FirstRand’s share price dropped more than 6% yesterday, a nervy development because it came at the same time as SA’s leading financial services group released its annual report. Fearing the worst, I scurried over to the online “glossy” (click here) to see what might have spooked investors.
That’s no easy task. The report is 397 pages long, the proverbial haystack from which to discover one worrying needle. There wasn’t one. If anything, the ‘Prospects’ section should be supporting rather than hurting the shares, with chairman Roger Jardine and CEO Alan Pullinger referring to accelerated lending and higher Net Interest Income for 2023.
Confused, I called our go-to man on banks, Denker’s Kokkie Kooyman. He quickly set things straight. Tuesday was the cut-off date to qualify for 310c a share in dividends – a 185c final and 125c special divi. Wednesday’s buyers will not participate. Take that out and the FirstRand share price drop was around 1%, unremarkable in this volatile era.
___STEADY_PAYWALL___The bottom line? I’m very happy we added FirstRand to the BizNews portfolios last month, even though, at R61.20, it’s a little above the current share price. A rising interest rate cycle helps banking profit and with FSR on an undemanding rating, investment experts, including Kokkie, reckon SA banking shares offer great value right now. With FirstRand, as ever, leading the pack.
More for you to read today:
- Lindiwe Sisulu and NDZ: Dream team or nightmare? Douglas Gibson recalls his interactions with the ministers turned Ramaphosa rivals over the years.
- Will Jerome Powell’s inflation crusade get as ugly as Paul Volcker’s? The Fed had to inflict a lot of pain in the ’80s to convince markets it was serious.
- How Ukrainian strategy is running circles around Russia’s lumbering military. Classic military operations and nimble battlefield decision-making are exploiting the incompetence and top-down command of Russian forces.
- Hedge fund managers paid for stockpicking genius aren’t showing much of it. The traditional strategy of mixing long and short equity bets hasn’t provided the bear market buffer that clients hoped for.
SA’s shadow mining minister James Lorimer had his hopes of a breakthrough in the war against organised mining criminals dashed when ANC and EFF members of Parliament’s task force refused to visit an illegally-worked open pit coal mine. This was the second site scheduled for observation during Saturday’s visit to Emalahleni (Witbank), unusual in that it avoided typical Potemkin-village staging by bureaucrats. But as Lorimer explains in this podcast, the risk of getting their shoes muddied apparently took precedence for the R95k a month taxpayer-funded ANC and EFF deployees. In this interview with Alec Hogg of BizNews, the DA veteran unpacks how illegal mining has become big business in SA’s coal mining epicentre with criminal syndicates leasing heavy duty diggers and dump trucks to illegally strip-mine hundreds of tons of coal sold wholesale into the system at massive profits. Lorimer explains how this crime is facilitated through deliberately blind eyes of those paid to protect society against such abuse. Including, it appears, some Parliamentarians.
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