Star 2024-07-22

Telkom’s permanent staff had shrunk by 15% by the end of its financial year to March 31, its six prescribed officers were paid 51% more and the group’s financial performance was still far from where it should be. This was according to the group’s annual report released on Friday, in which chairperson Mvuleni Qhena said that their operational and financial performance had significantly improved over the year, but were “far from where it should be.” Revenue increased 1.6% to R43.23 billion, despite tough trading conditions, while earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda), the group’s key measure of profitability, increased 5.2% to R10.04bn. Free cash flow was up 115.6% to R424 million, due to better working capital management and a 337.2% rise in pre-tax profit. Employee costs fell 4%…

Ascendis Health’s takeover and potential delisting by a consortium that includes its CEO Carl Neethling that was the subject of a Takeover Regulation Panel (TRP) compliance ruling has been called off, as there is not “sufficient comfort the transaction will complete”. The announcement saw Ascendis’s share price falling 10.13% to 71 cents on Friday. The minorities had been offered 80c a share by the takeover consortium, prior to a potential delisting from the JSE. Last week the High Court set aside the TRP ruling on the basis that it was unlawful for lack of procedural fairness towards Ascendis’s non-executive director Theunis de Bruin and Calibre Investment Holdings, an investment group headed by Neethling, and remitted the matter to the TRP. According to information received by Business Report, the TRP post…

Nigeria's Dangote refinery will hit production of 550 000 barrels per day (bpd) this year, equivalent to 85% of capacity, but it is having to increase crude imports due to insufficient domestic supplies, the plant's CEO said on Saturday. CEO Aliko Dangote said the 650 000 bpd capacity refinery, the largest in Africa, had only received five crude cargoes from state oil firm NNPC since it started operating earlier this year, instead of the 15 it expected. “That is why we went ahead and bought some Brazilian crude, we also got US crude. Any time we go to IOCs (international oil companies) they say go to brokers,” Dangote said during a tour of the facility on the outskirts of Lagos. He added that brokers were charging a $4 (about R73)…

Trade agreements between the US and African countries, such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), could undergo significant reforms after the November elections in the US, particularly if the Trump administration wins a landslide victory. This is according to US foreign policy expert Professor Michael Walsh – a senior fellow in the Africa Programme at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Agoa allows more than 30 African countries to export 1 835 types of goods to the US consumer market, and in turn affords the US access to critical minerals, product value chains, and investment opportunities in Africa. It is scheduled to expire in September next year, but there is a new bill seeking to extend the preferential trade agreement by 16 years, pushing out the programme’s expiring…

The South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB) has ordered the Steinhoff group of companies to forfeit up to R6 billion held in its bank accounts, four months after the death of former CEO Markus Jooste and weeks after Ben la Grange, the company’s former chief financial officer was arrested and released on bail. The scandal around the collapse of Steinhoff erased more than R200bn from the JSE, cost pensioners hundreds of millions of rand, with the Public Investment Corporation also losing up to R21bn in investments. South African regulators also fined the leadership of the company – including Jooste – while the company has now forfeited vast amounts in accounts linked to it. On Friday, SARB deputy governor for the prudential cluster, Fundi Tshazibana, said in a Government Gazette that Steinhoff…

Smaller companies are lagging behind their JSE-listed peers when it comes to considering climate resilience or decarbonisation initiatives because of the impact of the sluggish South African economy on operations and income statements. This was said by Nedbank Commercial Banking on Friday, which added that some companies were also not able to justify the cost of transitioning at present. Based on recent a review of 100 companies in the unit’s client base, which included companies in industries such as mining, iron and steel, coal, real estate, and agriculture with annual turnovers of between R30 million and R2.5 billion, Nedbank found varying degrees of awareness of climate impact. The Nedbank unit said larger companies and JSE-listed companies were more likely to have a robust understanding of how to transition as the…