The gold price did wonders for DRDGOLD (JSE: DRD)

These numbers were well telegraphed to the market

DRDGOLD already released pretty detailed disclosure around the latest financial year, so the release of full results hasn’t told us much that we didn’t already know.

The TL;DR is that gold production fell by 3% in the year ended June 2025, which is unfortunate timing as the average gold price received was up by 31%. Under those circumstances, you would obviously love to see production running as high as possible.

Cash operating costs were up 8% per kilogram of gold, although they were actually down per tonne of material processed. This tells you that they are getting more efficient at managing throughput, yet it’s also becoming harder to extract the gold. DRDGOLD is shifting towards having higher throughput and lower yield, so you can expect to see this trend continue. It’s fine, provided the cost per kilogram of gold is well managed – something that will rely on technology being used effectively.

Thanks to the high gold prices, operating profit jumped by 69% and operating margin came in at 44.7% vs. 33.4% in the prior period. HEPS also jumped by 69%.

Guidance for FY26 is production of between 140,000 and 150,000 ounces of gold. They produced 155,288 ounces in FY25, so you don’t need to get the calculator out to figure out that this is the wrong direction of travel. They would like to get to over 200,000 ounces, which feels like a long way away from current levels.

Equites Property Fund is selling one of its large UK properties (JSE: EQU)

This is part of a broader strategy to exit the UK market

Equites Property Fund announced the sale of a logistics facility known as Unit 1, The Hub in Burgess Hill in the UK. They are selling it for around R422 million. For whatever reason, the announcement doesn’t disclose who the buyer is.

Importantly, the selling price is a net initial yield of 5.0% and is in line with the book value as at February 2025. They will use the proceeds to settle debt.

The disposal is part of the overall plan to get out of the UK portfolio, which comprised seven assets at the time of making that decision in early 2025.

Here’s something interesting to learn about property in this sector: as this is a 25-year lease (typical of logistics properties), rental reviews only happen every 5 years. The most recent one was in March 2024, leading to an uplift of 69% to the base rental! Even if you work that out over 5 years, it’s still a huge uplift – especially in hard currency.

The deal has already closed and the asset was transferred on 19 August, so there’s no implementation risk.

Prosus reminds the market of the Tencent Plus strategy (JSE: NPN | JSE: PRX)

The shareholder letter after the AGM carries on where the Capital Markets Day left off

If you’re following the Prosus story closely (as I am – mainly because I’m long Prosus), then you’ll know that the recent Capital Markets Day was all about the “Tencent Plus” strategy – a clever narrative from CEO Fabricio Bloisi that talks to how the group excluding Tencent should be seen as a positive contributor rather than a detractor from the story. This speaks directly to growth in the broader eCommerce business interests.

They’ve got a lot of work to do, both across organic initiatives and deal integrations like the recent JustEatTakeaway and Despegar transactions. The exciting thing about JustEatTakeaway is that regulators approved the deal far more quickly than anyone expected, giving them the opportunity to realise those benefits sooner.

When it comes to targets for organic growth, the first quarter of 2026 suggests that Prosus was on target for revenue (which meant 15% growth) and 14% ahead of target for adjusted EBITDA (translating to 54% growth).

My long position at Prosus is based on where they are on the J-curve and how deeply they can embed AI in their business. So far so good, with the share price up 44% year-to-date. I bought the very odd dip at the start of the year, so my position is thankfully up 58%. Goodness knows things don’t always go that way in the market, but it’s lovely when they do.

Sabvest saw a strong increase in NAV per share in the past 12 months (JSE: SBP)

And this is the right metric for the investment holding company

As investment holding companies go, Sabvest is regarded as one of the best ones. The company has a portfolio of two listed and thirteen unlisted companies, which means that the bulk of the portfolio is in assets that you otherwise can’t get exposure to. In theory at least, this helps to minimise the discount to net asset value (NAV) that the fund trades at.

In practice, with the NAV per share at R138.82 and the share price at R94.90, there’s still a huge discount in place. The market just doesn’t show much love to investment holding companies.

In Sabvest’s case, there’s certainly no lack of performance. The NAV per share has achieved a 15-year CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 18.1% without dividends, or 19.3% with dividends reinvested. The latest period shows that NAV per share grew by 17.8% over the past year.

In case you’re wondering whether these are all just paper gains, Sabvest has declared an interim dividend of 40 cents per share, which is 14.3% higher than in the comparable period. They’ve also increased their allocation to share buybacks.

They have a bullish outlook, with an expectation for growth in the second half of 2025 to be “in line with prior years” – and with the track record that they have, that’s strong guidance to give.

Sabvest’s share price is up roughly 30% in the past 12 months

Nibbles:

• Director dealings:
  • The founder and CEO of Datatec (JSE: DTC) bought shares in the company worth R5.7 million.
  • A director of South Ocean Holdings (JSE: SOH) has been buying up shares in multiple tranches since April. Why is it only being announced now, I hear you ask? Great question. The total comes to over R630k, so I also wouldn’t describe this as an immaterial trade, nor would I describe this as acceptable disclosure.
  • The CEO of Vunani (JSE: VUN) bought shares worth R6.7k – this may sound insignificant, but he’s executed many such recent trades. The challenge is that liquidity in the stock is limited.
  • A non-executive director of Collins Property Group (JSE: CPP) sold shares worth R1.4k.

• Those watching the Investec (JSE: INP | JSE: INL) share prices carefully may be interested to know that the company is commencing a share buyback programme of up to R2.5 billion that they expect to run until March 2026.

• You’ll need sharp eyes to notice the difference, but Blue Label Telecoms (JSE: BLU) will start trading under its new name (Blu Label Unlimited) from 3 September. The JSE code is unchanged, mainly because most of the name is also unchanged.