Star 2024-06-27

Listing is the second of an expected 10 so far this year ONE OF SOUTH Africa’s best-known chicken producers, Rainbow Chicken, listed on the JSE Main Board yesterday through an unbundling from its parent RCL Foods. The listing, the second in two days for the bourse, followed RCL announcing its decision to list Rainbow in March. Rainbow’s 890.3 million shares were untraded at R4 each yesterday, and will begin trading from July 1 this year. The JSE has been struggling to attract new listings recently after only three companies listed last year. Although it predicted possibly up to 10 new listings this year, so far Rainbow is only the second after Cilo Cybin listed on the AltX board yesterday. Smalltalkdaily Research market analyst Anthony Clark said the listing of…

THE JOBS BLOODBATH in South Africa’s mining industry is likely to worsen in the upcoming months, the Minerals Council has warned. This after data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) earlier this week painted a bleak picture of the state of jobs across the mining industry. The 2024 first-quarter mining sector employment numbers declined for the first time in six quarters amid stubborn headwinds in the operating framework. The South African mining sector lost 3 000 jobs, or 0.6%, in the quarter to the end of March 2024 to 479 000 compared to the December 2023 employment data. A reversal of fortunes is now afflicting employment prospects in the South African mining sector, with job losses escalating, especially in the first quarter of 2024. South African mining companies have…

AYO TECHNOLOGY Solutions shareholders yesterday voted overwhelmingly in favour of a resolution for the firm to buy back its shares from the Government Employee Pension Fund (GEPF), which effectively finalises the settlement agreement with the Public Investment Corporation (PIC). In terms of an agreement with the government-owned asset manager, AYO had undertaken to repurchase over 17.2 million of its shares from the GEPF, for R620.4 million. The AYO and PIC settlement agreement had been made an order of court in March 2023. The finalising of the settlement left a clear runway for the diversified ICT investment group to ramp up its business, said AYO CEO Amit Makan. “This significant endorsement reflects the confidence our shareholders have in the company’s leadership team, the board and its strategic direction. “The…

SOUTH Africa has asked the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to establish two panels to probe EU Citrus Black Spot and False Codling Moth citrus regulations, which it says “are unscientific and discriminatory”. This is according to a joint statement released yesterday by the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition and the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa. The request to establish the two panels is a significant development. This is the first time that South Africa has progressed a dispute at the WTO beyond the panel state of the established Dispute Settlement Body process. The government’s representatives reiterated the legal basis of their complaints at the WTO headquarters in Geneva this week. These included the following arguments: ■ The measures…

ESKOM is managing to keep the lights on even through the winter period, despite reduced off-take of coal from suppliers such as Exxaro Resources, which said this week that it expects a 12% half-year decline in sales of the energy commodity to the power utility. Exxaro was diverting some of its local coal sales for export, it said on Tuesday. It attributed the expected interim decline in coal sales to Eskom for the period to the end of June to “lower Eskom demand linked to their internal maintenance and production” plans. However, Eskom has been keeping the lights on, avoiding lengthy load shedding, a development that has brought some respite to South African mining, manufacturing and industry companies. “I suspect that Exxaro is referring to last year’s performance for both…

THE ROYAL Group said yesterday it had been granted the right to sell seized ETG assets which a court ordered it to seize as an economic bond for the $60 million (R1.1 billion) losses and damages caused by ETG to Royal Group. ETG’s international shareholders include Japan’s Mitsui, South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation, and Saudi Arabia’s Sabic chemicals com- pany. This order was made pending the outcome of the main case. Ahead of the sale of the seized assets, Royal had been ordered to provide an immediate guaran- tee of $39m to the court, which it had done. This amount included an approximate $32m for the value at cost of security, plus a 20% margin for potential changes in market pricing. The Judicial Court of Nacala-Porto authorised…