Pepkor and Woolworths have revealed how much the government's restrictive lockdown measures cost them in sales over the past few months. With retailers barred from even online sales during April, Pepkor reckons it missed out on revenue of about R5 billion. Last Wednesday, Stats SA said retail sales plunged just over 50% during the level 5 lockdown, which restricted sales to food and essential goods only. Sales of textiles, clothing, footwear and leather goods' plunged by 94% from a year earlier.

While retailers are now doubling down on their online strategies, two companies that have benefitted from theirs are Naspers and offshore subsidiary Prosus, largely due to their investment in Chinese gaming and messaging giant Tencent.

International mobile games are increasingly important for Tencent, growing ahead of its China revenues. Ingham Analytics have taken profit on Tencent lately because of substantial growth in the share price beyond growth in expected earnings - further detail on this and Tencent developments are contained in its latest note, Tencent on top of its games.

More on that in today's newsletter, along with updates from MTN and Octodec, while Delta Property Fund has cashed in on Grit Real Estate's delisting from the JSE this week.

In The Week Ahead, Chris Gilmour reviews some of the news that influenced the direction of markets last week, including renewed tension between the US and China, and lists some of the data and results to come in the days ahead, including numbers from Kumba Iron Ore, AB InBev, Sappi and Anglo American.

Finally, in DealMakers latest Thorts column, Samantha Hogben, partner at Dentons Johannesburg, discusses the increasing use of warranty and indemnity insurance in mergers and acquisitions markets.

I hope you have a good week.

Stephen Gunnion

Managing Editor, InceConnect

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