BizNews Radio

At BizNews, we keep a close eye on share prices of high quality companies, waiting to flag the opportunity when they temporarily fall out of favour with Mr Market. South African-focused iron ore, coal and bulk materials miner Afrimat fits this bill. Its share price it now at around R50, having traded above R75 four months ago. In this in-depth interview, Afrimat CEO Andries van Heerden shares unique insights into the ambitious company's progress. An obvious conclusion: as institutional investors were recently climbing over each other to buy R680m worth of fresh shares at the current price, private players entering now appear to have a safety net. Ven Heerden spoke to Alec Hogg of BizNews.

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A forgotten term, The Fed Put, has re-entered Wall Street's vocabulary. Stock and bond participants are betting the US Federal Reserve Bank is bluffing and will stop raising interest rates when economic damage becomes obvious. Fed officials have been doing their best in public statements to say the opposite. Also in this episode of the BizNews Breakfast Briefing - after hitting a six month low earlier in the week, the oil price is edging back towards $100 a barrel; Bitcoin's rally appears to have petered out; and the Rand fell sharply overnight against the US Dollar. On the JSE, it was all about Grindrod yesterday after the company released a trading update that sent its already elevated share price higher still (+138% year to date).

R1.25trn needed to end load-shedding by 2035

Thungela still burning bright

Apple products currently worth buying

In-depth with Mike Brown, SA’s longest serving bank CEO: Nedbank, digital revolution, renewables, fintechs, greylisting and crypto

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It was not long ago that bankers and traders were turning up their noses at fintech and the phrase, “Normal people should not be trading,” was common in the City of London and other financial markets. That was until several players like Robinhood joined the party and technology democratised investing. Several new players have popped up to open up trading to retail investors and in South Africa, Netherlands-based fintech, Mesh.trade is launching a decentralised financial markets platform that is promising speed and lower costs. Heading Mesh, which took three years to build, is Connie Bloem. Bloem, who has a background in industrial and financial engineering told Linda van Tilburg that retail investors wanted more visibility, flexibility, and control over their entire investment portfolio, just as the institutional investors have at their multi-screen trading desks. What Mesh offers is an end-to-end Financial Markets platform, built with bank-grade security on top of Blockchain technology, that will create huge time and cost efficiencies, substantially improve the markets and make them more accessible to all.

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In this in-depth podcast, Nedbank CEO Mike Brown tries (unsuccessfully) to hide irritation at the slow pace of SA's economic reform, but brightens up on the demand that's building for renewable energy investments. The country's longest-serving banking boss occupies a unique vantage point from which to share his insights on a variety of subjects - ranging from Nedbank's recent interim results including the 5% staff reduction and R10bn investment into digitisation; through to the danger of SA's potential greylisting and urgent need to regulate crypto currencies. He spoke to Alec Hogg of BizNews.

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Stock market technical analysts are fixated with the 200-day Moving Average which they say provides either support (in a Bull Market) or resistance (Bear) for share prices going forward. After the major US indices broke above this critical tend last week, declines in the past two days have brought the Nasdaq perilously close to dropping below the trend line again. Minutes from the latest Fed meeting helped share prices stage a recovery late in the US afternoon, but it ran out of steam towards the close. In SA-related news, Naspers got a double hit after its associate TenCent reported a first ever drop in revenues and China's biggest food delivery company went into bankruptcy (Naspers has bet big in that sector). On the JSE, punished Sibanye after a trading update in which it showed operational issues more than offset the support from a weaker Rand.

Bain & Co – still trying to gloss over the shocking facts

DA won’t support Ramaphosa MONC…for now – absent from joint opposition presser

Meet the SARS chief: Revenue service on the road to recovery

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Several opposition parties gathered in Johannesburg on Wednesday to outline their plans to hold President Cyril Ramaphosa to account for the allegations surrounding the Phala Phala theft matter. Reading the joint statement on behalf of opposition parties - excluding the Democratic Alliance, among others - EFF leader Julius Malema says parties will request a follow-up meeting with the Speaker of the National Assembly to discuss all accountability issues, including the usage of a secret ballot for a motion of no confidence in Ramaphosa.

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Bronwyn Nielsen speaks to Thabang Mahlangu, the automotive and TFL lead at Nedbank CIB, about South Africa's journey to mass electric vehicle adoption. the country's lack of policy and legislative frameworks to drive growth in the EV market, and how the adoption of EV could benefit SA in the future.

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Russian oil is getting through to users despite Western sanctions, a reality that's starting to dawn on the market and analysts with Barclays yesterday joined Goldman Sachs in sharply dropping its oil price forecast. A record dividend declaration by BHP in its annual results released yesterday highlighted Anglo American's coal blunder. The 26% bottom line surge at 'The Big Australian' was solely due to the higher contribution from its booming coal interests - Anglo bowed to ESG-driven pressure to offload its coal assets through JSE listed ten-bagger Thungela. Also in this episode, quarterlies from US retailers surprise on the upside; lower US housing starts show the market is cooling; and venture capital legend Marc Andreessen invests $350m into the latest business idea floated by WeWork founder Adam Neumann, confirming an unlikely comeback by the Israeli serial entrepreneur.

Not much Good at all about De Lille’s Public Works shambles

How world sees SA: What happened to Mandela’s dream?

The chickens are coming home to roost for Pfizer

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Interest rates are going up in the UK and the property market growth in the retail sector has slowed down substantially. So is it still a good destination for South Africans wishing to hedge their investments against instability in South Africa? Migrant specialists, Sable International, say it is. Group international director of Sable International, Andrew Rissik, and the director of the real estate division, Megan Copley, told BizNews about opportunities in the UK, and how South Africans prefer projects with returns in the short term. Rissik believes the UK still offers fantastic hedging for retail property investors and Sable has recently formed a partnership with API Global Solutions, a global property sourcing company, to identify the best areas to invest in the UK. Managing Director of API Global, Mike Leighton, told BizNews how they use market indicators, infrastructure and government spend to come up with the best areas in the UK to invest in, and who they partner with to make it a seamless process. – Linda van Tilburg

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Extensive delays by the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition, and the Minister of Finance to take final decisions in dozens of customs duty investigations have cost the fiscus at least R1.25bn in revenue. So believes Donald MacKay, CEO of XA Global Trade Advisors. He was speaking at the launch of the XA Open Cases Report which outlines how long these customs duty cases are taking to be decided by the International Trade Administration Commission. The report found that in addition to the loss to the fiscus, another R2bn has been collected in duties for goods not made locally, adding a significant cost burden to companies without protecting any domestic industry. South Africa collects around R55bn per annum in customs duties. Import duty changes which are supposed to take between four and six months to finalise are taking over two years to be completed. There are currently 46 tariff and anti-dumping investigations underway, with 58% of these overdue. MacKay proposes that all cases which have been open for more than 18 months should be given 3 months to be finalised or terminated. This is audio taken from his presentation of the report.

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