Star 2023-03-02

CASHBUILD’S interim dividend fell by 32% after growing numbers of its lower income customers struggled to find the additional spending power for new builds and home improvements, the chief financial officer Shane Thoresson said yesterday, “It is a hell of a tough trading environ- ment at present. For many of our customers, they need to focus on survival, as they have been severely impacted (by the weak economy, including rising prices for food, energy and interest rates), Thoresson said in a telephone interview. The share price fell sharply by 5.1% on the JSE yesterday to close at R188, some 29.5% lower than at the same day a year before, following the release of the weak results. Gryphon Asset Management analyst Casparus Treurnicht agreed that in the retail sector, particularly for…

DOLLAR millionaires are flocking to Cape Town seeking a sunnier climate and a bang for their buck, according to The Wealth Report 2023, by Knight Frank released yesterday. The report said the city was currently the 31st place on the Prime International Residential Index (Piri), moving up a whopping 63 places in the past year from 94th. The Mother City, as it is known in South Africa, is increasingly becoming known as a playground for the international rich and famous, while also having seen a rising trend of South Africans moving away from other provinces and semi-grating to Cape Town, lured by its reputation as an area with more reliable utilities and municipal services. In 2022, between January and December, the Western Cape passed building plans worth R37…

SENTIMENT about expected business conditions in the manufacturing industry has plummeted to its lowest in nearly three years dragged down by extensive load shedding which continues to undermine business conditions. This comes as data released yesterday showed that manufacturing activity has fallen below the neutral 50 points – which separates contractionary from expansion – for the first time since September 2022. The seasonally adjusted Absa Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell sharply to 48.8 points in February, from a seven-month high of 53 points in January. In contrast, manufacturing activity rebounded to its highest in seven months in China, while it rose to a more than six-year high in Russia and remained robust in expansion though slightly declining in India. The latest South African PMI reading – conducted…

Domestic new vehicle sales rose by 1 128 units, or 2.6%, to 45 352 units, compared to last year THE AUTOMOTIVE Business Council (Naamsa) has expressed disappointment at the lack of government support for the struggling industry on the back of the energy crisis and the rising cost of living squeeze. Naamsa yesterday was reflecting on new vehicle sales performance for February, looking at how monetary policy amendment and the Budget Speech influenced the automotive industry. Naamsa CEO Mikel Mabasa said the escalating cost of living in the country was slowly putting off buyers of new vehicles as consumers have to contend with other urgent household demands. “The South African Reserve Bank’s decision to increase interest rates for the eighth time in a row is a reminder that South Africa,…

DESPITE a 36% increase in interim profit, Harmony Gold’s shares slipped yesterday after it failed to deliver a dividend as it hoards a war chest for copper acquisitions for its transformation into a global gold-copper producer. In its results for the six months ended December 2022, the gold miner reported a 36% increase in net profit to R1.9 billion from R1.4bn in the comparative period in 2022. But on the JSE yesterday the share price had recovered and gained 0.70% at R56.20 at the close. Headline earnings per share in- creased by R2.93 per share, while earnings per share rose by 31% to R2.98 per share. Revenue of R23.3bn increased by 6%, while operating profit grew 7% to R5.4bn. The group did not declare an interim dividend due…

THE SOFTENING of the key Safex prices will pare back South African farmers’ incomes, despite a higher Crop Estimates Committee (CEC) first production forecast, Anthony Clark, an independent analyst at Smalltalkdaily Research said in a note yesterday. The release of the CEC’s first production forecast for commercial field crops this week showed that the initial maize figure was better than market expectations at 15 615 million tons, or 0.94% higher, than the previous harvest. Clark said yellow maize was more than R1 000 a ton lower than the peak for late last year. And this would also place pressure on farmers given materially higher year-on-year production input costs such as diesel, chemicals and fertiliser, he said. This came from a decline reflected in overall hectares planted year-on-year of…