,100 tonnes, so that will be a massive recovery if they can get it right. They have little choice, as they’ve thrown everything behind the Zambian copper strategy. The share price is down 18.6% year-to-date.

A juicy jump in the dividend at Quilter (JSE: QLT)

The increase in earnings is more modest

Quilter has released results for the six months to June 2025. This has been a strong performer on the JSE, with a wealth and asset management business model that enjoys powerful distribution in the UK. The share price is up 23% over 12 months and 10% on a year-to-date basis.

The key metric is net inflows, with the distribution part of the business doing its job. Assets under management and administration (AuMA) enjoyed core net inflows equal to an annualised 8% of the opening value. That’s a very strong driver of earnings that makes the company less reliant on overall market values in the portfolios. AuMA increased by 6% from December 2024 to June 2025.

Profit growth was modest, with adjusted profit before tax up 3% and operating margin increasing by just 100 basis points to 30%. This is because revenue was only up 2%, so they found it harder to drive revenue despite the uptick in assets. A dip in interest revenue was also a contributor here.

This didn’t stop Quilter from pushing the dividend a lot higher, with an increase of 18% to 2.0 pence per share (it’s a UK company).

Sirius Real Estate announces more acquisitions in Germany and the UK (JSE: SRE)

They don’t waste time when it comes to deploying capital

When listed property funds raise capital from the market for general acquisition purposes, the risk to shareholders is that the fund sits on the capital rather than deploying it. This leads to a cash drag effect that hurts returns. With the inclusion of these latest acquisitions, Sirius Real Estate has managed to do €165 million worth of acquisitions in 2025. They are certainly doing their best to avoid the cash drag trap!

The latest deals include a business park in Germany for €23.4 million and one in the UK for £16 million. Both are off-market deals, which means Sirius avoided being part of a bidding war. When you’re a regular acquirer of assets, you get access to the best deals before the general market does. In the area in Germany where the latest property is located, Sirius already has three other properties. This is the value of building relationships through focusing on specific regions. Interestingly, this region in Germany (called Dresden) is attracting investment from semiconductor companies like TSMC, so that has incredible knock-on benefits for the broader area.

As usual with Sirius, there are plans afoot to improve the yield on the properties. The site in Germany currently has one tenant (being the seller of the property) who will vacate after a year. At that stage, Sirius will convert the property to a multi-let business park. The site currently generates a net initial yield of 9.13%.

The property in the UK is already a multi-let park and offers a net initial yield of 9.52%. 36% of tenants are in the defence sector, so that seems like a clever play in Europe at the moment. 67% of tenants have “lease events” within the next two years, which is an opportunity for an uptick in rates on the leases. Although Sirius notes that Bedford is the site for a proposed Universal theme park that would bring benefits to the area, I’m not sure the defence tenants care too much!

Separately, Sirius sold off a small property in the UK for £1.55 million, which is a 7% premium to the most recent book value. Even on small sales, achieving a premium to book is what helps give support to the Sirius valuation.

Nibbles:

• Director dealings:
  • A director of Richemont (JSE: CFR) sold shares worth around R73 million. In a separate announcement, a director sold shares worth nearly R30 million. As the primary listing is in Switzerland, famous for helping rich people keep things a secret, we don’t know which directors sold shares.
  • Absolutely zero marks to Raubex (JSE: RBX) for the disclosure around directors and execs selling shares from the long-term incentive scheme. No effort is made to indicate the taxable vs. non-taxable portions. On sales of over R17 million, that’s a frustrating lack of useful information for shareholders.
  • The director of Santova (JSE: SNV) who has recently been selling shares is at it again, offloading shares worth R4.1 million.
  • The CEO of Vunani (JSE: VUN) is picking up whatever shares he can get his hands on in the market, with the latest purchase being for R2.7k.

• Spear REIT (JSE: SEA) announced the acquisition of Berg Business Park in Paarl back in May. The company has confirmed that the deal has now met all conditions and that transfer is expected to take place in October.

• The latest acceptance level for the Primary Health Properties (JSE: PHP) offer to Assura (JSE: AHR) shareholders shows that holders of 3.13% of shares have accepted the offer. The closing date is 12 August.

• The mess that is aReit (JSE: APO) continues. The latest issue is that the auditors have resigned because they don’t have access to the resources required for timeous release of financials. Specifically, aReit is stuck because they can’t get outstanding financial information from third parties associated with their tenants. The company is suspended from trading. It turns out that I wasn’t wrong about the bright red flag of the company releasing its initial listing docs without even having a finalised website.