JSE’s 50% Club – Top performing shares of 2013 including five Large Caps professionals “had” to own

Some years back my pal Adrian Morris of EasySoft showed me how to pull performance data from his excellent Market Master stock market software. So I spent part of New Year’s Day at my iMac pulling the JSE’s key numbers for 2013. Yesterday we published the 25 Biggest Losers. Here are shares we all wish we’d owned through 2013.

The table is easy to play around with. Click the arrows at the top of each column to line up the list in the way you prefer.  Additional information on each stock is available when you click on our JSE Data tab on the navigation bar – enter the name of the stock in the Share Lookup box.  Happy homework.

One of the highlights quickly apparent from the table is the high proportion of Transport and TMT companies among the 54 stocks whose share prices rose over 50% last year. Also fascinating for me was that a dozen of these top performers have the scale (R8bn-plus market cap) to be on the radar of “institutional” investors – the large unit trust, retirement and pension fund portfolios whose size means they can only focus on big fish. In particular, professional money managers who stayed away from supercharged Top 40 stocks Naspers, Richemont, Aspen, Steinhoff and Mondi would have found it tough to get close to the best performing funds of 2013. 

As you’d expect, a number of the top performing stocks are relatively small businesses. But with the possible exception of Namibian-based Southern Electricity, there’s enough of their equity around for private investors to have been able to grab a slice. With a bit of homework there’s really no reason why in the year ahead you won’t be among those to spot 2013’s equivalents of Finbond (a “mutual bank”)  or the old Anooraq Platinum (now Atlastsa Resources). 

For obvious reasons I play close attention to Media stocks. The amazing story of Naspers continues with its 30% stake in the hugely successful Chinese business TenCent propelling the group’s shares past further milestones in 2013 (over R1000 per share and over R450bn market cap). Less noticed was the strong showing by the streamlined Times Media Group, owners of the Sunday Times, Business Day and Financial Mail.

Times Media’s CEO Andrew Bonamour, the investment banker who became the ultimate insider when taking over the executive reins, has been backing himself with cold cash. A little noticed SENS announcement on December 27 disclosed that Bonamour’s Blackstar Group has pushed its stake in TMG to a touch over 25%, up from 17% at the previous formal disclosure. The 25% shareholding level is key as it introduces a raft of new rights. Not least, ensuring that for as long as Bonamour wants to run the business, he will be able to block any takeover approaches. That would suggest the investment banker has indeed found his home – and won’t be “fixing and flipping” the business as widely rumoured. – AH

Winners of 2013