Listen here.FirstRand just put its UK business up for sale after a motor finance mis-selling scandal turned an eight-year-old acquisition into a multi-billion-rand headache, and analyst Kokkie Kooyman of Denker Capital walked Alec Hogg through what it's actually worth. He explained why Capitec is quietly trying to build six versions of itself across Eastern Europe and Latin America, why South Africa's big three banks keep poaching each other's executives, and why a punishing war between Iran and the United States is, oddly, good news for bank profits and bad news for everyone else. He also weighed in on Washington's new visa restrictions on South African officials, what a strong DA showing in the upcoming local elections would mean for the rand, and why he thinks South Africa's own BEE rules are capping the entrepreneurial growth the country badly needs..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Alec Hogg: Hey, it's been too long since we've had an opportunity to talk to South Africa's top financial services investment analyst. He is recognised around the world as one of the best there is: Kokkie Kooyman from Denker Capital. Every time I get hold of you, Kokkie, you seem to be in a different part of the world. Are you home at the moment?Kokkie Kooyman: Interesting, I'm actually in the Kruger. I was sitting outside earlier, but then the wind started blowing and I thought, let me rather go inside. I've been inside the Kruger, but now just at Nguenya Lodge, on the Crocodile River.Alec Hogg: An exotic location as always for Mr Kooyman. And it's important, because you keep a close eye on the most significant part of the South African economy, which is our banks and our insurance companies. We had FirstRand reporting just the other day. It's a good place to start.Kokkie Kooyman: Yes. It's slightly messy because of the discontinuation of Aldermore. Your listeners might recall, Aldermore was, it's more than five, must be about ten years ago, eight years ago now, and that resulted from them having started MotoNovo, which is a motor leasing business in the UK.Alec Hogg: Just explain that, Kokkie. Explain Aldermore.Kokkie Kooyman: The problem is they couldn't get scale, they couldn't get deposits. Johan Burger, who was CEO at that stage, thought that if we buy a smaller bank, we are good at running banks, we can turn that around and we can at the same time have a deposit franchise. And so they bought Aldermore, which is actually quite a good little UK bank. We used to own it in our portfolios as well. But then the last few years there's been a tremendous turn in the UK. A Labour government, very overregulated. But the most important thing regarding them was there was a complaint from clients that they were misled on commission paybacks to introducers of their business. This has affected all the banks. It was disclosed, but it wasn't in a way that was clear enough, and it's a long story: they've had to pay enormous fines backdated to more than twenty years.And I think, correctly, FirstRand decided, we don't want to continue in this type of environment, where it's so uncertain politically, it's uncertain in terms of regulations, it's overregulated. So they have now finally put it on the block. There are four or five buyers for this business, and the proceeds will be between twenty five billion and thirty billion rand. So this is big, this is big money. They built this business over the years, they paid twenty for it. So if they get even thirty now, that's still good. I don't think they'll get thirty, but the results, back to your results question, were a bit impacted. If you look at it including Aldermore, then it's still a bad result, earnings per share down five percent. But if you strip it out and look at the FirstRand operation as we know and see it in South Africa and Africa, then earnings were up thirteen percent.Alec Hogg: Okay, so the Aldermore story is a big one. Just before we move off that: Metro Bank, which we once had in our BizNews portfolio. In fact we've got FirstRand in our BizNews Ricardo portfolio, and we were very lucky to escape before the real troubles started at Metro Bank. I read in the Financial Times that they were interested in buying Aldermore. Are they one of the five you've highlighted?Kokkie Kooyman: Yes, it ranges from Lloyd's, the big one, and I think Aldermore might be a bit too small for them, but let's see, they seem to be interested. Metro as well. Metro on its own has got a very interesting history. A CEO who grew this bank by just opening branches, and obviously your cost ratio ran away and they had to be totally restructured, recapitalised, but they're back on the front foot now. So for them it might most probably be a nice, you know, joint business. But there are three or four or five, mostly smaller. Lloyd's is one of them, the old Lloyds TSB.Alec Hogg: So if there are five bidders, you'd expect FirstRand will be able to bank something out of that story.Kokkie Kooyman: No, I think they will. I've just read up what all the sell side guys are saying, we've been talking to management as well. In fact, Craig in our team is talking to management today, I think in Cape Town. But the smaller banks and the whole bank sector in the UK have been derated quite a bit on fears of the government wanting to introduce a tax on banks.It's all socialist governments, they love doing that, because everybody hates banks, so you tax banks and your voters will be happy. And that is a risk at the moment which might suppress the price. And the UK economy is going nowhere. It's even worse than South Africa: there's no growth, also huge government debt, very high interest rates. So it's not an ideal time to be selling a bank. But Mary Vilakazi, we had one of the discussions with her, which was, you know, going to and fro, should I, should I not, and doing all the work. But in the end they decided, let's rather sell it. It's taking too much management time, and we can use the capital to either pay a big dividend to shareholders or grow our African footprint.Alec Hogg: When it comes to valuing banks, we work on a book value. Just explain what that is, and where's your valuation of FirstRand, and I'm going to ask you to do the same for Capitec, because within our BizNews portfolios we've got the intrinsic value, our valuation, and both of those share prices are either close to or, in Capitec's case, above our intrinsic value. So they're not cheap, but you're the expert.Kokkie Kooyman: Yes. So exactly like yourself, we use the price to net asset value. The net asset value is another term for the book value, which effectively is the capital of the business. In accounting, whatever grade they teach it now, the first thing you get taught is assets equal owner's equity plus liabilities. So it's the assets of the business less the liabilities, which is your owner's capital. And it's that owner's capital that you grow. So we always calculate for banks the return on equity, which is effectively the return on that capital. Small point, and I'm sure you do that as well: we always take the goodwill and the non-tangible assets out. So we look at the tangible net asset value and the return on tangible net asset value. And as you know, that was what Charlie Munger taught Warren Buffett all those years ago: often a business is worth more than the net asset value. Coca-Cola was his perfect example, or See's Candy, where the business, the brand, is so good that it will ensure you being able to continue to grow profit for a long time.And so that's where the intrinsic value comes in, because you do calculate this business is actually worth more than the assets. So we look at the return on that capital. FirstRand for this year, with Aldermore, was disappointing: a seventeen percent return on capital. We'll compare that to the other banks just now, but they've again stated, at the results presentation, their target, and that is what they did pre-Aldermore, because remember, in Aldermore in the UK, your returns on capital are a lot lower, twelve percent. So it dragged the group down. But going forward they think they will do a return on capital of between twenty and twenty five percent, could be twenty six percent. It'll take two or three years, because they've got to deploy that capital. But even a twenty three percent return on capital, if you compound that over five years, that's a doubling of your money.And so we always look at that return on capital relative to the price to net asset value. Just think, roughly, on a one times price to book value basis, you'd want a ten percent return on capital. For a twenty percent return on capital, I'm keeping it simple, you'll pay two times book. Thirty percent, you pay three times book. By the way, it doesn't quite work like that, we've done the correlations and the line moves a bit differently. But effectively Standard Bank is now trading at roughly two point two times book value for a return on capital of twenty five percent. So on that basis, it's almost perfectly priced. But now comes the quality overlay, or discount. And because of the quality and the track record of the business, it should trade higher. Most forecasters say it should trade two point five, two point eight.ABSA, for instance, is doing a sixteen percent return on capital, but trading at one times book. So you can see there's a big discount on ABSA's book value because of the uncertainty of Kenny being able to turn the business around. But in FirstRand, except for Aldermore, you haven't got that. So it's fairly valued, it's a great bank.Just as a quick one for your listeners, very interesting: I did a study on Standard Bank the other day, talked to a lot of Standard Bank people. If you had bought Standard Bank in 2002 and held it for those twenty four years, it grew from, let's say, one million in the share price to nine million. But it paid a lot of dividends. Had you just reinvested those dividends, every time you got your dividend you bought more Standard Bank, you'd now have twenty nine million. So the dividend reinvestment, people often tend to forget the value of that: it's a compound return over those twenty four years of roughly sixteen and a half percent. Just think of everything South Africa's been through, the world's been through, the Trade Center attacks, 2008, recessions, wars, Covid, Zuma, and you still get, and FirstRand's return on capital is slightly higher than Standard Bank's, but it wasn't listed in the same format, so I couldn't do that calculation. But for FirstRand, most people would have had a compound return over those years of twenty percent. And what more do you want than that?Alec Hogg: That's an incredible stat to share with us, Kokkie, because quite often people forget that investing is about compounding. You want a compounding machine. And the banks in South Africa seem to be compounding machines, none better than Capitec. But Capitec was a disruptor, it was very good at shaking up the place. It's not a disruptor any more, it's huge, and it's even looking at international expansion. So should we be looking at its valuation differently?Kokkie Kooyman: Yes, a lot of investors start looking at it on a PE basis, which makes it look cheaper. And they justify it because of what Gerrie Fourie, and before him Riaan Stassen, who actually built the business on solid foundations, and challenging and keeping the costs low, and having that client centric focus. Gerrie took it further, being a data and computer man, and grew the fee income, the transactional income. At this stage the transactional income is, I think, forty five percent of its earnings. So your lending income is less, and that justifies a higher PE basis. But even on that it's not that cheap, because banking tends to be volatile. Capitec have been an amazing bank because of their data driven lending, the bad debts are actually always fairly well controlled. And remember, they start at the low end of the market and they're gradually moving up. So Capitec, if you look at it on a traditional basis, the price to book is expensive. On a PE, even then, it's not cheap, but it's unique.I see banks all over the world, we're on our way now to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and places like that to go again and look at the banks there. Ben and Barry, at the moment, are in Latin America looking at Nubank again, and Inter, and a few others. And everywhere we go, the first thing management asks us when we sit down is, tell us about Capitec, how do they do it. That includes Tinkoff, which was arguably the best bank alongside Capitec in the world; in Russia now, unfortunately, we don't visit them any more. Capitec has actually grown slowly, gradually, module by module, and it's still a retail bank. It's gone into business banking now, more at the lower end, but growing that. They're not even into corporate banking yet. They started first with adding insurance, which is more lucrative. Whatever they do, it's the so-called flywheel effect, that you've got a core and you just keep adding clients and you keep adding products. So the return on capital is a very high thirty three percent, and if you compound that, it's amazing.And then coming to offshore: they, I think, about ten, twelve years ago, bought a stake in a small business across six countries, mostly Eastern European countries, one of them was in Mexico. So five Eastern European countries, and I think Denmark wasn't totally Eastern Europe either. It had the unfortunate name of Creamfinance, but they bought a twenty five percent stake. I always asked Gerrie, what are you doing here? And he said, listen, we are getting a ringside seat here, observing six different banks, six different regulators, six different groups of consumers, six different tax regimes, and we're just learning the whole time. And then post-Covid, these banks got into trouble because they'd overlent, and Capitec bought out the remaining shareholders and took control, well, except for two and a half percent. So they now have control over six banks in quite a wide variety of countries, higher growth countries, all of them generally, and with populations that are poorly banked.And so what Gerrie, in fact, is doing at this stage, him and, I believe, one of his colleagues, are travelling again like they used to do at Capitec, going to the taxi ranks, understanding those client bases. And the plan is to build six Capitecs. Now you'll never get that quite right, but that is the plan. And he says, look, it will take ten years, but that is the plan, and I think investors are paying up a bit for that already as well.Alec Hogg: So this is Gerrie Fourie, the former CEO. He hasn't retired, he hasn't gone off into the sunset to go fishing, he's fishing for more profits for the company.Kokkie Kooyman: No, no. But you're quite right, and I think it's the same with, I've heard that from Laurie Dippenaar, from every CEO, when you ask them. Sim Tshabalala, I had a long chat to him: why is he retiring so early? Investors don't realise the constant pressure on a CEO of a bank, especially under regulatory pressure from government, clients, cyber attacks, growing the business. So that's why he wanted to step down, and this is a much more relaxed role, almost a scout role, so he's enjoying that. And Graham Lee, by the way, is phenomenal, so he could stand back and let Graham take over, and Graham and Gerrie, the two old soldiers in that team, seem to be enjoying themselves.Alec Hogg: Why is there such a merry go round amongst South African banking executives? I'm talking specifically here about what happened between Standard Bank, Nedbank and ABSA, not Capitec: no one, Capitec doesn't seem to rely on anybody else, and neither does FirstRand, they don't hire from others. But those three banks have a bit of a merry go round amongst themselves. It's almost like, as an outside investor, you'd say, why are they not growing their own timber, why are they hiring from elsewhere?Kokkie Kooyman: Yes, I think it's partly circumstantial. It's a good question, let me think as I speak. We discuss it ourselves a bit, but Standard Bank has been almost the university, Standard Bank and FirstRand both. Young talent will go to Standard Bank or FirstRand, that's where you go when you're young and you want to make your name in banking. So they've actually grown the timber. And in a lot of banks you'll find ex-senior guys from Standard Bank who then in the end get lured away, because you get so many new guys and only a few of them can make it to the top. Sim was still young, and ABSA, specifically under Kenny, obviously they lured him away. Kenny thought he wouldn't get to be CEO at Standard Bank because Sim was still too young. So they started talking to him, and suddenly he gets the opportunity to go and turn around ABSA, a huge challenge, and he must have said, look, I like that. But unfortunately what he then does is he goes and phones his friends or colleagues at Standard Bank who he knows are good, and convinces them to come across. And that's happened at Nedbank and ABSA. And at the same time, bringing in new blood, the older guard resists the change, or doesn't like the change, or feels overlooked, and then they leave. That's why you have this merry go round: quite a few new guys coming into ABSA, quite a few of the older execs leaving who don't like the new culture, maybe, or don't like the way Kenny wants to do things, or are just overlooked for new positions. There are a lot of reasons, often, but you're quite right, those three, there's been quite a bit of a merry go round.Alec Hogg: Moving back to FirstRand and Nedbank, because the big story there is what the one is not doing in Africa, i.e. FirstRand not really interested, and what the other one is doing, which is selling up in the West and going off to the East. Nedbank has taken a big bet in East Africa, haven't they?Kokkie Kooyman: Yes, Mike Brown took a bigger bet initially, also about ten, twelve years ago, when he bought into Ecobank. And that never worked, it was a good idea at that stage, and as long as I've been an analyst in South Africa, South African businesses have been trying to extrapolate or grow outside South Africa, right back to the earliest days: Standard Bank, ABSA, Sanlam and Old Mutual were particularly poor at buying businesses in the UK. You remember all those things Jim Sutcliffe did, and United Asset Managers, and then Sanlam had quite a few of those businesses too. But it doesn't matter. So Mike Brown, over the past fifteen years, it was Africa, because Africa was going to grow, and it has grown fast, in South Africa too, but that's our fault, not their doing, we're growing much less than we should. But okay, Mike Brown bought a stake in Ecobank, roughly twenty two percent. The idea was that Nedbank suddenly gets exposure to, I think it was seventeen different banks inside East and West Africa. But the group never did that well, and they never had the influence they thought, and there was never the cross-selling.So I think when Jason Quinn came in, the first thing he did, and there must have been a lot of discussion on this, he said, let's sell Ecobank, and we use that money to grow our own timber in Africa. And that's when they then bought, I always get the initials wrong, is it NCBA, I think it's N-C-B-A, it's a very good Kenyan bank with operations in three or four surrounding countries. And that will start kicking in for them in the second half of this year and next year. So they've suddenly increased their footprint in Africa: next year it'll be thirty percent of earnings. By the way, Standard Bank is more than forty percent now, ABSA is also about thirty percent, and Standard Bank, by the way, is much more diversified, twenty one countries. So now with FirstRand, we're sitting with, I think it's eleven, twelve, thirteen percent in Africa, and it's concentrated in Botswana, which, as we know, the diamond price collapse is hurting, and then Zambia and Namibia is the main focus. So they also want to go into East Africa. So the only risk I see for FirstRand is that they get the money from Aldermore and now it's burning a hole in their pockets, and they go and overpay. It's not in their culture, but that's the risk there. I'm sure they're out there looking at the moment, they know the Aldermore money will come, but so they also want to increase the African footprint.Alec Hogg: It's so interesting when you have a look at the environment and the different strategies going on inside South Africa's banking sector. But if you think more broadly: we had a pretty shocking bit of news coming out of the United States last night in the fight between Washington and Pretoria. Now they're going to name South Africans and have visa restrictions. You can imagine if you're a public servant in a senior position and you've got children studying in the United States, well, they might not be studying there for very long. And Ambassador Brent Bozell, this morning, came out with a statement immediately afterwards, saying this is step one, that there's much worse to come, in essence. Kokkie, how should we be reading that on the one hand, and then overlay that with what came out at the BNC#9 conference, that the Iran war is no victory for the United States, if anything they've got themselves into a Vietnam-type situation, a bit of a quagmire there. And that's not good news for the oil price. So you've got the oil price on the one hand, you've got an erratic president in the White House who's targeting South Africa. How do these geopolitical issues affect us in South Africa, and by definition, our banks?Kokkie Kooyman: Yes, banks in that regard, and this is global at the moment, banks are benefiting from the war. It sounds contrary to what you'd normally believe, but the higher oil price is fuelling inflation and keeping interest rates higher. And so everywhere in the world, bank net interest margins have been going up. Normally, in the past, when interest rates go up, your bad debts go up. But because post-2008 balance sheets, and everything, and regulation, have been changed dramatically, the banks' bad debts in South Africa as well are still at record lows. So you're benefiting, at least, from net interest margin.But politically, for South Africa, yeah, we're sadly moving more and more towards China, Iran, Russia. And so, for Standard Bank, ICBC, the biggest bank in China, is simply a business partner, an investor in the bank. They're doing very good business with them, also setting up payment systems between China and Africa. So in that regard, it will open doors for us in Africa, as America is actually withdrawing from Africa, alienating Africa, not only South Africa but other African countries as well, under the Trump regime. Almost a bit like Canada, I mean Canada's getting even worse treatment than we are. So your banks obviously do best in an environment where a country grows, and that's the sad part. Does what the US is doing affect our growth rate? It will affect our exports. But to a large extent a lot of the exporters have already been looking around, a bit like Canada, there've been agreements signed, especially on the fruit side, with China, with other countries. So I think it depends on our government, how they play it. But the bottom line of what you're saying is true: it is very, very sad that our government has allowed us to get on the wrong side of the largest country by GDP and the most influential country in the world. And that can't be good. So we're going into this fight as underdogs, but we're still fighting.Alec Hogg: It is a concern, though, for the man in the street, when you think about interest rates. Higher interest rates might be good for banks, but when they're higher for longer, it's not that good for the economy.Kokkie Kooyman: Yes. So, where we started, with the FirstRand results, and if you look at the results of the four big banks, then lending growth was still actually fairly good, eight percent year on year, but most of that was corporate: new projects, government business, joint initiatives with railways and things like that, exports, and Africa. The retail loan growth was actually quite poor, five percent, mortgage only three percent. So you can see the consumer is under pressure. And it's interesting that the net interest margins generally were under pressure too, because they're not getting sufficient deposit inflows, because there isn't a lot of cash in people's pockets to place with the banks. So the consumer is definitely under pressure, and if you keep that up, we don't have a higher growth rate, then even the banks will start battling, because then your bad debts do start rising, and your unemployment starts rising even more in the currently employed sector. Government will have to cut costs.So this election, by the way, I'm sure you've been talking a lot about that, this election is going to be crucial as to whether those people who have been suffering because of the policies followed by the ANC finally wake up and see, we've got to vote for change, and not vote for a party that's to the left of the ANC, but go for a party that's more capital friendly and attracts capital and can grow the country.Alec Hogg: We had the mayoral candidate from the Democratic Alliance for eThekwini in studio yesterday, and it was interesting to hear what he had to say about what's going on there, because it's very clear that in KwaZulu-Natal, or certainly in eThekwini, they've tossed out the ANC. He says they're in the low teens for their support there, from a dominant position. Of course there it all went to the left, to MK. But perhaps in Johannesburg it's different, and those, more educated.Kokkie Kooyman: Politics are hectic at the moment, aren't they? You've almost got to read the politics before you can do the investing.Alec Hogg: Companies adapt.Kokkie Kooyman: Yes. Well, over time, unless your country really becomes an Argentina, or a Turkey, where Erdogan really made bad decisions and the currency really collapsed, over time economies adapt, companies adapt. A very interesting book, I know you've got a lot of older listeners who might enjoy reading it, it's called Why Nations Fail. I've only been reading it recently, but it's fascinating to go through history: generally, countries who follow the route of what they call an extracting society at the top, which effectively we've had with BEE, it's actually a way of extracting money from your voters and enriching an elite, it never ends well. And in the end that elite resists change, and that's where we are in South Africa, because we're lacking the innovation, the entrepreneurial spirit, because a lot of entrepreneurs are being chased outside the country, because they're not allowed to, or they can't work to the full extent they'd like to, because they've got to give up a share in the whole BEE structure. So you're actually really putting a cap on growth, and that's really what the whole BEE thing has done. And I know it's been necessary to get a black middle class through, and so on, but the book is just full of examples of how this has failed, time and again, throughout history.Alec Hogg: Well, when the elites manage to get their grip on a political system, it's very, very difficult to get that grip off. But I guess, to close off with: if you extrapolate what's happening now, with the United States putting pressure on South Africa, on BEE as one of the target areas, isn't that, couldn't that be, maybe, the antibodies from Pretoria kicking back and saying, you see, it's these guys in the West trying to get us to change, whereas, in another scenario, they might see the realities. Now they could have a reason, politically, ideologically, whatever, to resist what could be very positive change, to get rid of this terrible system.Kokkie Kooyman: You know, all those years ago, remember, when the Lady R docked in Simon's Town, I saw Alan Pullinger, then CEO of FirstRand, that morning, and he said, there will be consequences. His famous words. And FirstRand was already going proactively to the US, speaking to politicians and funders, saying, listen, this is our government, this is not the banks, you must differentiate between the two. So there's been a lot of lobbying on that side as well, obviously it hasn't helped enough. But back to your question, you're quite right, the risk is that the pro-reform people in the country now get lambasted, and told, you're just acting as agents for the USA.Alec Hogg: And you're on their side.Kokkie Kooyman: And it's not true. We now need cool heads and just do what is right. And whenever I talk to Ian Kirk and other guys who work more closely with government, I think Cyril does realise that, where we are with our debt to GDP ratio, we do need changes. There's a lot of cooperation, a lot of work being done. But a new government might change things, so we must hope and pray for a better government. But always remember, in investments, good corporations adjust, and the same with the banks. Standard Bank has now got forty percent of its business outside South Africa, the other banks roughly thirty percent, they're continuously adjusting, and an economy has to keep growing.And in South Africa's case, our big positives are a very good, very capable, highly regarded South African Reserve Bank, and our Treasury as well. And that's what's keeping the rand fairly, fairly strong, it's actually been strong. And then also, in terms of whether you like it or not, what the finance minister has done on the tax side: revenues have still been fairly strong, funnily enough, you'd actually want it to fail to not give enough revenue to a government for spending, but that has been a saving grace for South Africa. And we've still got an independent judiciary, very, very important, and a free press. So, I'm not that negative, I think, but it depends on how the elections play a role.Alec Hogg: This too shall pass, Mr Kooyman, and we retain hope that once it's passed there will be an upside. But I guess rationality would suggest that that's really the direction to go. So you remain fully invested in banks in South Africa? How are foreigners thinking? Are they also investing in our banks, or are they holding off?Kokkie Kooyman: They've been coming in and pulling out again, depending on the news flow and where it's going. But bear in mind our banks have a fantastic track record. Remember that stat I gave you about Standard Bank? Through everything we've been through, still compounding, very good management teams. And now you've got ABSA and Nedbank at one times, one point one times price to net asset value, for a return on capital of sixteen percent. So at the conferences you see a lot more foreign investors, and also, when I speak to the CEOs, there was a while when they weren't travelling, there was just no interest, no interest from overseas at conferences to listen to SA banks or insurers. But that has turned again. So they're hoping for a good election outcome, and then they'll be buying again, because the valuations are attractive, the track records are very good.Alec Hogg: What's a good election outcome?Kokkie Kooyman: A good election outcome is that the ANC loses voters, that seems to be almost a given. Everyone I speak to who's on the inside says the ANC is losing, but whether they'll go to the left, to MK or the EFF or one of the other smaller parties, or whether they'll vote for the DA. You want a capital friendly party like the DA to gain the votes, so a very good outcome would be the DA being the biggest party, which is not impossible. They've been shooting themselves in the foot a bit, but it's not impossible. And a new government of national unity led by the DA, that would be very good. Then the rand will strengthen and the economy will grow, we'll create jobs.Alec Hogg: Fascinating, always, to get your insights, Kokkie, given not just your own wisdom but those you tap into on a regular basis. Thank you very much once again for your time. Kokkie Kooyman is director and portfolio manager at Denker Capital. I'm Alec Hogg from BizNews.com.