After several major delays and hitches, it looks like MTN’s Zakhele shares may start trading early next year, although the precise date remains uncertain. Since November 27, there have been three other attempts to get the Zakhele share trading system up and running, but all have failed to address the system’s inability to handle high volumes. However, according to MTN Zakhele chairman Thulani Gcabashe, they’ve finally managed to get things right, doubling the capacity of the overworked call centre and significantly upgrading the capacity of the online trading system. All that remains, says Gcabashe, is the final auditors’ report on the upgraded system, and regulatory approval, both of which are anticipated soon. Trading in MTN Zakhele shares could commence by mid-January, putting an end to this embarrassing chapter. – FD
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GUGULETHU MFUPHI: MTN Zakhele announced over the weekend that its shares will only resume trading next month. This after huge demand and technical problems halted transactions. The shares were already supposed to be trading again but the date has been pushed back multiple times. Joining us now on the line to provide the latest is Chairman Thulani Gcabashe. Thulani, please provide us with an explanation as to what’s causing the delay yet again.
THULANI GCABASHE: Good afternoon, Gugu. Essentially, we’ve had our service providers working on fixing what needed to be fixed in terms of the amount of testing coming on the back of that. Now this has been ongoing and we are now at the point where in our view, the system is robust. Everything has been fixed. We’re awaiting the finalisation of the report by the auditors who audited the system. Thereafter, we will be conferring with the regulators who, as you might expect, have wanted to know what had gone wrong and what we’ve done about it, so we’ve already had some discussions and we’ll be having some more discussions with the regulators.
ALEC HOGG: What have you said to the Regulator, Thulani?
THULANI GCABASHE: No, we indicated that the problems we really had were around capacity in terms of concurrent users being more than the system could cater for, so we’ve been working on fixing that. In fact, just to mention one of the changes, we have now ensured that we can take four times the number of concurrent users that we had in our first round of trading. We’ve also looked at loading, in terms of the number of transactions that they would do, and we’ve then looked at the stability of the system while those transactions are happening. The service providers have been hard at work, getting this right, and we rely on the auditing that’s been done, we’ve been taken through it, and the system is far more robust now so it can take the volumes that we saw at the beginning. What we’ve also done, if I may add, is to double the number of call centre agents, so there are now 80 agents, all trained up and ready.
ALEC HOGG: Thulani, what’s confusing me here is that part of your consortium is STT and we know STT put together the Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s software, so they have plenty of understanding of a trading system. Yet, in engaging with them, they said they were not commissioned to do the trading system for you. It seems rather strange because they’ve handled things many times the size of what MTN Zakhele needs, and yet they weren’t engaged to do that. I’m confused.
THULANI GCABASHE: Alec, I think we’ve dealt with this point before. We engaged the consortium of which STT is a part. We did not suggest what it should be doing. They gave us a proposal as a consortium, and it’s that consortium, which we looked at…
ALEC HOGG: I understand now – yes.
THULANI GCABASHE: I must say that everybody has cooperated at the back end and at the front end. It’s really been around making sure that the integration holds out under severe pressure, and I think that’s where we are. The reason we didn’t open – as we had thought – today, is that the regulators are looking at our reports and we are holding discussions with them. Given the time of year, it’s quite difficult to get everything done quickly, so we are in engagement with them, and we just felt that it’s probably more likely by that January all of these processes will have finished.
ALEC HOGG: Very briefly, when in January: mid, late, or early?
THULANI GCABASHE: I cannot tell you. As I said, we need to sit down with the Regulator and if I put a date, it may not suit the schedule or the resources at this time of the year, but as soon as we know, we will communicate – that really is our priority.
GUGULETHU MFUPHI: Thanks very much, Thulani.
THULANI GCABASHE: Thank you.
GUGULETHU MFUPHI: Well that was MTN Zakhele Chairman Thulani Gcabashe.
