Unchallenged as South Africa’s most influential daily newspaper, The Star covers the heart of the nation with unequalled reporting of local, national and international news and sport. It is widely considered to be a superb advertising environment.
Its shares will be sold and the private health-care group will be delisted MEDICLINIC International’s board has accepted an offer by a Remgro and MSC Shipping consortium company to buy its shares and delist the private healthcare group in a $4.49 billion (R75.25bn) deal. Mediclinic’s board had on June 9 rejected the consortium’s offer of 463 pence (R94.35) a share (including a final dividend of 3p) on the basis it undervalued the group. However, the board said yesterday’s cash offer of 504p represented a 50 percent premium to Mediclinic’s average share price for the six months to May 25, 2022, of 337p. “We believe the proposal represents Mediclinic shareholders’ near-term value realisation. Therefore, we expect that more than the required 75 percent of the Mediclinic shareholders…
PRESIDENT Cyril Ramaphosa has confirmed that negotiations for Eskom to import surplus electricity from Botswana have begun in earnest as the energy crisis worsens in South Africa. This comes after Ramaphosa last week announced that Eskom will import power from these countries through the Southern African Power Pool arrangement as one of the measures to plug the 6 000MW electricity shortage on the grid over the next three months. Ramaphosa yesterday said the Bo- tswana government had also shown willingness to sell excess electricity to South Africa in a bid to strengthen economic and trade ties. Ramaphosa was speaking during a media briefing on the conclusion of the South Africa-Botswana Business Roundtable in Gaborone. The two-day event was held in celebration and commemoration of 28 years of bilateral economic…
THE GLOBAL oil price fell to its lowest since the war in Ukraine yesterday, shunning growing tensions between the US and China after China fired missiles in “unprecedented” drills around Taiwan. This as markets were rattled. The price of Brent crude oil fell to below $93 (R1 559) per barrel yesterday, closing on the lowest level since February when Russia invaded Ukraine. Oil-producing countries agreed to raise oil output by a meagre 100 000 barrels a day in September and warned of “severely limited” spare capacity. TreasuryONE currency strategist André Cilliers said the pumping of more oil in September, along with a surprise jump in US oil inventories and gasoline stocks, had pushed the price of Brent crude oil further down. “The oil price has been under pressure…
Sappi delivered another quarter of record earnings from strong demand and higher prices despite the backdrop of significant geopolitical turmoil, supply chain headwinds and extraordinary global inflationary pressures, chief executive Steve Binnie said yesterday. Earnings per share, excluding special items, of 39 US cents (R6.54) in the quarter to June 30 was a substantial improvement on the 5 US cents in the prior year. Strong global paper demand and pricing momentum in the quarter offset sharply rising costs and the negative impact of scheduled maintenance shutdowns at four mills, he said. However, Binnie warned, in a telephone interview, that in time there might be a limit to how much fast- rising costs could be offset by raising prices and strong sales – about 50 percent…
PAPER and packaging group Mondi is spending about €1 billion (R17.05bn) on various expansionary projects as it yesterday flagged an interim 66 percent rise in pre-tax profit boosted by higher prices due to decreased timber supplies. Mondi chief executive Andrew King said: “The performance was strong across the group in the first half of 2022. We achieved strong price realisation while maintaining tight cost control against a backdrop of strong inflationary pressures. “The expansionary projects in our continuing operations are already approved or under advanced evaluation, which we anticipate will generate mid-teen returns when in full operation. We continue to actively consider further capital investments for growth in the packaging markets in which we operate,” King said. In its results for the six months ended June 30, 2022,…
SASOL expects its annual earnings to increase by more than half in its year to end-June, as geopolitical tensions in Eastern Europe continue, resulting in higher crude oil and chemicals prices. In a trading statement for the financial year ended June 30, 2022, released yesterday, the JSE-listed global chemicals and energy company said earnings per share were expected to be between R60.59 and R63.51 compared to the prior year’s earnings per share of R14.57, a more than 100 percent increase. Headline earnings per share were forecast to increase by up to 28 percent to R50.74, an increase from the R39.53 the group reported in the prior year. Sasol’s adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation was expected to increase by between 36 and 56 percent from…
