Simon’s weekly wrap: Is it time for value over growth?

The Russia/Ukraine standoff is making lots of global news with no solution seemingly in sight. I spoke with Mohammed Nalla of moe-knows.com to get a sense of what the issues are and how he sees it potentially playing out. With Germany getting a significant portion of its gas requirements from Russia this has much wider implications, but Nalla thinks ultimately we’ll see a long-term standoff that avoids a war nobody wants. (Read the transcript here)

So far 2022 has seen some of the high-growth tech giants under severe pressure and I asked Kyle Wales from Flagship Asset Management if it’s time for value stocks over growth. His comment was that we should be careful of labeling ourselves as either growth- or value investors. He also made an investment case for two of the fallen angels: Meta Platforms and PayPal. (Transcript)

Residential real estate investment trusts (Reits) in South Africa are very few and very small, but it is a niche sector worth keeping an eye on. I spoke with Myles Kritzinger, CEO of the Reit Transcend Residential Property Fund, on its recent annual results and whether we’re starting to see a decent recovery from the pandemic yet.

Nedbank issued an improved trading update that expects to see headline earnings per share (Heps) more than double for the year ending December. While its Heps are still not at pre-pandemic levels, Carmen Mpelwane of Absa Asset Management believes local banks with mostly South African exposure are offering strong value at current levels. (Transcript)

Also this week:

Kea Nonyana of ThinkMarkets on what’s driving energy markets and related investment options. (Transcript)

And Nick Kunze from Sanlam Private Wealth on commodity miner updates and Disney as a stock. (Transcript)