Good and bad numbers from Didata, Reunert, Naspers and Brikor

ALEC HOGG: Hello, good evening and welcome to the SAfm Market Update with Moneyweb. I'm Alec Hogg.
    Detectives talk of finding the "smoking gun" at a murder scene - the evidence which proves beyond doubt who is guilty. Well, the smoking gun in the Eskom circus was an internal memo drafted by American consultant Susan Olsen back in 2007, warning that a coal-procurement crisis loomed. It was ignored. The predicted problems happened and massive damage was caused through load-shedding, brownouts and even lengthy power disruptions. Tonight we hear from the author of the report, the Texas-based Miss Olsen.
     Also Didata's Jeremy Ord, Reunert's Boel Pretorius and the inimitable market watcher, David Shapiro.
***
In the business news today, two JSE stalwarts released financial results. The shares of tech group Didata, the best bid on the market, the price rising 6% to a touch under R10/share. That's after it released a 25% jump in operating profits in dollar terms - that is, for the year to end-September. The highlight is a continued improvement in Didata's operating profit margin that rose to 4.9% from 4%. And that was in the 12 months to end-September - more than double, in fact, the 2.1% level of four years ago. We'll be talking to executive chairman Jeremy Ord in a  few moments.
    The power cables, office supplies and defence group Reunert also gave investors  a pleasant surprise. Although normalised earnings fell 21% in the year to end-September, this was better than expected and the share price there was up 4%. We'll hear more tonight from chief executive Boel Pretorius.
    And another big mover today was the media group Naspers, whose shares picked up R10 immediately after the release of a trading statement that reported core earnings there for the half-year to end-September would be up between 30 and 40%. And that's above the 476c reported in the same period last year. Headline earnings per share will rise by a similar number. Today's 4% share price improvement takes Naspers's value to just a sliver below R120bn. That dwarfs its nearest media competitors Caxton, whose market capitalisation is R7.5bn, and Kagiso Media and Avusa, who are each now worth less than R2bn, or one-sixtieth of the value of Naspers.
    At the other end of the scale, a disastrous set of results coming from one of the recent JSE listings, this time Nigel-based roof-tile and clay-brick maker Brikor. The company today warned shareholders its profit collapsed in the half year to end-August. Headline earnings will be, at best, 10% of those reported a year ago. The company's share price lost a cent to 19c on the news, valuing the business at around R100m. Ironically, that is as much as the chief executive and still-60%-shareholder Garnett Van Niekerk Parkin cashed in when he sold only 40% of the business ahead of the 2007 listing. At that time shares were 100c each. So, although Mr Parkin's bank account is still bulging, those who followed him have lost 80% of their investment. After today's profit warning that's not likely to be the last of the bad news.

• Subscribe to a daily email of transcripts from Moneyweb Radio - click here

COMMENTS

View disclaimer

 

responses to this article

Name
Subject
Comment

View disclaimer