🔒 WORLDVIEW: Strong biltong flavour in FTSE’s top shares of 2016

By Alec Hogg

Warren Buffett warns us to be sceptical about time periods covered by performance tables. He points out the starting date can make a huge difference. My friend Piet Viljoen, another rational being whose views are among the most forthright of any money manager, reckons any performance table that doesn’t account for a full cycle (5 to 8 years) is worthless.

But even those disclaimers can’t spoil our story. Because the timing of the last particular calendar year conspired to make 2016 an amazing one for most of the eight South African-related companies in the London stock market’s top index.
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They delivered three of the FTSE 100’s top four performers and four of its top 10. In a year when so much went wrong at home, that’s surely worth celebrating.

Here are the Saffer stocks:

Anglo American: Was the FTSE 100’s number one performer for 2016 with an incredible 287% share price surge. Investors loved the plan to downsize. The 85 000 workers who will lose their jobs, mostly South African, won’t feel quite as jubilant.

Glencore: The second best performer with a 207% share price jump, the multinational took an SA knock after being strong-armed out of its Optimum coal mine by the Guptas. But elsewhere in the world things went much better.

BHPBilliton: Like Anglo and Glencore, BHP benefitted from a share price that bottomed out in December 2015. It came 4th on the 2016 table with a 72% price improvement. Not really a “Saffer” though, as it hived off most SA assets into separately listed South 32 in 2014.

Randgold Resources: Although it has no assets in the country, is an honourary Saffer via the management team, specifically CEO Mark Bristow, a geologist from Estcourt in KZN. The stock gained 48% in 2016 giving it a spot in the FTSE 100’s Top Ten performing stocks (9th).

Mondi: The global forestry, pulp and paper group continues to quietly reward shareholders, delivering 25% in 2016. Johannesburg-based CEO David Hathorn is one of the most underrated of SA’s corporate leaders. He’s also married to my cousin, so I’m a little biased.

British American Tobacco: After SAB was acquired by ABInbev, this stock lost its spot as the biggest market cap on the JSE. But shareholders won’t worry as the Rupert-associated company returned 23% in 2016, ranking among the top quarter of the FTSE 100.

Old Mutual Group: Fans of Big Green have been waiting for a rejuvenation for some years, and new CEO Bruce Hemphill’s plans were good enough to lift the shares to a respectable 15.5% gain for 2016.

Intu Properties: Was the sole Saffer loser in a year (down 11.6%) when the FTSE 100 was split 60:40 in favour of gainers. The successor to Donny Gordon’s Liberty International was a casualty of Brexit, its shopping centres downgrading along with other UK-based assets.

MediClinic: The rapidly expanding private hospitals group let the team down by coming in the bottom four of the entire FTSE 100 for 2016 losing 30%. Investors fretted that it may have overpaid for a couple of big acquisitions. But that makes it all the more attractive for value hunters.

The full list of the FTSE 100 stocks’ performances for 2016 (and market caps) below: