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Banele Ginindza banele.ginindza@inl.co.za MORE than R104 billion in irregular expenditure at Transnet has come to light as the state-owned enterprise examines supposedly clean audits conducted during the state-capture years by private sector audit firms. The audits had largely misrepresented its financial position, especially on high-value tenders, the rail, port and pipeline group’s chief financial officer Nonkululeko Dlamini said at a presentation of the group’s results on Friday. This comes as the group reported a record net loss of R8.4 billion for its financial year to the end March 2021. Transnet attributes the loss mainly to the impact of Covid-19 on its port and rail operations. Further, it breached its loan covenants with an outstanding balance of R19.1bn as at September 30. Dlamini said audits by the Auditor General were still…
PARTIALLY state-owned Telkom on Friday flagged record strong earnings growth for the half-year ended September 2021, as the trading environment remains challenging. “Telkom expects to sustain its top-line revenue compared to the prior year and grow its profitability slightly ahead of revenue,” the group said. The group said headline earnings per share are expected to increase by up to 35% and basic earnings per share were likely to jump by up to 30% compared to a year earlier. “This was mainly due to a significant decline in finance charges, fair value movements and foreign exchange losses compared to the prior period,” it said. Telkom informed shareholders last month that it was pursuing a separate listing of Swiftnet, the group's masts and towers business, on the JSE. Swiftnet is a Telkom…
Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za MINING fatalities for the year had climbed to 55 by the end of last week compared with 43 during the same period last year, according to figures released by Minerals Council SA on Friday. This marks a second year of regression in the industry’s safety record; it recorded a total of 51 fatalities in 2019, the lowest number on record, and 60 last year. The mining industry experienced one of its worst weeks in the past month, with two multiple-fatalities incidents, the council said. Three workers at Sasol Mining’s Bosjesspruit Colliery in Mpumalanga died on Tuesday, following what the company described as an underground water compartment incident. A week earlier, at Harmony Gold’s Kusasalethu mine near Carletonville, a seismic event resulted in a fall of…
CASH is king for the Foschini Group (TFG) with cash retail turnover growth in its Africa business jumping by 37% in the second quarter of its 2022 financial year. TFG, which owns brands including Foschini, JET and Total Sports, on Friday said cash retail turnover now contributes 69.9% of total TFG Africa retail turnover and 79.1% to total group retail turnover. “Average approval rates for new accounts have normalised at 25 percent in the first half of the 2022 financial year, but overall credit retail turnover continues to be purposely restricted by stringent acceptance criteria in line with the prevailing economic conditions,” said the group. TFG Africa opened 54 new stores during the past quarter, while 24 stores were closed. At the end of the quarter, TFG Africa traded from…
Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za MTN Nigeria expanded its fintech, data and digital revenue during the nine months ended September 2021, despite losing 7.5 million mobile subscribers due to SIM card restrictions. MTN Nigeria chief executive Karl Toriola on Friday said the telecoms company expected the decline in the overall subscriber base to bottom out in the fourth quarter of this year as it continued to feel the pinch of the regulatory restrictions on new SIM sales and activations. MTN Nigeria is the multinational company’s most profitable African market, and has grappled with regulatory issues. It is working on shifting the perception of MTN away from that of a foreign value-extracting entity. “We expect the decline in the overall subscriber base to bottom out and return to positive net additions in…
It is safe to assume that back in July 2003 when Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning originally started Tesla Motors, they had no idea what kind of global behemoth it would morph into. Nor what a business cult symbol Tesla chairperson and largest shareholder since 2008, Elon Musk, would become. It is a massive tribute to Nikola Tesla himself, the Serbian-American inventor who died penniless even after the number of scientific contributions he brought to the modern world, to have the company named after him. With TSLA (Tesla Inc) recently surpassing the $1 trillion (R15trl) mark – yes that is $1 000 000 000 000, 12 zeros if you don’t feel like counting – interest in this share has never been greater. Comparing Tesla to…
