MTN was the shining star of the market on Friday, closing 13.2% higher at R167 per share after trading as high as R175 intraday. A big part of the jump was that the Central Bank of Nigeria has granted an "approval in principle" for MTN to operate MoMo Payment Service Bank. This is key to MTN's FinTech strategy, which is starting to show real promise. If you want more details on MTN's latest performance,
refer to this article that went out in Friday's InceConnect.
Purple Group released a trading statement for the year ended August 2021 that saw HEPS almost triple to between 4.38 and 4.54 cents. The share price is up around 136% year-to-date, a purple patch of note! I w ill be unpacking the group's structure and my thoughts on the valuation in Ghost Mail tomorrow. If you want to read it,
sign up here for free. As I frequently point out, Ghost Mail is the perfect accompaniment to reading InceConnect, especially if you are serious about improving your knowledge of investments and the market.
In a significant victory for shareholder activism, Harry Smit of the Ascendis Activist Investor group has been appointed as a non-executive director on the board of Ascendis Health. To say that he laid it all on the line in the process would be an understatement of note. I didn't always agree with the approach taken, but credit where it is due! You can't drive real change without taking risks. Respect.
Redefine has confirmed a dividend of 60.12 cents per share , which means the company is paying out its entire distributable income for the year (52.96 cents) plus 7.16 cents related to taxable unrealised foreign exchange gains due to the appreciation of the rand. If I understand that correctly, it means that the fund would rather pay shareholders those gains than pay SARS. I doubt many shareholders would disagree with that approach.
When Pepkor released its initial trading statement on 5th October, HEPS growth was only disclosed as being "at least 20%" higher, which is the minimum disclosure under JSE rules. It was obviously an understatement and I flagged the strong probability of the final number being a lot higher. That's exactly what happened in the end, as HEPS is actually between 84.7% and 114.7% higher for the year ended September 2021. We now know that Pepkor is trading on a Price/Earnings multiple of around 18x.
Irongate Group has been trying hard to convince investors that there is value in the fund. After an unsolicited approach by a potential suitor, the pressure is on. The Australian fund has announced the sale of a property for a price 18% higher than the book value. This is quite obviously part of a campaign to convince shareholders that the book value understates the true value of the fund.
Today's feature articles are on
Industrials REIT and
Textainer, a nice change from some of the names you are used to seeing. There's also a brand-spanking-new episode of
Magic Markets, in which we
welcomed Duncan Lishman to the show to discuss the interesting world of competition regulation. Duncan is a competition economist, so he knows his stuff.
Have a good Monday!
The Finance Ghost
