Harmony Gold has completed the MAC Copper acquisition (JSE: HAR)

The R18.4 billion transaction is just one example of large mining houses chasing copper

Harmony Gold announced the MAC Copper acquisition back in May 2025. It always takes several months to get deals of this size across the line. The good news is that the wait is over, with Harmony implementing the deal with effect from 24 October. The total equity value was R18.4 billion ($1.01 billion), funding using cash reserves and a bridge facility (debt).

Harmony will focus on integrating MAC Copper into their group over the next three months. They will give a detailed update on operational performance and key development milestones when interim results are released in February/March 2026.

Metrofile has released the circular for the Mango Holding take-private (JSE: MFL)

The shareholder meeting will take place in November

After many years of deals waiting in the wings and not materialising, Metrofile shareholders finally have a take-private to consider in the form of a scheme of arrangement. A special purpose vehicle put together by Mango Holding acts as the offeror, with the plan being for the offeror to obtain a platform across Africa and the Middle East. If you work your way up the chain, you eventually land at WndrCo LLC as the largest individual shareholder, a technology investment firm focused on consumerisation of software. That makes sense. There are some other entrepreneurs and high net worth individuals involved who have experience in software as well.

For Metrofile shareholders, it’s much simpler than that: the scheme is a way to sell their shares at a premium of 95% to the 30-day VWAP up to 25 March, the day prior to the release of the cautionary. Before you get too excited about that premium, you need to see a multi-year chart of the share price:

As you can see, the price was extremely depressed when the offeror swooped earlier this year. The price of R3.25 per share is in line with where the shares traded in July 2023, except the offeror would be getting control of the company for this price!

A deal isn’t a deal until the conditions have been met, with the most important one at this stage being the shareholder approval. Irrevocable undertakings have been received from holders of 52.81% of shares in issue. That’s a very good start, but it doesn’t guarantee a successful outcome. They need 75% approval for the scheme.

The general meeting for the vote by shareholders is scheduled for 24 November.

Orion Minerals looks back on a watershed quarter (JSE: ORN)

The share price really tells the story

Junior mining companies are required to release quarterly activity reports to keep the market updated about the progress being made. Even if you know nothing about Orion Minerals, this chart will give you an idea of how important the latest quarter has been:

The biggest driver of this change in sentiment was the signing of a non-binding term sheet with a subsidiary of Glencore (JSE: GLN) for a financing package of $200 – $250 million. They’ve also made a key appointment of a project director and focused on further work at the underlying projects.

If you follow the company, you’ll also know that Orion has been busy with post-quarter capital raising activities. The planned raise was upsized a couple of times to the current level of roughly R99 million. Cash on hand at the end of the quarter was only around R6 million, so these capital raises are very necessary.

Quantum Foods is enjoying much better operating conditions (JSE: QFH)

HEPS shot up in FY25

Quantum Foods released a trading statement for the year ended September 2025. We knew that it was going to be a strong year, as interim HEPS was up by a rather spectacular 244%. Yes, this means that interim HEPS more than tripled!

The full-year move wasn’t nearly as impressive, but nobody is going to complain about a HEPS move of between 58% and 78%. It’s actually worth isolating the second half of the year to get a sense of the maintainable growth rate. In 2H’24, HEPS was 58.7 cents (you calculate this by substracting the comparable interim HEPS from the comparable full-year HEPS). In 2H’25, HEPS was between 52.6 cents and 68.6 cents. You can therefore see that the move in the second half of the year was very tame in comparison to the first half. At the midpoint of guidance (60.6 cents for 2H’25), it reflects growth of 3.2% for the second half.

Why is this the case? Well, it all makes sense when you look at how severely the previous period was hit by HPAI outbreaks (bird flu) and load shedding, particularly in the first half of FY24. This effect was less significant in the year-on-year growth for the second half of the year. Another reason why 2H’25 was softer is because egg prices in FY25 were 17% lower than in FY24. Despite a 79% jump in egg supply, the egg operations actually suffered a drop in profitability year-on-year because of the prices.

Thankfully, the weighted average cost of broiler feed was down 2% and layer feed was unchanged, thanks to a drop in price of soya meal that helped them offset the impact of expensive yellow maize. This is one of the reasons why the farming business was the star of the show on a year-on-year basis, with much higher layer flock numbers driving efficiencies and better cost recoveries. They talk about “much improved earnings” despite a small HPAI outbreak and other irritations like an administrative penalty related to a farm in the Eastern Cape. On the broiler side of the farming business, volumes were up and cost recoveries benefitted as a result.

In the feed business, total volumes were up 9% as volumes supplied to the external market and internally were boosted by the recovery in flocks across the country.

In the other African operations, Zambia and particularly Mozambique were difficult, with the latter impacted by civil unrest and outright theft of 16% of the birds in an incident in December 2024. Uganda thankfully has a far more positive story to tell, with earnings heading in the right direction.

Full results will be available on 28 November. The share price closed 13.6% higher on the day of results, but this was on very thin volumes and you can safely ignore that move. Interestingly, the share price is down 12.7% year-to-date and down 23.6% over 12 months.

Safari Investments isn’t wasting any time with its plan to go private (JSE: SAR)

The circular is out in the wild already

On 17 October, Safari Investments released a firm intention announcement regarding a plan to repurchase all the shares not held by Heriot REIT (JSE: HET) and its subsidiaries. In other words, this is Heriot taking Safari Investments private, but using Safari’s balance sheet. They are in a hurry to get it done, with the circular already released and the delisting date penciled in for 23 December.

Safari’s stock is highly illiquid and Heriot already owns 59.2% of the fund, so a delisting makes sense here. Another reason for the delisting is that Safari plans to undertake developments going forwards, so that makes things difficult for a REIT in terms of consistent dividends.

Irrevocable undertakings have been received from holders of 34.03% of the shares eligible to vote. This is an important point to understand. Heriot and its concert parties have 61.28% of the shares in issue, so only 38.72% of total shares in issue are eligible to vote. From that voting pool, 75% approval is required and they’ve locked in irrevocables from 34.03% (i.e. 34.03% of the 38.72%, not 34.03% of all shares in issue).

Incredibly, the fair value range of the shares is between R7.67 and R8.54, despite the net asset value (NAV) per share being R11.77 as at June 2025. In determining this fair value range, Moore acted as independent expert and used discounted cash flow and capitalisation of earnings. They took note of the much higher NAV per share and applied a market-related discount of 35.16% (based on observable JSE discounts) to arrive at the fair value.

In summary: the NAV of JSE-listed property funds is about as useful as those stapled condoms that once made headlines in South Africa. We know this already, but here it is in black and white. REITs are valued on yield and yield alone. It’s time that impairments to balance sheets were recognised to take this into account.

Nibbles:

• Director dealings:
  • To give you an idea of what truly impressive balance sheets look like, Capitec (JSE: CPI) announced a couple of transactions by the founders. Michiel le Roux executed an option transaction with a put strike price of around R2,754 and a call strike of around R5,251 (the current spot price is R4,030). The expiry date is 1.29 years on average. The options relate to 350,000 shares, or a casual R1.4 billion in shares based on the call price! Separately, an associate of Piet Mouton pledged shares worth R2.3 billion for a loan facility. What do the kids say again? Aah yes, “there are levels to this game”.
  • A director of OUTsurance (JSE: OUT) bought shares worth over R3.25 million.
  • A non-executive director of Hammerson (JSE: HMN), bought shares in the company worth nearly R180k through the reinvestment of dividends.
  • The CEO of Spear REIT (JSE: SEA) bought shares in his family investment vehicles worth R98k.
  • The CEO of Vunani (JSE: VUN) bought shares worth R4k, adding to his recent purchases.

• Canal+ has begun the squeeze-out process to acquire the remaining shares in MultiChoice (JSE: MCG). The MultiChoice listing is suspended from trading with effect from 27 October and will be terminated on 10 December (subject to final regulatory steps). For this reason, MultiChoice will not be releasing its interim results on 12 November 2025 as would otherwise have been the case.

• With shareholders having given their support to the Natco Pharma offer, Adcock Ingram (JSE: AIP) has confirmed that the listing will be terminated with effect from 11 November. The scheme consideration of R75 per share will be paid to shareholders on 10 November.

• Pan African Resources (JSE: PAN) has officially transitioned from the AIM to the London Stock Exchange Main Market. The company hasn’t issued any new shares in this regard. They’ve simple transferred the listing from the development board to the main board in a move that should help them attract larger institutional shareholders.

• Barloworld (JSE: BAW) announced that Nopasika Lila is retiring as group finance director. According to the announcement, she leaves from 31 November 2025 – a date that doesn’t exist on the calendar! Ghostly dates aside, new finance director Relebohile Sehoole will be in that role with effect from 1 December 2025. At least that’s a date that you can find in your Outlook calendar. This is an internal promotion, which is always good to see.

• Africa Bitcoin Corporation (JSE: BAC) announced that BDO has resigned as external auditor. This is because Forvis Mazars in South Africa has been appointed as auditor of the subsidiary Africa Bitcoin Strategies, which is en route to becoming a significant component of the group. BDO is looking to avoid a situation where they need to rely on an audit conducted by another firm on a large component of the group. The company hasn’t announced a new external auditor yet.