Cashbuild paints a worrying picture about our economy (JSE: CSB)
Where is the consumer discretionary spending?
In theory, Cashbuild should be doing well. There’s no load shedding. Interest rates have come down (a bit). The rand is getting stronger all the time. And yet, the share price fell 6.8% on Monday in response to poor sales in the second quarter.
The metric that matters is same-store growth, which they disclose based on stores that existed before July 2024. Cashbuild South Africa is the most important business (83% of group sales), so I’ll also focus there for now. Sadly, after a 5% increase in same-store sales in the first quarter of the year, they suffered a 1% decline in the second quarter. Yuck.
It gets even worse in the other segments, with P&L Hardware clearly still struggling with a drop of 11% in Q1 and 10% in Q2. Cashbuild recently acquired Amper Alles in December, so I’m hoping that business will turn out a lot better than P&L Hardware.
With the impact of new stores included, the second quarter was up 1% for Cashbuild South Africa and for the total group. The market is smarter than that though, with same-store sales as the important focus area.
The typical relationship between inflation and volumes just isn’t coming through. Inflation was only 0.8% at the end of December, yet same-store volumes fell by 1% in the second quarter. If inflation comes down and volumes don’t move higher, retailers very quickly have a bad time.
The share price is down 26% over 12 months. It rallied nicely into the end of 2025, but this update will likely take the wind right out of their sails. There’s certainly no wind in their sales!
Pan African Resources is printing cash (JSE: PAN)
Gold production is way up at exactly the right time
Pan African Resources was the fighter that I chose in the gold sector last year. My average purchase price is R8.64 per share. Currently trading at R31.52 per share, that’s a delicious 264% return!
This isn’t just because of the gold price, although that’s obviously the main driver. I loved the fact that Pan African would be ramping up gold production significantly. My thesis at the time was that the company offered a combination of gold price exposure and production upside.
So far, so good – it’s beaten the sector over the past year, although there was money to be made everywhere:
The latest from the company is an operational update for the six months to December 2025. With gold production up by 51%, they have such a good story to tell. They expect the run-rate to improve even further in the second half.
Still, it’s not a perfect result.
The first blemish on this story is that the Mogale Tailings Retreatment operations are running at roughly 10% lower than expected in terms of production. They have increased capacity and hope to see improved recoveries.
The second blemish is that all-in sustaining cost (AISC) of production has come in way above guidance. They expected between $1,525/oz and $1,575/oz, but they’ve come in at between $1,825/oz and $1,875/oz!
The stronger rand has hurt them by a substantial $115/oz, while higher share-based payments (due to the share price performance) are responsible for another $80/oz. There were a couple of other operational factors as well. They do at least expect the costs per ounce to improve in the second half, although the ongoing trajectory of the rand won’t help.
I must of course point out that the weaker dollar and the higher gold price are linked concepts. It’s pretty unlikely that we would have one without the other right now.
Looking at the balance sheet, net debt has dropped by more than 65% to below $50 million. Such is the level of profitability at the moment that the company expects to be a debt-free mining house by February 2026, an astonishing outcome when you consider the extensive recent investment in capacity (and the record dividend paid in December).
Speaking of the dividend, they intend to pay 12 cents per share as an interim dividend. This is important because it would be the company’s first-ever interim dividend. They are making so much money that they need to pay it out twice a year!
As you would expect, there are further expansion opportunities in the pipeline. They are planning to complete a definitive feasibility study for the Soweto Cluster Tailings Storage Facilities by June 2026. At Tennant Mines in Australia, various targets for further exploration have been identified.
Spear REIT may be focused on the Western Cape, the property jewel of South Africa, but that doesn’t mean that they can afford to throw capital at every opportunity that they find. Cape Town is the furthest thing from a hidden gem, as everyone knows that it is the most desirable city in the country. This means that properties in the region carry a valuation premium that can easily catch you out if you get too hot for the deal.
This is why you’ll hear management talk about their underweight exposure to highly priced retail assets, although they are still willing to do selective deals in this space (like Maynard Mall). For the most part, Spear loves industrial assets that tap into the underlying growth in the Western Cape.
Acquisitions during the 10 months to December 2025 were made at an average acquisition yield of 9.54%. This is above their weighted average cost of capital (a good thing). It’s also a reminder of how difficult it is to make money from property without a corporate balance sheet that has a low cost of borrowing. If you ask the bank for money, you’ll be doing well to get it below 9.5%.
These acquisitions have taken the loan-to-value back to 25%, slightly lower than the 27% as at February 2025. The half-year results were an anomaly of under 14% based on the timing of major disposals and acquisitions. Operating in the mid-20s is a very healthy level for a REIT and is well below many of the other players in the market.
With occupancy rates at their highest since the pandemic, Spear is executing well. They also note that tenants reported strong trading over the festive season. This is interesting, as we aren’t exactly seeing this coming through in the updates from the major retailers thus far this year. It’s important to remember that Spear’s Western Cape portfolio isn’t necessarily representative of the performance for national chains.
Having achieved distributable income per share growth of 5.7% for the 10 months to December 2025, the fund has upgraded its full-year guidance to reflect expected growth of between 5% and 6%. I went back and checked their interim results for the previous guidance, and found that it was between 4% and 6%. In other words, the upgraded guidance is a positive shift in the mid-point rather than the top of the guided range.
Spear is trading on a dividend yield of 7% and achieved share price growth of nearly 22% in the past year. That’s been a much easier way to generate returns from the Western Cape property market than the alternative of sending out rental invoices and calling out the plumber when your tenant’s taps are broken!
Nibbles:
Director dealings:
Here’s a meaty trade: an associate of a director of Dis-Chem (JSE: DCP) sold shares worth R35.4 million. The director in question is Stanley Goetsch, not a member of the Saltzman family.
The CEO and CFO of Clicks (JSE: CLS) each bought shares in the company. The combined value of the purchases is almost R2 million. Will this do anything to address the slide in the price?
A director of a major subsidiary of Ninety One (JSE: N91 | JSE: NY1) sold shares earlier this month to the value of R1.4 million. The share price has rallied significantly since then, so that must be rather frustrating.
A director of a major subsidiary of Southern Sun (JSE: SSU) sold shares worth R551k.
Fortress Real Estate (JSE: FFB) announced that Moody’s has affirmed its credit rating and its stable outlook. Access to finance and an attractive cost of borrowing are key inputs for the economics of property funds, so this is good news.
Africa Bitcoin Corporation (JSE: BAC) has appointed Maxim Group LLC as its general advisor in the US. I wonder whether they feel that the best chance for the company is to sell the bitcoin treasury company story overseas – although such things already exist there, so I’m not 100% sure what their unique selling proposition would be. I guess that’s why they’ve chosen to work with an advisor! Perhaps I’m wrong and they are going to promote the credit fund instead, which is by far the most interesting business in the group. This advice from Maxim doesn’t come for free of course. The company is paying Maxim in shares, with a fee equal to around 4% of currently issued share capital, issued in various tranches in 2026.
Mahube Infrastructure (JSE: MHB) announced in December 2025 that Sustent Holdings would be making an offer for the shares and delisting the company. Interestingly, Mahube has now announced that an entity called Five Words Capital has taken a 5.01% stake in the company. I’m not sure what’s going on in the background here, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.
When companies have significant development costs ahead and are tight on cash (like junior mining houses), they tend to look for opportunities to settle fees in shares rather than cash. Shuka Minerals (JSE: SKA) has taken this route with the issuance of shares to Gathoni Muchai Investments (yes, the investor that took forever to put in cash) and company executives in lieu of historical fees. A total of 6.56 million shares are being issued. The company will have 127 million shares outstanding after this issuance.
aReit (JSE: APO) is still suspended from trading. They are looking for a new auditor, while trying to get the previous auditors to sign off the financials for the year ended December 2023. Long-time readers will remember my somewhat blunt views on this one when it listed.
Mr Price pushes ahead with the NKD deal (JSE: MRP)
Theinvestor presentation on 17 March is going to have a spicy Q&A session
Despite considerable criticism in the market from major institutional and retail investors alike, Mr Price is pushing ahead with the acquisition of NKD in Europe.
At this stage, the major outstanding condition is approval under the European Commission’s Foreign Subsidies Regulation. Hilariously, if that condition fails, it would probably be the best near-term catalyst for the share price!
It’s unlikely to fall through though, as I can’t see why there would be any sensitive regulatory hurdles for Mr Price in this deal. This means that investors will grill management at the investor presentation scheduled for 17th March. I sincerely hope the webcast will allow for a proper Q&A, otherwise the entire thing really is a farce.
Reinet’s NAV fell 1% in the past quarter (JSE: RNI)
Thebigger questions are around the plans once Pension Insurance Corporation is sold
Reinet has been taking transformative steps in recent times. They sold their stake in British American Tobacco (JSE: BTI) in early 2025. Then, in mid-2025, they agreed to sell the stake in Pension Insurance Corporation to Athora Holding. This deal is expected to close in 2026.
What will be left, you ask? If you can imagine a bag of Liquorice Allsorts, you’re on the right track.
Based on the latest accounts, Pension Insurance Corporation is 51% of the group NAV. A whopping 32.9% of the group NAV is sitting in cash and liquid funds. Your eyes are not deceiving you – just over 16% of the group NAV is sitting in other investments (net of small liabilities and minority interests). And within that bag of sweeties, you really will find all shapes and sizes.
It’s easiest to just show you the extent of diversification by pulling this table from the latest report:
Nobody in the market is going to queue up to pay a premium valuation for such a diversified basket of random investment funds, so the real question is around Reinet’s plans for the extensive cash on the balance sheet – especially once Pension Insurance Corporation is sold.
Surprisingly (and perhaps disappointingly), there is no share buyback programme in progress. The lack of buybacks suggests that they have earmarked other uses for the cash in 2026. I hope that it will be a large acquisition that becomes the new cornerstone asset in the group.
The NAV per share of €36.24 (around R691) is significantly higher than the share price of R570. The discount to NAV of 17.5% is less than you’ll see in most investment holding companies, but that’s because such a big chunk of the NAV is sitting in cash. This discount gives further support to the argument that they should already be doing share buybacks, hence they must have something important planned for the cash as they aren’t taking that route.
Speaking of the NAV, we were given a clue earlier in the week as to the direction of travel. Reinet releases the underlying fund NAV before they release the group NAV. It’s therefore not a surprise to see a decline of 1% in the NAV per share from September 2025 to December 2025.
Valterra Platinum had a truly spectacular second half (JSE: VAL)
This is why share prices have been running so hard
All share prices are forward-looking by nature, but none more so than mining stocks. Daily moves are based on commodity prices, with financial reporting only catching up way down the line and showing us why the share price moved several months ago.
When PGM stocks started rallying in 2025, they were still releasing very uninspiring results for the first part of 2025. PGM prices were moving sharply higher, so the market knew that results in the second half of 2025 would be much better. At last, we’ve reached a stage where we are starting to see confirmation of that performance through the release of financial results.
In a trading statement covering the year ended December 2025, Valterra Platinum has flagged a jump in HEPS of between 85% and 105%. Yes, at the mid-point, that means they nearly doubled their earnings! This is for the full year, not just the second half, so it shows you how exciting the second half was. For context to just how nutty the year was, HEPS in the first half was down by 81%!
What does that look like in absolute terms? Headline earnings was R1.2 billion in the first half. In the second half, it was between R14.4 billion and R16.1 billion. Even when you think you’re numb to the effect of PGM cycles, it’s still wild to see numbers like these.
There’s an important nuance here, as the trend cannot be entirely attributed to PGM prices. In the first half of the year, flooding at Amandelbult had a significant impact on output. Although insurance proceeds of R2.5 billion were received (yet another skew to the timing), this still resulted in lower sales volumes in FY25 vs. FY24. The significant increase in PGM basket prices essentially rescued the period.
In case you’re wondering, the share price is up 178% in the past year!
Nibbles:
Director dealings:
There’s a reshuffling of the Wiese family exposure in Invicta (JSE: IVT). Adv JD Wiese’s Mayborn Investments sold R5.3 million in shares to Titan Premier Investments (a Christo Wiese entity of which JD Wiese is also a director). Some families pass the tomato sauce to each other around the table; others pass millions of rands worth of shares.
A trust linked to the CEO of Sirius Real Estate (JSE: SRE) received shares worth around R350k in lieu of cash dividends. This is part of the Dividend Reinvestment Plan (DRIP) offered by the company.
Farewell, Barloworld (JSE: BAW) – the iconic name will be delisted from the JSE on 27 January after the acquiring company utilised the squeeze-out mechanic to acquire all the remaining shares in issue.
A failed restoration turned a forgotten church fresco into one of the internet’s most enduring visual jokes. What followed was an unexpected lesson in attention, economics, and how small towns make a profit from global ridicule.
You may have heard this story before: a well-meaning elderly woman in a small Spanish town tried to restore a faded fresco of Jesus on a church wall. Due to her lack of professional training, her efforts transformed the likeness of the Son of God into something that looked more like a startled monkey in a woolly jersey.
(Images: Wikipedia)
The internet did what it always does: it laughed, it shared, it exaggerated. Within days, a botched fresco in a tiny town had become one of the most recognisable images on the web.
That part of the story may be familiar. The real surprise, as it turns out, is just how much of an effect two minutes of internet fame can have on a small town’s economy.
How it all began
The Ecce Homo fresco in the Sanctuary of Mercy church in Borja, Spain, spent most of its life in relative obscurity. Painted around 1930 by Elías García Martínez (a professor at the School of Art of Zaragoza), it was a conventional portrait of Christ crowned with thorns, in the style commonly referred to as Ecce Homo, or “Behold, the man”. Martínez was not a resident of Borja, but frequented the town on his holidays and was therefore considered a parishioner of the church. He commented that his work was “the result of two hours of devotion to the Virgin of Mercy”.
But by 2012, the paint was flaking and the compassionate expression that Martínez had captured so well was quickly deteriorating. Martínez himself had passed away only four years after completing his painting, but his grandchildren still lived in the area and were aware that the painting was coming apart. In fact, one of his granddaughters had just made a donation towards its restoration when the priest told her that the painting had already been “fixed” for free.
The “fixer” in question was one Cecilia Giménez, an 81-year-old untrained amateur artist and parishioner of the church. She wasn’t an art restorer by any means, but she was someone who painted as a hobby and therefore knew how to hold a brush. Moved by the fate of the disintegrating painting, she decided to intervene.
Is that… a monkey?
The transformation was immediate and startling. The delicate features of Christ were replaced by something rounded, blurred, and oddly expressive. Cecilia’s intention was to stabilise and repair, not to reinvent. She worked in the open, during the day, and maintained that the local priest knew what she was doing. Her approach was practical rather than technical: she repainted sections of the face, allowing them to dry before continuing. At some point, she left the work unfinished and went on holiday for two weeks, assuming she would return and simply complete it.
Instead, photographs of the unfinished altered fresco began circulating online. The resemblance to a monkey was quickly noted, and with that came a new name: Ecce Mono, or “Behold, the monkey”.
News outlets picked it up during the quiet August news cycle and social media quickly amplified it. Within days, an obscure church in a small Spanish town had become an international punchline. Local authorities initially suspected vandalism, but when they realised the changes were the result of a parishioner’s restoration attempt, the reaction shifted from anger to uncertainty. The priest who greenlit the restoration started backtracking at pace, even considered covering the fresco to stop the ridicule.
For Giménez, the experience was painful. She insisted the work was unfinished and said the public reaction hurt deeply. Had she not gone on holiday, she argued, none of this would have happened. But by then, the image had escaped any possibility of correction.
Fame to fortune
As the laughter spread, something less obvious followed: interest. People began asking where Borja was. Then, they began going there.
Visitors arrived first out of curiosity, then out of fascination. They wanted to see the painting in person, to confirm it was real, to take photos, to stand in front of something they had only known as a meme. The church, faced with a sudden and steady stream of onlookers, eventually decided to charge a small entrance fee.
Crucially, the fresco was left exactly as it was. Rather than commissioning a professional re-restoration (or allowing Giménez to complete her work), the church preserved “Monkey Christ” behind protective glass. What had first been treated as an embarrassing mistake was now being treated as an asset worth managing.
Within a year, Borja had received around 40,000 Ecce Mono visitors, an extraordinary number for a town that previously welcomed only a fraction of that annually. Entrance fees and donations to the church generated more than €50,000 for local charities in the first year. Over time, visitor numbers continued to grow, and with them, the town’s visibility.
There’s always room for merch
As the influx continued, Borja adapted. Local businesses benefited from increased foot traffic, and some even started selling Ecco Mono merchandise. The church hired additional staff to manage visitors. Donations were used for practical community needs, including support for a home for retirees.
In 2016, an interpretation centre dedicated to the fresco opened, formalising its status as a cultural attraction. Modestly priced tickets generated steady income, some of which funded care for elderly residents and (ironically) maintenance of the church itself. What made the situation unusual was not just the money, but the source of it. This was not heritage tourism in the traditional sense. Visitors were not coming to admire technical mastery or historical importance in the same way that they would admire the Sistine Chapel or the Eiffel Tower. They were coming because of a story rooted in error, humour, and the internet’s refusal to let a good meme go.
Over time, even Giménez’s relationship with the episode began to change. In the immediate aftermath, the attention had been bruising: she spoke openly about how painful it was to see her work mocked around the world, especially given that the restoration had been unfinished and undertaken in good faith. But as the years passed and the tone around the fresco softened, so did her own view of what had happened.
Giménez wanted a cut
That shift in perspective led Giménez to make a more complicated claim. As merchandise featuring the now-famous image began to generate revenue, she sought a share of the profits, arguing that her intervention was the reason the painting had become valuable in the first place. She said she wanted her portion of the income to go toward muscular dystrophy charities, a cause close to home since her son suffered from the condition.
The request was not without controversy. Questions of authorship, consent, and artistic ownership quickly surfaced. The original fresco had been painted by Elías García Martínez decades earlier; the church owned the wall; the town now benefited from the attention; and Giménez had, quite literally, changed the face of the work. Untangling who was entitled to what proved difficult enough that the town’s mayor eventually stepped in to mediate, but after a lot of to and fro, Giménez was eventually awarded49% of the merchandising profit. She died recently at the ripe age of 94, having achieved the unlikely feat of worldwide fame in the final decade of her life.
Banking on blunder
Today, this ill-fated fresco adorns the same wall it always has, but its value no longer lies in artistic merit alone (or, one could argue, in artistic merit whatsoever). Ecce Mono isn’t really a story about art gone wrong. It’s about how institutions respond when an accident turns into an asset – and how, in some cases, the most rational move isn’t to fix the mistake, but to learn how to monetise it.
About the author: Dominique Olivier
Dominique Olivier is the founder of human.writer, where she uses her love of storytelling and ideation to help brands solve problems.
She is a weekly columnist in Ghost Mail and collaborates with The Finance Ghost on Ghost Mail Weekender, a Sunday publication designed to help you be more interesting.She now also writes a regular column for Daily Maverick.
Clicks’ share price put itself on special (JSE: CLS)
The trading update drove a 6% drop on the day
Clicks released a trading update for the 20 weeks to 11 January 2026. This naturally includes the all-important Black Friday and festive periods. Although growth was positive, the market had no love for the trend.
We may as well deal with the problematic number first: same-store sales increased by 3.7%, a much softer outcome than 5.9% in the comparable period. Although a 110 basis points decline in selling price inflation was part of the reason (coming in at just 2.4% vs. 3.5% previously), the most likely culprit that set hares running in the market is the slowdown in growth in volumes from 2.4% to 1.3%.
If inflation was lighter than before, then volumes growth should be accelerating rather than decelerating.
One of the reasons for this odd outcome is a warehouse management systems issue that affected retail sales by around R120 million, particularly in the Western Cape. The group didn’t disclose total retail sales for this period, but did disclose group turnover of R19.5 billion. This systems issue therefore affected group turnover by around 0.6%. Once you split out retail turnover, it’s likely that the systems issue is the major reason for the lost ground in volumes growth. Importantly, this situation is expected to be fully rectified during February, at which point Clicks needs to claw back that market share.
As Clicks has been expanding its footprint, the total retail sales growth of 6% looks better than the aforementioned same-store sales number. Pharmacy turnover was a particular highlight, up 9%. But the market is smart enough to place greater importance on same-store sales.
There’s also a concern around margins, with Clicks flagging “aggressive competitor discounting activity” over the festive trading period. They also had record Black Friday sales. I doubt that gross margin has a happy story to tell over this period.
On the wholesale side of the business, distribution turnover was up by an encouraging 11.4% (vs. 9.5% in the comparable period). This was boosted by the strong Clicks pharmacy turnover result of course, as well as non-Clicks pharmacies that are supplied by UPD. They did lose two contracts with bulk agency distribution clients though, leading to managed turnover falling by 0.2% for the period.
Interim results for the six months to February 2026 are due for release on 23 April. In the meantime, investors will have to weigh up a Clicks share price that is currently at its 52-week lows:
Reinet’s NAV looks to have dipped slightly (JSE: RNI)
The direction of travel for Reinet Fund gives us a good hint
Reinet Investments (the listed company) always releases the net asset value (NAV) of Reinet Fund as a precursor to the release of results for the holding company. Although there are other assets and liabilities at holding company level, the fund holds the major investments and thus typically drives the direction of travel for the group NAV.
The fund’s NAV per share dipped by just over 1% between September 2025 and December 2025. It’s worth reminding you that the portfolio these days (post the exit of the long-held stake in British American Tobacco in early 2025) is just Pension Insurance Corporation and various odds and ends spread across diversified portfolios.
The share price has been choppy over the past few months, reflecting the effects of currency and geopolitical shifts rather than material changes in the value of the underlying portfolio. Investors will now wait for confirmation of the listed company NAV.
Sasol punters are celebrating (JSE: SOL)
Will it last?
There are many local investors that find themselves in an abusive relationship with the Sasol share price. The volatility is incredible, which means the good days are great and the bad days are terrible. For example, the 52-week low is R53.01 and the 52-week high is R129.09!
Sasol closed at R114.46 on Thursday (a casual 14% higher) after the release of business performance metrics for the six months to December 2025. Much of the joy is thanks to the destoning plant reaching beneficial operation in December, which means that coal quality is improving. This allows them to operate the previously closed low-quality mining sections, driving 6% higher production at Secunda Operations on a quarter-on-quarter basis. If you look at the year-on-year numbers for the six-month period, production was 10% higher!
This was accompanied by a better performance by Natref in the quarter, leading to higher fuel volumes in South Africa at better margins. This fuel performance is exactly why the Sasol share price is up 31% in the past year despite oil prices being sharply lower.
Of course, it would be too easy if everything was going well at Sasol. For example, a dip in gas supply from Mozambique has led to a significant downgrade in gas production guidance for the year.
There are also bigger problems, like the important chemicals business suffering a decline in revenue thanks to weak pricing. Chemicals Africa’s revenue is down 3% quarter-on-quarter, while Chemicals America fell by a nasty 9% thanks to an outage at Louisiana in the quarter. Chemicals Eurasia fell by 11% quarter-on-quarter due to lower volumes and prices. The picture internationally is less severe if you look over six months rather than just the latest quarter, but the reality at Sasol is that the volatility in the share price is a reflection of the volatility in the operations!
This is therefore very much a fuel volumes story, with Sasol upgrading guidance for FY26 from expected growth of 0% – 3% to a new range of 5% – 10%. They are certainly doing their best in a hostile oil price environment.
With the first half behind them, South32 has maintained production guidance (JSE: S32)
And of course, they have the magic word: copper
South32 released an update dealing with the quarter ended December 2025. This marks the halfway point of their financial year. The overall story is that production guidance for FY26 has been maintained, with operating costs on a per-unit basis also in line with guidance.
There’s a small caveat here: guidance for non-operated Brazil Aluminium is under review as there were lower quarterly volumes than planned.
On the plus side, the hottest of hot assets (copper) is doing well, with Sierra Gorda currently performing ahead of FY26 guidance. They haven’t taken the step of updating guidance yet, but things are clearly heading in the right direction.
Another highlight that caught my eye is a 58% increase in manganese production as Australia Manganese returned to normalised production rates and the South Africa Manganese operations completed their planned maintenance.
Alumina production increased by 3% for the period and aluminium was up 2%. Remember that there is an issue coming down the line, with Mozal Aluminium set to be placed on care and maintenance in March 2026 due to an inability to secure an economically viable electricity supply.
Commodity pricing has been all over the place over the past year. Although payable copper was up by a delightful 45%, alumina prices were down 22% at Worsley Alumina and 37% at Brazil Alumina. Aluminium prices were up by between 7% and 10%, depending on which operations you look at.
Helpfully, operating costs on a per-unit basis are looking good. They are generally in line with or below current guidance.
There are a number of important projects underway at South32. Aside from corporate activity like the completed divestment of Cerro Matoso in early December 2025 (nickel in Colombia), they are also busy with construction at Hermosa’s Taylor zinc-lead-silver project, as well as exploration work at the Clark battery-grade manganese deposit.
South32’s share price is up 17% over the past year. Recent momentum is very strong though, up more than 30% over 90 days.
Truworths is going from bad to worse locally, while Office UK is doing all the heavy lifting (JSE: TRU)
The Truworths Africa decline has perfectly offset the Office UK growth
The year is 2030. Office, a JSE-listed retailer, has released results. They talk about how they are just finishing off the disposal of the charred remains of that once-great South African retailer, Truworths. But it’s really just a footnote, as the group has been renamed to make sure that investors only pay attention to the Office UK business.
Cheeky? Sure. Impossible? Not in the slightest. Based on the recent trajectory of the two major segments in Truworths, this is a plausible outcome.
For the 26 weeks to 28 December 2025, a period that avoids that awkward week after Christmas where nobody knows who they are or why they are, Truworths’ group sales were flat year-on-year. That’s right folks, flat!
But if you dig deeper, you’ll see that the segmental performance continues to tell a story of divergence.
Truworths Africa suffered a drop in sales of 3.6%, although gross margin was at least slightly higher. Management continues to give primarily macroeconomic commentary, as though they are merely passengers on the South African journey. They certainly aren’t being paid like passengers, that much I can tell you.
Account sales in Truworths Africa were down 2.7% and cash sales fell by 5.8%. They talk about being disciplined with credit, yet cash sales still fell faster than credit sales. The only highlight is that online was up 23.3%, now contributing 7.4% of Truworths Africa’s sales (vs. 5.8% previously).
Perhaps worst of all, this result was suffered despite a 1% increase in trading space for the period. Not good.
In Office UK, Truworths is bucking the trend of local retailers being obliterated offshore. Sales were up 6.4% in British pounds and 7.1% in rands. As this market is far more mature in terms of omnichannel retail, online sales were up 7.5% and contributed 45.7% of segmental sales (vs. 45.2% in the prior period).
Trading space is expected to jump by between 10% and 12% for the full 2026 financial period, so they are investing heavily in space. If they are increasing space by double digits, then one would hope to see a similar increase in sales, otherwise trading density is dropping.
Surprisingly, flat group sales were enough for group HEPS to be up by between 0% and 2% for the interim period. They clearly weren’t joking about the improved margins in Truworths Africa.
Expectations for this stock are so low that the share price closed 5% higher on the day. It’s still down by nearly a third over 12 months:
Nibbles:
ArcelorMittal (JSE: ACL) is still in negotiations with the IDC regarding a potential transaction. One wonders where those negotiations lie on a spectrum of purely commercial deals through to thinly-veiled government bail-outs. Only time will tell, with no guarantee at this stage that a transaction will be announced.
RMB Holdings (JSE: RMH) renewed the cautionary related to the non-binding indicative proposal received from Atterbury Property Fund. The parties are still negotiating the terms.
Southern Palladium (JSE: SDL) made a whoopsie in its recent presentation at the Future Minerals Forum. Slide 9 in the presentation gave updated forecast financial information for the Bengwenyama Project based on a basket price of $2,000 per 6E oz. That’s a substantial 30% higher than the $1,557 per 6E oz used in the optimised pre-feasibility study. Although market prices have certainly moved up, the company isn’t allowed to do this unless there’s an updated pre-feasibility study. After getting a rap on the knuckles from the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX), the company has retracted those sections of the presentation and referred shareholders back to the original pre-feasibility study.
Labat Africa (JSE: LAB) is on the radar of many local investors this year as a potentially lucrative speculative punt. The company has applied to list R52 million worth of shares at 14 cents per share. That’s more than double the share price before the announcement, but is still well below their view of underlying asset value (25 cents per share).
4Sight Holdings (JSE: 4SI) has released the circular dealing with the proposed repurchase of R10 million worth of shares from Silver Knight Trustees at a price of 55 cents per share. The current share price is 75 cents, so that looks like a decent deal for 4Sight shareholders. It’s very difficult to get out of illiquid holdings like these, hence the discount that Silver Knight was clearly willing to accept.
Coronation doesn’t make it easy when it comes to their assets under management (AUM) disclosure. They never give comparatives in the SENS announcement, an approach that I struggle to understand. At least they are consistent – whether the news is good or bad, they still don’t do it!
A fishing expedition through their SENS history reveals that AUM stood at R786 billion as at December 2025, up 16% from R676 billion as at December 2024. They’ve also grown nicely since the September 2025 number of R761 billion.
The company produced strong results in the year ended September 2025 and the momentum seems to be continuing. It certainly helps that the JSE had the best year that anyone can remember!
AUM is the driver of earnings and an increase in asset prices is the easiest way for these companies to grow in South Africa where we struggle to achieve meaningful investment flows from our cash-strapped consumers.
Karooooo is growing, but this quarter wasn’t great for margins (JSE: KRO)
When results are released quarterly, it’s a challenge for companies during a period of investment in the business
The business journey isn’t linear, especially for fast-growing companies that need to expand and then grow into the bigger shoes before expanding once more. Karooooo has always indicated to the market that margins can vary by a few hundred basis points, but that doesn’t mean that the market is forgiving when margins go the wrong way.
For the third quarter of FY26, which covers the three months to November 2025, Karooooo grew its subscription revenue by 20% in ZAR and 27% in USD. The world is still getting used to a situation where the rand strengthened against the dollar over the year!
That’s a strong revenue story, supported by a record number of net Cartrack subscriber additions and a 16% uptick in the total number of subscribers. Look, the company has to achieve record net additions on an ongoing basis to support the growth rate, but it’s still good to see.
Accompanying this result is an upgrade to the mid-point of FY26 revenue guidance – another good sign.
But the share price closed 3.9% lower on the day, so clearly all wasn’t well.
Adjusted earnings per share increased only 11% year-on-year as Cartrack’s operating profit margin compressed from 30% to 28%. They attribute this to the investment in “incremental sales capacity” and “acquisition-related expenses to support accelerated growth” – in other words, expenses and income don’t increase at the same rate in every quarter.
Although absolutely tiny in the group context, operating profit at Karooooo Logistics increased by 7% and the margin contracted from 8% to 7%.
The group is focused on driving both sources of revenue growth: the number of subscribers and the ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). The latter is achieved through selling additional solutions to the existing customer base, like Video and Cartrack Tag solutions.
The guidance for FY26 adjusted earnings per share is between R32.50 and R35.50. The share price at ~R757 is therefore a three-month forward earnings multiple of around 22.3x. This is a demanding multiple, with the share price down 12% in the past 12 months. It hasn’t helped that founder Zak Calisto sold a sizable number of shares over the period as part of a (well-deserved) process of taking value off the table.
Quilter caps off a fantastic year (JSE: QLT)
The most important metric (core net inflows) looks fantastic
In the same way that mining companies are judged on production (as they can’t control commodity prices), large asset and wealth management houses are judged on net inflows. This is because they can’t control broader market prices, so the main driver of assets under management and administration (AuMA) that they can control is net inflows from clients.
In that regard, Quilter’s report card would definitely earn the company an ice cream from its parents (as I think back to my once-a-term Magnum as a kid). For the full year, core net inflows came in a whopping 75% ahead of the prior year. They represented 8% of opening AuMA, a significant improvement from 5% in 2024.
Things admittedly slowed down in the fourth quarter, with core net inflows up 21% vs. the comparable period, but a growth rate as high as 75% simply cannot be maintained into perpetuity.
Remember, core net inflows tell you about the rate of growth attributable to client moves, not total asset prices in the market. The growth rate that actually drives revenue growth is the movement in total AuMA, which in this case was 18% for the year. Again, that’s very good.
The Affluent segment did the heavy lifting, with strong growth rates across both the Quilter channel and the independent financial advisor (IFA) channel. Quilter has been working hard on distribution, and the results speak for themselves. In business, distribution is one of the most powerful assets you can have. Additional good news for profitability is that sales per Quilter adviser in the Quilter channel grew 12% year-on-year.
The High Net Worth segment was a less enjoyable story, with a fourth quarter net outflow based on how clients are positioning themselves ahead of the UK Budget. The UK government is pretty hostile towards its wealthiest residents at the moment. For the full year, net inflows in this segment still increased 15% year-on-year and represented 2% of opening AuMA.
The share price closed over 4% higher in appreciation, taking the move over the past year to 17%.
Nibbles:
Director dealings:
An associate of a director of Dis-Chem (JSE: DCP) sold a casual R36 million worth of shares. That’s a meaty trade.
A Richemont (JSE: CFR) executive (or director – we don’t know for sure) sold shares worth R8.5 million.
A director of a major subsidiary of Southern Sun (JSE: SSU) sold shares worth R406k.
Astral Foods (JSE: ARL) announced that the CEO bought shares worth R308k.
Numeral (JSE: XII) released results for the nine months ended November 2025. It remains a very small company, with revenue of just R1.9 million for the period. At least they make a small operating profit! They are taking steps to do far more with the listed structure, having recently recovered its stake in Cryo-Save and then moving it higher to a 51% controlling position.
Astral Foods (JSE: ARL) announced that the acting CFO for the month of February will be Henry Enslin. It really is just for the month, as Johan Geel is the incoming CFO with effect from 1 March.
AI has moved beyond experimentation. It now sits at the centre of decision-making. At the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, the conversation is clear – how can leaders use AI to drive growth, manage risk and reshape work.
In episode 2 of our Davos Debrief series, Jeremy Maggs speaks to Lyndon Subroyen, Investec’s Global Head of Digital & Technology, on why AI is a platform shift, not a passing trend, and what that means for strategy, talent and long-term competitiveness.
Hosted by seasoned broadcaster, Jeremy Maggs, the No Ordinary Wednesday podcast unpacks the latest economic, business and political news in South Africa, with an all-star cast of investment and wealth managers, economists and financial planners from Investec. Listen in every second Wednesday for an in-depth look at what’s moving markets, shaping the economy, and changing the game for your wallet and your business.
Scroll down to read the transcript of this conversation.
Also on Apple Podcasts and Spotify:
Transcript:
Intro
[00:00:00] Jeremy Maggs: Artificial intelligence is no longer a future debate. It’s a leadership decision. And in Davos at this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting, artificial intelligence is being discussed as a driver of growth, competitiveness and long-term value creation with direct implications for how organisations invest, operate, and attract talent.
Hello, I’m Jeremy Maggs. This is No Ordinary Wednesday, Investec’s fortnightly podcast on the forces shaping business, markets and economies. And this week we’re in the middle of our special three-part Davos debrief series, hearing from Investec leaders on the ground in Switzerland. Today’s conversation is about technology, AI and the future of work.
Topics that are central to the programme at Davos as leaders grapple with how innovation can deliver growth without leaving people behind. But rapid innovation also raises tough questions. How do companies capture value from AI while managing risk? How do we invest in people so that the future of work is not one of displacement, but opportunity?
And what does all of this mean for business strategy and long-term competitiveness? And today, to help us answer some of those questions we have Lyndon Subroyen, who is Investec’s Global Head of Digital and Technology. Lyndon, welcome to episode two of this Davos Debrief.
So, Lyndon, this is your first time at the World Economic Forum in Davos. How are you finding it so far?
[00:01:36] Lyndon Subroyen: I mean, it’s just been absolutely profound. It’s been a day and a half for me so far. There are well 3000 people here from 149 countries. There are 200 politicians of which 65 of them are heads of state and there’s 850 chairs and CEO’s of companies. So it is a very, very influential group of people sitting around here.
And the opportunity to listen and learn has been amazing for me. And that is the theme of Davos this year, which is “A spirit of dialogue”. So super excited.
[00:02:00] Jeremy Maggs: One of the most talked about topics this year is artificial intelligence, as I’ve referenced. Conversations spanning from ethics and governance to economic impact and productivity.
Are there sessions or speakers that have caught your attention?
[00:02:13] Lyndon Subroyen: Look, so I’ve only been able to attend a few sessions in AI. So far. Probably the best that I’ve been in has been with Satya Nadella and Larry Fink, where Satya is the CEO of Microsoft and Larry Fink, who everyone will know is the chair and CEO of BlackRock, and their conversation was really centered on the economic prosperity that we think we will find as a result of AI.
But as we are going through this process of AI shifting fundamentally from being experimental to foundational, there’s recognition that AI is a platform shift for the world, and we’ve been through many platform shifts like this before, beyond my lifetime certainty. Things like the steam engine, electricity, these were platform shifts.
The internet connected the whole world, and each of these transform society. And we’re going through that one more time
[00:02:54] Jeremy Maggs: Now Lyndon, in business, the conversation often swings between AI as a transformative efficiency tool and AI as a disruption risk. What then is your take on how leaders should be thinking about AI this year?
[00:03:09] Lyndon Subroyen: Look, I think it’s easy to get caught up in either the hype where you have a utopian view of the world, or you get caught up in a negative spiral where you’ve got a dystopian view of the world. I think it’s got to be balanced, but the world has gone through these shifts before, you know, if you track the arc of computation over a long period of time, it’s a similar pattern that we’re going through now.
So we’ve proven that if you can get to the point where you can digitise something; artifacts, people, place, things – put into some kind of information format, you power it with information technology, you can build analytical power on top of that, and it starts to create new opportunities, new jobs, new industries.
So, each of the paradigms before this, if we think about in business with mainframes and PCs and servers, mobile and internet, that did exactly the same thing and we’re going through that paradigm right now.
So, I would encourage business leaders to just try and learn from history and look at what happened and we’ll go through the same shifts all over again.
If we go back to your point around disruption, I would guess 40, 50 years ago in big companies, you had pools of typists whose sole job it was to just type, and now every day 4 billion people wake up and they start typing. That didn’t create job destruction. It created more opportunity and more industries.
So, I think more of that is going to happen.
[00:04:22] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, Lyndon, the balance then between opportunity and risk comes up a lot. So how then should businesses think about balancing the urgency to innovate with the need to manage risk?
[00:04:33] Lyndon Subroyen: The key point there is very much balance. One of the talks I was in this morning, somebody likened human nature being a pattern that always goes in repeat, and he likened what he is concerned about with AI to the development of cars.
He described it quite simply, as you know, at first humans built cars, then we made them go really fast, then we had a crash, and then we realised we needed safety measures. He was concerned that we’re going to do the same thing with AI. We had great breakthroughs, now we’re going to try and make it go faster and be more powerful and we’re going to have a crash and then we’re going to try and implement safety measures.
So I think everyone is erring on the side of trying to be more balanced so we don’t default to the human behaviour that we normally would like building fast cars and then realising way after we need seat belts and airbags.
[00:05:12] Jeremy Maggs: So, when you look at AI and how it’s being adopted, are companies investing in the right capabilities or do you think many are still chasing the hype?
[00:05:22] Lyndon Subroyen: Look, there’s this idea that for new technologies to really have an impact, they’ve got to go through this process of diffusion into society. And there are three main players in that. There are the people who are bold, in this case, the people who are building and designing the models and training them and making really smart AI.
Then there are people who build infrastructure and the providers, all of this. And then there are the people who use it, the individuals and the companies. At the moment obviously most companies are on the side of being consumers of this technology. The technology won’t get to scale and add value if it doesn’t go through this full diffusion into society in the way that I’ve just described, where the frontier builders, the infrastructure providers and the users all understand where to prioritise the investment and how to use all of this safely.
And it is going to come down to learning skills and education.
[00:06:06] Jeremy Maggs: Now our central theme at Davos this week is investing in people, building resilient workforces and upskilling. So, in a world of AI, what should in your opinion, leaders be prioritising when it comes to workforce strategy and talent investment?
[00:06:21] Lyndon Subroyen: Technology intersects with investing in people in two ways. One is in skills and the others in jobs. So, AI will displace some jobs, but it’ll also create new ones. A major point now is, for me, it’s about retraining programmes. So, what we are hearing a lot in Davos at the moment in the sessions I’ve been in is the focus should be on how to prepare workers for an AI-augmented economy.
So, the idea of humans plus AI working together is where we need to direct our attention. So, if I give a practical example, that’s universally applicable, if you had a doctor who could spend more time with his patients because he’s got an AI agent alongside him capturing the notes, updating all the medical history, providing the input and the right codes into the medical claim system.
The entire ecosystem of medical servicing becomes better, and doctors get to spend more time with the patients. Patients get a much better service. So that kind of very simple idea of augmenting people with AI, with universal impact is how I think jobs will start to evolve going forward.
[00:07:16] Jeremy Maggs: So, Lyndon, if we look ahead to an AI-augmented workplace, which skills do you think will matter most?
[00:07:23] Lyndon Subroyen: I’m always going to say creativity and critical thinking because I think what we are finding now very clearly is the technology is able to do what we needed to do pretty accurately.
So, I remember a conversation with Bill Gates many, many years ago where he described his attempt to try and understand the difference between a Word document, a webpage and an application, and as somebody who builds software and somebody who’s built a lot of the computing capability, he couldn’t understand why these things had such different paradigms. Where we are today is you can describe something in a Word document and realise you actually want that to be interactive.
You ask the AI to convert that to a webpage and it’ll do it, and then you want it to be much richer. You can then ask it to convert the webpage into an application. So, this is all going to be powered by your creativity, and I think that’s the kind of skill that we need to be harnessing because the actual STEM skills are going to become easier to deploy now with AI. It is really a democratisation of technology in a way that we have never seen before.
[00:08:17] Jeremy Maggs: How do organisations then avoid scenarios where tech progress outpaces people’s ability to actually engage with it?
[00:08:26] Lyndon Subroyen: I think we’ve always run this risk of technology progressing faster than people can adopt it, but we’ve always found a way to catch up.
I think there’s always going to be some frontier technology, some leading-edge technology that’s being built that through the normal curve of adoption: you’ll have some early adopters, you’ll have people will be fast followers, people will then bring it into the mainstream and you’ll have some laggards.
So, I don’t think this is any different to that. I think there are some nuances today in that the world is more technologically savvy. I remember I grew up in South Africa and there was a direct correlation between your ability to be skilled in tools like Excel and a computer and your ability to therefore get a good job.
When mobile came about, that became pretty ubiquitous. There wasn’t such a correlation any longer, and the technology was adopted much quicker. So, I think the pace of this technology adoption is improving, and I think we’re seeing that with AI as well.
It is going to become more ubiquitous. It will be adopted faster, but there will always be a segment of the technology that’s outpacing mainstream human adoption, and I think that’s okay cause that’s what development progress is all about. We want that.
[00:09:23] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, let’s move on. Another long running debate, and one that I think is front and centre at Davos is the future of work. So, beyond jobs lost or created, do you have a view on how businesses need to adapt their operating models to succeed in this fast-evolving environment?
[00:09:43] Lyndon Subroyen: I think it’s fair to say all successful companies continue to evolve. They wouldn’t be around today if their culture didn’t evolve, if their operating models didn’t evolve based on the context in which they’re operating. So, the geopolitical climates, the technology advancement, the need of the consumers, the customers, their clients. If businesses don’t evolve, they don’t stay alive. This is going to be a similar challenge.
I like to draw comparisons to very simple scenarios to help me understand this on my own. So if I think about many of the senior leaders who are here at Davos this week, no doubt, 5, 7, 10 years ago, probably two years ago, in their preparation for it, they would have had a series of meetings lined up, lots of one-to-one engagements with different counterparts. For each of those counterparts their teams would be producing briefing notes for them. I’m pretty certain today these C-Suite executives are producing their briefing notes for themselves and they’re sending it to the rest of their teams.
You know, “I’m meeting so and so from this company. Here’s all of our bilateral interactions with each other. Here’s their strategy. Here’s where our strategy intersects with theirs, and here’s what my conversation’s going to be”.
That can be created now pretty easily. So, you see an inversion of the flow of information where you used to have this bottom up flow up to the C-suite. You now have a pretty flattening of the structure where the information could flow around, and we can start to think about different value creations.
So that’s an example of an adaptation of companies as AI starts to infuse itself into the organisations. There’s going to be job displacement. Let’s not kid ourselves about this, but in every major technology advancement with job displacement has come massive new job creation. You can look back in history going back a hundred years, and you’ll see that take place.
The same is going to happen here, so we already can see new skills that are required for today, not even the future, for today, in order to just keep our companies competitive. In an AI-driven world that is so heavily dependent on technology that requires a much more secure estate. You know, one of the things we haven’t spoken about, you and I here, is the threat that comes with technology advancements.
But all of these create new opportunities for roles and jobs and people to develop new skills.
[00:11:44] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, let’s discuss those threats then. What’s important for leaders to understand about the risk side of rapid technological advancement?
[00:11:51] Lyndon Subroyen: Look, what we do know, every major technology advancement creates an opportunity for threat actors, criminals to also adopt this technology and use it for their benefit.
One of the big themes of Davos this week is cyber-crime and cybersecurity and what we know for sure is that it has shifted now from a focus on cyber as a tool for crime to cyber as a tool for disruption and espionage.
So the intersection of the conversations taking place in the sessions I’ve been in so far, and I’m sure will continue, is the intersection between the advancement of AI, the geopolitical landscape today and how those two are becoming drivers for heightened cyber activity, cyber-attacks, and therefore how we’ve got to leverage all of those together to try and ensure we stay secure.
You know, cybersecurity used to be a technology-focused area. Now it’s very much a boardroom issue. It used to be for a while where certain industries paid attention to it. Now it’s a societal issue. You know, there is no society today if we can’t keep all of our infrastructure secure, and that’s the world we live in. And so I’ve been in a few sessions on it this week, and I’m sure it’s going to continue for the rest of the week.
[00:12:58] Jeremy Maggs: There’s a strong governance thread running through AI discussions this week, as I understand it. Ethics, accountability, transparency, regulation. From your perspective, what’s the right approach to risk and governance when deploying AI at scale?
[00:13:15] Lyndon Subroyen: If we go back to earlier on, I spoke about the diffusion of AI into companies and society -the three major plays in it, the people who produce these advanced AI models, the frontier models; the people who then build infrastructure in which these things run on; and then the consumers of it. I think the ethical and secure use of AI has to be applied in all of those layers. We’ve got to have security built into it. We’ve got to have good ethical boundaries built into it. We’ve got to have kill switches built into it. And at each of those layers, we’ve got to make sure that we don’t just rely on what was there before.
We layer even more guardrails on top of it, which is how we think about it in corporates. And I would encourage everyone across public, private, and in private, the producers and the consumers to think about how they can collaborate across all of those areas to make sure that we advance safely.
[00:14:01] Jeremy Maggs: Investors are increasingly looking at technology, not just as a productivity tool, but as a growth engine. So where do you see the most compelling opportunities right now, not just for tech firms, but for businesses embracing technology more broadly?
[00:14:15] Lyndon Subroyen: We are in the middle of probably one of the most consequential moments in the world.
If I take the geopolitics and put that aside, if I take the fact that economic and trade boundaries are being redrawn and put that aside, I think technology advances right now, both, I’ll use the term “threatened prosperity and pain”. So I think if we look at the upside and the downside of us getting this right or wrong, it’s no wonder that there’s so much focus on investors on how to get the best out of it because we need to get the best out of it.
In the last 12 months alone, one and a half trillion dollars have been invested in new technology. If this is applied in the right way, it is going to be the driver for growth over the next decade.
I don’t think you’re going to see the same kind of capital expenditure continue for the second half of this decade, but the fact that we’ve put in place all of these foundational capabilities now the focus is how to leverage it safely, how to deploy it, how to diffuse it, I keep using that term, into societies in the right way. That will be the driver for economic growth, and I remain completely optimistic that that’s the outcome we’re going to get.
[00:15:11] Jeremy Maggs: So, a follow up to that, are there particular sectors that are especially well positioned to benefit from the AI transition?
[00:15:20] Lyndon Subroyen: I can’t think of a sector that is not positioned well to benefit from this. Whether you’re working in the medical sphere, in retail, in manufacturing, and financial services and technology, every one of those are being not just disrupted but advanced faster than ever before because of this.
[00:15:36] Jeremy Maggs: And when it comes to emerging markets, particularly here in Africa, do you see them primed to leapfrog or is there a risk that they will fall further behind?
[00:15:47] Lyndon Subroyen: A term that I’ve heard quite a lot over the last few days is the Global South, which is, I guess a friendlier way to describe emerging markets these days. The investment being made by the large technology providers spans not just the developed world, but into the emerging markets as well. I have seen the adoption of this keeping pace in emerging markets.
Certainly, in the countries that we operate in, and I suspect because they have less legacy, they have an opportunity now to leapfrog some of the more developed economies because they don’t have to go through the same learning processes and infrastructure buildouts to get to where developed economies are today.
So, I suspect that they will likely leapfrog a couple of steps in their own development and get to the point where they are cutting edge, bleeding edge. I really like what’s happening out in the Middle East where they’ve made conscious decisions that they’re going to be leaders in AI and because they had no other legacy behind them. They just went straight to the outcome they wanted, and my hope is that that is what continues to happen in emerging economies.
You’ve got consumer bases that are large, they are modernised, they are completely digital in most cases because of mobile phones and the ubiquity of the internet, and they’re not afraid to adopt these technologies.
I think it’s up to governments and business leaders to help drive the change in society.
[00:17:04] Jeremy Maggs: So, as Davos unfolds then with sessions on AI, people-centered innovation and the future of work, what’s the single question you think that leaders should be asking themselves as they head back to their organisations?
[00:17:19] Lyndon Subroyen: So, at the start, I said the theme for Davos this year is “A spirit of dialogue”. I think business leaders, public sector leaders, will have to understand how as AI diffuses into society, they will need to evolve. So, the way that we work and workflow will change. That means that firms and government societies will have to change. That means education systems will have to change.
But the best way to understand the change that is needed here is by having these conversations with each other. So, I’m a big proponent of the public-private collaboration to try and get these changes through. And in the spirit of dialogue, I think them working together will come up with the best answers.
[00:17:59] Jeremy Maggs: Lyndon Subroyen, Global Head of Digital and Technology at Investec, thank you so much for your insight from Davos.
In our next episode that drops on the 23rd of January, we’ll wrap up our series with the key takeouts from this year’s meeting. Until then, thank you so much for listening to this edition of No Ordinary Wednesday, and remember to follow Investec Focus Radio SA wherever you get your podcasts.
And if you like the channel, please take a moment to rate it and share it as this is going to help us reach more listeners. Until next time, goodbye from me, Jeremy Maggs and the entire focus radio team.
[00:18:38] Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the contributors at the time of publication and do not necessarily represent the views of the firm and should not be taken as advice or recommendations.
Investec Limited and subsidiaries, authorised financial service providers, registered credit providers, and long-term insurer.
BHP had a strong start to 2025 and is singing a bullish tune (JSE: BHG)
Importantly, they feel more confident on copper guidance
As we know, copper is all the rage at the moment. In an update for the six months to December 2025, BHP highlights that there was a 32% increase in copper prices. That certainly does the job, with a 4% increase in iron ore prices as further good news.
You still have to mine the stuff of course, something that BHP seems to be doing rather well. Based on the first-half performance and the outlook for 2026, they’ve raised the midpoint of copper guidance. This is an important step in maintaining the support of the market for the extensive efforts in copper.
In iron ore, the Western Australia Iron Ore (WAIO) business achieved record production and has given the group a strong foundation as they head into the traditionally wet third quarter. You may recall that they also announced a deal with Global Infrastructure Partners that should unlock capital tied up in WAIO’s inland power network.
Steelmaking coal and energy coal both increased as well.
Looking to the future, the Jansen potash project in Canada is on track for production to start in mid-2027. In a separate update on the day, BHP noted that the cost estimate for the project has been increased from $7 billion to $7.4 billion. That’s not ideal obviously, with inflationary pressures clearly coming through here. With around 18 months still to go on this project, the risk is that costs come in even higher than the revised expectations. There are also risks of delays, even though the project is 75% complete at the moment.
Based on the updated expectations for Jansen, the project has an internal rate of return of 7.9% to 9.1% (is this really enough, even in hard currency?) and a payback period of 11 to 15 years. This gives you insight into how difficult the capital allocation decisions are, as they need to invest on a through-the-cycle basis.
Although the production story is bullish overall in terms of volumes, the unit cost guidance is unchanged for all assets. This is another indication of inflationary pressures coming through the system.
Unsurprisingly, Merafe’s production has fallen through the floor (JSE: MRF)
This is what happens when your smelters are suspended
The ferrochrome industry is in crisis. Smelters are struggling to be economically viable, as they are high energy users and Eskom is taking no prisoners in terms of energy costs. A stable financial power utility is good news for South Africa, but it has really tightened the screws on industrial users.
With smelters suspended from operating in this environment as they would be losing money, Merafe’s attributable ferrochrome production from the joint venture with Glencore (JSE: GLN) fell to almost zero in the quarter ended December. They literally managed attributable production of 0.1 kt vs. 70 kt in the December 2024 quarter. The year-on-year decline may be 63%, but that isn’t even getting close to telling the real story of what will happen with more quarters of negligible production.
Attributable chrome ore production was up slightly at 222 kt, which means the annual result of 932 kt was almost 2% lower on a year-on-year basis. They attribute this decrease to temporary equipment breakdowns.
PGMs concentrate production was 4 koz, up from 3 koz in the December 2024 quarter. The full year result of 15 koz was higher than 2024 at 14 koz.
The share price is down 26% in the past 12 months. The only reason it isn’t much lower is that the market is hoping for a resolution of the energy issue with Eskom. As the saying goes: hope isn’t a strategy.
Nibbles:
Director dealings:
A director or senior executive of Richemont (JSE: CFR) sold shares worth around R10.7 million. This is Switzerland we are talking about, so the announcement doesn’t include the name of the person involved. There was another share sale announcement by Richemont, but it looks like it relates to the sale of share options with no indication of the taxable portion.
The CEO of Sirius Real Estate (JSE: SRE) sold shares worth around R5.5 million. It’s a small portion of his stake, but still a significant sale when viewed in isolation.
The CEO of Spear REIT (JSE: SEA) has bought more shares for his family, this time to the value of R85k.
A director of a major subsidiary of Stefanutti Stocks (JSE: SSK) bought shares worth R42k.
Here’s an odd one that you certainly won’t see every day: two directors of Visual International (JSE: VIS) have partially reversed a trade with each other. The reversed trade has a value of R500k. And no, the website still doesn’t work.
Araxi (JSE: AXX) – previously known as Capital Appreciation Limited, in case you’ve forgotten the change of name – has renewed its cautionary announcement regarding a potential acquisition of a controlling interest in a payment services business. The payments segment is certainly the area of the business they should be focusing on expanding, as the other major segment in the group (software) has been a detractor from the story rather than a strong element of the bull case. At this stage, there’s no guarantee of a deal happening.
Raubex (JSE: RBX) is another company that has renewed its cautionary announcement. They are considering a disposal of Bauba Resources (either the entire stake or a portion). The wording is deliberately vague as they are giving themselves maximum flexibility. I think getting out of that asset would be beneficial to the investment case.
Alphamin had a strong 2025 despite security challenges (JSE: APH)
And the share price has rewarded those who took a punt
To say that Alphamin has been on a choppy journey would be an understatement. Check out this share price:
There’s clearly plenty of money that could’ve been made along the way, but it’s also possible to have bought the early peaks and been flat for the past few years. Also take note of the horrible dip in early 2025 in response to security fears in the DRC. The share price is up more than 2.2x since then!
This recovery has been driven by the only thing that investors want to see: tin coming out of the ground and producing cash. The security risks are never zero, which is why African mining businesses tend to trade at valuations that consider the risk. But as cash is banked and the balance sheet is shored up, investors breathe a collective sigh of relief – and pay more for the shares.
Alphamin has now released the results for the year and quarter ended December 2025. FY25 tin production was up 7% and sales volumes increased 4%. But thanks to a 13% jump in the average tin price achieved, EBITDA was up by a juicy 25%. Remember, this was despite the security issues in March/April that led to a suspension in operations. Shareholders will be more than happy with that!
Looking at Q4 vs. Q3 as a measure of momentum, tin production dipped 4% and sales were down 2%. The average tin price rose by 12% though (yes, quarter-on-quarter!) and so EBITDA increased by 13%. Production will always be volatile if you isolate each quarter, as mining isn’t exactly flipping burgers.
The encouraging element of this update is the momentum in the tin price and what this means for earnings, while recognising that FY25 was a strong year overall despite such challenges.
Alphamin’s cash balance improved from $30 million to $56 million over 12 months. Their next dividend decision will be made in April 2026. Naturally, the current trajectory of tin prices is bullish for cash payments to shareholders. They just need that trajectory to continue.
On the exploration side, recent drilling at Mpama South and Mpama North has delivered disappointing results. Although this doesn’t affect near-term cash flows, this is something investors will need to consider in terms of the longer-term value of the project and the valuation that it trades at.
Here’s another thing investors need to think about: CEO Maritz Smith has decided to retire after more than six years. The current CFO, Eoin O’Driscoll, will step up to the CEO role. JP van Staden, previously the CFO of the operating subsidiary in the DRC, will take the group CFO role. It’s always good to see internal succession like this.
Sibanye-Stillwater plots a way forward with lithium (JSE: SSW)
A staged approach is preferred for the Keliber project in Finland
Sibanye-Stillwater can certainly breathe a sigh or two of relief at the moment. The incredible PGM rally as a follow-on to the gold rally has delivered a share price return of a whopping 320% in the past year. And if you can believe it, the return over 5 years is just 12%! When people talk about cyclical companies, this is the kind of business they are referring to.
With the core business printing cash at the moment, Sibanye can afford to dedicate more time and attention to some of the other investments in the group, like the Keliber lithium project in Finland. These projects are all about careful planning, particularly in the context of market conditions.
The cold commissioning of the fully integrated project is on track for Q1 2026 with a total capital investment of around €783 million. But the real focus is on the plan for the ramp-up of the project and pathway to production, with a staged approach agreed between Sibanye and its partner in the project, Finnish Minerals Group.
This partner, owned by the State of Finland, intends to participate in further equity funding on a pro rata basis in terms of its existing stake of 20%. This is a strategically important project in the EU. Given the geopolitical environment at the moment, anything that improves European independence from other major regions will be given priority.
What does a staged approach really mean? Essentially, they are maintaining maximum flexibility and moving carefully through the pre-operational phase. This includes engaging with potential strategic off-takers as well. If you can imagine a game of hide-and-seek, this approach means checking each room carefully and plotting your move into the next one, rather than charging through the house to see what might happen behind the curtains.
Nibbles:
Director dealings:
An executive of Investec (JSE: INL | JSE: INP) sold shares worth R4.5 million.
A director of Dipula Properties (JSE: DIB) bought shares worth R167k.
Europa Metals (JSE: EUZ) will pay a return of capital to shareholders in February 2026 after shareholders approved the payment at a general meeting. The amount is 21.993 cents per share.
Numeral (JSE: XII) has confirmed that the 10:1 share consolidation will be completed by 2nd February. This is an important step to take the company out of impractical “penny stock” territory where there isn’t a practical bid-offer spread.
Priscilla Msimanga made the leap that so many dream of, yet few are willing to make: leaving a big corporate role and shifting into the grinding world of entrepreneurship. To add to the intrigue, she bought a Shell forecourt and stepped into specialist retail.
From managing staff to complying with petroleum regulations, the learning curve was steep. Drawing on her corporate experience, her love of sales and her passion for service, Priscilla rolled up her sleeves and did everything – from pumping fuel to serving food.
And yes, that means there’s a food truck to go with this great story!
On episode 7 of The Finance Ghost Plugged in with Capitec, Priscilla tells us more about her leap from corporate life to entrepreneurship.
Episode 7 covers:
Her corporate background and why she wanted to do something of her own
How she prepared before leaving corporate
Finding the right forecourt to buy
The retail strategy of a forecourt and adapting to local consumer tastes
Why hands-on involvement matters for success
An honest look at the short-term financial impact of leaving corporate and starting a business
The Finance Ghost plugged in with Capitec is made possible by the support of Capitec Business. All the entrepreneurs featured on this podcast are clients of Capitec. Capitec is an authorised Financial Services Provider, FSP number 46669.
Listen to the podcast here:
Read the transcript:
The Finance Ghost: Welcome to this episode of TheFinance Ghost plugged in with Capitec. What a wonderful podcast season we are having. We’ve spoken to some really interesting entrepreneurs doing all kinds of different things.
We’ve covered retail, we’ve covered restaurants, we’ve covered pharmacy. We’ve covered a whole bunch of things, and today we are doing something completely different.
What I’m particularly excited about with this podcast is that we will be speaking to someone who has done something that so many people dream of, and that is to leave their corporate job and go off and either start a business or acquire a business.
So many of the other people I’ve spoken to on this podcast season, they either started the business quite young or they’d been entrepreneurs for a very long time. Whereas for Priscilla Msimanga, the owner of Shell Boksburg Motors, this is actually quite new for you, which I think is great! A nice fresh journey into entrepreneurship, having left the typical corporate jobs and very senior roles.
So, Priscilla, thank you so much. Really excited to just get to know you and to talk about this. Because, as I say, I think what you’ve done is something that many people, when they’re sitting in traffic on the way to work, fantasise about doing. So, congratulations!
Priscilla Msimanga: Thank you! Good morning, Ghost, and good morning to your listeners. Thanks for having me.
The Finance Ghost: No, it’s great to have you. Let’s jump straight into that path that you have travelled, and then we’ll talk about the business that you own today.
So, let’s just get a backstory here. What was your career before you decided to get out of corporate and go into entrepreneurship?
Priscilla Msimanga: It was a weird sort of career, right? So, I studied business engineering, but I ended up in IT about 20 years ago – by chance, because I’m one of those people who like taking risks. So, I went into IT.
I got to move into SAB (South African Breweries) after being headhunted, and went into Head of IT (well, not Head of IT, but sort of Service Operations Manager, which is a Head of IT at a smaller scale) for a site, which was Egoli. That’s where my journey started, with IT, until three years ago when I decided I needed to pursue my love.
I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart. I’ve always been that person who grew up in the dusty streets of Sebokeng, selling stuff. My mother never had a job. She made jobs by selling, and had a spaza shop, so that’s where the passion came from.
From a corporate perspective, I grew up in the ranks and became Head of IT for a multinational in Cape Town. Two multinationals, actually – by the time I left, I was a Head of BSS (Business Support Systems) for MiX Telematics, and before that, I worked for Philip Morris.
But MiX Telematics was more of a contract role, because I had started on the journey of, “I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to build a legacy, as opposed to being an employee.”
So, yeah, that’s kind of my journey. Loved corporate, loved IT, loved doing it. Loved the interaction with people – that was my passion. My last VP actually said to me, “You are more of a marketing person than an IT person.” I was like, “Yeah, maybe I am!”
So, yes, that’s how I started my journey. It wasn’t easy leaving corporate, because of the security around where your next salary is going to come from. I’ve grown quite a bit. I have a growth mindset. Studied quite a bit – you don’t have to pay for it, they actually pay for it. So, it was quite easy to do that.
It wasn’t a very easy decision to say, “I’m going into entrepreneurship,” but I was pushed more about building my own legacy and actually being an employer, as opposed to being an employee.
The Finance Ghost: Absolutely, I love that story. So, I always laugh – there’s this standard joke that goes along the lines of, “Instead of working 40 hours a week for someone else, I want to work 60 or 70 hours a week for myself!” Because entrepreneurs, of course, have gone through the long hours. They understand this. I’m sure that’s been your experience as well (although it doesn’t sound like your jobs were exactly 40 hours a week to start with). But I think there’s a good underlying point there around what it’s like to go from corporate into an entrepreneurial environment, and actually deal with that adjustment.
I love the reference there to taking risks, and that informal economy experience when you were growing up. It’s amazing how those experiences shape what people do later in life, it really is. And it comes through as you speak to entrepreneurs. They all have a relatively common thread that goes through their backstories around either their parents were hustlers, or they were, or it’s side gigs, or it’s holiday jobs, or it was something at high school. Something triggered an interest for them, and then it’s stayed with them.
And that comment you made about being more of a marketing person, I also really like that. Because if you work for yourself, you work in sales. Primarily, you work in sales. You’ve got to keep everything else going, all the operational stuff, but you’re a salesperson.
So, well done on making the leap. I think that’s fantastic. How did you actually make the final decision? Because, as you say, it’s not an easy thing to do, it’s not an easy decision to make, especially with large corporates.
It is quite a nice safety net, and like you say, lots of opportunities to grow, to study further. When you get to that level, you’re leaving behind quite a lot, and I think that’s what stops people from doing it.
So, what was the final decision for you? What made you say, “That’s it, I’m out of here. I’m leaving corporate”?
Priscilla Msimanga: Age. And moving to Gauteng. This was weird, how this came about, right? A friend of mine, while I was busy with a presentation for the ExCo, said to me, “There is a site in Leeu-Gamka.” Leeu-Gamka, of all places!
She kept on pestering me, and I was like, “Okay, let me just do this for them, let me get it out of the way,” because she had already acquired one. And two years later, then the process started, right?
And I’m still working. And I’m like, “Maybe let me pursue this,” and it started being interesting. I don’t know this, and I want to see what this has got for me. Because I always took risks, I was like, “I’m going to go for it.”
And that was the time when I made a decision, “In two or three years, I must be out of corporate.” I had to move to Gauteng in…2023? 2022, actually, and then I got to do the job with MiX in 2023.
But during that time, when I got into MiX, it was already set up. It was just getting a site and getting in there and starting the business, because I started in 2024. I was appointed in 2024 very early, around Feb. So, yeah, that’s how it started.
It was more of a push that, “You’ve got to go. Now it’s time.” Because I put it off, from the age of 27 until later in life. That I needed to go. So, until later in life, I’m like, “If I don’t do this now, I’ll probably never do it.” And then I just decided not to go for corporate anymore, and to pursue this full time.
The Finance Ghost: So, the one thing there that’s so interesting, Priscilla (and it’s, I think, also in my own experience, so true) is that kind of two- to three-year runway from when you decide, “Okay, it’s time to go.” It’s almost impossible to then do it straight away. You’ve still got to actually give yourself runway.
And two to three years is pretty common, actually. I think mine was even longer than that. I had this spreadsheet on my computer for a very long time, called ‘Escape Plan’.
And ‘Escape Plan’ was basically me making sure that whenever I added a monthly overhead, I used to put it on the Escape Plan and be like, “Look, is this an overhead where there’s no flex? Is this an overhead that can go away if it needs to? And then, what would I have to earn in order to escape?”
And people think people just wake up – they look at a successful entrepreneur, and they go like, “This guy or this lady just left corporate one day, and it worked.” It’s not actually how it works. You’ve got to plan for this thing, and you’ve got to adapt your life to it. You’ve got to get ready for it. Maybe we can chat about that just now.
But what I would like to understand is, you talk about these sites being ‘ready’, so this is the decision to go into fuel retail, these forecourts. As I said earlier, Shell Boksburg Motors – that’s you.
From Cape Town to Boksburg, that’s a reasonably unusual path (I think the other way around is more common, let’s be honest). So, from Cape Town to Boksburg you went, and you went and got this forecourt site.
How did this happen? How did the sites become available? What was the situation to be able to get one, to qualify? What was the backstory that got you to say, “Not only am I leaving corporate, I’m going to go and acquire a petrol station”? Which is a really interesting thing to do!
Priscilla Msimanga: So, to answer your first question, how did it happen? Moving to Joburg was an “I need to go back home”. Because Joburg is home. Boksburg, I already had a base because I held a house there, so it made more sense that I move back to my place.
So, the place that I applied for was not in Boksburg, it was somewhere in the Pretoria area. But there are a couple of sites that usually come up. When, during that process, the Boksburg site came up, I was like, “Okay, maybe I should try this one.”
It takes, literally, a year before everything is sorted, because it’s quite a process. It’s an advertisement on the site – I recommend that people check the fuel sites, different brands. They advertise petroleum sites on there. That’s what I did. I found a site, and I went and applied.
You’ve got to have a good idea of the area. You’ve got to create a business plan that shows the financials, the marketing. You’ve got to know at least a lot about the financial and the environmental sort of SWOT of that area.
I had to create that in preparation for this, because you go through three different interviews. The first one is pretty much around, “What is it that you know about the site?” You present your basic business plan – there’s a template, of course, but you’ve got to have your own so that it can feed into this.
It was luck that I actually lived in Boksburg before. So, I understood the area very well. I understood the LSM, which worked in my advantage. I understood the dynamics that they wanted in the place.
Then we went to the second interview, which is pretty much about the sales and the execs of Shell that will sit down and say, “What do you know about this place? What value are you bringing? What is it that you will change? What do the financials look like? Most importantly, do you have the money to buy it?”
So, the preparation we spoke about (of three years) was the money part, right? Because you’ve got to have at least 20% – depending on which bank you go for, 20% to 40% – of the actual capital. I needed to have that money. So, during that time, it was the savings, it was like, “Every penny counts, because this is what I want to do.” It’s the availability of that money – proving that you have it.
Then after that, it’s the actual work. After they say yes, it’s the licensing from a DMRE (Department of Mineral Resources and Energy) perspective. It takes about six months for that to happen, to have a final trading licence.
You’ve got to go into, “What’s my working capital? What does the site look like?” Now it’s real. It’s no longer pen and paper. It’s, “How do I make this work? How do I get the money to actually make it work?”
And I had to get the 20%, of course. I proved that. I had to go to all the banks – and Capitec (yay!) was amazing, they actually came out quicker than most of the banks – because they look at the risk, right?
“This is Priscilla, who comes from corporate, who’s an IT Head. What does she know about petroleum?” So, it presents a little bit of a, “Are we getting ourselves into a corner here? Will she do this? From computers to petrol – what is she doing?”
I think they took a leap of faith and appointed me. I went through a couple of sort of government financial institutions, which couldn’t come through in time. Some of the banks were a bit slower, but Capitec was much, much faster.
And this is where I am. And then the work starts. You pay the person, then you start working. You do not know anything about this business. But what I did, though, which was smart, was, between the Leeu-Gamka situation and when I took over, I took time to learn the business.
Being in a petrol station and just putting petrol is the least complex of all, but when you get into the business, there are so many things that you have to be aware of. There are so many things that you have to comply with.
There are a lot of requirements. From a business, from a South African perspective, from the licensing, from the food safety. There are so many nitty-gritties that I had to comply with.
But because I had already, for at least a year, been going to this other lady who helped me quite a lot in Pretoria. At least 180 hours, which I spent with her, just to understand the business.
Because the first one, I didn’t get, because I didn’t have the operational knowledge. And it was a challenge for me, like, “Go for the operational knowledge.” I had to go and learn, and it was quite interesting.
I’m like, “Sho. We just come in and pump petrol, and then you’re like, ‘I’m paying.’ And that’s it.” But there are quite a lot of things that happen behind the scenes.
So, yeah, that’s how the journey was, and how I got into a relationship with Capitec, as well.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, very cool. I love that that’s come through. I was going to ask you what difference Capitec made in the process, and you’ve already answered the question, which is lovely.
And like you say, it’s such a big adjustment actually going into a business, right? You spoke earlier about how, if you’d stayed in corporate, maybe you would have been able to study further. I think you’ve learned much more by leaving corporate and actually spreading your wings and going out into a business like this.
Because that’s the biggest thing with entrepreneurship – you have to understand the entire business, and then you have to actually figure out how all of the different elements work. And this is where it’s so interesting.
So, especially with a business like that, I can imagine the risk and compliance stuff must be through the roof. Because, I mean, it’s as flammable as it gets. Let’s call a spade a spade – a forecourt is basically a great big bomb inside concrete. So, it comes with a ton of health and safety stuff.
And then you’ve got the store, which has to have the right strategy for the area. So, like you said, you’ve got to understand the local area. Because it’s a retailer, and like any retailer, if you don’t understand the average customer – a forecourt in a very rich area is going to sell something completely different to a forecourt in a lower-income area.
And you can see it when you look at the specials. If you go into a fancy area and you put petrol in your car, you’re going to go into the forecourt – they’re going to have freshly baked goods, it’s going to be Magnums on sale. It’s that kind of vibe.
When you go into a lower-income area, it’s pies, and it’s Score energy drinks. You’ve got to respond to the people in the area. That’s how retailers make money. So, there’s a lot to learn. I can imagine it’s been such an interesting business.
When you look back on it now, and as you continue to run this thing, what would you say was actually the biggest challenge in getting up the curve on understanding how the business works?
What was really, really difficult, and which pieces do you think were maybe a little bit easier?
Priscilla Msimanga: I think for me, the people part was the most challenging part. Forecourt, there is a best practice, so you probably can – if you’re from corporate, you’re used to standard operating procedures, you know that in terms of compliance, this is what I should do.
From the shop perspective, I had a little bit of knowledge around what LSMs are there and what it is that I need to sell. We used to sell things that are not relevant, and you look at the pricing and that, so you kind of have a strategy.
But human beings, you can’t have a strategy for. Because they are very different in nature. But I’ve always been very fascinated by the human mind, especially now that I’ve moved from managing professionals to now managing the forecourt staff. It’s very different, the different spaces.
So, for me, it was that. You’ll be surprised that, because this is a cents and rands business, theft is a huge thing. So, that was my challenge. How do I make the team be part of the business, if you get what I mean?
Most of the time, we employ people, but I wanted them to be part of the business and care about the business. Because if you do, then you get them to be loyal and know that “If I steal, then I would not be able to get a salary.” That understanding.
And also the customer service aspect of it, because I’ve always been very passionate about customer service. We don’t want you to come to the garage… The last thing I want is for you to be in the forecourt, trying to pour petrol, and it takes 10 minutes. I’m like, “What are we doing?”
So, I wanted people who are energetic. I wanted the spirit that I have – the passion of what I do, and the pride of what I do. I love owning a petrol station. I love being on that forecourt and gooi-ing petrol into that car.
The Finance Ghost: I was going to ask, if you are there pumping petrol sometimes! I can totally imagine you doing it.
Priscilla Msimanga: I am pumping petrol.
The Finance Ghost: There we go, I knew it!
Priscilla Msimanga: I’m being the cashier. I am everything, basically, most of the time. Of course, not all the time, because there are things that I need to do. But if the forecourt is full, I will say, “Give me my tag, I’m going to go on that forecourt and gooi.”
The Finance Ghost: Nice.
Priscilla Msimanga: Because we need those cars to move. And also, this is a business where you have to be highly involved. And the fact that I knew I didn’t know. It’s a very good position to be, when you say, “I’ve only learned this for the past 14 months.”
Compared to someone who’s been doing it for five years, they assume that they know. But I knew I didn’t know enough, so I had to learn. What I learned in the other spaces, now I had to practice, replicate.
And the only way to do that is to be involved. Be that cashier. Understand when a customer says, “Oh! You’re always out of Grand-Pa, what is wrong?” Then you know what to address.
Or when you are in a forecourt, and the person is upset because he said he wanted R100 and they gooi R200. So, you find ways of having a strategy on, “How do we satisfy a customer and, at the same time, not lose money?”
So, yes, I love being on that forecourt. I always say, “I’m from heels to boots.” Safety boots, because you’re wearing your safety boots on the forecourt. You have to be an example. I can’t come in wearing high heels on the forecourt. It will be an HSSE (Health, Safety, Security, and Environment) issue.
So, yes, I am on the forecourt all the time, very involved financially. Cash-ups, I do it. I check every little cent from banks. The merchants were another thing where I thought, “It’s easy.” Banks do not take two seconds to open a merchant account. It took, like, months. So, yeah.
The human element was the challenge, but I think I’m in a space where everyone understands what I expect. It’s been 14 months or so, and they understand what I’m at. They see it live, they see the passion. You can’t not have passion if the person who owns the place actually goes on the forecourt. Why do you say I can’t? So, it’s been quite a challenging part of this for me. The other parts are pretty much standard. I was able to comply.
And why I say it’s been something that I’m proud of is, this quarter, out of 583 stations, I’m number 15, and I haven’t even traded for two years. So, there’s something that we are doing right.
The Finance Ghost: Well done! And, yeah, I love the passion coming through there. It’s so obvious. That’s why I guessed that you were probably out there, as you say, gooi-ing petrol, because you just strike me as someone who gets involved. And I think that’s key here.
I was going to ask you if you have to actually be there all the time? Or can you trust a station manager to get it done? I guess when people own multiple forecourts, you can’t cut yourself into lots of pieces, so you have to get to the point where you have people you can trust.
But I guess, early days like this, you’ve got to understand how the entire business works. And that’s an interesting point. Because I’ve seen people in my life who have started businesses, and they start something where they either have very little idea of how it works – and that’s still okay, provided you’re willing to learn.
But sometimes they say, “Well, I don’t really know how this works, and I’m going to find someone who knows how it works, but I’m going to be the business owner.” It’s just…it’s a structural problem.
You need to understand your business inside out. You need to be able to do all the things it needs. You’re not going to do them forever – you’ve got to outsource, you’ve got to find staff, etcetera – but you’ve got to be able to jump in and be like, “I understand that job, this is how it’s going to work.” Especially for small businesses.
And that’s one of the big differences to corporate. In corporate, everyone is a cog in the wheel. You understand your world and how it fits in with everyone else, but that’s all you need to understand. Whereas when it’s your own business, you need to understand the whole thing, right? Inside out.
Priscilla Msimanga: Yeah, so I do have a site manager. Because part of my role is to scan the environment around me. To check the prices in other areas, to understand if I stand in the middle of a Makro, or any other warehouse, and go like, “What would I buy if I were my customer?”
And I would then do that buying and saying, “It’s Christmas, we have extra money from the bonuses. What would I want?” Instead of having Cadbury, I want to indulge and buy a Ferrero Rocher.” So, why not get Ferrero Rochers and test the market?
So, I do have someone that I now feel comfortable to leave when I’m not around. But it will be for a couple of hours, of course. He would be an operational person.
The other thing is the growth, right? So, the innovative part. I’m a Select store. Select store means I don’t have that big bakery. So, I don’t have hot food, but can I stay without hot food? Hell no. So, I needed to find a way to be creative around it.
If I can’t make my place bigger, I need to make a plan to sell hot food, and I did. I got the food truck. It was the first [laughing]. I have a little food truck…
The Finance Ghost: I love that! So cool [laughing]. That’s great!
Priscilla Msimanga: …and I’m selling hot food, and I’m selling what I think people would like for the market that I’m in. So, I have hot food now. When I got there, there was no gas. I’m like, “I have a gas stove, we have an electricity problem, so why not sell gas?”
Started the process of being compliant with the gas, because I didn’t have a licence, and I now sell gas. So, it’s those kinds of ideas. This is how you see it. When you scan your environment and say, “What do we need? Do we need gas? Yes, we need gas.”
The people who are selling gas close at 6pm or 8pm. I’m 24 hours. So, that market after 24 hours, that is why we are a convenience store. Your gas finishes at 8pm, you’re having a braai, so you come to me and buy the gas. So, yeah, that’s pretty much how it works.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, it’s crazy interesting. The food truck is fascinating. Tell me about the menu. What can someone get when they’re hungry, there at Shell Boksburg Motors?
Priscilla Msimanga: We get from sandwiches to pap and steak, because my market is really people who are working in the area. I’m in between the car dealerships. Most of the people on lunch don’t have anything to eat. So, we have the best mogodu as well.
We have fancy foods like chicken and chips. We sell kota – I don’t know if you know what kota is? [laughing] It’s a little bunny chow.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah!
Priscilla Msimanga: So, we sell those and vetkoeks in the morning, to accommodate that market. We also have samosas. We are purely non-pork. If you eat pork, don’t come to us. Because my market is either people who are halal or people who are not eating pork.
We all need to test the market, I started selling pork, and no one bought. And I’m like, “Okay, so what is wrong?” Because I love pork! So, we then saw that it’s either a religious thing. So, then we stopped selling it, and we’re now getting traction. People are buying more.
We sell toasted sarmies, we have burgers and all that. So, yeah. But most of the high sellers are actually food – pap, rice and stew and all that. Mogodu is the high seller on Monday, because people have babbalas, so they want something like mogodu to take away the babbalas [laughing].
The Finance Ghost: Sort them out [laughing]. Ah, that’s great. I have small children, so now I just have ‘Are you achin’ for some bacon?’ in my head, courtesy of The Lion King. A gift that I’ve passed on to them.
But there’s a great story in there. Just because you are achin’ for the bacon doesn’t mean that your customers are. So, you’ve got to then adapt to the people who are actually coming to your store. If pork is not going to cut it, you take it out. You respond to what people want.
It does not help to sell premium croissants to a market that is actually looking for a babbalas cure on a Monday morning and cheap sources of maximum protein and carbs to keep them full. That’s the reality. So, that’s the cool thing with being in retail. It’s also the challenge with being in retail.
Let’s talk a little bit then – because I’ve always wondered about these forecourts. My understanding is that, when you sell a litre of fuel, basically, the amount of money you make per litre is just about fixed. It’s a very highly regulated space around pricing, etcetera.
So, you’ve actually really only got two ways of making more money, because you can’t just put the price of fuel up. You either have to sell more fuel, you’ve got to get more people coming, or you’ve got to get people to get out of their cars and walk into your shop, right?
I mean, that’s what this business comes down to. And I guess at the end of the day, getting people out of their cars is going to be stuff like service, how long it takes to get fuel. But then the shop, again, you need to give people a reason to come there. Like your food truck, etcetera, etcetera. It’s very clever.
So, is that essentially how the business works? Selling fuel is really only one part of it, and the shop is absolutely key to the economics of this thing?
Priscilla Msimanga: The fuel, as in 93 and 95, that’s the case. It’s highly regulated. You’ve got to sell it at the amount that the DMRE sets. Even with diesel. But there is a little bit of space to play around with diesel, because it’s not as regulated as the fuel.
So, you can go down or up, depending on your market. Because diesel is mostly for trucks, and you want to attract the trucks. So, you’ve got to be smart around how you price your diesel so that you still have the market come to you.
And for me, who has two competitors that are literally 900 metres away, I have to be very cognisant of how I price my diesel. It is also very regulated. They tell you how much you can go up by, but then the way that you would want to go down is dependent on you.
So, yes, it is regulated, and there is a margin that we do. There is a RAS (Regulatory Accounting System) model, and I don’t want to get into the technicalities (that I had to learn, by the way, when I got into this) on how much money or how much margin you make.
Then the shop, yeah. Ideally, we want to be able to pump more on the forecourt and also get people out of their cars to the truck or to the shop. Because I still sell pies, so if you don’t want my truck food, we still sell pies and other snacks and carbonated drinks and cigarettes.
So, basically, we are happy to give you the best service, and also, we are happy for you to say to my forecourt attendant, “Hey, can you get me a packet of ciggies when I pay?” And they can do that.
So, we have extended a value for your money kind of service, where you know that it’s a one-stop shop, kind of – not yet a one-stop shop, it will be one day – but you can get your cigarettes and pay at the same time, and this guy will do it for you in the quickest way possible.
Yeah, we do measure. I’m an efficiency kind of person at heart, so I do literally stand outside and see how long people wait, and if there’s no one servicing them, I’m like, “What is going on?” to the person in charge, or I will personally go and assist.
So, you want to get more people in the shop because the shop margins are a little bit different. Because we are a convenience store. We are not priced like Pick n Pay, because of the timing. We are 24 hours. You’ve got to pay two different shifts, as opposed to just one shift for the day.
So, yeah, what we used to do on Saturdays, we used to have boerewors rolls. That is the one that’s built into the truck. Boerewors roll – it smells nice, you see it with my little gas, so you get out of your car and park and buy the boerewors roll. So, those are the kinds of little things that we do.
Sometimes we then partner with some of our suppliers and get little ice creams and give them out on the forecourt so that people come back again.
But the service component is the most important. I want people that I would have tested. These people are passionate, they are proud, and they love serving people. And they like talking to people. People just want to be spoken to. It’s like a salon. When I go to do my hair, the last thing I do is my hair. It’s actually the conversation around what is happening around us.
So, I’ve had quite a few comments, people saying, “Thank you, just for talking to me.” And they are sure to come back. So, those are the kinds of things that my team and I are doing so that people would want to come back to us, as opposed to the other petrol stations.
The Finance Ghost: Boeries and ice creams. You’re definitely speaking my language. That sounds excellent. And the human touch, as you say. Just being friendly. I mean, it’s the basics, but this is what we crave.
We crave human connection – and ice cream, and boeries. And if you can get all three of those right, then you are golden. That’s how it works.
So, Priscilla, without giving away specifics (obviously this is private), but I’m just curious. What has the journey, high-level, been like for you, going from essentially a corporate salary in a big job into your own business? You had to borrow money for it. Would you say it’s been tough? Would you say it’s been in line with expectations? Again, no specifics here. Just high-level, for people thinking of doing this, what’s been your experience of it?
Priscilla Msimanga: So, if you are going into this business, you’ve got to be able to stop living the posh life. There’s no longer any going out and eating out. That has stopped, because your salary is the challenge for you.
You’re paying yourself little. Sometimes you don’t pay yourself at all, if it’s a bad month. So, you’ve got to be able to have a cushion on the side, or you’ve got to have some support, something. Or you have to downscale quite a bit, which I have done.
But for me, it’s a downscaling that you know, in five years, it will pay you back. You know what I mean? It’s just a temporary sort of inconvenience, but you have to be able to take it and be agile enough to adjust to your new reality now. I am not getting that salary that I was getting in corporate. I’m not going to get the 13th cheque. So, how do I balance my life to live the way that I’m living now?
If I were to give you an idea, my salary is not even half of what I used to get in corporate. But I love it. Because at the end of a year, when you look at your financials month-to-month, you’re like, “Okay, so it’s worth it.” At the end of a year, you will see the results, and you’re like, “In five years, I probably will pay myself a little bit better.”
But I think I would do it again. I don’t want to be promising people that you’ll get double your salary, because you won’t – you’ll bankrupt yourself. So, you’ve got to be smart around how you balance.
Because they do manage your expectations, the franchisors, to say, “You’re from corporate, you’re not going to get that salary. How do you balance your finances to still be able to maintain your life?”
Because you’ve got debts and whatever, right? So, you’ve got to package your life in such a way that you’re not going to struggle, but at the same time, you don’t pay yourself so much that you won’t even make a profit.
The Finance Ghost: Thank you. I think that’s a very honest and sobering viewpoint, and that’s why I asked the question. Because I always think people must just go into this with their eyes open.
It’s basically… There’s this quote that goes roughly along the lines of, “Living the life that others won’t, so that you can live the life that they can’t in years to come.” Take the hard stuff now, and it will pay off later.
I’ve always loved cars, and so I had some interesting stuff – nothing crazy at all, I was always careful, but I had some fun stuff. And then, when I finally decided, “It’s time to start getting out of corporate now. This is the opportunity in front of me, let’s do it.” I remember I downscaled all the way down to this leaking Fiat.
Basically, if it had rained, it would leak straight through the door, basically onto me. I was this ex-investment banker and CA in this leaking Fiat, but that’s what you’ve got to do. You’ve got to humble yourself down to that level. Because that tiny little overhead every month is going to make the difference if something goes wrong in the business, while your friend is paying off R15,000 a month on some fancy German car.
And that’s why entrepreneurs actually end up being much better at managing their money, because they don’t take on unnecessary overheads. They go into a cash mindset of, “Okay. Did I already make this money? All right, I’ll spend some of it. I’ll leave behind a buffer, spend some of it, but I had to make it already.”
They don’t go and throw debt at their personal lives. Whereas when you’re a salaried employee, you assume that money’s always going to be there, and then you’re very happy to layer on these big overheads.
And it’s dangerous, because corporates do retrench people. Things don’t always go to plan. And then you’re in serious trouble, because now you don’t have a plan B.
So, as much as it’s hard to go and do what you’ve done, you’re also in control of your own destiny, right? And that’s a nice way to wake up in the morning.
Priscilla Msimanga: Yes, I’ve been retrenched three times in my life.
The Finance Ghost: Wow! Yeah, you know that gig well.
Priscilla Msimanga: So, I know how that feels. I’m driving a 12-year-old car. Everyone asks me, “You’re still driving this thing?” I’m like, “Yes. Until it stops working, I will still drive it.” I’m not going to buy anything that will get me into a position where I struggle right now. If it moves, it moves. I get there!
The Finance Ghost: 100%. I love that. So, last question on this podcast. It’s been such a lovely look at just life leaving corporate. What advice would you give to someone who is maybe thinking about doing this in 2026 or beyond?
Or to someone who’s now maybe at that point, as we spoke about, where you kind of say, “Okay, two to three years from now.” That’s actually the safer runway. If you’re sitting here listening to this and you’re going, “Oh, 2026 is my year to leave corporate,” be careful. It takes longer than that.
So, what advice would you give to someone who’s in that situation? They’re in their corporate job, they’re dreaming of leaving to go and do this thing – what would your one piece of advice be?
Priscilla Msimanga: Stop being fearful. Just jump into it, and start planning today. Because, as you said, the day that you decide, it takes at least two years. So, it’s just a change of mindset. “I’m going to stop being afraid. I’m going to do this.” And now, you start defining the how. You start saving money. You start looking into where you want to go.
It was a collision with petroleum, but I loved it. I think it was meant to happen. I do think that our journeys are supposed to be ‘somewhere’, and you will be ‘somewhere’. But it collided with me, and I love it.
Sometimes people are born with a passion that they are underestimating, and then they die without actually pursuing it. So one day, in 2026, make a decision: “I’m an artistic person, I need to get in to open my art shop.” Start working towards that art shop!
There are a lot of banks that are actually – with a good business case, like Capitec – able to fund you if they see the logic. If they see that you have managed your money properly, and you have a contribution, they’ll be able to help.
I think a lot of people have this comment that, “I don’t have money, it’s a limitation.” Only because you are fearful. So, if you stop being fearful, then you look at possibilities. You can see that it is possible if you really, really want to do it. And that is where I was.
I would say, “Stop being fearful. Pursue what you love, and go for it.” Even if it doesn’t yield the result in two days. Because I was an impatient person. I think the one thing that this business has taught me is to be patient.
The waiting game. In four years, three years, whatever, it will be a different thing. Just hold on. And when they listen to this kind of podcast, they’ll be able to see that it can be done. If a dusty kid from Sebokeng can do this, anyone can, really.
Just go above the fear. And leave corporate. And I know I used to be one of the execs, and I’m like, “Oh, yeah, it’s prestigious,” but for whom? For me, now, I’m prestigious to me. I’m the one who makes decisions, and that’s different.
So, when you’re in corporate, you’re working for someone else who had the dream to do what they are doing, and they hire you to do it for them. So, in my opinion, I’m better off doing my dream than working for someone else’s dream. So, dream, go for your dream, and stop being fearful.
The Finance Ghost: I love that. Loads of great advice in there. It’s funny, so my thing is being able to fetch my kids from school without having to ask someone. That’s the biggest win for me. It’s not even about the money or whatever. It’s literally just the freedom.
The richest person you know is the person who has the most control over their time. That is my honest opinion on the world, really.
Priscilla, have you read The Alchemist before? Because if you haven’t, you should.
Priscilla Msimanga: Yes, I have read The Alchemist, funnily enough. It was like 14 years ago! [laughing] I still have it. I go back to it. So, yes, I have.
The Finance Ghost: You struck me as someone who should read it. And for anyone listening to this, there really are two types of people who read The Alchemist. There are those who read it and go, “I don’t understand the hype, what is this?” Then it just wasn’t for you, that’s fine. And then, if it is for you, it will really be for you.
So, I was one of those people where it was really for me. I took a lot from The Alchemist. I remember reading it on a flight between Joburg and Cape Town – a late-night, very tired, hardcore-financial-services-career flight, and I read The Alchemist.
And I remember” I basically read it, closed it, and that was the start. It ended up being much more than two to three years, but that was the start of me going, “Okay, I need to do something else long term.” So, yeah, it’s a lovely thing.
Priscilla Msimanga: There are just those books that never leave my shelf, and The Alchemist is one of them. Rich Dad Poor Dad is one of them. It’s just those that always remind me, “You know what? These people could do it. I can too.”
And there are people that have poured into me as well that would say, “You can do this,” and I’m like, “Okay, okay.” And so, yeah. But The Alchemist was one of them.
The Finance Ghost: It’s fantastic. So, there’s a dog in the background there that is calling you to go and run your business, so I’m going to let you go, Priscilla.
Priscilla Msimanga: [laughing]
The Finance Ghost: Thank you so much. We were done anyway, but it has been lovely. Thank you so much. We’ll take the dog’s hint here.
And just, good luck. Well done on everything you’re doing. It’s a very inspiring story, and I really wish you the best with it.
The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting is here and markets are paying attention. As leaders gather in Davos, the conversations will likely shape risk premiums, capital allocation and investor confidence in the months ahead. In episode one of our special Davos Debrief podcast series, host Jeremy Maggs is joined by Chris Holdsworth, Chief Investment Strategist at Investec, to cut through the noise and focus on what really matters for investors.
Please scroll down if you would prefer to read the transcript.
Hosted by seasoned broadcaster, Jeremy Maggs, the No Ordinary Wednesday podcast unpacks the latest economic, business and political news in South Africa, with an all-star cast of investment and wealth managers, economists and financial planners from Investec. Listen in every second Wednesday for an in-depth look at what’s moving markets, shaping the economy, and changing the game for your wallet and your business.
Also on Apple Podcasts and Spotify:
NOW Ep 117: WEF 2026 Preview
[00:00:00] Jeremy Maggs: It is World Economic Forum Week. Markets are open, capital is moving, and in Davos, the conversation this week will help shape where risk is priced and where opportunity emerges. This is No Ordinary Wednesday, Investec’s fortnightly podcast on the forces shaping business, markets and economies. Hello, I’m Jeremy Maggs, and this week it’s a special Davos debrief series.
I’m going to bring you insights from Investec leaders attending the 56th annual meeting in Switzerland. Now, today marks the start of WEF 2026, convening global leaders under the theme, “A Spirit of Dialogue”. But the backdrop is anything but calm. The Global Risks Report 2026 warns that geo-economic confrontation has become one of the most pressing near term threats to global stability.
At the same time, the Global Cooperation Barometer 2026 tells us that cooperation across geopolitics, technology, and trade is weakening precisely at a time when systemic risks are rising. So as Davos gets underway, what signals should markets be watching and which conversations rarely matter? To help us unpack the risks, the opportunities, and what this week could mean for markets and the global economy, I’m joined by Chris Holdsworth, Chief Investment Strategist at Investec. Chris, a warm welcome to No Ordinary Wednesday.
So let’s start with this then. The Global Risks Report 2026 ranks geo-economic confrontation as the top risk over the next two years. That’s ahead of even state-based armed conflict. Chris, how should investors then interpret that finding, particularly in relation to trade tensions, tariff tensions, or supply chain nationalisation?
[00:01:49] Chris Holdsworth: I think the essence of that report is that we’re seeing a shift away from cooperation to competition amongst major economies and tariffs are an example of that. And one of the key questions that we need to answer this week, and we hope to get some guidance, is around how persistent that is likely to be.
Is it the next two years, three years, five years? Is it a long term trend or is this something that is just cyclical for the short term? And if so, what are the other consequences that are likely to come about in addition to tariffs that we need to be concerned about? And I think we will get some hints in that regard and certainly something that we’ll provide an update on throughout the week as we get information, but for us, that’s pretty close to the top of the list of things that we are looking out for.
[00:02:28] Jeremy Maggs: So let me ask you a follow up to that. Does this shift in risk weighting from traditional geopolitical fears to geo-economic friction maybe change how we think about capital allocation and diversification?
[00:02:42] Chris Holdsworth: Yes, it’s a great question. I think the primary concern is around the extent to which the dollar continues to be a safe haven for international investors. There’s a shortage of safe haven assets across the globe, and if the dollar is not going to be the sort of safe haven that it was before, it means that we need to find other safe havens and we will be looking out for any information with regards to that potential issue.
[00:03:03] Jeremy Maggs: And Chris, are markets pricing this opportunity appropriately do you think? Or are investors underestimating the economic side of global risk?
[00:03:11] Chris Holdsworth: You know, it’s hard to say that markets are pricing in a lot of risk when the US stock market’s on a forward P/E of 23, which is pretty close to the top end of the range of what we’ve seen over the past 30 years. It does seem that the market’s pretty relaxed and we can understand why US GDP growth has been pretty good and earnings growth has been pretty good as well.
But there is a cloudy outlook, and I would suggest that there’s not a huge amount of risk currently priced in to US equities in particular. Elsewhere it’s a bit of a different story, but certainly in the US it seems like a lot of these risks are being put on the back burner for now.
[00:03:43] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, let me move on to this.
The Global Cooperation Barometer 2026 suggests cooperation is weakening even as risks intensify. So Chris Holdsworth, in your view then, are we in a world that is genuinely de-globalising or is the narrative more about reorganisation, maybe new partnerships, new corridors of capital and trade?
[00:04:07] Chris Holdsworth: Depending on the data sources, you look at. Trade over the past couple of years has been flat to up a little bit, but in effect, no sign of deglobalisation in the trade data just yet. Clearly there are threats to that. In summary, I think we are looking at an environment where the world is just a lot more complicated.
We can’t simply rely on past economic relationships between countries to continue going forward. And that just makes asset allocation a lot more complicated than it has been before. And in general, it makes investing a lot more difficult than it has been before. And again, we are going to be looking out for any information in that regard.
So we’ve put together a list of a couple of things and I’m sure we’ll talk about that shortly, and this will feature on that list too.
[00:04:47] Jeremy Maggs: So what then are the investment opportunities and risks in a more multipolar or contested economic order?
[00:04:55] Chris Holdsworth: Well, the first question is if the dollar’s not going be the safe haven that it was before, is there a substitute?
Is there something else that can offer the sort of protection for portfolios that dollar investments used to? And maybe it will be the dollar again in a couple of years, but maybe we need to try for something else. And I think that goes somewhere in expanding the recent, very strong performance in gold.
And there is a shortage of safe haven assets. And this is top of the list for investors across the globe, and again, top of the list for us this week in Davos.
[00:05:24] Jeremy Maggs: Now Chris, one of the central pillars of Davos 2026 is, as I understand it, unlocking new sources of growth, all well and good. Where do you see growth potential right now, both in developed economies and in emerging markets like those in Africa?
[00:05:41] Chris Holdsworth: Well, one underreported new development we think is that GDP growth in Africa this year is likely to outpace Asian GDP growth which doesn’t often happen. If you look over the last 30 years, it’s occurred on a handful of occasions. Now what’s more is that the IMF expects going forward, African GDP growth will be above Asian GDP growth for each of the next five years.
So we are on the cusp of a regime change and it means that the longstanding promise of faster African growth may well be delivered. And so if we are looking for new sources of growth, I think we should look probably not much further than the African continent.
[00:06:16] Jeremy Maggs: So are certain sectors like technology, energy transition, or even digital infrastructure maybe better positioned to capture this growth?
[00:06:26] Chris Holdsworth: Well, one of the problems is that there are very few ways to neatly access faster GDP growth in financial markets. So if you look for example, at listed entities in developed markets, typically Africa is a very small portion of their revenue. Even in South Africa, there’s only a handful of companies that are direct plays on Africa x SA growth and that makes it quite difficult. So we first need to see increased access for investors to the African continent, and that’s going to take a bit of time. That would be the initial stage of what could be a very long running theme, and it’s something that could be quite exciting and we hope to start to see some developments in that regard over the near term.
[00:07:03] Jeremy Maggs: Now, Chris, another key theme this week is deploying innovation responsibly. Now in a world where technological disruption can rapidly reshape industries and where risks from ungoverned tech rise over longer horizons, Chris, how should investors balance their innovation upside on the one hand with systemic risk exposure?
[00:07:25] Chris Holdsworth: That’s a very difficult question. I know there are a couple of talks this week on that, and so hopefully we’ll get some insights this week. I mean, one of the thoughts is that the development of AI in effect is going reduce barriers to entry, reduce moats, which means that higher quality companies, which have typically enjoyed barriers to entry and higher moats would be derated. And perhaps we’ve seen a bit of that over the past six months or so.
We are not going to get an answer to that question at the end of this week, I don’t think. Not a full answer, and we probably won’t get an answer to this question for the next couple of years, but hopefully we get some insight with regards to the problem that you’ve raised.
And if so, we’ll certainly report back in the follow-up sessions.
[00:08:02] Jeremy Maggs: Now Chris, the World Economic Forum Agenda, also emphasising building prosperity within so-called planetary boundaries. So for investors, looking beyond short-term returns, how do you think about resilience, whether for portfolios, for businesses or economies in the face of the risks highlighted in those two reports that we’ve mentioned?
[00:08:25] Chris Holdsworth: You know, this is a longstanding theme, the need to invest sustainably and responsibly. The theme is not particularly popular at the moment. It’s certainly less popular than it was a couple of years ago, but we do think that it’s going to come back into fashion over the next couple of years. And just like the AI theme, which is likely to play out over the next decade or so, we think that this theme is likely to play out over the next few years.
[00:08:47] Jeremy Maggs: Now as the week begins, what are the three signals or outcomes that you’ll be watching closely over the next couple of days that could shift market sentiment or reshape investment assumptions?
[00:09:00] Chris Holdsworth: Well, as a starting point, if you look back over time, there have been a number of World Economic Forums where there’s been market-moving commentary, particularly from central bankers with regards to the outlook for monetary policy. This time around the focus is more likely to be on geopolitics, but nonetheless, this is something that’s going to be pretty closely watched by investors across the globe, and everyone’s going to have their list of things that they’re looking out for.
In terms of our list, top of the list is to the point we mentioned earlier about the safe haven status of the dollar, and any information in that regard.
The second is around resource nationalism. This relatively new development that’s come about with regards to rare earths, but it also applies to other resources more broadly, and we’re looking out for any information in that regard.
And the third is questions around Central Bank independence, particularly in the US. Now that’s just the top of our list.
We’ve got to be open to the idea that there may well be other commentary coming through, that’s out of left field that are market-moving as well. So we might not get answers to our top three. Hopefully we do, but I think we will get some information out there, even if it’s not something that we are expecting at this point.
[00:10:03] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, I want to bring South Africa into the picture now. Team South Africa is in Davos, positioning this country as reforming, stabilising, ready for partnership. From an investment perspective, how material are these signals in a world, Chris, where capital has become, I think, far more risk selective?
[00:10:23] Chris Holdsworth: That’s absolutely critical there. There’s still a pretty widespread scepticism about the recovery story in SA, and it’s going to take more delivery to change views and talking to people is one thing, and talking about commitments is one thing, but at this point we need to see signs of delivery and you need to evidence that delivery and you need to make it public.
And this is a platform to do that.
[00:10:43] Jeremy Maggs: Now Chris, a recurring theme in the team South African narrative is that the country has moved from policy intent to implementation, particularly through Operation Vulindlela, energy reform and logistics modernisation. As a strategist, how do you then distinguish between reform rhetoric and reforms that can actually unlock capital?
[00:11:05] Chris Holdsworth: Now this is pretty important for us. A couple of years ago, we created our own SOE index to measure the performance of SOEs in South Africa. And the reason we did that is the realisation that SOEs at that point were a binding constraint on GDP growth in South Africa. And if you look at that index, it bottomed around 2023.
And since then there’s been a sizable recovery, and we can see that through electricity production as an example. We can also see it through the performance of container handling at the ports. So there’s signs that things are turning around. And what that means is SOEs are less of a binding constraint on growth, and that allows GDP growth to drift upwards.
We may even see it at 2% this year. And the more we see signs of delivery in that regard, the more we see signs of structural form actually leading to better results, the more likely we are to see a reduction in the risk premium in South Africa.
[00:11:55] Jeremy Maggs: Alright, Chris, a final question for you then, as investors wake up to this first day of Davos 2026, looking at a world, as we’ve discussed of elevated global risk, weaker cooperation, but also new growth corridors, is there one thing they should be watching this week when it comes to South Africa’s positioning in global portfolios?
[00:12:17] Chris Holdsworth: I think it’s the extent to which South Africa is relevant and desirable for foreign investors. And that’ll take a combination of things. It’ll take a combination of policy certainty, reform and signs of green shoots to convince foreigners to bother to look at SA. And there might still be some questions around foreign policy and the extent to which that affects the outlook for growth in SA, but I think the primary point is going to be trying to address investors scepticism about the recovery story in SA.
[00:12:45] Jeremy Maggs: And that’s where we are going to leave it. Chris Holdsworth, thank you for that big picture outlook and for helping us prepare for what promises to be a critical Davos week.
In episode two that drops on Wednesday the 21st of January, we’re going to explore technology, artificial intelligence, and the future of work with Investec’s Global Head of Digital and technology, Lyndon Subroyen.
Until then, thank you for listening.
Now remember to follow Investec Focus Radio SA wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like the channel, please take a moment to rate it and share it as this will help us reach more listeners. Until next time, goodbye from me, Jeremy Magsg and the entire Focus Radio team.
[00:13:29] Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the contributors at the time of publication and do not necessarily represent the views of the firm and should not be taken as advice or recommendations. Investec Limited and subsidiaries authorised financial service providers, registered credit providers, and long-term insurer.
We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept All”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. However, you may visit "Cookie Settings" to provide a controlled consent.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Cookie
Duration
Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional
11 months
The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance
11 months
This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy
11 months
The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.
Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features.
Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors.
Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc.
Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads.
