There are director dealings, and then there are director dealings.
Prosus CEO Bob van Dijk has casually put EUR8.8 million of his own money into Prosus shares. That's nearly R160 million! Now, we can debate all day whether it's reasonable that he even has that kind of cash based on Prosus' investment track record outside of Tencent, but that's outside the scope of this point.
It certainly sends a solid message to the market and is a stark reminder of the size difference between global giants and local small caps.
At the other end of the spectrum, a divisional executive at Santova has also bought shares. It may only be a touch over R150k worth of shares, but the principle is much the same in terms of messaging to the market about the share price. Santova's share price has had an incredible run, up nearly 80% in the past year.
I wrote on Steinhoff last week regarding the substantial progress made by the company in achieving a creditor settlement. A further update has confirmed that all suspensive conditions related to the Trevo settlement have been met. The sanction hearing for the settlement proposal will be heard by the Western Cape High Court later this month. Unless there is a major negative surprise in that process, Steinhoff's disputes with creditors appear to be nearly over, which means reading SENS will no longer feel like I'm studying a LLM degree.
Kibo Energy, an obscure renewable energy company with a market cap of R235 million and far more offers in the market than bids, has announced that it will issue convertible notes to raise cash to settle outstanding fees to directors and management. No salaries and fees were paid for a 16-month period, which comes to an aggregate amount of over GBP670k. The notes pay interest at 7% and can be converted into ordinary shares.
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The first of today's feature articles is on Rebosis, a property company with two classes of shares that has become highly popular among investors with thick skins and a healthy risk appetite. It's a great example of the type of company that many choose to include in a "speculative basket" with an allocation of around 5% of their portfolios. Importantly, such a strategy usually includes many such companies in the basket, rather than betting 5% of the portfolio on a specific outcome.
The other feature article is on
Gemfields, a gemstones company you've possibly never heard of. With a market cap of R3.5 billion, it's not an insignificant com pany at all. The company has released an update on the structure through which it holds a legacy investment in a local platinum mining group, which gave me a good excuse to explain what the business does and a little bit about its history. You can
read that here.
Finally,
Chris Gilmour is back with his weekly update on the macroeconomic and political new s that is moving markets.
Read it here.
With that, we kick off a new week. Good luck!
The Finance Ghost
