It's been an interesting week for those who follow macro trends, particularly in the US where 10-year yields rose steeply earlier this week. If you look at a chart of the Nasdaq-100 (or better yet, $ARKK) against the US 10-year yield, you'll note that growth stocks get punished when yields rise.
With voices of concern about inflation continuing to be heard, some are expecting US yields to increase towards the end of the year. That's not great news for the frothy Nasdaq-100 or for the rand, which fell to 15.20 to the dollar yesterday. I flagged a couple of weeks ago that I was worried about the rand and I was unfortunately proven correct, with factors like price declines for platinum group metals (PGM) and iron ore not doing us any favours.
In company news, Omnia rose 8.77% on the release of a cautionary announcement. No details were given around the "negotiations" that the company is busy with. Zeder issued another cautionary announcement, which marks over 4 months that the company has been trading under cautionary.
Northam Platinum grew revenue 83% in the year to June 2021 and saw operating profit triple to R16.1bn. There is no dividend despite these results, as the company reduced its issued share capital by 28.9% in the recent Zambezi deal.
AngloGold confirmed that underground ore mining at Obuasi Gold Mine in Ghana is expected to resume by mid-October, although gold production at the mine will only resume in 2022. The share rallied 4.4% on the news.
Pick n Pay has received R600m from its insurers, with a further R300m to be recovered for damage in the riots. The retailer will also try to recover loss sales of approximately R930m, which dragged down the result for the 26 weeks to end-Aug ust 2021. Sales growth was only 4.1%, although normalised sales growth came in at 8%.
In property news, Lighthouse Capital and Resilient closed the deal for four French shopping centres, in which they took 75% and 25% stakes respectively. Accelerate Property Fund released a pre-close update, noting that vacancies have risen to 16.5%, most of which are in B- and C-grade office space.
Ascendis lost another R1bn in the year to June 2021. If you exclude the debt and the entities being given to the lenders in settlement of the debt, continuing operations made just R14m in operating profit and converted just R8m into cash from operations.
Bidcorp's revenue fell 4.8% but trading profit increased 17.7%, driving HEPS growth of 21.8%. The company has declared a final dividend of R4 per share, a yield of 1.2% on the current price which is up nearly 22% this year.
Sephaku's Metier Mixed Concrete business has nearly doubled its operating profit vs. the comparable period in 2019 (pre-Covid), despite sales volumes being 8% - 12% lower, evidencing an excellent turnaround in the business. Sephaku Cement's volumes are 11% - 15% higher than in 2019, with a similar impact on operating profit.
Other than the usual
DealMakers content to round off the week, I've written on
Capitec's interim financial results in
this feature article.
Ince would also like to invite you to attend a
webinar on integrated reporting in Africa, where lessons from the South African landscape can be applied to the rest of the continent. You can
register here for the event on 6th October.
Have a terrific weekend!
The Finance Ghost
