# Business Bagel > Fast, clear, daily coverage of the markets, money and companies shaping South Africa. A bite of business, every day. Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. This file includes a bounded export of public pages first, then recent public posts. Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`). ## Pages ### About URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/about/ Last updated: 2026-06-08T10:19:42.000Z **Business Bagel is South Africa’s business and finance news, served daily.** We cut through the noise to bring you fast, clear, decisive coverage of the markets, money and companies shaping South Africa — and what they actually mean for you. We believe business news shouldn’t be dense, dry or reserved for people in suits. Whether you’re an investor, a founder, a student or just trying to make sense of the rand, we turn the day’s most important stories into something quick to read and easy to understand. A bite of business. 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Material changes will be reflected here with a new effective date. *Effective date: June 2026.* ### Editorial Standards URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/editorial/ Last updated: 2026-06-08T10:19:43.000Z Business Bagel exists to make South African business and finance news fast, clear and trustworthy. These are the standards we hold ourselves to. ## Independence Our editorial decisions are our own. Commercial partnerships never determine what we cover or the conclusions we reach. ## Accuracy & sourcing We aim to get it right. 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If you spot something that’s wrong, please tell us via our [Contact](https://www.businessbagel.com/contact/) page and we’ll put it right. ### Business Bagel URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/links/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T06:56:54.000Z Business Bagel — South Africa’s daily business & finance brief. - [Get the free newsletter](#/portal/signup) - [Read today’s stories](https://www.businessbagel.com/) - [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/7dlLmy9OpjTbDk279QCgw9?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Work with us](https://www.businessbagel.com/work-with-us/) ### Markets URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/markets/ Last updated: 2026-06-23T06:13:04.000Z Markets data hub. ## Posts ### The Roundup — Monday, 7 September 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-monday-7-september-2026/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T04:00:58.000Z Today's edition Golden Rule Good morning. The world's biggest money managers spent recent weeks buying gold back, and South Africa's contribution to that is a forgotten mine that somebody else already dug. Plus a couple other stories you’re going to want to hear. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/markets--36-.png) --- REOPENING ACT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Articlesibanye-1.png) ## Sibanye-Stillwater is reopening a gold mine that somebody else built and abandoned in 2012 Gold has spent this year doing what gold does when investors get nervous. It trades above $4,400 an ounce, and Bloomberg reported this week that some of the big boys - Amundi, Pictet, Robeco and Fidelity - have all rebuilt positions they cut earlier in the year. Almost none of that money goes into the ground in South Africa, which now takes under 1% of the world's mine exploration spending. Sibanye-Stillwater's board approved a new gold mine anyway, and it is not a new discovery. Burnstone sits near Balfour in Mpumalanga, where a Canadian developer sank the shaft, poured gold in 2010 and gave up two years later after flooding. Sibanye inherited it with Wits Gold in 2014. **Why this one passed the vote:** - The shaft, the decline and the machines that work underground are all still standing, which is why mining can start next year rather than in a decade. - Sibanye approved R98 million for Burnstone this year, covering setup and recruitment rather than construction, with about R3.5 billion of infrastructure capital still to follow. - At full production the mine is planned for roughly 130 000 ounces of gold a year and about 2 500 jobs, against a reserve of 2.7 million ounces. Mining starts in 2027 and the processing plant only runs in the first quarter of 2029\. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/sibanye-stillwater-burnstone-gold-mine-approved/) --- CART BLANCHE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-SA-retail-1.png) ## Online shopping is now about a tenth of South African retail, on a shrinking share of shoppers South Africans are expected to spend about R159 billion online this year, and World Wide Worx's annual study puts that at roughly a tenth of everything the country's retailers sell, for the first full year. The increase on its own is about R29 billion in twelve months, close to the size of the entire South African online market in 2020\. Retail as a whole grew about 4% over the first five months of the year. The share of adults who shop online went the other way, from 36% in 2024 to 34.2% in 2025. A delivery subscription is not really about delivery. Amazon Prime costs R59 a month here and Shoprite's Xtra Savings Plus R99, and the report is explicit that these plans exist to lift how often people shop and how many categories they buy across, not to absorb the courier bill. TakealotMORE carried more than a quarter of Takealot Group's sales within two years of launching. Checkers Sixty60 sold R25.5 billion of groceries in the year to June, a third of what Pick n Pay takes in a full year, and TFG's Bash produced the turnover of 195 physical stores. Takealot Group turned its first full-year trading profit, R171 million, about fifteen years in. The margin behind it runs near 1%, and Amazon started selling Prime here in June. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/online-retail-south-africa-2026-tenth-of-turnover/) --- BAGEL BITE **What is the medical term for ringing in the ears?** **A.** Vertigo **B.** Tinnitus **C.** Labyrinthitis --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-competition-commision-1.png) **The Competition Commission has started publishing the gap between what food producers get and what you pay.** Its latest Cost of Living Report tracks 6 staples. Between January and June, the price farmers received for maize fell nearly 14%, while a 2.5kg bag of maize meal got only 5% cheaper. Frozen chicken prices didn’t change at the producer level, but rose 5.4% on supermarket shelves. Chief economist James Hodge says gaps like these may warrant the commission stepping in. No investigation has been opened. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/competition-commission-cost-of-living-report-food-spreads/) **Implats had the kind of year that makes a mining company look transformed, and almost none of it was its doing.** Headline earnings went up thirtyfold on revenue up 58%, after platinum, rhodium and palladium prices recovered hard. The company is handing back R17.1 billion, about 82% of the cash it had spare. What it has not fixed is the cost side, which crept up this year and is guided higher again next. Prices handed Implats this result, and prices can take the next one away. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/implats-fy2026-results-r17-1bn-dividend/) **From today, you can trade Capitec shares on 2 different South African stock exchanges.** The bank is keeping its main JSE listing, but is adding a secondary listing on A2X - a smaller, alternative exchange where companies like Naspers, Discovery and Standard Bank can also be traded. The exchange currently has 167 securities worth more than R13 trillion combined. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/jpmorgan-a2x-capitec-secondary-listing/) **Oura has filed to go public in the United States, built around a ring its customers barely take off.** Paying members wear it for a median of about 23 hours a day, and roughly 85% are still paying for the membership a year later. That helped revenue grow 74% to $1.21 billion in the 9 months to June, with Oura now profitable. And the market around it is getting crowded: Samsung, Ultrahuman, RingConn and Circular are all building smart rings of their own.[**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/oura-s1-filing-ring-subscription-rivals/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/weather--32-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Wordle--35-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/beta/wordle/play?p=-P0q98zcYKORvJIqu5UN&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Tinnitus** Tinnitus is not a disease on its own but a symptom, often linked to hearing loss, ageing, or spending time around loud noise. The sounds are produced within the hearing system itself rather than coming from outside, which is why only the affected person can hear them. It is very common, and most people notice it at least briefly at some point in their lives. Protecting your ears from very loud sound is one of the best ways to lower the risk. --- That's your Monday done. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### South Africans are spending more online than ever, and it’s creating a R159 billion market URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/online-retail-south-africa-2026-tenth-of-turnover/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T03:44:59.000Z Online shopping in South Africa is now worth about a tenth of what the country's retailers sell. Online Retail in South Africa 2026, published by World Wide Worx with Mastercard, Peach Payments and Ask Africa, applies three different measures to that milestone, because the available retail series answer different questions. On the constant-price convention its earlier editions used, online was about 10.7% of retail in 2025\. On a strict comparison of online turnover against Stats SA retail sales at current prices, the crossing happened in the first half of this year and the full-year average lands at 10%. The money is less ambiguous. South Africans are expected to spend about R159 billion online in 2026, growth the study estimates at 22.5%. That adds roughly R29 billion of turnover in a single year, almost the size of the entire South African online market in 2020\. Retail as a whole grew about 4% over the first five months of the year. ## What a subscription is actually buying A delivery subscription is not really about delivery. Amazon Prime costs R59 a month here and Shoprite's Xtra Savings Plus R99, and the report is explicit that plans like these exist to lift how often people shop and how many categories they buy across, not to absorb the courier bill. TakealotMORE carried more than a quarter of Takealot Group's sales within two years of launching. The growth those plans feed is not evenly spread. Checkers Sixty60 sold R25.5 billion of groceries in the year to June, a third of what Pick n Pay takes in a full year. TFG's Bash grew 49.2% and produced the turnover of 195 physical stores, which is why the group can keep closing branches without losing the sales. ## Fifteen years to a profit Takealot Group recorded its first full-year trading profit about fifteen years after it launched, R171 million on an adjusted basis. Two years before that it wrote R5.9 billion off the value of its e-commerce business, on the view that it was taking too long to get there. The report is careful about what the profit means at this scale: a margin of about 1% is thin cover against Amazon, which started selling Prime here in June for less than its video service costs on its own. The shopper base is the part that is not growing. The share of adults buying online fell from 36% in 2024 to 34.2% in 2025, so the extra turnover is coming from people who were already there, ordering more often. Ask Africa's Andrea Rademeyer said convenience has overtaken saving money as the reason people shop online, and that established shoppers are buying more frequently and across more categories. Arthur Goldstuck, who led the research, points out that online retail has gone from under 1% of turnover to a tenth of the market in a decade. The next tenth has to come from people who are not shopping online yet, and the past two years have gone the other way. ### Sibanye is bringing a South African gold mine back to life after more than a decade URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sibanye-stillwater-burnstone-gold-mine-approved/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T03:29:59.000Z Building a gold mine from nothing in South Africa has become close to unheard of, in a country that now attracts less than 1% of the world's mine exploration spending. Sibanye-Stillwater's board has approved one that is not from nothing. Burnstone sits near Balfour in Mpumalanga, about 80km south-east of Johannesburg, where a Canadian company sank the shaft, poured first gold in 2010 and gave up in 2012 after flooding and a shortage of developed ore. Sibanye inherited it in its 2014 takeover of Wits Gold, and the decision to restart was disclosed in its half-year results on 1 September. What survived the failure is the expensive part. The vertical shaft and the decline are standing, and the fleet of machines that works underground is still there, which is why mining can start next year instead of in a decade. Ralph Lombard, who runs projects for the company, said the build carries on to 2029 with ore stockpiled until the processing plant starts in the first quarter of that year. ## The R98 million that is not the whole number The board approved R98 million for Burnstone this year, and that covers project setup and recruitment rather than construction. The company's own figures put infrastructure capital at about R3.5 billion and pre-production capital at about R2.5 billion through 2028\. News24 puts total project capital at R6.2 billion. Sibanye values the project at about R19.2 billion and puts its return at roughly 36%. Burnstone works the Kimberley Reef at an average depth of about 550 metres. Driefontein, the company's deep mine on the West Rand, sends 7 000 people a day down through infrastructure that is decades old. Richard Cox, who runs the Southern African operations, said the point is reserve replacement and a shallower, lower risk ounce to offset depletion from those deep conventional mines. ## The industry it is restarting into South African gold has been shrinking for a decade. Minerals Council figures put employment in the sector at just under 120 000 people in 2014 and a little over 90 000 by 2024, with annual production falling by about 40% over the same years. Sibanye's own gold output fell 2% in the half, and its underground mining went down further than that. At steady state Burnstone is planned for roughly 130 000 ounces of gold a year and about 2 500 jobs. The 25-year mine life attaches to a reserve of 2.7 million ounces. Lombard was explicit that the larger resource sitting behind it is not part of that number, and would only open up if the first phase works. Gold is doing the arguing for now. It trades above $4 400 an ounce, and Bloomberg reported this week that Amundi, Pictet, Robeco and Fidelity have all rebuilt positions they cut earlier in the year. Those managers can sell theirs on a Tuesday. Sibanye's version comes out of the ground near Balfour from next year. ### The Competition Commission is questioning why cheaper crops aren’t translating into cheaper groceries URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/competition-commission-cost-of-living-report-food-spreads/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T03:14:59.000Z Food passes through three sets of hands before it reaches a till, and the Competition Commission has started publishing what happens at each one. Its third Cost of Living Report, released on Friday, tracks the difference between what a producer receives and what a shopper pays for canned pilchards, eggs, frozen chicken, brown bread, sunflower oil and maize meal. The commission calls that difference the spread. Take maize meal. The farm value of the grain in a 2.5kg bag fell nearly 14% between January and June, while what the miller charged for that bag barely moved. The price on the shelf came down about 5%, to R39.79. Sunflower oil ran the same way, further. The farm value of the oil fell 13% over the same six months, while the producers who bottle it put their price up 9%. The bottle in the shop ended 2% dearer, at R37.77. Frozen chicken is the plainest of the three. Producer prices sat at about R45 a kilogram and did not move. Retailers passed on increases of 5.4% anyway, taking the shelf price from R96.38 to R101.56. ## A warning, not an investigation Chief economist James Hodge told the launch that margins on most staple foods are historically high, and that the spread between the commodity price and the producer price is at record levels for each of them. Wheat and maize have been getting cheaper on record harvests without that reaching the consumer. If the margins keep persisting, Hodge said, “then it may warrant us getting involved to see whether they are actually justified by fuel increases or not”. That is a conditional: no investigation has been opened, and the report makes no finding of wrongdoing against any company. ## The bills rising faster than everything else Food is only part of what the report covers. Electricity rose 8.1% and water 10.1% in the year to July, both well clear of overall inflation of 4.3%. A doctor's consultation costs 38% more than it did six years ago, slightly ahead of cumulative inflation over the same stretch. Transport carried its own increase. Petrol rose 26% between January and July, mostly on the conflict in the Middle East, and minibus taxi fares went up 13% behind it. Fares generally do not adjust downwards, so a cheaper litre later will not unwind that one. Commissioner Doris Tshepe's framing is that no single item caused this. Too many essentials are rising faster than inflation and faster than wages at the same time. For the poorest households, food alone takes about 40% of what they spend, and housing and utilities about a quarter. This is the third time the commission has published these spreads. The fourth will show whether anybody moved. ### Oura turned a tiny health-tracking ring into a billion-dollar business, and now it’s going public URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/oura-s1-filing-ring-subscription-rivals/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T02:59:59.000Z Oura sells a ring, and then it sells a subscription to the ring. The Finnish-founded company filed to go public in the United States on 3 September, registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its filing shows revenue of $1.21 billion for the nine months to the end of June, up 74% on the same stretch a year earlier. The profit is the part that changed. Oura made net income of $60.8 million over those nine months, against $1.6 million a year before, and it kept 55 cents of every dollar of sales once the cost of making and shipping the rings was paid, up from 51 cents. ## The 23 hours a day the business rests on A subscription business needs the thing to stay on the finger. Oura says its paying members wore the ring a median of about 23 hours a day in its most recent quarter, which is what lets it collect readings without asking anyone to remember anything. Roughly 85% of paying members are still paying twelve months later, on a definition that counts people up to 28 days behind on the fee. The filing is plain about the arrangement: the hardware sale covers the cost of winning a customer on day one, and the membership is what earns after that. Set against the wearables market as a whole, Oura is small. It accounted for about 2% of global wearable shipments in the year to June. The market it says it is really addressing is preventative health, which it sizes at more than $90 billion. ## The rings coming for it Rivals have spent the year closing in. Samsung's $399 Galaxy Ring, launched in 2024, was the first from a large technology company. Ultrahuman raised $70 million this week with backing from Qualcomm's venture arm, and its Ring Pro starts shipping in the United States in mid-September. RingConn's Gen 3 arrived in May with vascular strain readings, and the French company Circular says its next ring will let people tap to pay. Ultrahuman already knows what an Oura patent can do. A United States International Trade Commission ruling in Oura's favour blocked its ring imports in October 2025, and it redesigned the product to get back into the country. Going public means Oura's own numbers get read the same way every quarter, by everyone. ### Capitec is joining a second stock exchange as the JSE’s smaller rival keeps gaining ground URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/jpmorgan-a2x-capitec-secondary-listing/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T02:44:59.000Z Buying a Capitec share on Monday will mean choosing where to buy it. The bank has approval for a secondary listing on A2X, an exchange licensed alongside the JSE, and its ordinary shares start trading there on 7 September. Nothing about the company itself changes: Capitec keeps its primary listing on the JSE, and the number of shares in issue stays the same. A secondary listing is not a second batch of shares. The same share is quoted on two venues, which gives a broker somewhere to compare when it fills an order, and that comparison is what the industry means by best execution. A2X says the arrangement broadens access to Capitec's shares and supports how easily they trade. Chief financial officer Grant Hardy made the same case from the bank's side, calling it an additional venue and better liquidity for shareholders. ## The brokers behind the 85% JPMorgan Equities South Africa began trading on A2X on 3 September. With JPMorgan on the platform, A2X says its members now account for 85% of trades in listed securities executed in South Africa. Ockie Raubenheimer, who runs the bank's South African cash equities execution, said joining expands the liquidity its clients can reach. JPMorgan lines up alongside Peresec Prime Brokers, RMB Morgan Stanley and SBG Securities. The list of what trades there has been growing too. A2X carries 167 securities, including 30 of the JSE's top 40 companies, and puts their combined market value above R13 trillion. AngloGold Ashanti, Sanlam, Discovery, Standard Bank, Prosus and Naspers have all taken secondary listings on it. Capitec joins a group of South African banking companies already there. ## Why Capitec is worth the trouble Capitec listed on the JSE in February 2002 and is now worth almost R537 billion. It reported a record profit of R16.8 billion in its 2026 financial year. Under Gerrie Fourie, who handed the job to Graham Lee in July 2025, it added more than 20 million clients and pushed into life insurance, value-added services and business banking. A2X was built to compete on price and execution rather than to attract new companies to market, and Kevin Brady, its chief executive, makes cost savings and execution quality the pitch. Its 85% figure counts the brokers who can trade there, not the volume that does. From Monday, Capitec shareholders find out which venue their broker picks. ### A huge platinum price recovery just turned Impala Platinum into a R17.1bn payday for shareholders URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/implats-fy2026-results-r17-1bn-dividend/ Last updated: 2026-09-07T02:29:59.000Z Shareholders in Impala Platinum are being paid 1 855 cents a share for the year to June, against 165 cents a year earlier. Counting the minority holders in its subsidiaries, that is R17.1 billion going out of the group, about 82% of the cash it had spare once it had paid for itself. The earnings number needs a word of definition first. Headline earnings is what South African listed companies must report with one-off items such as writedowns stripped out, so it shows what the business itself did. On that measure Implats made R22.9 billion, against R732 million the year before, on revenue up 58%. What changed was the price, not the volume. Sales of platinum group metals rose 4%, while Implats got 78.6% more for an ounce of platinum than a year earlier, with rhodium and palladium climbing behind it. In rand, what each ounce of metal earned rose 51%. Spot platinum has come off its peak and still trades at about twice where it sat in early 2025. ## The cost of getting it out of the ground Costs went the other way. An ounce cost R24 249 to produce, up 8% on the year, and the company expects to pay between 4% and 8% more again in the coming year. It also expects to refine less metal, held back by a safety reset at Impala Rustenburg and a furnace rebuild at Zimplats. Nothing in those numbers came from mining better. Four people died at managed operations at Impala Rustenburg during the year: a road accident, a winch incident, a tramming incident and a fall of ground. The safety reset now under way at Rustenburg follows those deaths. ## What the whole platinum sector paid out Implats is not the only one paying. Business Day counts about R44.5 billion in dividends declared this reporting cycle by the major listed South African producers of these metals, with Valterra, Northam and Sibanye-Stillwater all declaring before Implats did. Valterra's interim dividend on its own was R15.1 billion. Three years ago Implats, Sibanye-Stillwater and the company now called Valterra were restructuring loss-making shafts and consulting on job cuts. The prices behind all of it are set a long way from Rustenburg. Battery-electric cars use none of these metals and hybrids still do, which is the argument the industry is leaning on while electric sales grow more slowly than expected. Implats has already told shareholders what next year will cost it. What the metal fetches is somebody else's decision. ### Uber has switched off in Nigeria and Uganda after more than a decade URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/uber-has-switched-off-in-nigeria-and-uganda-after-more-than-a-decade/ Last updated: 2026-09-06T10:38:13.000Z Ride-hailing arrived in Lagos in 2014 with Uber's name on it. It switched off there on 2 September, and in Uganda, where the company had operated since 2016, after what Uber called a global review of its operations. Uber did not say why it was leaving Nigeria, a country of more than 200 million people where a decade of double-digit inflation has eroded purchasing power. Estonia's Bolt has been its main competitor there, and newer entrants have taken more of the share Uber once had to itself. A spokesperson drew a line around the decision. “This decision is limited strictly to these two markets and does not impact our operations across the rest of the continent,” the spokesperson said, adding that Uber “remains deeply committed to sub-Saharan Africa, where we continue to see robust growth and long-term opportunity”. ## The restructuring it landed inside The exits arrived in the same week as a much larger reorganisation. Uber is cutting about 3 300 jobs, roughly 10% of its global headcount, according to an internal email from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi that was published online on Wednesday and reported by TechCrunch. Management roles are being reduced by 20%, and remote work is ending for all but a fraction of staff. It is News24 that places the two African exits inside that restructuring. Khosrowshahi's own explanation is about size rather than geography. Growth had brought “more layers, more coordination, more fragmented ownership, and in some cases structures that made sense when businesses were smaller but no longer serve us well at our current scale”, he reportedly wrote. The same account describes Uber merging its engineering, science and delivery divisions. ## The $15 billion deal on the other side Money is not moving in one direction only. On the same day, Delivery Hero's supervisory and management boards recommended shareholders accept Uber's $15 billion takeover offer, calling the price fair and adequate. Uber was already Delivery Hero's largest shareholder and has set an acceptance threshold of half the shares plus one, and Prosus has agreed to sell its 17% stake. Nothing has closed. If it does, the deal would roughly double Uber's global delivery footprint and put it in a better position against DoorDash and Just Eat Takeaway. Uber's own account is that South Africa is untouched by any of this, and nobody at the company has said more than that. What has changed is the record: since 2014 Uber's answer in Africa was expansion, and this week it was two closures. ### The Roundup — Friday, 4 September 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-4-september-2026/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T03:59:59.000Z Today's edition Bread Winners Good morning. Tiger Brands has put more than 800 bread stands on South African pavements and wants 3 000 of them, at about R2 700 a stand. Discovery spent an estimated R15 billion on a bank for much the same reason, and seven in ten of that bank's new customers had never bought anything from Discovery before. And Woolworths has decided the food aisle deserves the money the clothing floor has been getting. Everyone is paying to stand where the customer already is. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/markets--35-.png) --- STAND AND DELIVER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-albany.png) ## Albany has more than 800 people selling bread at taxi ranks, and Tiger Brands wants 3 000 Selling bread from a stand on a pavement is not usually a corporate distribution strategy. Albany's owner has made it one. There are more than 800 branded bread stands at taxi ranks, bus stations and roadsides across five provinces, each run by a single person, and Tiger Brands wants 3 000 of them within a year. The company has been working the informal market since 2020\. The arrangement is built so the vendor starts with nothing down: Tiger Brands supplies the stand and delivers bread daily through Albany's own network, so nobody buys stock up front. Vendors arrive by referral from trade and community contacts. **What each side puts in:** - Tiger Brands supplies a stand it values at about R2 700, plus marketing material, and delivers the bread daily. - The vendor supplies the labour, every day of the week, and sells 20 to 30 loaves a day at roughly R2 profit a loaf. - That works out at about R1 300 a month for someone trading daily, on the company's own figures. Tiger Brands does not call that a job. It calls it an entrepreneurial opportunity, in a country where Stats SA put unemployment among 15 to 34 year olds at 47.4% in August. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/albany-is-selling-bread-off-the-pavement-and-wants-3-000-stands-doing-it/) --- WELL BANKED ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-discovery--1-.png) ## Discovery Bank turned its first full-year profit, and seven in ten of its new customers came from outside Discovery is an insurer that decided it needed a bank. Reported estimates put the spend at about R15 billion, and on Thursday that bank posted its first full-year profit: R370 million. Set those two numbers next to each other and it looks like an expensive hobby. Set the bank next to what it feeds and it looks like the reason the rest of the group keeps finding new customers. Discovery does not really want a bank. It wants what it calls an orchestrating layer, the place customers reach medical scheme cover, life cover and investments from. That only works if the bank brings in people the group does not already have, and it does. 70% of its new business last year came from people who were not Discovery customers already, on a client base up 26% to 1.57 million and deposits of R27.2 billion. Fees and commissions earn the bank more than lending does, so growing it ties up less capital than a normal retail bank's growth would, and it is less exposed when the Reserve Bank moves rates. Reported figures put the bank's own target at R3 billion by 2029, roughly eight times what it has just delivered. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/discovery-bank-has-stopped-costing-its-parent-money-and-started-feeding-it-customers/) --- BAGEL BITE **In which country was paper first invented?** **A.** Egypt **B.** Greece **C.** China --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-Woolworths-1.png) **Woolworths will not fund its divisions on equal terms again, and food is where the money goes.** Group sales rose 4.3% to R84.5 billion in the year to June. Underneath that, food lifted its operating earnings 3.2%, while fashion, beauty and home saw theirs fall 14.1% to R1.38 billion, even as Home on its own grew 11.7%. New chief executive Sam Ngumeni says the money and the floor space now go to food first. Net trading space across the clothing division has already shrunk 0.7% over the year. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/woolworths-is-done-treating-its-divisions-the-same-and-fashion-is-the-one-that-pays/) **Aspen sold nothing extra all year and still made 14% more money.** Revenue from the businesses it is keeping was flat at R34.9 billion, while operating earnings rose to R7.7 billion once currency swings are stripped out, out of efficiency work rather than sales. Mounjaro, the weight-loss and diabetes injection Aspen distributes here for Eli Lilly, carried its biggest division. Selling the Asia-Pacific business for R28 billion left Aspen holding more cash than debt. The share closed 7.35% lower at R145\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/aspens-sales-stood-still-and-the-money-it-keeps-went-up-14/) **Cashbuild ended the year with 317 stores and wants about 15 more in the coming one.** Chief executive Werner de Jager says suitable shopping-centre developments are scarce, so only two of this year's nine openings were traditional Cashbuild stores and the rest were smaller formats. Revenue rose 6% to R12.1 billion while operating profit fell 15% to R292 million, after a R34.9 million loss on the way out of Malawi. Takings in the first seven weeks of the new year are flat. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/cashbuild-sold-more-kept-more-of-every-rand-and-still-made-less/) **African exporters got two more duty-free years, tucked inside the bill that keeps America's government open.** The House passed it 370 to 48 on Tuesday, the Senate having done so in early August, and the extension runs to the end of 2028 once President Trump signs. South African citrus, cars and steel are among the goods it covers. Duty-free is still not tariff-free: industry-specific tariffs apply on top, and countries found not to have kept forced labour out of their supply chains can be charged extra. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/africas-duty-free-access-to-america-gets-two-more-years-tucked-inside-a-shutdown-bill/) **The medical scheme industry has costed making membership compulsory, and puts the saving at up to 30%.** The Health Funders Association, whose members include Discovery Health Medical Scheme, Momentum and Fedhealth, commissioned modelling on signing up everyone earning above the R99 000 tax threshold. The low end of that range adjusts for age alone; the high end assumes the healthier people currently outside come in. The average scheme beneficiary was 31.7 years old in 2005 and 34.5 by 2024\. The association says affordability has to be fixed first. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-medical-scheme-industry-has-costed-a-plan-to-make-joining-compulsory/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/weather--31-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Wordle--34--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P0bg5LNXkz2R%5FShzUCs&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. China** Before true paper, people wrote on materials like silk, bamboo, or animal skins, which were costly or heavy. In China, papermaking used cheap materials such as tree bark, rags, and old fishing nets mashed into pulp. The invention spread slowly along trade routes and eventually reached the rest of the world centuries later. The ancient Egyptians used papyrus, but that is made differently and is not the same as paper. --- That's your Friday done. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Albany is selling bread off the pavement, and wants 3 000 stands doing it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/albany-is-selling-bread-off-the-pavement-and-wants-3-000-stands-doing-it/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T03:44:59.000Z Getting a loaf of Albany bread into a South African household is mostly a supermarket problem. Tiger Brands has decided a growing share of it is a pavement problem instead. The company says more than 800 branded bread stands are already trading, each run by one person, at taxi ranks, bus stations and busy roadsides near Albany bakeries in Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, Mpumalanga and the Free State. It wants 3 000 of them within the next year. ## What the stand costs and what it earns The arrangement is built so the vendor starts with nothing down. Tiger Brands supplies a branded stand it values at about R2 700, along with marketing material, and delivers bread daily through Albany's own distribution network so nobody has to buy stock up front. Vendors are recruited by referral from trade and community contacts. The income is modest and the company does not hide it. Each stand sells 20 to 30 loaves a day at roughly R2 profit a loaf, which Tiger Brands puts at about R1 300 a month for someone trading every day. It calls the stands entrepreneurial opportunities, not jobs. Quinton Swart, who runs Tiger Brands' bakeries, puts two arguments in one sentence. The programme lets Albany “compete more effectively in a highly competitive local bread market, while bringing our product closer to consumers”, and it makes “a contribution to our country's unemployment rate”. The company cites Stats SA's August survey, which put unemployment among 15 to 34 year olds at 47.4%, with close to five million in that age group neither working nor looking for work. ## The bakeries that need somewhere to send the bread The stands are the cheap end of a much larger bet. Tiger Brands has built super bakeries in Gauteng and the Western Cape to replace five older plants, and reported figures put the Gauteng site at half the conversion cost, R250 million less overhead a year and 12 000 loaves an hour at full capacity. That output needs an outlet. Tiger Brands has been working the informal market since 2020, after research showed that at times only 27% of its products were available at the lower end of it, and it estimates that market at R1 trillion. Coca-Cola and South African Breweries are the playbook it says it is following. The next test is a count. Tiger Brands wants to go from more than 800 stands to 3 000 inside a year, and so far the only source for any of it, the R1 300 included, is Tiger Brands. ### Medical schemes want South Africa to consider compulsory membership to bring the cost of cover down URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-medical-scheme-industry-has-costed-a-plan-to-make-joining-compulsory/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T03:14:59.000Z Medical schemes in South Africa may not charge you more for being older or sicker. The Medical Schemes Act requires everyone in a scheme to pay the same contribution and to receive the same industry-wide minimum set of benefits, regardless of age or health. That rule is why the industry has spent this week arguing about who else should be made to join. The Health Funders Association, an industry body whose 26 members include Discovery Health Medical Scheme, Momentum and Fedhealth and which covers about half the market, released its first State of Medical Schemes report on Wednesday. Its central claim, from modelling it commissioned from the actuarial consultancy Insight, is that making membership compulsory for everyone earning above the tax threshold would cut the cost of cover by 10% to 30%. The range is doing a lot of work. The low end adjusts only for the age of the people who would come in; the high end also assumes they are healthier and cheaper to treat than the current membership. News24 reported the same modelling as a saving of 25% to 30% and possibly more, which is the same ceiling and a much higher floor. ## Why the maternity ward explains the problem Antiselection is the industry's word for people signing up when they know they will need cover and resigning once they have used it. Insight chief executive Christoff Raath put a number on one version of it: members who have a maternity event are five times more likely to resign within the next three months than other members. “That's perfectly rational behaviour in the current environment,” he said. The result is a pool that keeps getting older. The average beneficiary was 31.7 years old in 2005 and 34.5 by 2024, and younger, healthier members have been opting out as contributions rose faster than consumer inflation. Coverage has thinned with it. The HFA says the share of the population belonging to a scheme fell from 16% to 14.5% over roughly the same stretch. ## The R5.9 billion that would move between schemes Compulsory membership is only half of what the report models. The other half is a risk equalisation framework, a pot that moves money from schemes with younger members towards those carrying older and sicker ones, which Insight's modelling puts at about R5.9 billion a year. Raath says a small number of schemes are close to collapse on their risk profile alone and could be saved if both reforms came in. Neither idea is new. Both were planned by the health department under its social health insurance policy and dropped when the ANC resolved to pursue National Health Insurance instead. The association is not actually calling for compulsory cover yet. Wider participation “cannot be considered without first addressing affordability”, chief executive Thoneshan Naidoo said, which leaves the 8.7 million taxpayers it counts outside the schemes where they already are: using private healthcare and paying for it themselves. ### Discovery Bank has stopped costing its parent money and started feeding it customers URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/discovery-bank-has-stopped-costing-its-parent-money-and-started-feeding-it-customers/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T03:10:41.000Z Banks are expensive things to build from scratch, and insurers do not usually try. Discovery did, and on Thursday its bank reported a full-year profit for the first time: R370 million of normalised profit from operations, a change the group prints as more than 600%. Daily Investor puts the estimated spend on building it at R15 billion. What that money bought is not really a bank. Discovery says the business is evolving beyond a standalone banking proposition into “the orchestrating layer for customers' financial and health lives”, the interface through which people reach the rest of the group. Medical scheme cover, life cover, investments and insurance all sit behind it. ## Seven in ten arrived from outside The test of that idea is who walks in. Discovery's results presentation, as reported by Daily Investor, puts 70% of the bank's new business last year as coming from people who were not Discovery customers already. The client base grew 26% to 1.57 million, spread across 3.77 million accounts. Each of those clients is somebody the group can then sell a medical scheme, an investment or a policy to, on the same app. Discovery South Africa, the composite that holds the bank and the businesses it sells into, lifted normalised operating profit 16% to R13.87 billion. ## A bank that earns more from fees than from lending Most retail banks make their money on the gap between what they pay depositors and what they charge borrowers. Discovery Bank does not. Its fee and commission income exceeds its net interest income, so growing the business ties up less capital than lending would, and it is less exposed when the Reserve Bank moves rates. The lending book grew anyway. Retail deposits rose 17%, to R27.2 billion, and gross advances grew faster still, to R12.9 billion. Bad debts went the right way, improving to 2.71% of the book. The group behind it grew normalised operating profit 17%, to R17.75 billion, and raised its final dividend 36%. Headline earnings rose faster, 34%, but that number was lifted by one-off gains from ending a head-office lease early and selling part of a stake in Cambridge Mobile Telematics. Discovery is reported to be targeting R3 billion of profit from the bank by 2029\. R370 million is the first eighth of it. ### Africa's duty-free access to America gets two more years, tucked inside a shutdown bill URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/africas-duty-free-access-to-america-gets-two-more-years-tucked-inside-a-shutdown-bill/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T02:59:59.000Z The African Growth and Opportunity Act got two more years this week, and it got them by riding inside a bill about keeping the American government funded. The House passed that continuing resolution on Tuesday by 370 votes to 48, mirroring a Senate vote in early August. Representative Terri Sewell, a senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, says she worked the trade extension into the resolution. She called it “much-needed certainty to our African partners, American businesses, farmers and manufacturers”. The same resolution funds the US government to 11 December, which is why it moved at all. ## What the programme actually does AGOA lets thousands of products from eligible sub-Saharan African countries into the United States without paying import duty, and Congress created it in 2000 to expand trade and investment with the continent. More than 30 countries qualify. South Africa is the largest non-oil beneficiary. It exported $3.6 billion of goods under the programme in 2023, mostly vehicles, steel additives, jewellery and citrus, on figures reported in January this year. Across the whole region, trade with the United States came to about $50 billion in 2022 on the US Trade Representative's own analysis. ## Duty-free is not the same as tariff-free The duty-free label does more work than it should. Even with a signature, countries in the programme still face industry-specific tariffs, and any found not to have kept forced labour out of their supply chains can be charged additional levies. Those levies are part of the administration's effort to rebuild its tariff wall after the Supreme Court struck down its sweeping import duties. South Africa's place in the programme is not settled by this vote either. Republican Senator John Kennedy told a committee hearing in December that the country is a “unique problem for America”, and the January reporting noted that the value of the programme to South Africa is complicated by the reciprocal tariff regime and by the separate duties Washington has put on vehicles and components on national-security grounds. Mauritius has already welcomed the extension, saying it gives eligible countries and businesses greater predictability. Everyone else in the programme is waiting on the same signature, and the resolution has now gone to President Trump for it. ### Cashbuild wants 15 new stores next year, but says there is almost nowhere left to put them URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cashbuild-sold-more-kept-more-of-every-rand-and-still-made-less/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T02:44:59.000Z More people bought building materials from Cashbuild this year than last, and the company kept a bigger slice of every rand they spent. Its operating profit still went backwards. Revenue rose 6% to R12.1 billion, and the growth is real rather than inflationary: transactions through the tills rose 5% while selling prices moved only 1.5%. Costs are where it went. Gross margin improved, from 24.8 cents kept out of every rand of sales to 25.3\. Operating expenses rose faster than sales, though, and operating profit fell 15% to R292 million. ## The Malawi exit that cost R34.9 million Part of the gap has a name. Cashbuild sold its Malawi subsidiary and its two stores during the year and booked a R34.9 million loss on the way out. That is why the two earnings measures diverge: basic earnings per share fell 25%, while the cleaner headline measure fell 8%. ## Why the new shops keep getting smaller The expansion plan has run into property. Cashbuild ended the year with 317 stores and wants to open about 15 more in the coming one. Chief executive Werner de Jager says the traditional format depends on shopping-centre developers, and there are not many suitable developments going up. So the format is changing instead. Of the nine stores Cashbuild opened this year, two were traditional stores and the rest were smaller or alternative formats, and the company says converting stores to its small model format remains on track. More than 40 stores are approved over the next three years, though de Jager does not expect all of them to happen. The store estate churned underneath all of that. Cashbuild picked up three Amper Alles stores during the year and closed eleven underperformers, on top of the nine it opened. Some of the growth came off the shelf rather than out of a new site. Paint mixing and tinting has been added at about 60 outlets, which de Jager says lifted the category. The payout held its ground. The final dividend was cut 22% to 233 cents, leaving the total for the year unchanged at 626 cents. Since year-end there has been nothing to lean on: revenue in the first seven weeks of the new financial year is level with the same stretch last year. ### Aspen made 14% more money without growing sales, while Mounjaro helped lift its biggest division URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/aspens-sales-stood-still-and-the-money-it-keeps-went-up-14/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T02:29:59.000Z Aspen spent the year taking costs out rather than putting sales on. Revenue from the businesses it is keeping came in at R34.9 billion, flat on last year, while the operating earnings it measures itself by rose 14% once currency swings are stripped out. The company's own explanation is efficiency work, not selling more. The balance sheet changed more than the income statement. Aspen sold its Asia-Pacific business for R28 billion and booked a R2.4 billion profit on the sale. It ended the year holding about R0.8 billion more cash than debt. Getting there cost real money. Restructuring across the group came to R2.3 billion, and writedowns on brand values took another R2.3 billion off the reported line without any cash leaving the business. Between them they pulled headline earnings per share for the whole group down 20%, even as the continuing business went the other way. ## The injection carrying the biggest division Commercial Pharmaceuticals, Aspen's largest segment, grew revenue 5% at constant rates, led by demand for Mounjaro. Mounjaro is the weight-loss and diabetes injection Aspen promotes and distributes in South Africa for Eli Lilly. Its sales have reached about R1.5 billion, and chief executive Stephen Saad told Bloomberg the drug was responsible for about 40% of the growth in the country's private pharmaceutical market over the past year. “We definitely believe it's got potential to be our biggest product,” Saad said. Aspen has filed to sell Mounjaro in Nigeria and Kenya and hopes for approvals during the coming financial year, with French-speaking West Africa, Ethiopia and Tanzania after that. ## The cheaper copy, and the ingredient it depends on The bigger bet is the copy. Aspen has Health Canada approval for a generic injectable semaglutide, the ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, and Saad told Business Day it is awaiting registration in about 20 countries including Brazil and South Africa. He expects generic versions globally to cost at least half what branded ones do. Manufacturing is where next year's growth is meant to come from. The reshaped sterile plants in France and South Africa lifted that division's earnings 21%, to R828 million, while its revenue fell. Aspen is targeting at least R9 billion of group operating earnings in the coming year. Investors marked the year down on the day. The share closed 7.35% lower at R145. What Aspen does not control is the ingredient supply. It expects to hear in September whether Dr Reddy's has resolved the problems holding up its semaglutide launch. ### Woolworths is shrinking its clothing floors as food increasingly becomes the retailer’s biggest growth engine URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/woolworths-is-done-treating-its-divisions-the-same-and-fashion-is-the-one-that-pays/ Last updated: 2026-09-04T02:14:59.000Z Sam Ngumeni has been group chief executive of Woolworths for three months, and the first thing his results changed was not a number. It was who gets the money. The group used to fund its divisions on roughly equal terms, and it will not do that again. Food is what he is funding. Woolworths says it is reorienting the group around its premium food ecosystem, the business it calls its strongest source of competitive advantage and its main engine of value. Home and Beauty sit alongside it as ways of extending the food relationship rather than as businesses standing on their own. Fashion is the one left explaining itself. ## The division that earns a fatter margin and less money Fashion, beauty and home together lifted sales 4.4% and still watched their adjusted operating earnings fall 14.1%, to R1.38 billion. Food, growing a little faster, earned R3.71 billion and added to that number instead of losing it. Ngumeni is direct about why he keeps fashion anyway: it is a higher-margin business, he told Business Day, but it does not create the economic returns of the food business. Inside the clothing division the split is just as sharp. Home grew 11.7% and Beauty 7.9%, while fashion was the drag, with its own price inflation running at 0.9%. The floor space has already started moving: net trading space across the division shrank 0.7% over the year. ## The quality gap customers named Ngumeni says Woolworths is looking at trimming the tail of fashion lines that do not sell and giving that space to home, which earns more per square metre. He is not closing the division. “We are definitely not turning our back on fashion,” he told Business Day, adding that customer feedback had made product quality the priority. Every business is under review, Country Road included. The food projects get the runway meanwhile. Woolworths is in just over 100 Engen forecourts and wants to double that, its on-demand service grew revenue 19.6%, and management admits that chasing margin targets constrained its online investment and disappointed the online customer. Investors have not been won over. The shares fell more than 3% on results day and have lost more than 40% of their value over three years. ### GoPro is merging with an optics company as it pivots towards AI, defence and aerospace URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/gopro-starman-optical-merger-285-million/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T07:59:59.000Z Action cameras have not been a good business for a while. GoPro warned shareholders in June that it might not survive without new funding, and its founder Nick Woodman put $20 million of his own money in the month after that. On Tuesday it agreed to merge with Starman Optical, a privately held American optical-photonics company, in a deal that pays GoPro shareholders $285 million in cash. The structure matters more than the headline figure. Shareholders get $1.14 a share and keep about 10% of the combined company, GoPro's roughly $92 million of debt is repaid at closing, and GoPro stays listed on Nasdaq. So the money is a payment to shareholders and a balance-sheet clean-up rather than a price tag on the business. ## What Starman wants with a camera company Starman makes optical transceivers, the parts that turn data into light and back again so it can travel down a fibre between machines, and it makes them in the United States. Folding them into GoPro is meant to point the combined company at the market for AI data-centre infrastructure. After that, the plan is to take GoPro's optics and imaging patents, more than 2 500 of them built up over 24 years, into defence, government, robotics and aerospace. Charles Tebele, who runs Starman Holding, said the aim is to bring production of these components back to the United States. The cameras are not being switched off, whatever the pivot language suggests. The announcement says GoPro will carry on fully supporting its existing consumer products and its subscription and cloud platform while it invests in the wider roadmap. ## The company incorporated on 31 August The awkward detail is who is doing the buying. TechCrunch checked the corporate records and found that Starman Optical was incorporated in Delaware on 31 August, the day before the announcement, while the related Starman New Photonics appears to date from 2025 and is building a manufacturing plant in New Jersey. Both sit under Starman Holding, which also owns the consumer tech brands Incase, Incipio and Griffin. The transaction is agreed, not done. It needs regulatory approvals and a vote of GoPro's own shareholders, and both boards expect it to close by the end of the year. GoPro says it will give more detail once it does. ### The Roundup — Thursday, 3 September 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-thursday-3-september-2026/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T04:00:04.000Z Today's edition Sports Pass Good morning. DStv appears to be pulling sport out of its most expensive package, so a household can finally buy the rugby without the *Binnelanders*. Meanwhile, Volkswagen and Ford spent this week asking government for protection from Chinese cars, and Motus spent the year putting those same cars into its showrooms. Everyone is deciding what to keep out and what to let in. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/markets--34-.png) --- SPORTING CHANCE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-dstv-1.png) ## DStv is taking sport out of Premium, and not one of the five prices is changing For twenty years DStv has been sold as one ladder: five packages, climbing, with the sport most people actually want near the top of it. On Friday night MultiChoice put pages describing a completely new line-up on the DStv website, then took them down. MyBroadband had already saved the screenshots. According to this line-up, from 17 September these packages come into effect. **Where some of these packages land:** - *Starter* carries 85 channels for R99, including a Premier League match of the week and the kykNET and Kie channel for Afrikaans viewers. - *Sports*, at R399, is the old Compact package rebuilt around the games: Premier League and European football, T20 cricket, local rugby and one United Rugby Championship match a week. - *Premium* keeps everything at R799, which is what it costs today. Before you start popping bottles, it's worth noting that nothing appears to actually gets cheaper. MultiChoice has a briefing diarised in Johannesburg for 7 September, where an announcement is likely, but it has not confirmed any of it yet. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/dstv-new-packages-sport-mnet-17-september/) --- LEVEL BEST ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-vw-1.png) ## Volkswagen and Ford asked Pretoria for a level playing field, and the trade regulator announced a China deal Volkswagen has been building cars at Kariega since 1951, and on Monday night it turned the final assembly line into a black tie venue for its 75th birthday, with President Cyril Ramaphosa giving the keynote. Ford published a manifesto the next morning, opening its second century in the country. Both asked for the same thing, in the same words: a level playing field against imported cars. On Tuesday the trade regulator announced that it had renewed its cooperation agreement with China. The two are not in conflict, exactly. Itac's deal with China's trade remedies bureau, signed in Beijing on 26 August, covers shared information on imports said to be priced unfairly low, and the day before announcing it the same commission put provisional duties of up to 28.11% on Chinese colour coated steel. What the carmakers want is not Itac's to give: Ford named the automotive support programme it wants rewritten, and that sits with the government. Chinese brands took more than 19% of new passenger and light commercial vehicle sales in the first quarter, on TransUnion's count. Ramaphosa told the Kariega dinner that the automotive masterplan and the wider policy framework are under review. He did not say when the review ends. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/volkswagen-ford-level-playing-field-itac-china/) --- BAGEL BITE **What gives chilli peppers their spicy heat?** A. Capsaicin B. Piperine C. Allyl Isothiocyanate --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-shoprite-1.png) **Shoprite's Sixty60 sold R25.5 billion of groceries in a year, picked off the shop floor.** Shoprite built three warehouses for delivery in 2019, decided quickly that the model would not work, and fell back on the supermarkets it already had, which sit within five kilometres of 90% of the customers it could serve. On-demand sales rose 34.5% last year. Asked whether a rival could build the same thing, Pieter Engelbrecht said they could, and pointed at the business system that went in during 2017\. Another R7.7 billion goes into technology, supply chain and stores this year. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-sixty60-store-picking-r25-5-billion/) **Motus stopped fighting the Chinese brands and started selling them.** Sales of Chinese and Indian brands through its South African dealerships grew more than 200% last year, and R63 million went into one Garsfontein showroom so it could carry Chery, Omoda and Jaecoo under one roof. Revenue rose 1% to R113.6 billion while profit before tax rose 20%, because the company spent its cash paying borrowings down and the interest bill fell by nearly a fifth. The final dividend of 410 cents is paid on 5 October. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/motus-fy2026-chinese-brands-dealerships/) **Apple has had three chief executives this century, and the third started on Tuesday.** John Ternus joined the product design team in 2001 and has run hardware engineering since 2021\. A filing gives him a $3 million salary and a target share award of $55 million from next year, three quarters of it paid only if Apple beats the rest of the S&P 500\. Tim Cook stays on as executive chairman on a package worth $47 million, engaging with policymakers around the world. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/apple-ternus-ceo-handover-cook-chairman-pay/) **Goldman Sachs told clients South Africa gets its investment grade rating back in 2028.** The bank says markets have not priced it in. A team including the economist Andrew Matheny sees room for the ten year government bond yield to fall more than a percentage point, to 7.6%, and about 9% of upside on the rand. South Africa was cut to junk in 2017, and all three big agencies still rate it two notches below investment grade. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/goldman-sachs-south-africa-investment-grade-2028/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/weather--30-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Wordle--33-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P0XjQZ2l7HlPlThpuAI&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. Capsaicin** Capsaicin activates heat sensing receptors in your mouth, making your brain feel a burning sensation even though the food itself is not physically hot. The more capsaicin a chilli contains, the hotter it tastes, which is measured in Scoville Heat Units. It can also trigger sweating, watering eyes and a runny nose because your body reacts as if it needs to cool down. --- That's your Thursday done. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Volkswagen and Ford want new rules to help locally built cars compete with Chinese imports URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/volkswagen-ford-level-playing-field-itac-china/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T03:44:59.000Z The phrase both companies used this week was level playing field. Volkswagen put it to President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday night, at a dinner marking 75 years of building cars at Kariega. Ford put it in a corporate manifesto the next morning. The ask sounds vague until you notice that Ford named the document it wants rewritten. ## The programme they actually want changed It is the second phase of the Automotive Production and Development Programme, the scheme that decides what support each manufacturer gets. Ford asked that it be written so companies putting capital and jobs into the country are not left at a structural disadvantage to companies that only ship cars in. Neale Hill, who runs Ford's Africa operations, framed it as policy conditions that let local manufacturers compete fairly against importers. Volkswagen made the case from the factory floor. Kariega is the only plant in the world still building the Polo, and it exports the car to 38 countries. It employs about 3 600 people and supports 1 440 suppliers. Chair Martina Biene told Ramaphosa the industry needs decisive policy action and greater responsiveness to concerns it has raised repeatedly. One number explains the urgency. Chinese brands took more than 19% of new passenger and light commercial vehicle sales in the first quarter of 2026, on TransUnion's count, which is close to one in five cars sold here. Toyota made the same argument in July, standing next to R10.4 billion of new investment in the Hilux. ## The duty and the agreement, one week apart The trade regulator spent the week in a different conversation. Itac announced on Tuesday that it had renewed a cooperation agreement with the trade remedies bureau of China's commerce ministry, signed in Beijing on 26 August, covering shared information on dumping, subsidies, safeguards and ways around existing duties. The day before, the same commission imposed provisional duties of up to 28.11% on Chinese colour-coated steel, on an application from ArcelorMittal South Africa and Safal Steel. Both of those are its job. What the carmakers want is not Itac's to give. Ramaphosa told the dinner that the automotive masterplan and the wider policy framework are under review, and that discussions are underway between industry, unions and government. He said the work would be concluded as a priority, without saying when. Volkswagen starts building the Tengo at Kariega inside 100 days. ### DStv looks set to launch a standalone sports package in South Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/dstv-new-packages-sport-mnet-17-september/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T03:29:59.000Z Sport is what has kept DStv Premium expensive. The packages have climbed in a single line since 2005, with SuperSport near the top of it, so a household that wanted the rugby bought the films as well. Now DStv appears to be preparing to break that arrangement apart. Five packages briefly published on its website would let a subscriber take one half without the other. MultiChoice never announced them: the pages appeared on a Friday night, were later taken down, and MyBroadband had already saved the screenshots. ## What moves, package by package Nothing gets cheaper. The five streaming prices, running from R99 at the bottom to R799 at the top, are the prices subscribers already pay, and customers on decoders carry on paying what they have been paying. What moves is what sits inside each package. Sports, at R399, is the old Compact package rebuilt around the games: Premier League and European football, T20 cricket, local rugby and one United Rugby Championship match a week. Movies and Series, at R500, is brand new, and it is where M-Net lands after a lifetime available only on Premium. Carte Blanche comes down the ladder with it. Premium keeps everything, at R799. The bottom of the range is doing the other job. Starter carries 85 channels for R99, including a Premier League match of the week and the kykNET and Kie channel for Afrikaans viewers, which is why the kykNET Lekker channel was dropped to make room. Select, at R299, keeps the PSL football and the family channels. ## Why Canal+ wanted the ladder gone The reason for all of it is a French owner counting packages. Canal+ took control of MultiChoice last September, in a deal worth more than R50 billion, and inherited a business whose most valuable subscribers had spent years walking away, saying the top of the range had stopped being worth its price. Its turnaround plan runs to R1.9 billion, and one pillar of it was simply giving people fewer things to choose from. Canal+ counted up to 17 packages and five decoders when it arrived. None of this is official yet. MultiChoice has a media briefing diarised in Johannesburg for 7 September, while the leaked pages pointed to 17 September for the new packages. ### One of the world’s biggest banks thinks South Africa could escape junk status by 2028 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/goldman-sachs-south-africa-investment-grade-2028/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T03:14:59.000Z Ratings are slow news. South Africa was cut to junk in 2017, and the climb back since has been made in single notches, years apart, without much fuss. Goldman Sachs told clients on 1 September that markets have still not caught up, and put numbers on what catching up would be worth. A team including the economist Andrew Matheny wrote that its base case is South Africa regaining a first investment-grade rating in 2028, with risks to the timing running both ways. Goldman sees room for the ten-year rand government bond yield to fall by more than a percentage point, to 7.6%. It puts about 9% of upside on the rand against its own fair-value estimate, while noting that collecting it depends partly on what the dollar does. ## The price of insuring against a South African default Credit default swaps are the other measure the bank looks at, and they are simply what it costs to insure against a government not paying. Five-year cover on South Africa ran at around 116 basis points on 1 September, and Goldman thinks it could ease to about 100\. The bank also argues the bigger structural upside now sits in shares rather than bonds, because the bond rally has already run. ## What has to hold until 2028 None of this is a call on the next quarter. It is a bet that three more years of fiscal behaviour continue. Fitch upgraded South Africa in June to BB, its first upgrade of the country in almost 21 years, and was specific about what it was rewarding: the state has moved from running primary deficits to consistent and widening primary surpluses, meaning it now takes in more than it spends before interest is counted. Government debt is showing signs of stabilising on the back of better revenue collection and tighter spending. Two other things prop the case up. Treasury says it intends to write the discipline down: director-general Duncan Pieterse said in June that the growing primary surplus would be embedded in a fiscal anchor, with the details due in the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement. Fitch also credited the long average maturity of government debt, over ten years, and the small share of it owed in foreign currency, both of which make the country harder to knock over. All three big agencies still have South Africa two notches below investment grade. S&P and Moody's carry a positive outlook, which Treasury reads as a sign they could move within 12 to 18 months. Fitch's outlook is stable. ### Apple has a new CEO for the first time in 15 years as Tim Cook steps aside URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/apple-ternus-ceo-handover-cook-chairman-pay/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T02:59:59.000Z The handover had been in the diary since April. Apple said then that Tim Cook would hand the chief executive job to John Ternus on 1 September, named the date, and stuck to it. What arrived on the day was the paperwork: an amended filing setting out what each man now gets paid. Ternus gets a $3 million salary and a share award with a target value of $55 million from Apple's 2027 financial year. Three quarters of that pays out only if Apple's total return to shareholders beats the rest of the S&P 500, so most of the number is a bet rather than a payment. Bloomberg reckons the job he is leaving, running hardware engineering, paid about $25 million a year. ## The job Apple built for Cook Cook is not going anywhere. He becomes executive chairman on a package worth $47 million at target for 2027, against the $74.3 million he was paid as chief executive last year. Apple's own release says what the new role involves: engaging with policymakers around the world. The site 9to5Mac reads that as managing the company's relationships with the Trump administration and the Chinese government, which are the two things Apple cannot design its way around. ## What Ternus inherits The company he takes over is not the one Cook took over. Apple was worth about $350 billion when Cook got the job and is worth $4 trillion now, and yearly revenue has close to quadrupled over the same stretch. The installed base runs past 2.5 billion devices, and services on their own bring in more than $100 billion a year. Ternus has been inside for most of it. He joined the product design team in 2001 and has run hardware engineering since 2021, with the iPad and AirPods among the launches he worked on. At 51 he is fifteen years younger than Cook, which is the sort of gap a company leaves when it means to keep someone. The thing Apple has not solved with hardware is Siri, and the artificial intelligence race behind it is where Ternus will be judged. His first memo to staff, obtained by Bloomberg, went nowhere near it. There is “a huge launch next week”, he wrote, meaning the annual iPhone event on 9 September. ### Motus bet on South Africa’s Chinese car boom and sales have grown more than 200% URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/motus-fy2026-chinese-brands-dealerships/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T06:45:56.000Z Motus sells cars it does not build, and for a while that looked like the exposed position: cheap Chinese brands were taking share while Motus held the exclusive South African rights to Hyundai, Kia, Renault and Mitsubishi. So it stopped defending the position and started stocking the competition. The switch shows up hardest at home. Sales of Chinese and Indian brands through the South African business grew by more than 200% last year, with the Chinese brands alone up more than 300% in the United Kingdom and 44% in Australia. Rebuilding showrooms to hold them is not cheap. R63 million went into the Garsfontein dealership so it could carry Chery, Omoda and Jaecoo under one roof. ## Why the profit moved and the revenue did not Revenue is a poor guide to how this year went. It rose 1% to R113.6 billion, which reads as a business standing still, while the South African operation sold 12% more new vehicles than the year before. The gap between the two is what people bought: the growth landed in affordable brands and models, helped along by the interest rate cuts of 2025 and more first-time buyers coming into the market. What actually lifted profit was the debt. Motus used its cash to pay borrowings down, and the interest bill fell by nearly a fifth. Money that does not go to lenders drops almost straight through, which is why profit before tax rose 20%, to just over R4 billion, while the top line sat still. Attributable profit ended the year at R2.98 billion. ## The rights it has been collecting The other half of the strategy is upstream of the showroom. Motus has taken exclusive distribution rights for GWM, Omoda, Jaecoo, Changan and Dongfeng in East Africa, and for Tata in South Africa, where the Indian brand is averaging about 600 sales a month since coming back. The group expects Indian brands to gain ground here the way the Chinese ones already have. Shareholders got the rest. The board declared a final dividend of 410 cents a share, payable on 5 October, which takes the year's total to 710 cents and lifts the slice of headline earnings paid out to two fifths. Dividends and buybacks together returned R1.9 billion over the twelve months. Management expects revenue to grow in the mid single digits next year, and reckons South Africans will buy between 630 000 and 650 000 new vehicles this calendar year. ### Shoprite’s CEO explains why rivals would struggle to build their own Sixty60 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-sixty60-store-picking-r25-5-billion/ Last updated: 2026-09-03T02:29:59.000Z Every grocery delivery service in the world started with a warehouse. Shoprite built three of them in 2019, decided quickly that the model would not work, and fell back on the thing it had treated as a handicap: a very large number of big supermarkets sitting inside South African suburbs. Six years on, Sixty60 sold R25.5 billion of groceries in a year, and the picking still happens off shelves that customers walk past. Picking from the shop floor is why the service reaches almost everyone. Shoprite reckons its stores put it within five kilometres of 90% of the customers it could plausibly serve, and when it started, nobody else in the world was delivering that way. The growth has not settled down either. On-demand sales rose 34.5% last year, and the R6.6 billion of new business that came with it is the biggest single-year jump the service has had. ## The years and the money a rival would need Asked at an investor presentation whether a competitor could build the same thing, Pieter Engelbrecht said they could, and then set out the bill. It is not the app. The business system underneath Sixty60 went in during 2017, the Xtra Savings rewards programme was built on top of that, and the delivery service itself came later. Shoprite has put R22.6 billion into technology, supply chain and stores over the past three years, and another R7.7 billion is going in this year. ## Where the extra sales came from The delivery business is still the small part of it. Shoprite sold R270.8 billion of merchandise from continuing operations last year, and it did that while lifting its own shelf prices in South African supermarkets by 0.8%, against official food and drink inflation of 3.9%. So the extra sales came from more people buying more things rather than from charging more for them. About 1.1 million more customers a week now go through the tills. Checkers is where Sixty60 grew up, but it now picks from 137 Shoprite-branded stores as well, and those baskets are smaller and still turning a profit. The company had expected the Shoprite side to grow more slowly than the Checkers side, and says the take-up surprised it. It keeps expecting the growth to slow, and keeps setting new order records instead. ### Nedbank has cleared its biggest hurdle to buying a Kenyan bank URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nedbank-ncba-kenya-central-bank-approval/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T07:59:59.000Z The Central Bank of Kenya has cleared the last big regulatory hurdle standing in front of Nedbank's Kenyan purchase. It approved the acquisition of up to 66% of NCBA Group on 28 August, under section 13(4) of the Banking Act, and published the decision on Monday. Nedbank told the JSE the same morning that most of the approvals it needs are now in hand. What it is buying is a tier-one Nairobi lender with 122 branches, banking subsidiaries in Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda and a joint venture in Cote d'Ivoire. NCBA was formed in 2019 out of the merger of NIC Group and Commercial Bank of Africa, and serves more than 60 million customers. The price was struck at about R13.9 billion in January, structured as 80% new Nedbank shares and 20% cash. ## The rails belong to somebody else NCBA's most striking business is one it does not own outright. Roughly a third of its pre-tax profit last year came from digital lending, through Fuliza and M-Shwari, on Business Daily Africa's figures. Both products run on Safaricom's M-Pesa infrastructure rather than anything NCBA built. Fuliza alone has 33.4 million users and has lent out KES 2.9 trillion since it launched in 2019. ## What happened the last time South African banks have spent most of the past decade getting out of the rest of the continent, and Nedbank was one of them. It has bought African growth before and it went badly. It paid $500 million for 21.2% of the Togo-based Ecobank Transnational, and sold that stake in December for $100 million. [Business Day reported](https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/2025-12-18-nedbank-concludes-ecobank-disposal-and-sets-focus-on-east-africa-and-sadc/?ref=businessbagel.com) that the decade in between produced R400 million in dividends against R6.9 billion of unrealised losses and a $293 million impairment. A Nedbank spokesperson told the paper that material conditions were completely different when the original decision was made, pointing to the outlook for West Africa, and Nigeria in particular, at the time. The structure is different now, and that is the argument. Nedbank is taking control rather than a minority position it cannot direct. NCBA keeps its board, its brand, its local management and its Nairobi listing, and the other 34% carries on trading there. Nedbank runs only a representative office in East Africa, so there is nothing to merge and nobody to integrate. Shareholders holding 79.90% of NCBA accepted the offer when it closed in July, and Nedbank turned down 228.99 million excess shares to hold itself at exactly 66%. The outstanding approvals are expected towards the end of the third quarter, which leaves roughly a month. ### The Roundup — Wednesday, 2 September 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-wednesday-2-september-2026/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T05:56:17.000Z Today's edition Coffee Run Good morning. Shoprite has decided the fastest way into coffee is to buy 400 shops that already sell it. Sasol turned a war in the Middle East into its best year in five and is still paying its shareholders nothing, and that same war puts petrol up R1.34 a litre on Wednesday. One company is spending, one is holding on to it, and you are paying for the barrel either way. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/markets--33-.png) --- GROUNDS FOR EXPANSION ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/6-1.png) ## Shoprite has acquired South Africa's biggest coffee chain, all 400 stores of it Vida e Caffe opened on Kloof Street in 2001 and turns 25 this year. On Tuesday, alongside results for the 52 weeks to 28 June, Shoprite said it had signed an agreement to buy it: roughly 400 corporate and franchise stores across eight African countries. South Africa's largest grocer sold R270.8 billion of merchandise over the year and does not run a stand alone food chain of its own. Chief executive Pieter Engelbrecht framed it as a change of habit: Shoprite spent decades building everything itself, and has spent the past decade buying instead, wherever somebody else already had the expertise and the speed. **What 400 shops get you:** - Vida's stores sit where supermarkets do not: high streets, petrol forecourts, drive throughs and office blocks. - Shoprite gets the sites, the formats and the people running them without putting up a single building. - Others got there first. Famous Brands bought Mugg & Bean in 2009 when it had 79 restaurants and has grown it past 300, and Food Lover's Market has owned Seattle Coffee Company since 2015. The deal is small enough that the JSE does not require it to be categorised. It was signed in August, it needs regulatory approval, and it only counts from 2027. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-vida-e-caffe-food-lovers-seattle-coffee/) --- BARRELS AHEAD ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/4-1.png) ## Sasol needed oil at $49 a barrel, got $79, and still will not declare a dividend Sasol needs oil at $49 a barrel to cover its costs. For the year to 30 June it averaged $79, because the US and Iran spent months fighting over the Strait of Hormuz and the price went with it. Secunda, which turns coal and gas into petrol, had its best production run in five years at 160,000 barrels a day. Earnings before interest, tax and write-downs came in at R61 billion, up 17%, on turnover of R272 billion. Shareholders got no final dividend. The reason is a rule Sasol wrote for itself: nothing is paid out until net debt sits sustainably below $3 billion, and at year end it was $3.3 billion, down 11% but still $300 million the wrong side of the line. Cash was the softer part of the year. Free cash flow fell 5%, because the same conflict that lifted prices lifted the value of the fuel sitting in Sasol's tanks, and the results absorbed R16.8 billion of write-downs, R7.7 billion of it against the Secunda liquid fuels refinery. Chief executive Simon Baloyi called it a decisive year of delivery. The share price is up 83%, which is the only return anyone has had. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/sasol-fy2026-results-no-dividend-net-debt/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which ancient wonder of the world still stands today?** **A.** Hanging Gardens of Babylon **B.** Colossus of Rhodes **C.** Great Pyramid of Giza --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/2-1.png) **Petrol goes up R1.34 a litre on Wednesday, and diesel by as much as R3.15.** Filling a 50 litre tank costs about R67 more, and a diesel bakkie considerably more than that. Gauteng petrol reaches R26.92\. The rand actually strengthened over the review period, from R16.46 to the dollar to R16.21, and it made almost no difference, because Brent averaged $87.85 against $82.37 while the Strait of Hormuz stayed a war risk. Petrol started the year around R20\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/petrol-up-r1-34-diesel-up-r3-15-september-2026/) **Eskom's finance chief is retiring after 24 years.** Calib Cassim spent Monday morning explaining why ferrochrome smelters pay 62 cents a unit when Eskom's average price is R2.20, and announced his departure in the same statement. He goes in the financial year to March 2027, one of those years having been spent as acting chief executive. Eskom made R30.3 billion after tax, against R14 billion restated, while municipal arrears rose 17.9% to R111.6 billion. The board wants a replacement in the seat before the end of December. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-cfo-calib-cassim-retires-after-24-years/) **Shein finally went public, and the shares fell as much as 10% on the first morning.** New York would not have it and London stalled when Beijing withheld approval, so four years and three cities later it listed in Hong Kong at HK$48.56 a share, below the HK$49.50 it had asked for. That values the fast fashion group at a little over $26 billion, against nearly $100 billion in 2022\. Founder Sky Xu attended the gong ceremony and said nothing. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/shein-hong-kong-listing-debut-shares-fall/) **South Africa's trade surplus widened to R20.1 billion in July, from R17.2 billion in June.** It grew because the country bought less, not because it sold more. Exports edged up 0.8% to R194 billion on cars, manganese and coal, while imports slipped to R173.8 billion as refined fuel, crude and smartphones came in lighter. Almost all of the surplus came from trade with the rest of Africa, worth R31.97 billion, against a R30 billion deficit with Asia. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-trade-surplus-july-2026-lighter-import-bill/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/weather--29-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Wordle--32-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P0SHO5sgu%5FlX6KzsmPJ&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. Great Pyramid of Giza** Built more than 4,500 years ago as a tomb for the pharaoh Khufu, the Great Pyramid was the tallest human-made structure on Earth for thousands of years. The other six ancient wonders, including the Hanging Gardens and the Colossus of Rhodes, were destroyed or lost long ago. It was made from millions of huge stone blocks, fitted together with remarkable precision. Visitors can still see it near Cairo in Egypt today. --- That's your Wednesday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### South Africa’s biggest retailer has just bought one of the country’s biggest coffee chains URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-vida-e-caffe-food-lovers-seattle-coffee/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T03:44:59.000Z CEO Pieter Engelbrecht gave the reasoning away in a single line. Shoprite, he said, has spent the past decade moving from a do-it-all philosophy to partnering or acquiring wherever somebody else already had the expertise, the capacity or the speed. On Tuesday, alongside results for the 52 weeks to 28 June, the group disclosed what that looks like in coffee: a signed share purchase agreement for Vida e Caffe and its roughly 400 corporate and franchise stores. Vida is worth buying for where its shops are rather than how many of them there are. It runs high street cafes, petrol forecourts, drive-throughs, corporate office outlets and retail sites across eight African countries, every one of them a format a supermarket group does not operate. It turns 25 this year, having opened on Kloof Street in Cape Town in 2001 and reached its 400th store in June. ## What Food Lover's said in 2015 The precedent is close enough to be useful. Food Lover's Market took over Seattle Coffee Company in 2015, having already spent years running the brand inside its own network, in FreshStop forecourt shops and its own in-store coffee bars. Spokesperson Travis Coppin said at the time that the deal let the group put a world-class coffee experience into all of its stores. The scale it bought was small and the runway was not. Seattle had 21 cafes of its own when the deal was done. It has 331 today, on the Financial Mail's count, and Food Lover's has publicly aimed at 500. The difference is in what each buyer was after. Food Lover's already had Seattle inside its forecourts and bought the brand to put it into more of its own stores. Shoprite is buying a chain that already stands on its own, in formats it does not run, and says it wants to learn from a business it admires while supporting its next phase of growth. ## A grocer that grows by format, not by price Shoprite's growth has come from new shapes rather than higher prices. Its own shelf inflation ran at 0.8% for the year against official food inflation of 3.9%, and merchandise sales still rose 7.2%, to R270.8 billion. The pattern repeats across the group. Petshop Science, launched in 2021, is at 185 stores and grew sales 74.5%. Sixty60 added a record R6.6 billion. Coffee is the next format on the list, in a category the Financial Mail reports is growing while the rest of consumer spending is not. The deal is small enough that the JSE does not require it to be categorised. It was signed in August, it needs regulatory approval, and it only takes effect in Shoprite's 2027 financial year. Until then Shoprite owns the agreement, not the coffee. ### The Iran war has helped fuel an 83% share price surge for one of South Africa’s biggest companies URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sasol-fy2026-results-no-dividend-net-debt/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T03:29:59.000Z Sasol has a rule about when it pays its owners, and this year the rule said no again. The company earned more, sold more, cut its debt and watched its share price rise 83%, and the board still declared no final dividend. The policy is specific rather than vague. Sasol hands back 30% of the cash left over once the business has paid for itself, but only once net debt sits sustainably below $3 billion. Net debt fell 11% over the year, comfortably beating the company's own target. It finished at $3.3 billion, which is $300 million short of the number that opens the tap. ## What a war does to a coal-to-liquids plant Sasol makes fuel and chemicals out of coal and gas rather than crude, which is an unusual position when oil goes up: the cost of its raw material barely moves while the price of what it sells does. Its Southern African operation needed Brent at $49 a barrel to break even last year. Brent averaged $79.47\. Refining margins at Natref, the crude refinery it part-owns, went from $5.76 a barrel to $25.10. Adjusted operating earnings rose 17%, to R61 billion, on turnover of R272 billion. Secunda, which turns coal into liquid fuel at up to 160,000 barrels a day, had its best year in five, helped by a destoning plant that cleans up the coal going in. Cash fixed costs stayed flat at R70 billion for a third year running. ## The cash that did not follow the earnings Free cash flow went the other way. It fell 5%, to R11.9 billion, in a year when earnings rose. The same Middle East pricing that lifted those earnings also lifted the value of the fuel sitting in Sasol's tanks, and working capital ran at 18.3% of turnover against the 15.5% to 16.5% the company guides to. Last year's figure also had help that did not repeat. A once-off Transnet settlement put R3.1 billion after tax into the prior year's cash flow. Take it out of both years and free cash flow improved 26%. The result still carried R16.8 billion of write-downs, R7.7 billion of it against the Secunda liquid fuels refinery, which stays fully impaired on Sasol's books even while it runs at its best rate in five years. Chief executive Simon Baloyi called the year a decisive one of delivery against the commitments set at the company's capital markets day. Sasol wants net debt lower again in 2027 and has set itself a breakeven oil price of $50 a barrel by 2028\. The dividend waits on the same number it waited on this year. ### South Africa’s R20 billion trade surplus is hiding a much bigger African success story URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-trade-surplus-july-2026-lighter-import-bill/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T03:15:00.000Z The country bought less oil in July, and that is most of the reason the trade surplus grew. SARS put the preliminary trade balance at R20.1 billion for the month, up from a revised R17.2 billion in June. Exports barely moved. A trade surplus is simply what is left over when the value of what a country ships out is larger than the value of what it brings in. Exports rose 0.8% in July, to R194 billion, carried by passenger vehicles, manganese ore and coal. Imports fell by almost exactly the same proportion, to R173.8 billion, because the country brought in less refined petroleum, less crude oil and fewer smartphones. ## Africa carried it, Asia did not The surplus is not evenly earned. Trade with the rest of Africa produced a R31.97 billion surplus for the month, against R20.4 billion in June, mostly because imports from the continent dropped by nearly a third. Asia went the other way and deepened slightly, to a R30 billion deficit. The neighbours matter more than the headline lets on. Take out Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho and Namibia, the four countries South Africa shares a customs union with, and July's surplus falls to R9.1 billion. Those four accounted for R11.1 billion of it on their own. The categories underneath moved in different directions. Machinery and electronics exports rose 18% month on month and mineral products 14%, while precious metals and stones fell 21%. On the import side, mineral products slumped 32%, which is the oil bill arriving lighter, but vehicles and transport equipment came in 28% higher. ## The fuel bill that lands next The figures were published hours after the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources confirmed that petrol and diesel rise sharply from Wednesday, which is the same import bill arriving from the other direction. Investec economist Lara Hodes, quoted by Business Day, expects import values to rise in the near term as higher energy prices feed through, with Brent averaging close to $90 a barrel in August. For the year to July the country is R130.9 billion in surplus, against R100.6 billion at the same point in 2025\. These are preliminary numbers and they move: June's surplus was first published at R17.8 billion and settled R0.5 billion lower once corrections came in. August is when the oil bill starts showing up in them. ### Shein has finally made it onto the stock market, and the shares fell as much as 10% on day one URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shein-hong-kong-listing-debut-shares-fall/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T03:00:00.000Z Shein has been trying to go public for four years, and on Tuesday morning it finally managed it in Hong Kong. New York never happened. London stalled when Beijing withheld approval over what the company would have to disclose about its Chinese supply chain. The shares opened at the offer price and fell as much as 10%. The offer price was the first tell. Shein sold about 280 million shares at HK$48.56 each, below the maximum it had asked for. That values the company a little over $26 billion. Private investors had it near $100 billion in 2022. Demand was polite rather than enthusiastic. The Hong Kong retail tranche was subscribed 5.63 times and the international portion 2.59 times, in a market where Hong Kong's retail investors have pushed wanted listings hundreds of times over. Founder Sky Xu attended the gong ceremony, took photographs with staff and said nothing publicly. Chief financial officer Leigh Gui spoke instead. ## The rule change that broke the model Shein's whole model was cheap parcels crossing borders without paying much to do it. The United States ended its duty exemption for e-commerce shipments under $800 last year, and the European Union has since put fees on low-value packages of its own. Net income fell 39% last year and the company swung to a loss in the first quarter. The company has told the market to expect a thinner operating margin in the first half than in the first quarter, because of customs duties, tariffs, fees and logistics costs in Europe and the Middle East. Revenue growth has nearly stopped: up 1.1% year on year in the first quarter, to $9.05 billion. ## The R500 rule that already changed things here South Africa ran its own version of this two years ago. Shein and Temu had been splitting larger orders into parcels worth less than R500 each, which attracted a flat 20% customs duty and no VAT, while local clothing retailers paid 45% plus VAT on the same goods. SARS added VAT to the flat rate from September 2024 and later moved to withdraw the underlying concession outright. Commissioner Edward Kieswetter put the uncollected tax at over R3.5 billion. Shein arrived in South Africa in 2020 and, together with Temu, now accounts for about 15.3% of the online retailers South Africans use, second only to Takealot. Goldman Sachs may support the share price for a few more weeks as stabilising manager. That window closes on 26 September. ### Eskom's chief financial officer is leaving after 24 years, with a successor wanted before December URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-cfo-calib-cassim-retires-after-24-years/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T02:44:59.000Z Calib Cassim spent Monday morning explaining why Eskom sells electricity to ferrochrome smelters at 62 cents a unit when its average selling price is R2.20\. Further down the same media statement, Eskom said he was retiring. Cassim has been at the utility for 24 years. He arrived in 2002 as chief advisor for financial planning and regulation, took the finance job in 2017, and ran the whole company for a year as acting group chief executive after Andre de Ruyter left. He goes during the financial year ending March 2027, and the board wants his successor in the seat before the end of December. ## The discount Eskom is paying for itself Eskom has a problem it has not had in more than a decade: too much electricity. Better performance at the power stations, weak industrial demand and customers generating their own power have left it with an estimated two to three gigawatts of spare capacity. It is also locked into take-or-pay coal contracts signed when it expected to sell more, which means it pays for the coal whether it burns it or not. That is the whole logic of the smelter deal. Eskom sells to the Glencore-Merafe and Samancor ferrochrome smelters at 62 cents a unit, a 28% discount on its average price, and absorbs the shortfall itself for a window Cassim puts at three to five years. Some revenue beats none on coal you have already bought. Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa has said Treasury will not step in and other customers will not be billed for it. ## The number sitting under the profit Eskom made R30.3 billion after tax in the year to March, against a restated R14 billion, and a second straight profit after eight years of losses. Sales volumes fell 6.2% to 178TWh even so, and revenue only grew because the tariff went up 12.74%. Municipal debt is the part Eskom's own statement calls its biggest financial threat. Arrears rose 17.9% to R111.6 billion at year end and reached about R119 billion by June, with a projection of R358 billion by 2031 if nothing decisive happens. A further R15.8 billion that Eskom billed last year was never recognised as revenue at all, because it did not expect to be paid. Whoever takes the chair inherits all of it, plus a capital programme that grows from R45 billion a year now to over R70 billion from 2029\. The board has until December to find them. ### South Africa’s new petrol prices are in, and it might be time to dust off that old bicycle URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/petrol-up-r1-34-diesel-up-r3-15-september-2026/ Last updated: 2026-09-02T02:29:59.000Z The price you pay on Wednesday was decided in July and August, and the rand's good run was not enough to save it. From the 2nd of September petrol 93 and 95 both go up R1.34 a litre, which takes 95 unleaded to R26.92 in Gauteng. Filling a 50 litre tank costs about R67 more than it did last week. Diesel is the increase that leaves the forecourt. Wholesale diesel goes up between R2.94 and R3.15 a litre depending on the grade, which takes the cheaper of the two to R29.11 in Gauteng. It was R18.42 there at the start of the year. Almost every loaf of bread in the country travels on that number. ## The slate levy and the forecourt wage South Africa resets its fuel prices once a month, working off what it actually cost to import petrol and diesel over the previous thirty days. The state-owned Central Energy Fund does the sum, and the two ingredients that move it most are international product prices and the rand. Two smaller additions did their own damage this month. The slate levy, which repays importers the gap between what they paid on world markets and what the regulated price let them recover, rose 21.90 cents a litre to 83.28 cents, against a cumulative shortfall of R9.519 billion at the end of July. Gwede Mantashe separately approved another 4.9 cents a litre so that pump attendants, cashiers and forecourt administrative staff get the wage increase their bargaining council agreed last year. ## The war that set the price Brent crude averaged $87.88 a barrel over the review period, up from $82.37, because the United States and Iran keep fighting and nobody can say with confidence what will get through the Strait of Hormuz. Diesel is tighter still: Russia banned diesel exports after Ukraine attacked its refineries, and there is not enough spare refining capacity anywhere to cover the gap. The rand did exactly what it was supposed to do. It firmed to an average of R16.21 to the dollar from R16.46, which took 21 cents a litre off petrol and 29 cents off diesel. Then the oil price took several rands back. Business Day reports that local fuel importers have absorbed at least $3.5 billion in extra costs since the conflict began, on the count of the Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, which puts South Africa among the twenty countries worst hit by the shock. The Reserve Bank has held its policy rate at 7% since July and said it would not hesitate to act if the oil shock starts showing up in everything else. It meets again on 23 September, three weeks after this increase reaches the pumps. ### The Roundup — Tuesday, 1 September 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-tuesday-1-september-2026/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T03:59:59.000Z Today's edition Cash Flows Good morning. A charity is handing about R11,000 to every adult in a Malawian district and waiting to see what happens. Eskom, on the other hand, has posted its second profit in a row and still cannot get fourteen small towns to pay their electricity bill. Some money is moving, and some money is certainly not. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--32--1.png) --- CASH IN HAND ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-givedirectly-1.png) ## A charity is handing $550 to every adult in a Malawian district, and the shops left their prices alone Aid usually turns up as a thing: a clinic, a bag of maize, a training course. In Chiradzulu, a Malawian district of about 400,000 people, it is turning up as money. GiveDirectly, a charity started by Harvard and MIT graduate students in 2008, is handing about $550 to every adult - once off, no strings attached. For a household there, that is close to a year's spending. Most of the funding comes from the foundation behind the design app Canva, which put in $100 million - the biggest gift the charity has had. **What the first district showed:** - In Khongoni, the subdistrict GiveDirectly did first, the share of adults above the poverty line roughly doubled inside a year. - The injection was worth about as much as the whole local economy. Prices rose about 1%, then settled back within five months. - A year on, a third of what households spent was still going into housing, livestock and solar panels. Khongoni was one subdistrict, 85,000 people. Chiradzulu is 900 villages and 400,000 residents, with 185,000 due to be paid by early 2027\. That is more than double the people, across a whole district instead of a corner of one. Whether the same result survives that jump is what is being tested. The trial runs to 2035. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/givedirectly-malawi-550-dollar-universal-cash-transfers/) --- METER'S RUNNING ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-eskom--3--1.png) ## Eskom made R30.3 billion and still cannot get fourteen towns to pay their electricity bill Eskom spent a decade being judged on whether the lights were on. On Monday it reported R30.3 billion after tax for the year to March, its second profitable year running, with reportedly four days of load shedding in the twelve months. The problem it named as its biggest is not a power station. It is R119 billion of unpaid municipal bills, and the fourteen towns that had until today to hand over their meters or risk being cut off. Eskom's proposed Distribution Agency Agreement takes the billing out of a town's hands. Eskom runs the distribution itself for a fee: households pay Eskom directly, Eskom keeps what it is owed for bulk power and the cost of serving them, and the balance goes back to the struggling municipality. For a council, that means the money lands in Eskom's account before it lands in theirs. National Treasury called Eskom's original contract heavily skewed in Eskom's favour, and the working group meant to write a fairer one never did. Treasury says none of the fourteen has signed. Four of these deals already run, AfriForum is in court over one, and Salga has asked for six more months to figure this out. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-distribution-agency-agreement-deadline-fourteen-municipalities/) --- BAGEL BITE **What is the largest moon in our solar system?** **A.** Europa **B.** Ganymede **C.** Titan --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-scooters-pizza-1.png) **Scooters Pizza is back to ten stores and wants twenty by the end of November.** Taste Holdings converted its stores to Domino's in the years after 2014 and the brand vanished. Juan Engelbrecht, once its Western Cape master franchisor, bought the trademarks back in early 2025 and reopened in Melville that October. The pitch to franchisees is a store costing R1.66 million to R2 million, a 6% royalty, and no central kitchen marking up their ingredients. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/scooters-pizza-franchise-relaunch-ten-stores/) **369 Cape businesses were asked what is in the way, and labour law came out near the top.** The Cape Chamber had them rate 61 named constraints, with Stellenbosch's Bureau for Economic Research running the fieldwork. Regulatory compliance came first and labour legislation second. Almost 80% of the 23 firms with more than 200 staff called labour law a serious constraint, and so did 73.6% of 53 manufacturers. Some said the employment-equity rules that start at 50 employees are why they stop hiring at 45\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/cape-chamber-369-firms-labour-law-fifty-employee-threshold/) **Instagram is getting a bedtime.** Meta has settled the states' case over what its apps do to children, and the changes are firmer than the money. Under-18s get a two-hour daily cap, a lockout between midnight and 6am, and the option of a feed with no algorithm in it. The $17.1 billion everyone is quoting only arrives if TikTok and YouTube settle too. The settling states are guaranteed at least $12.1 billion. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/meta-settlement-under-18-curfew-instagram-facebook/) **Bidvest says it has stopped shopping and is putting R2.5 billion into port capacity instead.** Sales rose about 3% to R130.3 billion in the year to June, while trading profit rose 8%. Debt is down to about 1.9 years of operating earnings, from 2.2\. The group did buy three businesses for R1.67 billion, mostly the Pretoria water-testing business Aquatico, but chief executive Mpumi Madisa says no material deals are planned. The money is going into grain and gas capacity at Durban and Richards Bay. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/bidvest-fy2026-results-r2-5bn-port-capacity/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--28--1.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--31--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P0NWLzSm1-X3FTf5B0p&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Ganymede** Ganymede is so large that if it orbited the Sun instead of Jupiter, it could easily be called a planet. It is the only moon known to have its own magnetic field, generated deep inside it. Scientists believe it hides a vast salty ocean beneath its icy surface. Titan and Europa are also famous moons, but neither is as big as Ganymede. --- That's your Tuesday wrapped. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Fourteen towns had until today to hand Eskom control of their electricity meters URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-distribution-agency-agreement-deadline-fourteen-municipalities/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T03:44:59.000Z Paying your electricity bill in most South African towns means paying the municipality, which buys the power from Eskom in bulk and is meant to pass the money on. Fourteen municipalities have not been passing it on. They had until 1 September to hand that job to Eskom or risk having their supply cut, and National Treasury says none has signed. A Distribution Agency Agreement is narrow and drastic. Eskom takes over distribution in the town, temporarily and for a fee: it runs the meters, sends the bills, and households pay Eskom directly. Eskom keeps what it is owed for the bulk power and the cost of serving those customers, and the balance goes back to the municipality. The town keeps the electricity. It loses the till. Eskom is not pushing from weakness. It reported a second straight profitable year on Monday, R30.3 billion after tax, with four days of load shedding all year. What it is short of is paying customers: it sold 6.2% less electricity than the year before, industrial demand fell by almost a quarter, and it now expects two to three gigawatts of capacity nobody is buying. ## The debt that keeps outrunning the fix Municipal arrears reached about R119 billion by June, almost a fifth up over the financial year, and Eskom's projection, if nothing changes, is R358 billion by 2031\. It also left R15.8 billion out of its revenue this year, about a twentieth of the total, as money it does not expect to collect. There was a fix, and it has not worked. Three years ago the government offered to write off a third of a town's historical debt each year, on condition it paid its current account for twelve months straight. Municipal debt has more than doubled since then, and only R4.2 billion has actually been written off. Eskom's alternative has been to reach the money first, withholding with Treasury the grant allocations defaulting towns run on. That got R5.2 billion out of the City of Johannesburg. ## The contract nobody wrote The towns are not simply digging in out of pride. Treasury itself called Eskom's original standard agreement heavily skewed in Eskom's favour, and a working group of Eskom, Treasury, the municipal association Salga and two national departments was set up to write a fairer one. It never did. Eskom concluded a new agreement with Ditsobotla anyway, four are already running, and AfriForum is in court to have the Merafong one set aside because the legally required steps were skipped. Salga has asked Treasury for another six months. One of the fourteen, Dr Beyers Naudé, has a court order holding off the cut-off while it follows the proper process. The people on the other end of this are not the councillors. In Masilonyana, one of the fourteen, an administrator is running the town, the municipal manager and finance chief are suspended and fighting it in court, the workers have been on strike since mid-June, and the taps are dry. ### An entire African district is being given free money, and economists want to see what happens next URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/givedirectly-malawi-550-dollar-universal-cash-transfers/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T03:29:59.000Z Hand a whole village enough money to double what it spends, and the textbook says the shopkeepers will put their prices up. Inflation eats the cash and everyone finishes where they started. GiveDirectly ran that experiment in a Malawian subdistrict called Khongoni, where the injection was worth about as much as the whole local economy. Prices went up roughly 1%, then fell back to nothing inside five months. The design is what makes it an experiment rather than a donation. Every adult in a treated village gets the money, unconditionally, in two payments: about $50 shortly after signing up and about $500 roughly two months later. Some villages get it and others do not, and the treated ones are grouped so whole areas end up heavily covered while neighbours are barely touched. That variation is the instrument. It lets researchers watch a market where most customers suddenly have money, against one where only a few do. ## What the shopkeepers actually did Three things kept prices down, on GiveDirectly's account. Households spread the money over months rather than spending it at once. Shoppers had somewhere else to go, including the markets in Lilongwe, so a trader who marked up lost the sale. And traders said outright that gouging would cost them their reputation once the money was gone. Where demand did jump, vendors mostly ordered more stock, and new traders turned up to sell it. A year after the transfer, the share of adults in Khongoni living above the extreme poverty line, $3 a day, had roughly doubled, and household spending was still 89% higher than before. About a third went into housing, livestock and solar panels rather than food, the sort of buying that keeps paying after the money runs out. GiveDirectly is careful about that doubling: its own estimates of the starting share range from 18% to 36%, and it says the truth sits somewhere inside that. ## The district version, and what it is testing Chiradzulu is a different size of thing. About 400,000 people live there, and GiveDirectly wants the programme reaching 185,000 of them by early 2027. The money is mostly Canva's. The design company's foundation committed $100 million to the scale-up, the largest single gift GiveDirectly has had. The businesses are studied too, which is why it had to be done at district scale. About 2,000 local enterprises get a cash grant plus advance warning that demand is coming, another 1,000 get the warning only, and roughly 7,000 will be surveyed across the district's 77 weekly markets. GiveDirectly's own benchmark is Kenya, where it measured $2.50 of economic activity for every dollar handed out. Whether Malawi repeats that is what the trial is registered to find out: it sits with the American Economic Association, is led by the Oxford economist Dennis Egger, and runs to 2035. ### Bidvest is swapping its acquisition spree for a R2.5 billion bet on South Africa’s ports URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/bidvest-fy2026-results-r2-5bn-port-capacity/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T03:14:59.000Z Bidvest owns a bit of nearly everything. Freight terminals, hygiene contracts, car dealerships, a pharmaceutical business, bottled water, the company that cleans your office building. A group built that way does not grow by finding one big new market. It grows by squeezing a little more out of each of the parts, or by buying another part. In the year to June it did both, and then said it was stopping. Revenue rose about 3%, to R130.3 billion. Underneath that it went better: every division grew its trading profit, and the group now keeps 10 cents out of every rand of sales as trading profit, half a cent more than a year ago. The cash is where it shows. Cash generated by operations rose 17%, to R17.2 billion, and free cash flow, the money left once the business has paid for itself, went up by more than a quarter. Bidvest put it into debt, which now sits at 1.9 years of operating earnings, down from 2.2\. Shareholders get a final dividend of 483 cents, about 7% more than last year. ## The year Bidvest went shopping Three acquisitions went through, worth about R1.67 billion between them, and one of them is essentially all of it. Aquatico, a Pretoria environmental monitoring and water testing business, cost R1.5 billion and came in on 14 October. The other two are rounding: a hygiene bolt-on in Singapore and a Spanish pest control business, R38 million for the pair. Bidvest was selling at the same time, letting go of Autosure, half of a Centurion car dealership and most of WearCheck Ghana, on the grounds that the synergies never turned up. ## Where the next R2.5 billion goes Mpumi Madisa says no material deals are planned in the near term. The cash goes to debt instead, and to R2.5 billion of port capacity: a second gas terminal at Richards Bay and more bulk grain and liquid capacity at Durban, once the closing conditions are settled. Bidvest also signed the terminal operator licence on a renewed 25-year lease at Island View, with two more under negotiation. Freight grew its trading profit 10.3% on agricultural and mineral export volumes, which is the division that spending is aimed at. Bidvest Bank and Bidvest Life are still on the shelf. The bank's sale collapsed when Access Bank could not get its approvals before the long stop date, and the process has been restarted; the life business is waiting on regulators. Until both are gone, Bidvest's earnings will keep arriving in several versions at once, and the group will keep having to say which one it means. ### Children will soon be locked out of both Instagram and Facebook between midnight and 6am URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/meta-settlement-under-18-curfew-instagram-facebook/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T02:59:59.000Z Facebook and Instagram are getting a curfew for anyone under 18\. Under a settlement with a coalition of American state attorneys general, those users will be shut out between midnight and 6am, capped at two hours a day across the apps, and cut off from push notifications between 10pm and 7am and during school hours. The clock is the smaller half of it. After 60 and 90 minutes of use in a day the apps will pause content and put a break reminder in front of the user, and any single session running past 15 minutes gets one too. Under-18s can switch to a feed with no algorithm in it, showing only the accounts they follow in the order things were posted, and a parent can make that the default. Likes and other reactions get hidden from young users entirely. A parent's explicit permission is needed to switch any of it off, and it all runs for at least five years. The case behind this, brought in 2023, alleged that Meta built recommendation algorithms to keep young users on the platform as long as possible, deployed infinite scroll and constant notifications so they could not put it down, steered them towards content about eating disorders and self-harm, and then told everyone the products were safe. ## Three numbers for one settlement Now the money, and this is where the reporting pulls apart. The guaranteed part is at least $12.1 billion to the settling states. The $17.1 billion figure the attorneys general put in their headline only arrives if other major platforms settle on comparable terms, and it folds in a separate set of Cambridge Analytica claims worth more than $459 million. Meta describes the same agreement differently: about $18 billion, paid in annual instalments over ten years, with roughly 70% of it guaranteed and the rest riding on its rivals. CNBC, reading the court filing, gives the child-safety case itself as $16.7 billion. Three numbers, one agreement, and the gap between them is a bet on what other companies do next. ## The rest of the industry is in the price Half of the contingent money is tied to YouTube's settlement and half to TikTok's, and the restrictions tighten if either one signs. A second phase, running ten years instead of five, would move the night lockout back to 10pm, switch off push notifications altogether, and cut under-18s to 60 minutes a day on each app. New York's Letitia James, who led the coalition, has an open lawsuit against TikTok. The trial had been running about a week in an Oakland federal court when it stopped. Both sides waived their right to appeal, and Meta says it will book roughly $10 billion of legal expense in the third quarter. Investors did the arithmetic quickly. Meta's shares rose about 1% on the day. Snap, caught up in the same push by the attorneys general and having settled nothing, fell more than 8%. ### 369 local businesses were asked what is actually blocking growth, and labour law came out on top URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cape-chamber-369-firms-labour-law-fifty-employee-threshold/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T02:44:59.000Z Ask a business lobby what is wrong and the answer is normally that there are too many rules. Some of the biggest firms in the Cape Chamber's new survey asked for the opposite. They want the rules enforced harder, against competitors who do not comply, and they named importers of counterfeit goods as the people taking their work. The survey exists to turn that kind of complaint into a ranking. The Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry had the Bureau for Economic Research at Stellenbosch University put 61 named constraints in front of 369 firms, and asked each one to rate every constraint as seriously limiting, slightly limiting, not limiting, or not applicable. It did that four times over: for the firm, its precinct, its sector and its province. Fieldwork ran from late July to mid-August. Regulatory compliance and labour legislation came out on top overall. The pattern by size is the part doing the arguing: almost 80% of the 23 firms with more than 200 staff rated labour law a serious constraint, with skilled-worker shortages close behind, and so did nearly three-quarters of the 53 manufacturers surveyed. The compliance load, the Chamber reckons, lands hardest not on the smallest firms but on the ones in the middle, the ones that should be adding people. ## The line at 50 employees One threshold comes up by name. Under the Employment Equity Amendment Act a business with 50 or more staff becomes a designated employer, which means five-year numerical targets and compliance reports filed with the department. Several firms said those obligations put them off growing past that point. One medium-sized manufacturer answered flatly: “We cannot transition from 45 staff to more than 50 due to the massive additional cost and legislative burden posed by employment equity.” ## The constraints Cape Town cannot fix itself Most of the firms are in the Western Cape, 308 of the 369, but the things they name as binding mostly belong to somebody in Pretoria. The Port of Cape Town and the decaying freight rail network come up repeatedly, described as costs rather than assets. Electricity, Chamber chief executive John Lawson says, is not one problem but three: the outages, the tariffs, and the wait to get connected. Inside the metro the biggest local complaint is simply moving around, traffic and public transport. Outside it, firms point at the municipality: building plans they describe as years deep, and officials they cannot get answers from. Which is why one national fix does not work, Lawson argues, and he sets Killarney Gardens, worried about traffic flows, against Philippi, worried about crime, to make the point. The full ranking of all 61 constraints sits in a findings report the Chamber has not put anywhere a reader can reach. On the record are the top of the list, the split by size and sector, and an intention to run the whole thing again. ### Scooters Pizza is on track to open 20 stores just months after receiving 1,200 franchise enquiries URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/scooters-pizza-franchise-relaunch-ten-stores/ Last updated: 2026-09-01T02:30:00.000Z Scooters Pizza reached its tenth site this month and says it wants twenty trading by 30 November. Getting there means selling ten more franchises, and the pitch is built mostly on fees it says it is not charging. The brand passed 100 outlets by 2010\. Then Taste Holdings signed a master agreement to roll Domino's out across southern Africa in 2014 and invited Scooters franchisees to convert, retiring the name over the following years. Juan Engelbrecht, the brand's Western Cape master franchisor in its first life, secured the trademarks independently in early 2025 and reopened in Melville that October. A franchise is two businesses stacked on one till. The franchisee buys the store, pays the staff and carries the risk. The franchisor takes a cut of the turnover, and usually also runs the central kitchen that sells the franchisee its cheese and its dough, at a markup. Scooters says it will not run one, on the grounds that marking up stock to somebody you are also charging a royalty is a conflict of interest, so franchisees buy their own inputs. Getting in costs R1.66 million to R2 million, of which R125,000 is the fee for the name itself. The rest is the build, the stock and the wages paid before the doors open. Scooters wants R600,000 of your own unborrowed money before it will talk. Staying in costs 6% of turnover as a royalty, which the company says undercuts an industry standard closer to 7%. On top of that sits a fixed R2,500 a month for national marketing and a local marketing spend of at least 3% of revenue. It puts its setup cost R500,000 to R1 million below what it calls conventional benchmarks. Both comparisons are the company's own, and there is no audited industry average to hold them against. ## The bikes are the business Scooters was built in 2000, before Mr D and Uber Eats existed. It still runs its own fleet, which brings in between a tenth and a fifth of what a store takes. Every order routed through an aggregator pays a commission to somebody else. The 39-minute delivery guarantee is back on the menu too, the promise the brand was known for and the one that gets expensive when the traffic is bad. ## Where the next ten stores come from Demand is not the constraint, on the company's telling: more than 1,200 people have enquired since it reopened, at least 650 of them from KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. It has appointed a master franchise holder for both provinces, Vernon Marais, who owned eight Nando's outlets and now runs Skedadel, a last-mile delivery platform handling about 100,000 deliveries a month for other fast-food brands. Scooters intends to push its own orders through it. Ten sites are counted, though Parow is still being shopfitted. Rustenburg is due in September, and the first KwaZulu-Natal stores, in Ballito and Umhlanga, have to open before the end of November for the target to hold. ### Treasury wants to sell South Africa's first green bond before March URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/treasury-first-sovereign-green-bond-framework/ Last updated: 2026-08-31T07:59:59.000Z South Africa has never sold a green bond. National Treasury would like to change that before the financial year ends in March, and [said so to Bloomberg in late August](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/south-africa/south-africa-lays-groundwork-for-debut-sovereign-green-bond/?ref=businessbagel.com). A green bond is an ordinary government loan with a rule attached. The state borrows the money, undertakes to spend it only on a defined list of things, and publishes how it will report back on where it went. That list, the governance around it and the reporting principles are what Treasury put out at the end of May, in [a document called the Sovereign Use of Proceeds Framework](https://www.treasury.gov.za/comm%5Fmedia/press/2026/2026052901%20Media%20Statement-Publication%20of%20the%20South%20African%20Government%20Use%20of%20Proceeds%20Framework%20and%20Second%20Party%20Opinion.pdf?ref=businessbagel.com), drawn up with Rand Merchant Bank and J.P. Morgan and published with an independent reviewer's opinion alongside it. ## What the money would be allowed to buy The eligible list runs wider than power stations. Hydrogen manufacturing, hydropower, geothermal electricity and bioenergy sit on it, along with electricity transmission, water security and distribution networks for renewable and low-carbon gases. So do things that do not look green at first glance: reskilling and employment programmes for coal-sector workers, wider access to public healthcare and education, and low-income municipal housing. The breadth is deliberate, and Treasury intends to widen it further, to sustainability-linked financing, where the loan's terms move with whether the government hits a target rather than with what it spends the cash on. ## The number behind the hurry Meeting South Africa's commitments under the Paris agreement is costed inside the framework itself. Implementation comes to about R250 billion. The mitigation strategies come to R3.47 trillion, spread over the decade to 2035\. Averaged out, that is R372 billion a year. About R160 billion a year of it is meant to come from international climate-finance institutions by 2030, with private lenders and private spending carrying the rest. A single debut bond would not shift those totals. What it would do is make South Africa an issuer of this kind of paper, and Treasury is banking on the format to reach investors who do not currently buy its debt, which over time is how a borrowing cost comes down. Nigel Beck, who heads sustainable finance and ESG at Rand Merchant Bank and helped write the framework, [told Bloomberg that green and social issues generally price better](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/south-africa/south-africa-lays-groundwork-for-debut-sovereign-green-bond/?ref=businessbagel.com) than ordinary ones. His reasoning is mechanical rather than moral. There are large pools of capital, locally and especially in hard currency offshore, mandated to buy sustainable instruments, and drawing them into a book pushes the oversubscription up and the price the government pays down. ## What is still conditional Treasury's own statement in May said any issuance stays subject to internal readiness: a confirmed pipeline of eligible spending, working reporting systems, and the right governance structures in place first. Wanga Cibi, Treasury's chief director for liability management, [told Bloomberg the department would aspirationally like to issue](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/south-africa/south-africa-lays-groundwork-for-debut-sovereign-green-bond/?ref=businessbagel.com) within this fiscal year, and definitely in 2027/28 if not. It could go domestic, or sell in euros or dollars to reach a wider base. The projects it would fund are still being identified. The decision on size and timing lands with the medium-term budget policy statement in October. ### The Roundup — Monday, 31 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-monday-31-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-31T04:00:00.000Z Today's edition Arms Length Good morning. Europe’s defence spending boom is opening up a massive new market for South Africa, while local gold and platinum miners are flying high again - thanks to a single decision in Washington. It's a good day for South African companies, despite little of it happening *in* South Africa. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--31--1.png) --- SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-paramount-SA-1.png) ## Paramount is selling armoured vehicles into Europe by handing over the factory South African military spending has collapsed, which ought to be bad news for a company that has been building armoured vehicles in Midrand since 1994\. Paramount Group told journalists at a test track outside Pretoria that its market is growing instead, and that the growth is inside Europe, in countries that were not buying from it two years ago. The model explains the customer. Paramount rarely ships a finished vehicle: it sells the design and the right to build it, so the production line goes up in the buyer's own country. Deon Grobler, who runs Paramount Land Systems in South Africa, says European governments have lost confidence in the United States as a supplier, and the rift between them has opened markets that were previously shut to a South African manufacturer. **Where the vehicles actually get made:** - India: Bharat Forge builds Paramount's Mbombe 4 as the Kalyani M4 for the Indian Army. - Czech Republic and Kazakhstan: the same design sells as the M4 Golem and the Barys 8. - Midrand: the drawings, the intellectual property and about half of each vehicle (armoured glass included). None of it comes with a number. Paramount is privately held, named no NATO customer and put a value on nothing. Either way, they have confirmed that the next vehicle, built with India's Kalyani, will be unveiled in Pretoria in mid-September. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/paramount-portable-production-nato-markets-open/) --- AUGUST COMPANY ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-rainbow-chicken--2--1.png) ## South Africa's gold and platinum miners just had their best month in 20 years South Africa's gold and platinum miners gained about 38% in August on the JSE's precious-metals return index, the biggest monthly move in data going back to 2006\. Last year that index rose more than 200% as gold hit record after record, and the assumption going into 2026 was that the giving-back had started. Instead, after seven months down about 20%, one month has put the year in front. The move started with the metal rather than the mines. Gold rose nearly 15% over the month after the US Treasury stepped into the bond market unexpectedly, which sent investors back to bullion as cover against government deficits and a weaker dollar. A mine's costs barely move when the gold price does, so most of a higher price arrives as profit, and the lower those costs to begin with, the bigger that share is. African producers sit at the cheap end, which is why it landed hardest here. AngloGold Ashanti, Pan African Resources and Gold Fields each climbed more than 40%. Eight of the ten best-performing South African shares in August were precious-metals miners, and they carried the whole market up 4.6% with them. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-precious-metals-miners-best-month-on-record/) --- BAGEL BITE **What is a group of lions called?** **A.** Pride **B.** Pack **C.** Herd --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-labat-africa-1.png) **Labat Africa declared the first dividend in its history and has been suspended for not paying it.** The company put 1c a share on the table on 23 June, called it a landmark achievement, and certified that it would still be solvent the day after the money left. Payment was due on 3 August. A day before the record date the board postponed it until audited annual financial statements appear, no new date has been named, and those statements have not appeared. The last price anyone paid for a Labat share is 3 cents. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/jse-suspends-labat-africa-over-unpaid-maiden-dividend/) **Koeberg is generating no electricity at all.** Unit 1 tripped just before 1am on Thursday, and Eskom said nuclear safety was never compromised and the grid remains stable. What its statement does not mention is Unit 2, out since 26 April for refuelling and not due back until November. Africa's only nuclear station normally carries about 5% of the country's power, and more than 1.8 gigawatts of it is off. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/koeberg-both-units-offline-eskom-says-grid-stable/) **Beef got dearer and shoppers moved to chicken.** Foot-and-mouth disease pushed some red meat prices up more than 30% last year, and feed got cheaper at the same time. Rainbow Chicken's revenue rose 7.7% to R17.1 billion and its operating cash earnings doubled to R2.136 billion. The board added a 75c special dividend to the usual 45c final, taking the year to 135c a share. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/rainbow-chicken-fy26-special-dividend-cheap-feed/) **Harmony Gold received about a third more for every kilogram of gold it sold this year.** Revenue rose 34% to R99.2 billion, and the board declared a record 750c final dividend, about R8.1 billion for the year. The growth money is not going back into South African gold. Finance director Boipelo Lekubo said Harmony sees more value in copper, and executives told the market not to assume another record payout. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/harmony-gold-record-year-copper-australia/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--27--1.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--30--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P0HimMmzk%5Ft3mG4DRrX&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. Pride** Lions are the only truly social big cats, living together in prides rather than alone. A typical pride is built around a group of related lionesses who do most of the hunting and raise their cubs together. The males defend the pride's territory from rivals. Wolves live in packs and cattle move in herds, but lions have their own special name. --- That's your Monday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Anyone betting on South African gold just had their best month in nearly 20 years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-precious-metals-miners-best-month-on-record/ Last updated: 2026-08-31T03:44:59.000Z A total return index measures what an investor actually earned, dividends and all, rather than just where the share prices finished. South Africa's gold and platinum miners have just put about 38% on theirs in a single month, the most in data going back to 2006. That is a gauge, not a company, and what moves it is the metal underneath. Gold rose nearly 15% in August. The push came from the US Treasury, which stepped into the bond market unexpectedly while trying to hold down the cost of servicing American government debt. Investors read that as a reason to own metal rather than currency, the trade that carried bullion up 65% last year, and they bought. ## Why it lands harder in South Africa A mine's costs do not move much when the gold price does. Wages, diesel and electricity are broadly what they were last month, so most of a higher metal price arrives as profit, and the lower a producer's costs to begin with, the bigger that share is. African producers sit at the low-cost end, which is why they outran their global peers this month. AngloGold Ashanti, Pan African Resources and Gold Fields each put on more than 40%. The pull was strong enough to move the whole market. Eight of the ten best-performing South African shares in August were precious-metals miners, and the broader benchmark rose 4.6% on their backs, heading for its best month since February. ## It has already turned up in a set of accounts Share prices are opinions until a company reports. Harmony Gold published audited results for the year to June on Thursday, and the average gold price it received over that year was up 35%. Group revenue came in at R99.2 billion. Friday's closing prices said much the same across the sector. Valterra Platinum rose 5.98%, Impala Platinum 3.52%, Northam Platinum Holdings 2.65% and Sibanye Stillwater 2.47%. ## The size of it, kept honest August beat any single month of last year's rally, which is the comparison worth having, because that rally carried the index up more than 200% as gold hit record after record. One month has also flipped the year: the sector had been down about 20% before August, and it is now in front. It has not taken the miners back to where they were. The price version of the index, a different series from the total return one and a lower number by construction, closed on Friday at 151,536, against a 52-week high of 193,670. ### Europe’s defence spending boom is opening up a massive new market for South Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/paramount-portable-production-nato-markets-open/ Last updated: 2026-08-31T03:29:59.000Z Paramount Group's main export is not a vehicle. It is the right and the means to build one, in the buyer's own country, with the buyer's own workers. The company calls this portable production, and it is why a privately held manufacturer in Midrand is now talking about NATO. Most defence exporters ship a finished machine and a maintenance contract behind it. Paramount ships drawings, tooling and know-how, and lets a local partner do the welding. The customer gets a factory, jobs and a vehicle it can call its own. Paramount keeps the design and the intellectual property, and about half of each vehicle's content still comes from South African suppliers, armoured glass included. The armoured steel is Swedish and the engines are Cummins. ## One design, four factories The Mbombe 4 is the clearest case. Bharat Forge builds it in India as the Kalyani M4 for the Indian Army, STV Group markets it in the Czech Republic as the M4 Golem, and Azerbaijan makes its own. The larger Mbombe 8 is produced in Kazakhstan as the Barys 8\. Vehicles come in left or right-hand drive, and the conversion takes four hours. ## Why Europe started shopping outside America Deon Grobler, who runs Paramount Land Systems in South Africa, put the change in one line at Armscor's Gerotek test track outside Pretoria on Wednesday. “There were no NATO markets two years ago,” he said. “That has definitely opened up. All of a sudden spending has changed completely out of Europe.” European governments are rearming, and spreading their sourcing away from American products as they do it. A company whose entire model is handing over the factory suits a buyer who wants the production at home. Ukraine is where that model has been under fire. Through its Greek unit, Paramount builds there with the partner MAC HUB, and their MAC OWL is a Mbombe 4 rebuilt around what Ukrainian engineers and soldiers learned in combat. In June Ukraine's defence ministry codified it for service and named it the most highly protected locally produced armoured vehicle in its class, with the thickest side armour in its category and certification against blasts of up to 10kg of TNT. It carries up to ten electronic warfare modules aimed at the first-person-view drones that Grobler says have changed the design brief. ## What has not been announced None of this arrives with a number. Paramount is privately held, publishes no financials, and disclosed no order, no contract value and no named NATO customer at Gerotek. Its own newsroom has said nothing about the event or the claim; the most recent statement there is dated 30 June. What is on the calendar is a vehicle. A new 4x4 developed with India's Kalyani Strategic Systems, based on the Simha unveiled at Eurosatory in June, is due to be launched at the Africa Aerospace and Defence show in Pretoria in mid-September. Paramount's only South African government order remains the 12 Marshall vehicles it delivered to the police last year. ### Record gold prices just gave Harmony its best year ever. Now it’s putting its money into copper. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/harmony-gold-record-year-copper-australia/ Last updated: 2026-08-31T03:14:59.000Z Beyers Nel runs South Africa's largest gold producer by volume, and on Thursday an analyst asked how much of it he wants to be gold. He would not name a split. What guides the decision is value, he said: copper or gold, local or offshore, Harmony goes where the value is. That reads like a platitude until you follow the money. Harmony has spent 76 years pulling gold out of South African ground, most of it deep and old. An ageing shaft can still be mined, but each extra ounce costs more to reach than the last, and at some point the same rand does more somewhere else. ## The year that paid for it The gold price did most of the work. Harmony received an average of R2.07 million for every kilogram it sold, about a third more than the year before. Group revenue rose 34%, to R99.2 billion. Gold production itself slipped, and still landed inside guidance for the eleventh year running. The profit measures moved harder than revenue. Headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure South African listed companies have to report, rose 87%. Free cash flow set a record at R17.1 billion. The board turned part of that into the largest dividend Harmony has ever declared, a final of 750 cents a share, taking the full-year payout to about R8.1 billion. ## Where the growth money is not going South Africa keeps most of Harmony's production. It does not keep most of its growth spending. That money goes to the higher-grade mines, Mponeng and Moab Khotsong, and to the surface retreatment business that reprocesses old dumps. The marginal shafts get maintained rather than expanded. Finance director Boipelo Lekubo said it flatly: Harmony sees more value in copper at the moment than in gold, or in directing that money to the more marginal assets. Copper arrived by acquisition. Harmony bought MAC Copper in 2025, and with it the CSA underground mine in New South Wales, which delivered 18,207 tonnes in its first year at a grade well above what the company had guided. Eva Copper, an open-pit project in north-west Queensland, is due to pour its first metal in the second half of 2028. Australia supplied about 16% of group production this year, and Harmony expects that share to reach roughly 30% over the coming decade. ## The bill attached Harmony lost R9.65 billion on its gold hedge book over the year, as contracts struck at lower prices settled against a much stronger market. Lekubo calls that an opportunity loss rather than a mistake, and says the point of hedging is to protect a margin, not to speculate: about 30% of production is covered and the rest rides the spot price. Eva has a complication of its own. The site turned up a protected species, the Northern Blue-tongued Skink, which has slowed its environmental approvals, though Nel says first copper and the capital budget are unchanged and construction continues in already-approved areas. What Harmony has told the market not to expect is another record dividend next year. The heavy spending starts now. ### Beef prices jumped more than 30%, and South Africans moving to chicken helped Rainbow double its profits URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/rainbow-chicken-fy26-special-dividend-cheap-feed/ Last updated: 2026-08-31T02:59:59.000Z Rainbow Chicken is paying its shareholders twice this year. There is the usual final dividend, 45c a share, and then a special one of 75c on top, declared because the company finished the year with more cash than its plans need. A special dividend is what a board does when the money has arrived faster than the uses for it. It sits outside the normal payout and nobody should read it as a promise to repeat. Rainbow's directors named their reasons plainly: a strong cash position and low gearing, meaning very little of the business is funded by borrowing. ## The year beef had Chicken did not get cheaper. Beef got dearer. Foot-and-mouth disease pushed red meat prices up, some cuts by more than 30%, and shoppers went where the protein was affordable. Chief executive Marthinus Stander said that switch was the main event of the year, and that red meat prices have since begun to stabilise. Chief operating officer Wouter de Wet added that households remain under financial pressure, and that the cheapest lines, chicken heads, feet and soup packs, did well on the back of it. Stander's read on the pattern runs longer than one year: even when interest rates or fuel costs ease, he said, consumers come back to chicken first. ## What that did to the accounts Revenue rose 7.7%, to R17.1 billion. The profit line moved much harder: earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and impairment doubled, to R2.136 billion. The gap between those two is the year in a single line. Rainbow kept 12.5 cents of every rand it took in, against 6.7 cents the year before. Chicken prices held firm while the cost of feeding the birds fell, and the space between those two is where the money came from. The feed business itself made more money on lower selling prices, by chasing the higher-margin volumes rather than the tonnage. The group ended the year with R2.4 billion in cash and very little debt. ## Why next year turns on maize Feed is 60% to 65% of what it costs to raise a chicken, so the next set of results is a weather story before it is a poultry one. Stander expects a strong El Nino, the hot, dry pattern that cuts South African crop yields and lifts feed costs. His argument against panic is this year's harvest: even in the worst case of lower planting and lower yields, he said, there will still be enough maize in South Africa, and there is plenty of groundwater. Rainbow may forward-buy maize and soya to lock the cost in anyway. The two dividends are payable on 12 October. ### South Africa’s only nuclear power station is producing no electricity after both of its reactors went offline URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/koeberg-both-units-offline-eskom-says-grid-stable/ Last updated: 2026-08-31T02:44:59.000Z Koeberg has two reactors. Since just before 1am on Thursday, neither of them has been making electricity. A nuclear station of this kind is built to run flat out and stay there. It is not the plant you dial up when demand spikes and down when it falls; it sits underneath everything else on the grid, holding the same output day and night, which is what the word baseload means. Koeberg normally carries about 5% of the country's electricity that way. With both units down, more than 1.8 gigawatts of it is gone. ## The unit that tripped, and the unit nobody mentioned Eskom's statement on Thursday covers Unit 1, and only Unit 1\. The unit was taken offline safely and within procedure after a turbine trip, the utility said, plant monitoring stayed stable throughout, nuclear safety was never compromised, and there was no risk to employees, the public or the environment. Losing Unit 1's capacity poses no risk to national supply either, it added, because Eskom has enough generation available and the grid remains stable and secure. The cause of the trip is under investigation. What the statement does not say is that Unit 2 has been out of service since 26 April, on a 150-day refuelling and maintenance outage tied to the station's life-extension programme, and is not due back until November. ## Sardines in the seawater intake Thursday's trip was Unit 1's second interruption in seven days. On 21 August a cooling water pump shut itself down after marine material built up in the seawater intake, and Eskom halved the unit's output, roughly 465MW, for several days. Output had been brought back up to 70% less than a day before the turbine tripped. The fish are a separate investigation. Dead sardines have washed up along the Western Cape coast through the month, and the environment department confirmed on 14 August that it had found genetic material from pilchard herpesvirus in sampled fish, including at lower levels in apparently healthy ones, which suggests the virus alone is not enough to kill them. Harmful algae, low oxygen and unusual ocean conditions are all still being examined. ## Unit 2's six months out The refuelling outage has had its own incidents. In May a crane stalled while lifting a 150-tonne low-pressure turbine rotor and dropped it into the wrong position; Eskom said recovery teams repositioned it, inspections found no significant damage, and the outage schedule was unaffected. In July the National Nuclear Regulator disclosed that it was reviewing airborne contamination events inside the Unit 2 reactor building, detected during testing of the unit's new steam generators. Both the regulator and Eskom said the events were contained, classified level 0 on the international scale, and posed no risk to the public. Both units run on 20-year licence extensions granted after a multibillion-rand programme that replaced Unit 2's three steam generators, and this is Unit 2's first major inspection cycle since it returned at the end of December 2024\. It is due back on the grid in November. Until then, whatever is holding the base load up, it is not Koeberg. ### The JSE has suspended a listed company after it promised shareholders a dividend and then didn’t pay it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/jse-suspends-labat-africa-over-unpaid-maiden-dividend/ Last updated: 2026-08-31T02:29:59.000Z In June, Labat Africa's board put its name to a statement saying the company would still be solvent and liquid the moment its first ever dividend left the account. The money was due on 3 August. It never went out, and on Thursday the JSE suspended the company's shares. A dividend on the JSE is not a promise, it is a timetable. The company names a declaration date, a last day to trade, a record date that fixes who gets paid, and a payment date, and the exchange holds it to all four. It also has to move the full amount to Strate, the depository that actually settles the payment, so the cash is out of the company's hands before it reaches anyone's account. Labat did neither. ## The timetable that stopped Labat declared 1c a share on 23 June and called it a landmark achievement, the first in the company's history. With 2.268 billion shares in issue, that put the gross bill at about R22.7 million on TechCentral's arithmetic. Then the timetable moved. On 30 July, a day before the record date, the board pushed the payment back to line it up with audited annual financial statements for the year to 31 May, after consulting management and the external auditors. A second notice the same day confirmed the amount was unchanged and that shareholders on the register at the end of July were still entitled. Neither notice named a new payment date, and none has been named since. The audited statements have not appeared. ## What the exchange said it could not establish The JSE's notice turns on one word, and the word is uncertainty. Labat objected to the proposed suspension and put alternative settlement arrangements to the exchange; having read them, the JSE said uncertainty remains regarding the settlement of the declared dividend. It suspended the listing with immediate effect, instructed Labat to publish an announcement explaining the matter, and noted that it had placed its own notice in the interest of shareholders. Labat listed in 1999 as one of South Africa's first black-owned listed companies, and this is the second time in roughly two years that its shares have been suspended. That one was lifted as a precondition for buying Classic International, the software distributor that is now one of the company's two operating assets. TechCentral put four questions to the company on Friday: whether the R22.7 million was ever funded, when shareholders can expect it, on what basis the board certified solvency in June, and when the audited statements will be published. It had not answered by publication. The JSE has told Labat to explain itself in an announcement of its own, and until that lands, the last price anyone paid for a Labat share is 3 cents. ### Sanlam's headline earnings are falling while its reported earnings rise by a third URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sanlam-trading-statement-heps-eps-ninety-one-shriram/ Last updated: 2026-08-29T05:59:59.000Z Two profit numbers out of the same six months at Sanlam are pointing in opposite directions, and the difference is what each one is allowed to count. Headline earnings per share for the half to 30 June are expected to come in between 372 and 418 cents, somewhere between a tenth and a fifth below the 465 cents of a year ago. The other measure goes the other way. Basic earnings per share are expected between 607 and 656 cents, a rise of 24% to 34%. The diluted versions of both move by the same percentages. ## The two gains only one measure counts Headline earnings exist to strip the one-off items out, and this half is a demonstration of why. Two things lifted the basic number. Sanlam sold its active asset management business to Ninety One, a deal concluded in February that left the insurer holding 12.5% of the fund manager. It also booked a gain when its shareholding in India's Shriram Finance was diluted by a capital injection from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. Sanlam said that gain crystallises value in a long-held investment, with new capital coming in at a valuation that recognises Shriram's growth and supports what its own remaining stake is worth. Both gains sit inside basic earnings and outside headline earnings, which is why the two move apart. ## What actually got worse The fall in headline earnings comes off the investment side rather than the insurance side. Sanlam said shareholder investment returns were lower than a year earlier across the portfolio, pointing to a negative fair value movement on its listed exposure to Ninety One after that transaction closed on 2 February, and to weaker market conditions in Morocco and India. Ninety One's share price is down more than 19% since the end of February, when the United States and Israel attacked Iran and financial markets dislocated, though on a year-to-date basis it is only 4.9% lower. No source has put a rand figure on the mark-to-market hit. Insurance carried its own drag. Elevated weather-related losses and large claims hit general insurance earnings in both South Africa and the Pan-African book, which takes in Santam and the venture with Allianz. Against that, Sanlam said business volumes and net client cash flows were strong, and that a diversified portfolio and a strong capital position kept supporting value creation and cash generation. Sanlam's shares slid more than 2% on the day, to R85.02\. Keagan Higgins, an investment analyst at Anchor Capital, told News24 the trading statement looked broadly in line with expectations, with the main pressure coming from lower shareholder investment returns, the Ninety One mark and the weaker Moroccan and Indian markets. What he is watching at the results is new business growth, margins on new business and cash flows. Those land on 10 September. ### The Roundup — Friday, 28 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-28-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T03:59:59.000Z Today's edition Short Haul Good morning. South Africa has two working oil refineries, one of them lost a single downstream unit on Wednesday, and by that afternoon the busiest airport in the country was short of jet fuel. MTN wants AI data centres across Africa badly enough to go and buy the land, and not badly enough to own much of them. Nvidia sold $96 billion of chips in three months, then committed $279 billion to locking up the parts it needs to sell more. Nobody has enough of what they need today, except the company selling it. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--30--1.png) --- REFINED OR NOTHING ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-sasol-1.png) ## One unit went down at Sasolburg, and OR Tambo cannot simply ship the jet fuel in Sasol lost a single downstream unit at Natref, its refinery in Sasolburg, on Wednesday, and said it can no longer meet full supply commitments on some fuel grades. Jet fuel for its customers at OR Tambo is one of them. It will keep supplying them, just not in full. By that afternoon the Department of Energy had called an emergency meeting with the airports company and the fuels industry. The reason a refinery fault reaches an airport is a rule from 1964\. Jet fuel cannot be landed straight into an import terminal, so it has to come through a licensed refinery, and South Africa has two of those left. **How the fuel gets there:** - Natref is the only inland crude oil refinery in the country, which makes it the natural supplier to Johannesburg. - Two refineries are still working, Natref and Astron in Cape Town, and by law the jet fuel has to route through one of them. - FlySafair, which carries more than half of South Africa's domestic passengers, is buying extra supply from other providers to cover the gap. Sasol has given no restoration date, no volume figure and no estimate of how long the shortfall runs. A fire at the same refinery did the same thing to OR Tambo in January 2025. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/natref-shutdown-jet-fuel-or-tambo-import-rule/) --- MINOR DETAILS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-mtn-data-centres-1.png) ## MTN is building AI data centres across Africa and will not say how much of them it owns MTN told the market in its half-year results that its digital infrastructure arm has entered a partnership to build AI ready data centres across the continent, through a new company called Africa Data Hub Holding Limited. The booklet named no partner, no stake and no rand figure. Chief executive Ralph Mupita filled in some of it at a roundtable the next day: 150 megawatts in the first phase, split between South Africa and Nigeria, with MTN as a minority investor. Bloomberg supplied the name the day after that, Dubai-based Tarek Al Ashram, co-founder of the KKR backed Gulf Data Hub. The split is the design. MTN brings 317.7 million customers across 19 markets, the land it has been buying and the power deals it has been negotiating. The capital comes from the other side. The plan is to run MTN's own workloads and rent the rest to the big cloud companies, other large businesses and governments that want their data held inside their own borders. Africa holds less than 1% of the world's AI data centre capacity, and the biggest project announced for the continent, a gigawatt facility from Microsoft and G42 in Kenya, has not been built. MTN still has not said what share of Africa Data Hub it owns, what it has committed, or when the first megawatt comes online. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-africa-data-hub-al-ashram-ai-data-centres/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which of these fruits is botanically a berry?** **A.** Banana **B.** Strawberry **C.** Raspberry --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-nvidia-2.png) **Nvidia sold $96.2 billion of chips in three months and told investors this quarter will be bigger.** Revenue for the three months to 26 July was more than double a year earlier, data centres supplied $89 billion of it, and the guidance of $108 billion for the current quarter assumes no data centre sales in China at all. On the same earnings call Amazon Web Services agreed to take another two million chips, five months after committing to more than a million. The biggest names on that order book, OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Anthropic, are all building their own chips to lean on Nvidia less. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/nvidia-second-quarter-results-aws-gpus-custom-chips/) **Naspers put a $100 million bonus to a vote it cannot lose.** Norges Bank, CalPERS and others published plans to vote against the pay proposals or against two directors before Wednesday's annual meeting. The award goes to chief executive Fabricio Bloisi only if the combined value of Naspers and Prosus doubles and the group also beats the median return of a global technology peer group. Insiders hold shares carrying a thousand votes each against one for everyone else. Last year about 71% of ordinary shareholders voted against the pay policy and it passed anyway. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/naspers-prosus-agm-pay-vote-super-shares/) **Municipalities owe Eskom R119 billion, and fourteen of them have until 1 September to hand over their electricity business.** Under a distribution agency agreement Eskom takes over the whole distribution function and runs it for a fee. Samwu has rejected the arrangement and wants government to stop enforcing the agreements it already has. At the other end of the customer base, the mines that can generate for themselves keep contracting more: Anglo American's renewables venture now covers about 30% of what its mines use, and Sibanye expects renewables to cover close to two thirds of its South African energy demand by 2028\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-distribution-agency-agreements-samwu-mining-renewables/) **Discovery expects headline earnings for the year to June to rise between 31% and 36%.** Much of that is the building it works in. The insurer bought its Sandton head office outright in February for just over R4 billion, and ending the lease produced an accounting gain rather than money arriving. The businesses underneath grew more slowly, with normalised profit from operations up between 15% and 20%. The full results land on 3 September. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/discovery-headline-earnings-head-office-lease-gain/) **Absa closed 79 branches last year and ended up with more places to walk into.** It took the traditional branch count from 438 to 359 and pulled out 120 cash machines, then lifted its smaller outlets from 122 to 215\. Those outlets do advice, sales and service, and will not hand you notes. Chief executive Kenny Fihla said a branch that dispenses cash costs substantially more to run than one that does not. Absa's own cash machine estate has fallen 41% in six years, from 8,435 machines to 4,976\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/absa-branch-closures-cashless-outlets-atms/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--26--1.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--29--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-yMDJMMvvAPgirw81k&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. Banana** Botanically, a berry is a fleshy fruit that develops from a single flower with one ovary, which makes the banana a true berry. Strawberries are aggregate accessory fruits, and the small dots on their surface are actually tiny fruits called achenes, each containing a seed. Raspberries are clusters of many small fruits called drupelets. So despite their names, strawberries and raspberries are not true botanical berries. --- That's your Friday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### The world’s most valuable company just doubled its revenue in a year, powered by the global AI boom URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nvidia-second-quarter-results-aws-gpus-custom-chips/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T03:44:59.000Z Nvidia's quarter is easier to describe by what it leaves out. Revenue for the three months to 26 July came in at $96.2 billion, more than double the same quarter a year earlier, and the company guided to $108.0 billion for the current one while assuming no data centre compute revenue from China at all. Almost all of it is one business. Data centres brought in $89.0 billion of that quarter, up 117% in a year, while edge computing did $7.2 billion. Nvidia keeps 75 cents of every dollar it sells. ## Amazon came back for two million more The order that mattered most landed on the earnings call itself. Amazon Web Services agreed to take another 2 million Nvidia GPUs, five months after committing to more than a million, and Nvidia said demand had exceeded those expectations in between. The chips are Blackwell Ultra, Rubin and Rubin Ultra, and they go into AWS data centres across the following two years. Neither company put a price on it, though TechCrunch reckons unit costs alone make it worth tens of billions of dollars. Nvidia has been buying ahead of the demand. Its committed spending to secure supply and manufacturing capacity now stands at $279 billion, up from $119 billion a quarter earlier. It has also lined up Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to mobilise more than $500 billion of other people's capital for AI infrastructure, subject to definitive agreements. ## The customers designing their way off it The names at the top of the order book are the same ones trying to need it less. OpenAI, Google, Amazon and Anthropic are all building their own AI chips to cut their reliance on Nvidia. Amazon told its last earnings call that its custom chip business had crossed a $25 billion annualised revenue run rate, on $225 billion of total commitments from AI labs including Anthropic and OpenAI. One answer to that, if the reporting holds, is to move up a layer. The Information reported that Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, the hub where developers share and download open-source AI models, for $12.9 billion. Business Insider, which first reported the takeover interest, said the same night that the talks had not produced a signed agreement and could still fall apart. Neither company has commented. Hugging Face turned down a $500 million investment from Nvidia late last year that valued it at $7 billion, the Financial Times has reported. Jensen Huang's account of it is that the work has finally become worth paying for. "AI has reached its inflection point. It's doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue," he said. The guidance for this quarter is built on that conviction and on nothing at all from China. ### MTN has started building AI data centres in Africa - without saying how much of them it owns URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-africa-data-hub-al-ashram-ai-data-centres/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T03:29:59.000Z Africa's largest mobile operator wants a piece of the artificial intelligence build-out without carrying the balance sheet for it. MTN disclosed in its interim results that its digital infrastructure arm has entered a partnership to build AI-ready data centre platforms across the continent, through a new company called Africa Data Hub Holding Limited. The results booklet named no partner, no stake and no rand figure. ## What each side is putting in The two sides are bringing different things, which is the design rather than an accident. MTN supplies the footprint: 317.7 million customers across the 19 markets where it holds operations, joint ventures or associates in connectivity, fintech or digital infrastructure. It has been buying land and negotiating power agreements so the venture can build out in phases over time. Chief executive Ralph Mupita said MTN will be a minority investor and will partner with third parties that have the skills, rather than fund hyperscale capacity itself. The capital and the track record come from the other side. Bloomberg named the partner as Dubai-based Tarek Al Ashram, co-founder of the KKR-backed Gulf Data Hub, who is backing Africa Data Hub through his own investment firm. He told Bloomberg that Africa now offers a "similarly compelling opportunity" to the one the Middle East has delivered over the years, driven by demand, expanding digital economies and a need for resilient and scalable infrastructure. ## The first 150 megawatts Phase one runs to 150 megawatts split between South Africa and Nigeria. The plan is to process MTN's own workloads and rent the rest of the capacity to hyperscalers, other large companies and governments, which increasingly want more control over where their own data sits. MTN expects Africa's enterprise market to be roughly 1.6 times bigger by 2030. That first phase lands somewhere with very little already standing. Africa houses less than 1% of the world's AI data centre capacity on World Economic Forum figures, despite having the fastest-growing and youngest population in the world. The largest project announced for the continent, a gigawatt facility planned by Microsoft and G42 in Kenya, has not materialised. Digital infrastructure is not currently the part of MTN that is growing. The unit's consolidated external revenue fell 7.1% to R2.3 billion in the half, on lower international voice traffic and currency volatility. What MTN still has not said is how much of Africa Data Hub it owns, what it has committed, or when the first megawatt comes online. ### South Africa’s busiest airport is facing a sudden jet fuel. Here’s what you need to know. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/natref-shutdown-jet-fuel-or-tambo-import-rule/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T03:14:59.000Z One unit at one refinery stopped working this week and by Wednesday afternoon the Department of Energy had cleared its diary. Sasol said an unplanned shutdown of a downstream unit at Natref, its refinery in Sasolburg, has cut its ability to meet full supply commitments on certain product grades, jet fuel for its customers at OR Tambo International Airport among them. It will keep supplying those customers, in part. ## Why the fuel cannot simply be shipped in The reason a refinery fault turns into an airport problem is a rule from 1964\. The Customs and Excise Act prohibits importing jet fuel straight into an import terminal, so it has to be routed through a licensed manufacturing warehouse or refinery. South Africa has two of those still operating, Natref in Sasolburg and Astron in Cape Town. Natref is the only inland crude-oil refinery in the country, which makes it the natural supplier to the economic hub sitting above it. Avhapfani Tshifularo, who runs the Fuels Industry Association, told Tourism Update last year that the rule limits flexibility in sourcing, forces reliance on a shrinking number of refineries and creates bottlenecks during shutdowns and maintenance, "especially when Natref is offline". That was written as a warning. This week it reads as a description. ## What the airlines did about it The airlines did not wait for a timeline. FlySafair, which carries more than half of South Africa's domestic passengers, has arranged to increase supplies temporarily from alternative providers. Chief marketing officer Kirby Gordon told Bloomberg the airline is also doing a moderate amount of tankering, where an aircraft carries extra fuel so it needs less at the other end, and that together the measures should keep its operations fuelled. The emergency meeting the Department of Energy called on Wednesday afternoon brought in Airports Company South Africa and the Fuels Industry Association, and was confirmed by the Airlines Association of Southern Africa. Southern Africa is short in more than one place. Namibia is rationing too, after a contaminated cargo left the trading house Vitol scrambling to replace supplies and airlines rerouting flights, a situation Bloomberg reported could last into the weekend. Underneath both, jet fuel has been tight worldwide since the United States and Israel went to war with Iran at the end of February and flows through the Strait of Hormuz were disrupted. Sasol has given no restoration date, no volume figure and no estimate of how long the shortfall lasts, only that it is implementing mitigation measures and that further updates will follow. It is the second time in nineteen months that a fault at Natref has reached OR Tambo, after a fire around the crude distillation unit in January 2025 did the same thing. The next shutdown at the refinery is already scheduled, for early 2027. ### Absa is replacing many of its traditional branches with smaller ones that don’t handle any cash URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/absa-branch-closures-cashless-outlets-atms/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T02:59:59.000Z A bank closing branches usually means a smaller bank. Absa's South African network finished the year with more places to walk into than it started with. It shut 79 traditional branches in the twelve months to June, taking the count from 438 to 359, and pulled out 120 cash machines and devices. The replacements do everything except cash. Absa lifted its smaller sales and service outlets from 122 to 215 over the same year, and the two counts together, what the bank calls customer points of presence, went from 560 to 574\. Those outlets do advice, sales, service and assisted digital banking, alongside self-service machines. What they will not do is take a deposit over the counter or hand you notes. ## Cash is the expensive part The whole move comes down to what it costs to keep money on the premises. Chief executive Kenny Fihla, speaking after the interim results, said cash-dispensing branches are substantially more costly to run than the cashless kind. "We are changing the nature of our branches, moving away from cash branches into more sales consulting-driven kinds of branches," he told the results briefing. "That alone significantly reduces the costs of managing that branch relative to having cash." Absa wants 456 of the cashless format over time. Fihla said the shift should not bring massive retrenchments and should instead give the bank room to carry more volume. ## Six years of machines coming out The cash machines have been going for longer than the branches. Absa's South African estate has fallen 41% in six years, from 8,435 machines to 4,976\. Much of that was one event: a third-party ATM operator walked away in late 2022 and took roughly a fifth of the fleet with it. The revenue has followed the traffic. Absa reported digital revenue up 21% and digital payment revenue up 18% for the half, and said branch and ATM revenues fell as customers migrated across. Absa is not alone in the shape of it. Standard Bank says 353 of its branches now offer cash only through machines, including mobile branches, and FNB counts 203 tellerless branches and one cashless one within a network of 644\. Absa is also working with the Reserve Bank on modernising cash distribution in South Africa, nameless ATMs included. ### Discovery bought the building it was already renting, creating a massive accounting boost to its profits URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/discovery-headline-earnings-head-office-lease-gain/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T02:44:59.000Z Discovery expects a big year, and one of the reasons is the building it works in. The insurer told the market on Wednesday that headline earnings for the twelve months to 30 June should rise between 31% and 36%, and named the reason in the same breath: a gain booked on ending the lease over 1 Discovery Place, its Sandton head office, which it now owns outright. A gain of that kind is a bookkeeping event rather than money arriving. Discovery said in February, when it announced the purchase, that the economics had swung towards owning, with both interest rates and Johannesburg property prices well down, which let it swap a long-term lease for a fully funded ownership arrangement at a lower overall cost. The deal was valued at just over R4 billion. ## Three earnings numbers, three different answers Discovery published three profit measures on Wednesday and they do not agree with each other, which is the useful part. Normalised profit from operations, the closest thing to how the businesses actually traded, is expected up between 15% and 20%. Discovery South Africa sits in the lower half of that and the Vitality composite above it. Move up the ladder and the number grows. Normalised headline earnings, which also picks up lower finance costs as the group works its debt down, is expected up between 18% and 23%. Headline earnings, the measure carrying the building, is up between 31% and 36%. The distance between the bottom rung and the top one is the head office. In cents it reads the same way. Headline earnings per share are expected between 1895.6c and 1967.9c, against 1447.0c last year. ## What the market did with it Investors took the top number. The share was up 4.8% at R258.82 by mid-morning on the JSE, which put it 13.7% higher for the year so far. Business Day rendered the headline earnings range as a rise of about a third, which is accurate and is the version that travelled. The full results land on 3 September and will carry the detail a trading statement does not: how much of the jump is the lease and how much is insurance. None of the forecast numbers has been reviewed by Discovery's auditors, which is standard for a trading statement. ### Big South African businesses are learning to make their own power, and that’s becoming a problem for Eskom URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-distribution-agency-agreements-samwu-mining-renewables/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T02:29:59.000Z Eskom's revenue problem has two ends to it and both of them moved this week. Municipalities owe the utility R119 billion, regarded as the single biggest threat to its sustainability. At the other end, the mining companies that can generate their own electricity keep contracting more of it. ## What a Distribution Agency Agreement actually does The fix on offer to an indebted municipality is to hand over the business. Under a Distribution Agency Agreement, Eskom takes over the municipality's entire electricity distribution function and charges a fee to run it. Customers pay Eskom directly, Eskom keeps what covers bulk purchases and its other functions, and the balance, if any, goes to the municipality. Four are running now, at Maluti-a-Phofung, Emfuleni, Merafong and Ditsobotla. National Treasury instructed another fourteen in March to sign one before 1 September, and has earmarked as many as thirty. Samwu wants all of it stopped. The municipal workers' union has rejected both the takeovers and the way they are being imposed, and wants government to stop enforcing existing agreements and to stop tying equitable share allocations, grants and debt relief to signing one. It also wants no employee moved or reassigned without proper consultation and bargaining. Electricity is one of the largest revenue sources a municipality has, and stripping it out while the same municipality still has to fund everything else risks making the crisis worse. The equitable share, the union said, "cannot be turned into a weapon through which National Treasury forces municipalities to surrender control of their functions and revenue streams". Samwu is not the only objection on the record. AfriForum has gone to court to have the Merafong agreement declared unlawful and set aside, arguing the required legal processes were not followed. Salga sits in a working group with Treasury, Eskom and two departments to standardise a contract Treasury once called one-sided in Eskom's favour, and Eskom finalised the Ditsobotla agreement before that wording was settled. ## The customers who can generate for themselves The other end of the base is not waiting for a policy. Anglo American's renewables venture, Envusa, runs 520MW of wind and solar, about 30% of what Anglo's mines get through. Sibanye has contracted 835MW, only a fifth of it operating today, and expects renewables to cover close to two thirds of its South African energy demand by 2028. Cost is doing the persuading. Exxaro says one 68MW solar plant has cut the grid draw at its Grootegeluk coal mine by 30% and saves it R100 million a year. None of this is an exit. Coal still makes more than 80% of South Africa's electricity, and the executives building the wind farms say Eskom baseload stays essential while battery storage catches up. Fourteen municipalities have until 1 September. Miss it and Eskom may cut their supply, attach their bank accounts, and Treasury may hold back assistance and grants. Treasury has done a version of this before: in July it withheld equitable share payments from 69 municipalities over compliance failures, several could not pay salaries, and it released the money again. ### A controversial Naspers vote shows how 66% opposition can turn into 92% support URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/naspers-prosus-agm-pay-vote-super-shares/ Last updated: 2026-08-28T02:14:59.000Z Some of the world's largest investors published their voting plans before Wednesday's Prosus and Naspers annual meeting, and most of what they published was no. Norway's Storebrand and the Dutch manager Van Lanschot Kempen said they would go against the re-election of directors Rachel Jafta and Mark Sorour because of the share structure. Funds under the New York City Comptroller and the California Public Employees' Retirement System also voted against the two directors without giving reasons. Norges Bank Investment Management, which looks after about $2 trillion, objected to the pay proposals at Prosus, as did the California State Teachers Retirement System. The structure they were objecting to is also what settles the outcome. A small group of insiders, chairman Koos Bekker among them, hold shares carrying 1,000 votes each against a single vote for an ordinary share. Mark Zuckerberg at Meta and Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Alphabet run the same arrangement at ten votes to one. Naspers has had its version since 1995 and, asked about it by Bloomberg, referred questions to its website. ## The moonshot that keeps moving away Chief executive Fabricio Bloisi's award is what the money is really arguing about. He collects $100 million in shares only if the combined market value of Naspers and Prosus doubles from where it stood when he took the job, and only if the group also beats the median return of a global technology peer group. Prosus says the award is binary and capped, either both hurdles clear or nothing pays, and that it is settled in shares rather than cash. The doubling is going backwards. The combined value was $84 billion when Bloisi arrived, climbed for a year, and by March 2026 sat at $94 billion, barely above where it started. Reaching the target from there needs growth of close to 30% a year, well above what the doubling implied when it was set. ISS, the largest proxy adviser, told clients the conditions "appear unlikely to be met within the performance period". ## What happened the last time they objected There is a rehearsal for this, and it was a year ago. At the August 2025 Naspers annual meeting the remuneration policy and its implementation report were both endorsed by more than 90% of total votes. Among ordinary shareholders, the free float, about 71% voted against each of them. The high-voting A shares backed the company completely, the vote is advisory, and both passed. Glass Lewis went against re-electing Jafta again this year and said the Prosus pay policy should be rejected for an insufficient response to that dissent. The objectors keep being right about the numbers and losing the vote anyway. Prosus shares are down 28% this year, while the holding-company discount target on the executives’ scorecard scored zero for the second year running. And on Wednesday, the pattern repeated itself. Almost 70% of ordinary Naspers shareholders voted against the pay policy, but once the high-voting shares were counted, it passed with 92% support. The implementation report followed almost exactly the same result: 66% of ordinary shareholders voted against it, and it still passed with 92%. ### The Roundup — Thursday, 27 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-thursday-27-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T03:59:59.000Z Today's edition Borrowed Time Good morning. MTN spent a year lending people airtime and only getting about half of it back, but now says it is ready to give it another go. Bidcorp, which built itself by buying other people's businesses, says the buying is more or less done. And Northam Platinum, which three years ago was the one doing the chasing, has spent this week being chased. Nobody is doing quite what they were doing last year. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--29--1.png) --- SIM AND SIM AGAIN ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-mtn--1--3.png) ## MTN spent a year lending less airtime, and now says it is ready to start again MTN South Africa puts about 90 million prepaid SIM cards into a country of 65 million people every year, and reckons the industry as a whole pushes out 200 to 300 million. It doesn't take much napkin math to know that almost none of them find a new customer. They’re landing in the same hands, with people carrying multiple SIMs and jumping between networks depending on who has the best offer. That became a problem for XtraTime, which lets MTN customers borrow airtime and repay it the next time they recharge. At its height, MTN was advancing up to R800 million a month. But if a customer borrowed airtime and then switched to another SIM instead of recharging with MTN, the money didn’t come back. So MTN's CEO deliberately turned the tap down. **What turning the tap down cost:** - Advances came down from R800 million a month to between R400 million and R500 million, and in-month repayments rose from about half of borrowers last October to about 70%. - Naturally, the South African subscriber base fell 0.7% to 39.5 million in the six months to June, and the prepaid half of it shrank 4.5%. - Prepaid service revenue also fell 3.3% over those six months. Cash recharges, with the advance repayments set aside, grew 9.4%. South Africa puts no limit on how many SIMs one person may hold. MTN has capped itself at ten per registration, and MTN's CEO draws a straight line from a base turning over this fast to the syndicates taking over people's WhatsApp accounts. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-xtratime-airtime-advances-prepaid-reset/) --- OFF THE MENU ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-bidcorp-1.png) ## Bidcorp bought five businesses last year, and they added about one percent of its sales A good chunk of the food on a restaurant’s shelves may arrive from what looks like a local distributor. But in more than 35 countries, many of those distributors sit inside Bidcorp, a South African group out of the Bidvest stable that got there mostly by buying other people's businesses. On Wednesday it reported R242.2 billion of food sales for the year to June, up 5.0% in constant currency, and told the market it would rather grow from here without buying much at all. Last year's five deals show why. A seafood wholesaler in the north-east of England, distributors in Sardinia and Kuala Lumpur, a fish processor in Poland and Fridge Foods in the Cape added R2.7 billion of revenue between them, and R142 million of trading profit against R13.8 billion for the group. What the buying actually buys is efficiency: Bidcorp takes on a local distributor, leaves the people running it in place, and moves compliance, finance, IT and hiring up to the group. Trading profit grew 8.2% last year, faster than revenue did. The group put money into its own shares instead, buying back 2.6 million of them at an average of R409.35 while they deemed the price weak. The habit has not gone anywhere yet. Two more deals were struck after the year ended, both on ground where Bidcorp already trades. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/bidcorp-fy2026-cash-generation-five-acquisitions/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which planet in our solar system spins on its side?** **A.** Neptune **B.** Uranus **C.** Saturn --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-Northam-Platinum-2.png) **Northam Platinum got an offer it did not ask for, and has invited everyone else to bid too.** Three years ago, Northam was the one chasing an offer, and it never came through. This week an unnamed major South African platinum producer approached its chief executive, and the board's answer was to open a three-phase contest and invite every credible buyer in, the first approacher included. The share moved enough on Tuesday to trigger a short trading halt, valuing Northam at about R122 billion. Nobody has named a price. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/northam-platinum-invites-rivals-to-bid/) **Some of the world's biggest investors told Naspers how they would vote before the meeting, and it was against.** Storebrand, Van Lanschot Kempen, New York City’s pension funds and California’s public employees’ fund all disclosed votes against directors ahead of Wednesday's annual meeting, over a structure that hands insiders including chair Koos Bekker a thousand votes a share while everyone else gets one. Norges Bank Investment Management and California's teachers went after the pay instead. The same objections have been raised before and overruled by those same votes. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/naspers-prosus-thousand-vote-shares-moonshot-award/) **Alibaba has raised $10 billion in Hong Kong to pay for artificial intelligence, and its own founder was buying days later.** It sold 710 million new shares at HK$112.70 each, and the market read the dilution before the ambition and knocked the stock down 8.5% on Monday. Chairman Joe Tsai and chief executive Eddie Wu bought shares that same day, and co-founder Jack Ma followed with more than HK$600 million of his own. It is Hong Kong's biggest share sale since Prosus sold $14.7 billion of Tencent in 2021\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/alibaba-hk80-billion-share-placement-ai-spending/) **Bitcoin has broken back through $80,000 after its strongest week in about three years.** The cryptocurrency touched $81,257 on Tuesday, taking its seven-day gain to 23% and wiping out around $7.2 billion of shorts along the way. The rally began after the US Treasury said it would buy back more long-dated bonds, helping push yields and the dollar lower. But even after this run, bitcoin remains more than a third below the $126,000 high it reached in October. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/bitcoin-above-80000-treasury-buyback-short-squeeze/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--25--1.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--28--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-yMDJMMvvAPgirw81k&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Uranus** Most planets rotate with only a slight tilt, but Uranus is tipped almost completely sideways. Scientists are not certain why, although a massive collision early in its history is one leading explanation. Because of its extreme tilt, each pole can experience decades of sunlight followed by decades of darkness. Uranus takes about 84 Earth years to complete one orbit around the Sun. --- That's your Thursday wrapped. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### A South African company supplying restaurant kitchens globally made R242 billion in sales last year URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/bidcorp-fy2026-cash-generation-five-acquisitions/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T03:44:59.000Z Cash, not profit, is the number that tells you whether a food distributor is being run well. Bid Corporation, the international foodservice group out of the Bidvest stable, sells fresh and frozen food to restaurants, hotels and caterers in more than 35 countries. For the year to June it generated R18.6 billion of cash after paying for working capital, up 17.7%, against trading profit of R13.8 billion. The gap between those two is the point. A distributor buys stock, sells it and then waits to be paid, so cash can lag profit badly if any part of that cycle slips. Bidcorp converted 118% of its operating earnings into cash, meaning it collected more during the year than the year's trading actually threw off. For every R100 of food it sold, about R6.50 was left before interest, tax and the cost of wearing out its trucks. ## The five businesses it bought, and what they added Bidcorp has a reputation as a serial acquirer and it did nothing to shake it. Five bolt-ons closed during the year: Hodgson & Sailbrand, a seafood wholesaler in the north-east of England; Gruppo Alimentare Sardo in Sardinia; Chuan Yee in Kuala Lumpur; Fridge Foods in the Eastern and Western Cape; and Baltimer, a fish processor in Poland. Together they added R2.7 billion of revenue and R142 million of trading profit. On a base of R242.2 billion of sales, that is close to one percent. Buying is what keeps the model efficient rather than what makes the group big. Bidcorp takes over a local distributor, leaves the people running it in place, and moves compliance, finance, IT and human resources up to the group, which is how profit ends up growing faster than sales. ## Where the growth is supposed to come from now The next phase is meant to look different. Bidcorp says it will concentrate on organic growth in the markets it already occupies, selling a wider range to customers it already has, while staying open to bolt-ons on that ground. It goes into that off a year in which revenue rose 5.0% once the rand's swings are taken out, and trading profit rose 8.2% on the same basis. Shareholders get the rest. Headline earnings came in at 2 701.4 cents a share, up 6.8%, and the full-year dividend rises to 1 240 cents, with 625 cents of that as the final payment. The group also spent money on its own shares. It bought back 2.6 million of them at an average of R409.35 while the price was weak, and says the benefit of that shows up in the 2027 results. Trading was not even across the group. Europe and the UK carried the trading profit while Australasia and emerging markets grew more slowly, and Bidcorp says rivals are chasing volume hard in slow-growth markets. The buying habit has not gone anywhere either. Two more deals were struck after year-end, a small UK bolt-on and the Fijian and Pacific Islands export business of T&G Global, which was due to complete at the end of August. ### South Africa has 65 million people, but up to 300 million SIM cards are being put out every year. Here’s why. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-xtratime-airtime-advances-prepaid-reset/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T03:29:59.000Z Run out of airtime on an MTN prepaid line and the network will lend you some. XtraTime advances a small amount to a customer with little or no balance and takes it back out of the next recharge. It is not a loan in any formal sense, as MTN South Africa chief executive Ferdi Moolman puts it, it is an advance. It has also become a big contributor to what mobile operators earn from financial services, and a way to make a prepaid deal look better than the next one. The scale is the part that surprises. An estimated 48% of Vodacom's airtime top-ups run through advances, and MTN's own share reached 42% at one point. At its height MTN was extending up to R800 million a month. ## The half that stopped repaying The model works for as long as people recharge. MTN found repayment cycles stretching past 50%, meaning about one in every two subscribers could not settle the advance at the next top-up and carried it into the following month. Someone who cannot get more airtime from MTN goes to another network and gets it there, so the debt does not stop, it spreads across operators. So MTN turned its own tap down. It decided it had gone too deep into the market and had to reset the product in the customer's interest. Advances came down to between R400 million and R500 million. In-month repayment improved from about half of customers in October last year to about seven in ten now, leaving materially lower outstanding balances behind it. ## What the reset cost Cleaning the base cost MTN customers and revenue at the same time. Its South African subscriber base fell 0.7% to 39.5 million in the six months to June, dragged down by a prepaid base that shrank 4.5%. Prepaid service revenue fell 3.3% over the same half. The South African business as a whole barely moved. Service revenue there rose 1.5% to R21.94 billion, while operating earnings before one-off items fell 7.6%. Take out the advance repayments and cash recharges grew 9.4%, which is the number MTN points to as evidence that customers are spending their own money again rather than the network's. The pullback was not the only response. MTN has been going after direct relationships with banks instead of working through intermediaries, on the grounds that it understands its customers better that way. The pressure it is answering is not only economic. Telkom is the fastest-growing mobile business in the country, and non-telecoms players like Capitec and FNB are competing for the same prepaid spend. Moolman says MTN is comfortable enough to start pushing XtraTime into the market again and has begun doing it, with the warning that going out carelessly would land the company back where it was. The test arrives in guidance MTN has already given for South Africa: low-to-mid single-digit growth, with an operating margin of 35% to 37%. ### Bitcoin broke above $80,000 after surging 23% in its biggest week in nearly 3 years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/bitcoin-above-80000-treasury-buyback-short-squeeze/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T03:14:59.000Z Bitcoin had spent months falling, and last week it went the other way hard. It rose 23% in the seven days to Sunday, its biggest weekly gain in about three years, and pushed above $80,000 for the first time since mid-May. The trigger sat in the US bond market. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced last week that the government would step up its repurchases of long-dated bonds, which pushes long-term borrowing costs down by making the state a buyer of its own debt. Sceptics read it as the administration reaching for the easy lever rather than doing the work of shrinking the deficit. ## Why a bond announcement moves a crypto price Bitcoin was built as an escape from debasement, the erosion that comes when central banks create money. A government stepping in to hold its own borrowing costs down reads, to that crowd, as a reason to hold less currency and more of something nobody can print. The dollar sold off on the news, and gold, the older version of the same trade, went up alongside it. ## The bets that had to be bought back Part of the rise bought itself. A trader betting on a fall gets closed out when the price runs against them, and closing that bet means buying. Roughly $7.2 billion of leveraged bearish positions across crypto were liquidated last week. Real money came in behind it. The thirteen US-listed spot bitcoin funds took a net $1.92 billion over the week, their strongest run in ten months, and a further $337 million on Monday. Those funds buy actual coins, and fewer are available than the headline supply suggests, because about 60% of the bitcoin in circulation has not moved in more than a year. ## Why $81,000 matters more than $80,000 Traders are watching a level slightly above where the price got to. Bitcoin's 50-week moving average sits at roughly $81,000, a line it has traded below since November, and it touched $81,257 on Tuesday before easing back. Closing above that average is the thing technical traders treat as evidence a rally has legs. Miners sit on the other side of the same line. The average cost of mining one bitcoin was just under $80,000 at the end of last year, on CoinShares' numbers, which puts the current price roughly level with the cost of producing a new coin. Politics is moving too. The Clarity Act, the US market-structure bill for crypto, failed to reach a Senate vote before the August recess and is expected to be taken up again in mid-September, after Donald Trump met industry leaders and pushed for it. Bitcoin is still a long way from where this started. Its October peak of about $126,000 sits more than a third above where the price is now. ### Alibaba raised $10 billion for its AI push in Hong Kong’s biggest share sale in five years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/alibaba-hk80-billion-share-placement-ai-spending/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T03:00:00.000Z Alibaba has just run the largest follow-on share sale Hong Kong has seen. It sold 710 million new shares at HK$112.70 each, raising HK$80 billion, or about $10.2 billion, and says all of the net proceeds go into its own artificial intelligence infrastructure. New shares are not free money. Every one issued makes the shares already in circulation a slightly smaller claim on the same company, which is why a record raise can knock the price down on the day it lands. Alibaba's stock fell 8.5% on Monday, its worst day since early 2025\. The offer itself was not short of buyers: institutions asked for almost three times what was available, at a price 3.6% below Friday's close in New York. ## The bill the raise goes towards What it raised is a top-up on a much larger commitment. Alibaba has pledged more than 380 billion yuan, about $56.5 billion, over three years on AI, covering chips, data centres and the Qwen model family that now sits behind its services. Capital spending in the June quarter alone came to nearly $10 billion. Set against that, the money raised this week buys roughly one more quarter of building. The revenue is arriving faster than the explanation of it. Annualised revenue from AI products is expected to approach $10 billion this quarter, up from around $7.3 billion in the April to June period, and executives say the whole investment should be recouped within three years. Cloud is growing in double digits and AI revenue in triple digits, while the online retail business that pays for it is dealing with weak Chinese consumer spending and eroding margins. ## The founders bought the dip themselves Chairman Joe Tsai picked up about HK$80 million of shares on the Monday and chief executive Eddie Wu about HK$40 million, both disclosed in filings to the Hong Kong exchange. Co-founder Jack Ma followed later in the week with more than HK$600 million of his own, first reported by the South China Morning Post, which Alibaba owns. The stock rose as much as 3.2% on Wednesday. Not everyone was reassured. Michael Burry, the investor from The Big Short, wrote that he cannot bless the new issuance and that Alibaba's return on capital will keep falling. He had planned to move most of his position back from JD.com and says he no longer intends to, and that the price would have to halve before he looks again. Alibaba is locked out of issuing any more shares for 90 days, and the placement itself was set to close on 26 August. ### Big international shareholders are taking on Naspers over who really controls the company URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/naspers-prosus-thousand-vote-shares-moonshot-award/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T02:44:59.000Z Most listed companies work on one share, one vote. Naspers and Prosus do not. A small group of insiders, the chair Koos Bekker among them, holds A shares carrying a thousand votes each, while an ordinary share carries one. That is well past what the same idea does elsewhere in technology: Mark Zuckerberg at Meta, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Alphabet, hold ten votes per share. The gap settles most outcomes before anyone votes, which is what makes this week's filings a statement rather than a contest. Ahead of Wednesday's annual general meeting, Norway's Storebrand and the Dutch manager Van Lanschot Kempen said they would vote against re-electing directors Rachel Jafta and Mark Sorour because of the share structure. Funds under the New York City Comptroller and the California Public Employees' Retirement System went against the directors too. Norges Bank Investment Management, which runs about $2 trillion, and California's teachers' fund objected to the pay proposals at Prosus instead. ## The $100 million award that has not paid out The pay fight is about money that has not been handed over. Chief executive Fabricio Bloisi holds a moonshot award with a face value of $100 million, close to R1.6 billion, on top of long-term incentives worth another $33.8 million. His actual pay for the year came to $1.85 million, because the moonshot pays nothing unless two conditions land together. Those conditions are a doubling of the combined Naspers and Prosus market value, and a shareholder return that beats the median of a global technology peer group. The group was worth $84 billion when Bloisi took the job and $94 billion at the end of March. Doubling was worth about 19% a year when the target was set. From here it needs closer to 30%. Storebrand's objection is not that he might collect it, but that the quantum sits well above market norms. ISS, the largest proxy adviser and the one that advises Storebrand, Van Lanschot Kempen, Norges Bank and the New York City funds, says the conditions look unlikely to be met inside the performance period. Its rival Glass Lewis, which advises the two Californian pension systems, told them to reject the Prosus remuneration policy outright. ## What happened the last time they said this None of this is new, and that is what the structure is for. At last year's Naspers meeting the remuneration policy and its implementation report both passed with more than 90% of the total vote, carried by the high-voting A shares, which backed the company completely. Among ordinary shareholders, about 71% voted against both. The votes are advisory, so they passed anyway. The award is also no longer Bloisi's alone. It was extended last year, on the same terms, to finance chief Nico Marais and Naspers South Africa chief executive Phuthi Mahanyele-Dabengwa, putting about $116 million of executive pay on the same doubling. ### One of South Africa’s biggest miners could be about to change hands in a R122 billion takeover URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/northam-platinum-invites-rivals-to-bid/ Last updated: 2026-08-27T02:29:59.000Z Northam Platinum received a takeover approach it did not go looking for, and its answer was to open the process to everyone. Its chief executive and certain members of management were approached by a major South African producer of platinum group metals about either an asset deal or a corporate transaction. Rather than negotiate with that buyer alone, the board started a competitive process and invited other credible parties to submit proposals, the original approacher included. The contest runs in three phases. Interested parties first put in non-binding proposals with an indicative valuation range and a deal structure, then formal proposals, and only at the end does Northam sit down with one or more of them on terms. One Capital Advisory, which has worked with Northam for more than a decade, is running it. ## Why a board turns one buyer into several Talking to a single suitor behind closed doors gives a board no way of knowing what the company is worth to anybody else. Northam says its aim is to have its long-term value recognised and crystallised, and that a contest leaves it with options either way: a deal that adds value, or carrying on alone. It also says a structured process keeps a stream of separate approaches off its managers. None of it obliges Northam to sell. It has kept the right to refuse any party entry, to negotiate with several at once, to change or stop the process at any point, and to reject every proposal that arrives. No decision to pursue a transaction has been taken, and anything offered gets measured against what the company is worth on its own. ## The three companies it could be Northam will not name the producer, saying that is not warranted yet. The description narrows it sharply, because only Valterra Platinum, Impala Platinum and Sibanye-Stillwater are big enough to fit. Valterra is worth R377 billion on the JSE, roughly three times Northam. Shareholders worked that out quickly. The share climbed as much as 11% on Tuesday, enough to trigger a short suspension in trading, before settling at a gain that valued Northam at R122 billion. A buyer would be getting a company that has grown from about 380,000 ounces of platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold in 2015 to roughly 940,000 last year, with chrome output up more than four times over the same stretch. Northam is still the smallest of the four producers that supply most of the world's platinum, and it is aiming at 1.5 million ounces by early next decade. Its audited results are due on or about Friday 28 August, and the information memorandum bidders will work from goes onto the website after that and the ensuing investor roadshow. Until it says more, Northam has told its own shareholders to be careful about trading the stock. ### If you are tiling your bathroom, the cheap imports have about three months to run URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/italtile-anti-dumping-duties-annual-results-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T08:00:00.000Z South Africa's tile makers spent years asking the state to do something about cheap imports. In July they got it. Italtile's results for the year to June show how long a win on paper takes to reach the till. Dumping means selling into a market below what the product costs at home, and the fix is a duty at the border that closes the gap. The International Trade Administration Commission put provisional anti-dumping duties on imported ceramic and porcelain wall and floor tiles in July. Italtile called the tax encouraging. It also said the relief would not arrive straight away, because a large part of the cheap stock is already inside the country and has not been sold yet. ## The part a duty cannot reach Brandon Wood took over as chief executive on 1 July, and he is not counting on the duties. He told [News24](https://www.news24.com/business/companies/italtile-fights-back-with-more-stores-trained-staff-and-unique-products-20260824-1148?ref=businessbagel.com) there is probably two to three months of dumped stock still to work through the market before Italtile sees anything change. He also expects people to try it on: the group already knows of companies using the wrong tariff codes to get tiles into the country. "The reality is, regulations are one thing; enforcement is a completely different thing altogether," Wood told News24\. He described the duties as a move to level the field a bit, and said growth has to come from taking market share back, not from the border. ## The arm that makes the tiles Across the group, turnover barely moved, up 0.6% to R11.3 billion. Trading profit fell 10.4%, to R1.8 billion. Core earnings landed at 113.4 cents a share, a 9.4% drop, and inside the range Italtile had guided two weeks earlier. The shares still came off almost 3% on the day. The payout says the company is short of growth rather than short of money. The ordinary dividend was cut to 45 cents a share. A special dividend of 25 cents goes on top of it, about a quarter of what shareholders were handed last year. Net cash fell 21%, to R1.7 billion. Italtile's own breakdown shows where it went: capital projects, a round of share buybacks, and R1.8 billion paid straight out to shareholders. That is money handed over, not money lost. Italtile expects the next twelve months to stay hard and it named why: the Middle East conflict pushing fuel and transport costs up, consumer confidence going down with them, and buyers sitting on their hands ahead of the local government election. The duties are in place. What they turn out to be worth depends on whether anyone at the border is checking ### The Roundup — Wednesday, 26 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-wednesday-26-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T03:59:59.000Z Today's edition Street Value Good morning. Frogfoot and Vox have raised money at a R14.4 billion valuation to run fibre down township streets, on the theory that houses standing closer together are cheaper to reach. Shein is looking at a $27 billion public valuation, four years after private investors said $98.2 billion. Datatec is handing R7.05 billion back to its shareholders, and Nvidia is trying to talk six of the world's biggest money managers into lending against its chips. Everybody is putting a price on something today. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--28--1.png) --- CLOSE QUARTERS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/1-2.png) ## Frogfoot and Vox are quadrupling their fibre build, and aiming almost all of it at the townships Frogfoot has spent more than twenty-five years laying fibre, and its sister company Vox has been selling internet over it. On Monday the pair, along with prepaid brand Hypa, announced new equity and bigger debt facilities in a deal that values the three businesses at R14.4 billion. Nearly all of the money is aimed at townships and lower-income areas. What decides whether that pays is a single number: how much cable it takes to reach each home. The suburbs came to 4.5 million households and took the better part of a decade. Township streets are tighter, so there is less cable behind every front door, and that is the lever. **How the money reaches the front door:** - The DNI Consortium leads the incoming money, with JSE-listed Sabvest Capital inside it, and RMB advised, funded and arranged the debt. - Frogfoot lays the open-access network and plans to quadruple its connection rate to 360,000 homes a year within twelve months, with more than 5,000 direct jobs. - Hypa sells the service prepaid, as time vouchers running from a week to 30 days, because that is how the money comes back in. Census data puts 12 to 15 million homes in those areas, with fewer than two million on fibre. The build stops where rural distances get long enough that wireless and satellite make more sense. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/frogfoot-vox-hypa-r14-4bn-township-fibre-rollout/) --- MARKED DOWN ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/2-4.png) ## Shein is listing in Hong Kong at about $27 billion, down from $98.2 billion four years ago Shein sells $5 dresses and $10 jeans to shoppers in about 160 countries, and on Monday it started taking orders for its Hong Kong listing. It is selling 280 million shares at HK$47.60 to HK$49.50 each, raising up to about $1.77 billion. The top of that range values the company at close to $27 billion. In 2022 private investors put it at $98.2 billion, and the rounds that followed came in at $64 billion. Shein went into this year's investor meetings asking for $30 billion to $40 billion, and did not get it. Behind the discount is a business that stopped growing quickly. Revenue rose 1.1% in the first quarter of this year, and the company has told investors the first half will be broadly in line with that. It swung to a $99 million quarterly loss after the United States removed its duty exemption on small parcels, and an accounting change added a $328 million charge on preferred shares. The European Union also put its own charge on low-value parcels from 1 July. Oof. The buyers are largely the people who already own it: Boyu, Tiger Global and General Atlantic have subscribed for about $383 million between them. The final price is set on the 31st of August, and the shares start trading on the 1st of September. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/shein-hong-kong-listing-small-parcel-import-duties/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which is the smallest country in the world?** **A.** Monaco **B.** Vatican City **C.** San Marino --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/4-4.png) **Datatec is handing shareholders R7.05 billion, about a third of what the whole company was worth on Monday morning.** The technology group behind Logicalis and Westcon declared a special dividend of R29 a share, funded by a refinancing deal that closed on 4 August. Shareholders can take the R29 in cash with 20% tax taken off, or new Datatec shares with no tax at all. Investors sent the share up almost 10% that morning. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/datatec-r7-billion-special-dividend-scrip-alternative/) **Advtech's South African pupil numbers grew 1% this year, while its schools in the rest of Africa grew 14%.** Its universities and colleges grew 19%, and that mix lifted group revenue 8% to R5.06 billion and headline earnings 16%. The board raised the interim dividend to 53 cents a share. Its staffing arm went the other way, though, with revenue down 15%. All in all, investors marked the share down 1.2% on the day. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/advtech-interim-results-enrolments-rest-of-africa/) **BHP's Johannesburg listing is now worth more than R4 trillion, up about 50% so far this year.** The shares hit a record high on Monday, and copper is why. For the first time the metal brought in more than half the earnings of a group that made its name in iron ore, a record $18 billion. Of the eleven analysts who have rated the stock since those results, one said buy, nine said hold and one said sell. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/bhp-copper-overtakes-iron-ore-r4-trillion-jse/) **Nvidia has lined up six of the world's biggest financial firms behind a $500 billion financing idea.** It has signed preliminary agreements with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR, aiming to pull that much outside money into data centre construction over time. Chips have always been treated as something that loses value, not something a lender will lend against. Nothing is binding yet, and BlackRock's Larry Fink has compared the idea to the 1970s invention of bonds backed by home loans. This is either incredibly innovative, or incredibly slippery.[**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/nvidia-compute-financing-platforms-500-billion/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--24--1.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--27--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-tZTMzL3scPwQg56sU&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Vatican City** Vatican City sits entirely within Rome and is the smallest independent country in the world by both land area and population. It covers just 0.44 square kilometres and has fewer than 1,000 residents. Despite its tiny size, it has its own postal service, newspaper and railway station. Monaco and San Marino are also small countries, but both are much larger. --- That's your Wednesday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Shein is finally hitting the stock market after losing 70% of its value in four years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shein-hong-kong-listing-small-parcel-import-duties/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T03:44:59.000Z Shein's business was built on a rule about parcels. Ship a cheap dress or a pair of jeans straight from a Chinese warehouse to a shopper in one of about 160 countries, keep the declared value low enough, and it crossed the border without paying import duty. The United States scrapped that exemption in the summer of 2025\. The European Union added its own flat $3.50 charge on low-value parcels from 1 July this year, and Britain is expected to follow in 2028. The accounts moved accordingly. Shein lost $99 million in the first quarter of this year, against a $395 million profit in the same three months of 2025\. The lost American exemption is one reason. A $328 million charge on convertible preferred shares, triggered by an accounting change, is the other. Revenue grew 1.1% in that quarter, and the company has told investors the first half will look much the same. ## What is on offer in Hong Kong The offer opened at nine on Monday morning. Shein is selling 280 million Class B shares, a tenth of them set aside for the Hong Kong public and the rest sold internationally, at between HK$47.60 and HK$49.50 each. At the top of that range it values the company at close to $27 billion. Shein went into this year's investor meetings asking for $30 billion to $40 billion, and private investors put $98.2 billion on it back in 2022. ## What the buyers get, and what they do not A tenth of a vote each. The Class B shares on offer carry one tenth of the voting power of the founders' stock, which leaves the four founders holding 90% of the votes. Shein's own filing warns that the people holding those weighted rights can decide shareholder resolutions regardless of how anybody else votes. The cornerstone money is largely money that was already in. Boyu, Tiger Global and General Atlantic, all existing shareholders, have taken about $383 million between them, with Tencent, Greenwoods, Taikang Life and UBS Asset Management alongside. Even at the reduced price this is the largest new share sale Hong Kong has seen in 2026, ahead of the $751 million listing of the self-driving company Momenta Global in July. The market Shein is joining has raised about $41 billion so far this year, more than double the same stretch last year, and the queue in front of it belongs to artificial intelligence and chip companies. ### South Africa is about to see a massive expansion of prepaid fibre into its townships URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/frogfoot-vox-hypa-r14-4bn-township-fibre-rollout/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T03:29:59.000Z Buying internet a week at a time is not how the suburbs got connected. In the townships it is the whole model: Frogfoot sells prepaid vouchers that run from a week to thirty days, priced by time rather than by speed. Hypa, the prepaid brand Vox launched in 2021, does the same, and not only over Frogfoot's network. Monday's announcement is about doing a great deal more of it. Frogfoot, Vox and Hypa have raised new equity and expanded their debt facilities in a deal that values the three businesses together at R14.4 billion, or R8.4 billion once the debt is taken off. RMB, FirstRand's corporate and investment banking arm, advised, funded and arranged the borrowing. How much new cash actually came in was not disclosed. ## Who put the money in The biggest new holding belongs not to one company but to a group of four: DNI 4PL Contracts, the JSE-listed Sabvest Capital, Masimong Group Holdings and Draper Gain International, together as the DNI Consortium. Behind them, two partnerships tied to Metier Capital Growth Fund III are reinvesting after more than twenty years in the business, and EM-Three, Simphiwe Mehlomakulu's private investment company, comes in as the third-largest direct shareholder. Management took equity alongside them. Nobody ends up in charge. No single shareholder controls Frogfoot or Vox now, and none will once the deal is implemented. Abraham van der Merwe leads the companies, with Gert Koen as finance chief. ## What the money buys Connections, four times as many. Frogfoot has been laying fibre to homes, businesses and towers for more than twenty-five years, and the plan is to lift its rate to 360 000 connected homes a year within the next twelve months, with more than 5 000 direct jobs attached to the build. The reason the sums work in a lower-income market is distance. Townships are denser than the suburbs, so it costs less to run cable past each home, and that lets the retail price come down without wrecking the return. The suburbs are close to finished: roughly 4.5 million households, and the better part of a decade to do them. The townships hold somewhere between 12 and 15 million homes on census data, and fewer than two million have fibre. Everyone can see the same arithmetic. Two weeks before this deal Frogfoot launched Leap, its own prepaid fibre service, into a township market Business Day describes as heating up. Last week Comsol announced a multibillion-rand investment from Convergence Partners, Platform Investment partners and Wimsey Capital to expand fixed wireless access. ### Nvidia is trying to convince Wall Street its AI chips are worth lending billions of dollars URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nvidia-compute-financing-platforms-500-billion/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T03:14:59.000Z A graphics processor is a piece of computer equipment, and computer equipment loses value fast. Nvidia wants the world to treat it like an office block instead: something that earns money for years, that a lender will lend against, and that somebody else will happily take over if the borrower walks away. Jensen Huang took the idea to Wall Street himself, according to Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon. On 10 August Nvidia announced partnerships with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR to set up independent compute financing platforms, aiming to mobilise more than $500 billion for AI data centres over time. Goldman is the only bank in the group. The other five manage other people's money, mostly institutional and insurance. ## What the platforms are meant to do Data centres are expensive, and until now the companies filling them with Nvidia hardware have paid for that out of their own pockets. These platforms are meant to move the cost somewhere else: dedicated pools of money, at what Nvidia calls attractive rates, that its customers can draw on without borrowing against themselves. Nvidia's pitch to a lender is that its chips are widely used, move easily between customers and operators, and keep getting better through its CUDA software, which stretches how long one stays worth owning. That runs against how the market has always treated chips, and the doubt is easy enough to state: the next generation arrives and the last one gets cheaper. Larry Fink of BlackRock calls it the start of the next future for financial engineering, the way bonds backed by home loans were in the 1970s. He also says some money has already been raised, and that BlackRock will be raising quite a bit more. ## What has actually been signed Memorandums of understanding. Nvidia's own release says the partnerships remain subject to execution of the final agreements, and its forward-looking statements list those agreements, their terms, their timing and their benefits among the things that may not turn out as described. BlackRock and Blackstone call it a potential strategic partnership. KKR calls it a proposed transaction. The $500 billion carries no deadline and no split between the six platforms. It is an ambition with six signatures of intent behind it, in a year when rating agencies have already warned that data centre spending is eating into the free cash flow of the companies doing the building. ### Copper has just become the biggest money-maker at R4 trillion mining giant BHP URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/bhp-copper-overtakes-iron-ore-r4-trillion-jse/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T02:59:59.000Z Iron ore built BHP, and it still digs the stuff out cheaper than anyone else: seven years running as the lowest-cost major producer in the Pilbara, more than US$10 a tonne ahead of its nearest rival, and a record year of production behind it. In the year to June, copper overtook it. For the first time, the copper business earned more than everything else BHP mines put together. Copper made a record US$18 billion before interest, tax and the wear on the machinery, keeping 70 cents of every dollar it brought in. That is the best margin anywhere in the group. Across the whole company, earnings on that measure reached US$32.9 billion, a quarter more than the year before. Shareholders get US$8.7 billion for the year, the biggest payout in four years. ## What the market did with it The market took the point. BHP's shares hit a record on Monday and the value of its Johannesburg listing went through R4 trillion, up about half this year. The Australian line hit its own record a day later, at A$68.22. The people paid to rate the stock are not joining in. Of the eleven brokers who have published since the results, one says buy and nine say hold. The eleventh moved to sell, with a target a fifth below where the shares are now, and every twelve-month target on the list already sits under the current price. ## Where the next US$11 billion goes Copper, mostly. BHP spent US$10.3 billion on building and exploring last year, and expects to spend about US$11 billion a year from here, more than half of it aimed at copper. At Escondida in Chile, the biggest copper mine there is, a new concentrator is waiting on a final decision in 2027 or 2028\. It would cost somewhere between US$5.4 billion and US$6.3 billion. The Vicuna venture with Lundin Mining, on the Argentina and Chile border, could reach its own first decision as early as the end of this year. Not everything landed. A US$2.3 billion writedown on the Jansen potash project, taken because it is costing more to build than planned, pulled statutory profit down to US$9.8 billion, against underlying profit of US$13.2 billion. ### Advtech is closing in on 120,000 students, with growth increasingly coming from beyond South Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/advtech-interim-results-enrolments-rest-of-africa/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T02:44:59.000Z Advtech does two quite different things for a living. It runs private schools, colleges and universities under names like Crawford International, Makini Schools, Emeris and Rosebank International, and it runs a staffing business that manages payrolls and places people in jobs across Africa. In the six months to June the first one grew and the second one shrank. Revenue rose 8%, to R5.06 billion, and costs did not keep up with it. Advtech now keeps 22 cents out of every rand it takes in, against 21 cents a year ago. Headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure, rose 16%, and shareholders get 53 cents a share, a fifth more than last year. The market marked the stock down anyway on Monday, which is roughly what happens when a share has already run up more than a third in a year. ## Where the pupils came from Advtech taught 119 197 people this half, 13% more than a year ago, and almost none of the growth came from the schools South Africans would recognise. Enrolment at home crept up 1%. The schools elsewhere in Africa grew fourteen times faster than that. The real growth is in the lecture halls. Close to 71 500 students are on full qualifications, nearly a fifth more than last year, and that side of the business now brings in R2.243 billion. In February Advtech opened a R420 million campus in Sandton for Emeris, the brand that folds Varsity College, Vega, MSA and HSM into one. ## The staffing arm going the other way The staffing arm went the other way, and not gently. Revenue fell 15%, with the rest of Africa down 16% and South Africa down 9%. Advtech points at the closure of USAID in February 2025, which took the aid-funded payrolls it managed away with it. The division still made money and still widened its margin, which mostly tells you how small it is: Business Day puts the whole thing at 4% of operating profit. The one thing Advtech cannot schedule is the paperwork. Government opened a route to university status in 2025, and the rules for actually applying are still being drafted. Rosebank International and Emeris are both waiting with the forms in hand. ### One of the JSE’s tech companies is about to hand its shareholders a massive R7 billion payday URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/datatec-r7-billion-special-dividend-scrip-alternative/ Last updated: 2026-08-26T02:29:59.000Z Datatec has more money than it has plans for. The Johannesburg-listed technology group behind Logicalis and Westcon has spent years selling and reshaping pieces of itself to win back value the market had written off, and the latest of those deals has just paid out. On Monday it told shareholders the proceeds are going straight back out again: R7.05 billion, or R29 a share. Shareholders liked it. The stock rose almost 10% by mid-morning, valuing Datatec at just over R21 billion. At that price the payout is worth roughly a third of the entire company. ## Where the money came from The cash came out of Westcon, Datatec's distribution arm. In June it agreed to refinance the holding company sitting above the Westcon businesses and to sell a slice of it. The counterparties to those June agreements were two Atlantic Park funds, and the deal closed on 4 August. General Atlantic put in a six-year loan of $375 million, and another $25 million in cash for 5% of that holding company, plus a share issue built to work like warrants. Chief executive Jens Montanana's point is that Datatec keeps control while gaining a lender and a shareholder in one move. Datatec's own share of the proceeds came to about $434 million. ## Cash or shares Now the choice. Take the R29 and, unless you are exempt, a fifth of it goes to the taxman, leaving 2 320 cents. Take new Datatec shares instead and no dividend tax applies at all. The shares are priced off the average over the 30 trading days to 5 October, minus the dividend itself. Datatec is covering the transaction costs so the payout is not nibbled at on the way through. What is left is a diary and one permission slip. The circular explaining both options goes out around 26 August. The last day to trade for it is 13 October, the register closes on 16 October, and the money and the new shares land on 19 October. The Reserve Bank still has the exchange control application, and Datatec will put the answer on SENS when it has one. ### Fiat's smallest car is being sold to Americans who wanted a nicer golf cart URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/fiat-topolino-us-golf-cart-market/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T07:59:59.000Z American golf carts are mostly not used for golf, and Fiat has decided that is a market. The company has begun selling the Topolino, a two-seat electric micro car, through selected United States dealers, aimed at the roughly 2.3 million people who drive carts around resorts, gated neighbourhoods and coastal towns. [Bloomberg](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/international/weekend-fiat-little-mouse-micro-car-nibbles-at-us-golf-cart-market/?ref=businessbagel.com) puts the value of that market at about $1 billion. The specification is modest, deliberately. A 5.4kWh battery gives up to 46 miles of range and takes about five hours to charge on a normal outlet, and the car is 8 feet 3 inches long and weighs 1 073lb. It leaves the factory capped at 19mph, which keeps it off public roads. A dealer-installed conversion kit due later this year lifts the top speed to 25mph and adds a rear camera, a pedestrian alert and a proper vehicle identification number, which turns it into a federally regulated low-speed vehicle, legal on roads posted at 35mph or less. Until that arrives, buyers are mostly limited to private property. ## The dealers ran out first Fiat shipped about 300 units to the United States ahead of an official launch tentatively set for October, brand chief executive Olivier François telling Bloomberg that requests from American dealerships persuaded him to make it available early. They went quickly. Alfa Romeo Fiat of Daytona in Florida sold its first six immediately, a Minnesota dealer sold five before they reached the lot, and a Michigan dealership has sold 10 of its 14 and ordered another nine. The buyers are not commuters. The list price is $13,995 before the destination fee, which puts it under the luxury carts it is competing with, and dealers describe the buyers as affluent people treating it as a second or third vehicle. The promotional tour has been routed accordingly, through the Hamptons, Montauk and Coral Gables. ## What it does not have It has seatbelts. It does not have airbags or a crumple zone, and as a low-speed vehicle in the United States and an L-category vehicle in Europe it is not put through standard crash tests. Michelangelo-Santo Gulino, an engineering professor at the University of Florence who co-authored a recent study on micro car safety, told Bloomberg that in an impact where the difference in mass is very high, the light vehicle will be disadvantaged. There is no air conditioning either. Fiat has run this play before. Stellantis built a dominant position in European quadricycles, the small four-wheeled vehicles the Topolino belongs to, after launching the battery-powered Ami in 2020 and overtaking Ligier and Aixam, the French makers that had held the market for decades. France and Italy are the two biggest markets on the continent. The Topolino itself was unveiled in 2023 and takes its look from the Fiat 500 Nuova of the late 1950s, another car just under three metres long that got there first. ### The Roundup — Tuesday, 25 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-tuesday-25-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T04:16:15.000Z Today's edition Filling In Good morning. Abu Dhabi's ADNOC is paying about $1 billion for Shell's South African petrol stations, and on Friday it named the local partner it needs to run them. Nvidia is passing its memory bill straight to its biggest customers, and the state is asking private money to fund the R1.99 trillion of projects it cannot pay for itself. Nobody is carrying the whole bill today. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--27--1.png) --- NAME AT THE PUMP ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/3-1.png) ## ADNOC has named Reatile as the South African partner in its $1bn Shell forecourt deal Shell has been trying to get out of its South African fuel business for a while. Talks with the commodity trader Gunvor came to nothing, and then in July a buyer turned up from the Gulf. ADNOC Distribution, the retail arm of Abu Dhabi's state oil company, agreed to pay about $1 billion for 100% of it. That is 580 company and dealer-owned forecourts, plus wholesale fuel, aviation and lubricants. Buying the whole thing is one problem; operating it in South Africa is another, and that takes a local shareholder. Late last week, ADNOC named Reatile Group, a South African energy investor with 23 years in the sector, taking an undisclosed minority once the deal closes. **Who gets what:** - A 28% stake was earmarked in July for a local empowerment partner and an employee share scheme. Neither side would say how much of it goes to Reatile, which is founded and chaired by Simphiwe Mehlomakulu. - South Africa would be the fourth country ADNOC Distribution operates in, after the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and it expects the deal to lift its earnings per share 6% in the first full year. ADNOC will licence the Shell name for the stations and the lubricants, so the forecourt looks the same while the owner behind it changes. Regulators still have to clear it, which ADNOC expects in 2027. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/adnoc-shell-south-africa-reatile-empowerment-partner/) --- APP AND AWAY ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/4-1.png) ## As TFG announces potential retrenchments, Bash is becoming increasingly important Moneyweb reported on Monday that The Foschini Group, owner of Foschini, Markham and Sportscene, has opened a formal retrenchment consultation covering part of its head office. TFG confirmed the process but would not say how many roles are involved. It comes as the retailer cuts back its physical footprint. About 300 of its 4,914 stores are considered marginal, with around 100 closed last year and just over 100 more expected to close this year. CFO Ralph Buddle says a smaller store base also means reducing the overhead behind it. Bash, however, is moving in the opposite direction. The platform helped online sales in TFG Africa grow 49.2% last year, reaching 8.2% of the division’s sales and 10% in the fourth quarter. CEO Anthony Thunström says Bash’s extra R1.1 billion in sales would have required more than 100 new stores and about R500 million in shopfitting and stock to match physically. Bash is still a small but rapidly growing part of TFG Africa, and as stores close and costs are cut elsewhere, its role is becoming increasingly important. It’s already TFG’s standout success story. The question is how vital it could become to the group’s future. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/tfg-head-office-retrenchment-consultation-bash-online-growth/) --- BAGEL BITE **What is the smallest bone in the human body?** **A.** Stapes **B.** Malleus **C.** Incus --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/5-1.png) **Eskom's diesel bill has fallen 83% in a year, to R992m.** Diesel has been getting more expensive since April, after the US-Iran war disrupted global oil supply, and Eskom's answer was to buy far less of it: R992m in the financial year to 20 August, against R5.92bn a year earlier. It could afford that because the coal stations broke down less, with average unplanned outages down 39.2% and the emergency turbines running at an eighth of last year's rate. The country has now gone 462 days without load shedding. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-diesel-spend-r992m-unplanned-outages-fall/) **MTN is skipping the interim dividend and spending R6 billion on its own shares instead.** The buyback sits inside a framework that returns 40% to 60% of spare cash to shareholders each year, and it has not started yet. Underlying earnings per share rose 21.3% to 793 cents on service revenue of R115.3 billion. Bottom-line profit fell 25% to R7.41 billion, after a R3.9 billion writedown in Iran. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-r6bn-share-buyback-no-interim-dividend/) **Nvidia is passing its memory bill on to its biggest customers.** Bloomberg reports that some of the company's largest buyers have been told servers built around its AI chips will cost more than 15% extra, on systems shipping early next year. Memory chips are the choke point in the AI build-out, and a company that keeps about 75 cents of every sales dollar could not hold the line on a bill set by Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/nvidia-ai-server-price-increase-memory-costs/) **South Africa has a R1.99 trillion list of state projects, and R1.21 trillion of it is still on paper.** Ninety of the 263 projects are sitting at the feasibility stage with nothing in the ground, while 82 worth R502.7 billion are under construction. Public Works Minister Dean Macpherson told an infrastructure symposium in Cape Town that projects stall because studies are incomplete, approvals are delayed and funding models are unclear, and that the state budget cannot cover the programme alone. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/infrastructure-south-africa-feasibility-backlog-private-capital/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--23--1.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--26--1.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-oKX%5FcJFG2YBsfNutt&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A.** Stapes The stapes is one of three tiny bones in the middle ear, together with the malleus and incus. These bones, known as the ossicles, transmit and amplify sound vibrations toward the inner ear. The stapes gets its name from the Latin word for stirrup because of its distinctive shape, and it is smaller than both of its neighbouring bones. --- That's your Tuesday done. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### The Foschini Group is cutting back and closing stores. Could Bash become the retailer’s saviour? URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/tfg-head-office-retrenchment-consultation-bash-online-growth/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T03:44:59.000Z Moneyweb reported on Monday that TFG has begun a formal consultation under Section 189A of the Labour Relations Act, the step before retrenchment, covering part of its head office. TFG confirmed it. The company said it is reviewing part of its head-office operating model to reduce complexity and lower its cost of doing business. It would not say how many roles are in it. ## The shops that stopped earning their place The cuts at the centre follow the cuts on the shop floor. TFG traded from 4 914 stores across 18 countries at the end of March, 3 432 of them in South Africa. About 300 are marginal, on chief executive Anthony Thunström's own count. Around 100 closed last year. Just over 100 more go this year. Finance chief Ralph Buddle put the logic to investors plainly: the marginal stores cover their variable costs, but that is not good enough. Cutting them lifts the average return. Then the group has to take out overhead at the centre to cater for a smaller base. ## What R1.1 billion of Bash sales would have cost in shopfronts One part of the group has nothing to close. Bash pulls TFG's roughly 40 brands into a single app and website. Online sales in TFG Africa grew 49.2% last year on the back of it, reaching 8.2% of that division's sales and 10% in the fourth quarter. Thunström gave investors a way to size that. The extra R1.1 billion Bash brought in would have needed the equivalent of more than 100 new stores, plus about R500 million in shopfitting and stock, to do physically. The group spent that same year closing a hundred. Yes, Bash is still a small part of TFG Africa, but its a fast-growing one. All the while, TFG is closing stores and cutting costs elsewhere in the business. So the question must be asked: how big a role could Bash play as the group tries to find its way back up? ### Abu Dhabi’s oil company is buying South Africa’s 580 Shell stations, and it’s just picked it’s local partner URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/adnoc-shell-south-africa-reatile-empowerment-partner/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T03:30:00.000Z Fuel retail in South Africa comes with a shareholder requirement attached, and a buyer from Abu Dhabi has now met it. ADNOC Distribution said on Friday that Reatile Group will take a minority holding in Shell Downstream South Africa once its purchase of the business completes; chief executive Bader Saeed Al Lamki called the partnership an important step in the company's commitment to South Africa. Neither company put a number on the stake. The purchase itself was agreed in July. ADNOC Distribution, the fuel retail arm of Abu Dhabi's state energy group, signed a definitive agreement to buy 100% of Shell Downstream South Africa from Shell South Africa Holdings, at an implied enterprise value of about $1 billion before adjustment for net debt and working capital. What it is buying is 580 company and dealer-owned fuel stations plus wholesale fuel, aviation and lubricants operations, a business that moved about 3.5 billion litres of fuel and ran 360 convenience stores in 2025\. Shell had been in talks with commodity trader Gunvor before those negotiations fell through. ## Who Reatile is Reatile Group is a South African investment holding company founded and chaired by Simphiwe Mehlomakulu, with a portfolio of energy assets running from gas to renewable projects. Mehlomakulu started at Sasol in 1993, where he was global export manager for Sasol Solvents, and was managing director of PetroSA's European operations in 2003\. He sits on the board of JSE-listed logistics group Super Group. He called the partnership a significant milestone that reflects the confidence placed in a 23-year record of investing in, operating and growing South African energy businesses, and said combining ADNOC's financial strength with local market knowledge and industry relationships puts the pair in a position to keep the business growing. ## Two separate 28% stakes ADNOC said in July that a 28% stake in the business would be sold on to a local empowerment partner and an employee share scheme after completion, and that it would look for a partner with a deep understanding of the sector, its regulatory environment and the requirements of broad-based black economic empowerment law. How that 28% divides between Reatile and the staff scheme has not been disclosed. A different 28% already sits inside the same business: Thebe Investment, the Black-owned group that first backed Shell in the early 2000s, holds that much of Shell's local retail operation. On completion ADNOC will take a long-term licence on the Shell brand for the retail stations and the lubricants business, so the signage does not change. South Africa would be the fourth country ADNOC Distribution operates in, after the UAE, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, following its 2023 purchase of half of TotalEnergies Marketing Egypt and its 2018 entry into Saudi Arabia. The company expects the deal to lift its earnings per share 6% in the first full year after completion. Regulatory approvals and closing conditions still have to be met, and ADNOC expects the transaction to close in 2027. ### Government is asking private companies to fund the R2 trillion pipeline it cannot pay for itself URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/infrastructure-south-africa-feasibility-backlog-private-capital/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T03:14:59.000Z More than 1 200 delegates went to Cape Town on Sunday for South Africa's infrastructure symposium, among them seven African ministers, nine African mayors and 13 South African ones. Infrastructure South Africa used it to set out where the country's project list actually stands. Of 263 Strategic Integrated Projects worth a combined R1.99 trillion, 82 worth R502.7 billion are under construction, 54 worth about R206 billion have reached documentation and procurement, and 37 worth about R69 billion have been completed in the past 18 months. The rest is still paperwork. Ninety projects worth R1.21 trillion sit at feasibility stage, and another 58 early concepts worth R337.4 billion are not ready for an investment decision at all, ISA head Mameetse Masemola said. Energy is where the value sits. It accounts for R1.26 trillion of the portfolio, ahead of water at R255.1 billion, transport at R241.1 billion and human settlements at R176 billion. ## Why projects stall before the ground is broken Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Dean Macpherson named the reasons directly: feasibility studies that are incomplete, approvals that are delayed, funding models that are unclear, and projects that are not packaged in a way investors can support. Projects are still announced, he said, before feasibility, land requirements, regulatory approvals, procurement routes and funding arrangements have been resolved. Government's own documents list six recurring bottlenecks, and funding is only one: weak preparation, slow environmental, water-use and land approvals, shortages of grid and municipal bulk capacity, thin technical capacity, poor coordination between spheres of government, and the difficulty of getting from feasibility to financial close. Twenty-one projects carry a red status and need intervention. Water is the worst of it. Of 57 projects audited, 82% had run over scope and the average delay was 32 months. ## The money the state is spending before construction Rather than fund the whole build from the fiscus, ISA is paying for what comes first: feasibility studies, business cases, engineering designs, legal work and financial structuring, the work that turns a proposal into something a lender will price. Its third project preparation bid window is part of a R600 million commitment to delivery support, open to projects worth at least R1 billion that can show they could attract development or private funding. At municipal level it has committed R131 million over 18 months; in one case about R1.8 million spent preparing a water programme across roughly 1 700km of network helped unlock an R800 million debt facility from the Development Bank of Southern Africa. Regulatory unblocking, which fast-tracks permits and licences, is running at an 87% success rate, mostly on privately funded energy projects. The fiscus cannot meet the requirement alone, Macpherson said, so public investment has to work alongside development finance and responsible private capital under clear public oversight. He set his own test for what the week has to produce: better-prepared projects, credible partnerships, identified blockages, clear responsibilities and implementation timelines that can be monitored. Ninety projects and R1.21 trillion are waiting on it. ### Nvidia is reportedly raising AI server prices by more than 15% as memory costs surge URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nvidia-ai-server-price-increase-memory-costs/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T03:00:00.000Z Bloomberg reported at the weekend that some of Nvidia's biggest customers have been told what next year's servers will cost, and it is more than 15% above this year's in many cases. The increase lands on systems shipped from early next year and covers the flagship Vera Rubin and Grace Blackwell machines, according to people Bloomberg describes as familiar with the process, who asked not to be identified because the communications are not yet public. How much any given system goes up by depends on the chip generation and the memory configuration. The contract manufacturers that assemble servers for the large data centre operators, Microsoft, Google and Oracle among them, have already told their own customers what is coming. Nvidia did not respond to Bloomberg's requests for comment. ## Who has the leverage now An accelerator is only as useful as the memory beside it, and memory is where the squeeze is. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron between them make most of the world's dynamic random access memory, the working memory those chips are paired with, and they have not caught up with AI demand despite raising output, which has driven the price of a commodity component up sharply and handed the three of them unusual influence. Nvidia is not a company that normally has to take that. It keeps about 75 cents of every dollar it sells and charges tens of thousands of dollars a chip, because TSMC, the contract manufacturer that makes them, still cannot meet demand either. Apple and Qualcomm have both said recently that chip shortages are forcing them to charge more, and Tom's Hardware reported earlier this month that Nvidia has raised the price of its gaming graphics cards too. ## How long the squeeze runs Not briefly, on the industry's own account. SK Hynix's chief executive has forecast that 2027 will be the worst supply year the memory industry has had, with demand running ahead of what the company can make well into the next decade even as it expands capacity. Nvidia's own chief executive said last month that AI memory shortages would continue for several years and that SK Hynix would remain his largest supplier. UBS expects the market to stay undersupplied until at least the second quarter of 2028. The spending carries on regardless. Micron plans to invest more than $250 billion in the United States through to 2035, up from $200 billion, and Bank of America expects the large cloud operators to spend about $851 billion on capacity this year and $1.15 trillion next. Nvidia reports its fiscal second quarter on Wednesday. ### MTN will spend R6 billion buying back its own shares after declaring no interim dividend URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-r6bn-share-buyback-no-interim-dividend/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T04:31:25.000Z There is no interim dividend from MTN this year, and there wasn't one last year either. What shareholders get instead is R6 billion spent buying up its own shares. A buyback is the other way of handing money back. Instead of paying cash out, the company takes shares off the market, so everyone still holding one owns a slightly bigger slice of the business. The board has approved it, and buying starts once MTN is allowed to trade in its own shares again. It's worth noting that none of this is improvised. At the end of 2025 MTN set itself a rule: every year, between 40% and 60% of the cash left over once the business has paid for itself goes to shareholders: part as a guaranteed dividend, part as buybacks. For this half, the buyback is doing all of it. ## The half that paid for it MTN makes its money selling airtime, data and mobile money, and in six months all three sold more. Take out the rand's swings and what it earned from services was up 17.5%, to R115.3 billion. Data did most of the lifting: it grew by close to a third, and now brings in about half of everything MTN takes in. Costs grew slower than the money coming in, which is the part that pays for a buyback. It ended the half with 317.7 million customers, more than half of them on data. But it certainly wasn't spread evenly. Nigeria brought in R35.55 billion, a quarter more than a year ago, and Ghana grew by more than 40%. Home, though, was the drag: South African revenue slipped, to R24.84 billion. ## Where the reported numbers went The profit line tells a different story, and two things outside the day-to-day business explain it. The first is Irancell, MTN's joint venture in Iran, whose value has been written down. That does not mean money left the building, only that MTN now admits the stake is worth less than its books said. Daily Investor puts the writedown at R3.9 billion. The second is South Sudan, where the currency moved against MTN and cost it R2.3 billion. Between them they pulled profit down 25%, to R7.41 billion, and left earnings per share 5.8% lower at 615 cents. Neither has much to do with how many people bought airtime. MTN is sticking to the targets it gave investors: keep service revenue growing in the high teens or better, and debt no larger than a year's operating earnings. Growth did slow over the first half, but management expects a stronger second, and it has three fairly specific reasons. Airtime lending in Nigeria is returning to normal, last year's price increases there stop flattering the comparison, and South Africa's prepaid business gets back to growing. ### Eskom has reportedly cut its diesel bill by 83% as South Africa goes 462 days without load shedding URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-diesel-spend-r992m-unplanned-outages-fall/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T02:29:59.000Z Diesel is what a power station fleet burns when it has run out of better options. Eskom keeps open-cycle gas turbines for exactly that, and they have been one of its most expensive tools for holding the grid together when supply falls short. For the financial year to 20 August it spent R992.06 million on diesel, against R5.92 billion over the same stretch last year, a fall of 83.25%. The turbines are the whole explanation. Their load factor, which is how much of the time they actually run against how much they could, dropped from 8.67% to 1.10%, well inside the 3% Eskom budgets for. Output from them came to 126.47GWh for the year to date, about 87.35% below the same period last year. What did get burnt between 14 and 20 August went into peak demand periods and into holding the reserves the South African grid code requires. ## The coal fleet stopped falling over Breakdowns are down sharply. Average unplanned outages over that week ran at 6 647MW against 10 936MW a year earlier, a drop of 4 289MW or 39.2%. The unplanned capability loss factor, the share of the fleet sitting out of action without warning, improved from 22.90% to 13.82%. Year to date the energy availability factor, the share of the fleet actually able to generate, sits at 67.79% against 60.44% last year, the highest since October 2020. There is more slack in the system than there was. More than 79% of the coal fleet is running at availability of between 63% and 95%. Planned maintenance has gone up rather than down, averaging 5 731MW or 12.12% of capacity against 11.11% a year ago. Eskom puts the capacity recovered over three years at about 6 100MW, and is holding another 3 967MW in cold reserve because it has more than it needs. ## The customers coming off the load reduction schedule Load reduction is the other programme, and it is the one that still touches people directly. Seven provinces are now clear of it, ahead of an October target, and about 1.2 million customers have gone back to normal supply, roughly 71% of the households the programme set out to reach. That leaves 6.8% of Eskom's customer base still on the schedule, in areas where illegal connections and meter tampering keep damaging infrastructure. The phased plan to end it runs to 2027, covers 971 feeders and about 1.69 million customers out of a base of 7.2 million, and has put 508 510 smart meters in so far, 88% of the 577 347 planned for high-priority areas. South Africa has gone 462 days without load shedding since 16 May 2025\. Eskom's winter outlook, published in April and running to the end of this month, projected none. ### Platinum lifted African Rainbow Minerals' earnings, and the rand took some of it back URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/african-rainbow-minerals-fy2026-trading-statement/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T09:59:59.000Z Platinum prices did most of the work in African Rainbow Minerals' financial year, and a stronger rand took some of it back. The miner told the market on Friday that its core earnings for the year to 30 June should land between R3 018 million and R3 288 million, 12% to 22% above the R2 695 million of the year before. Per share that works out at 1 544c to 1 682c, against 1 379c. The statement went out because JSE rules require one as soon as a company is reasonably certain its next set of results will differ by at least 20% from the previous corresponding period. ## Platinum up, iron ore down The company puts the increase primarily down to higher US dollar prices for the basket of platinum group metals it mines, partly offset by lower average realised rand iron ore prices as the rand firmed against the dollar. Basic earnings move on a different scale altogether, up between 1 105% and 1 115% to between R3 977 million and R4 010 million, from R330 million. Most of that gap belongs to the prior year, which carried a R2 209 million impairment on property, plant and equipment at Bokoni Mine with no tax effect. This year adds a R241 million profit on disposing of ARM's investment in the Sakura ferroalloys business and a R462 million gain on remeasuring its pre-existing 50% interest in Nkomati. None of the figures have been reviewed or reported on by the company's external auditor. ## What ARM is doing with platinum next Bokoni is where the money is going. In July the company approved a R15.2 billion investment in developing the Limpopo platinum project after completing a definitive feasibility study, Business Day reports. The plan refurbishes an existing 60 000-tonne-a-month concentrator and builds a new 120 000-tonne-a-month one, with first production targeted for the first half of the 2028 financial year and steady-state output of about 350 000 to 400 000 ounces of platinum group metals a year from 2032\. ARM had suspended mining and milling at Bokoni in 2025 while it reassessed the mine's economics and development plan. Nkomati is restarting as well. The company has approved a return to open-pit mining and nickel concentrate production at the Mpumalanga operation, on care and maintenance since 2021, at a cost of about R753 million, with an offtake agreement with Swedish metals producer Boliden providing the route to market once production resumes. Both decisions sit inside a plan to bring assets back into production and widen ARM's exposure to platinum group metals and nickel. The full results are due on 4 September. Platinum was quoted at $1 895.70 an ounce and the rand at 16.0195 to the dollar as this was written. ### Cell C's fastest-growing business rents its network to banks and retailers URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cell-c-fy2026-results-wholesale-network/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T08:00:00.000Z Cell C's fastest-growing business does not sell anything to Cell C's own customers. It rents the network to banks and retailers. The operator published audited results for the year to 31 May 2026 on 21 August, its first full year since listing on the JSE in November. Revenue rose 13.5% to R12 641 million, adjusted operating cash earnings rose 16.9% to R2 381 million, and net debt fell 64.5% to R2.0 billion, cutting the debt-to-earnings ratio to 1.56 times from 4.29. ## The wholesale business doing the work Wholesale revenue grew 20% to R1.76 billion, and the operator now carries 5.71 million subscriber lines for the virtual operators running on its platform, up 27.3% in a year, on an estimated 80% to 85% of that market in South Africa. Data traffic from those users rose 131%, against 47% across the group. The tenants include Capitec Connect, which had more than two million subscribers of its own at Cell C's half-year, along with FNB Connect and Shoprite's Knect Mobile. The position is less comfortable than the growth rate implies. MTN has said it wants to be South Africa's leading wholesaler of this kind and Vodacom has entered the market, and both are networks Cell C itself roams on; Standard Bank moved roughly 300 000 subscribers from Cell C to MTN in 2024\. Chief executive Jorge Mendes told TechCentral the arithmetic favours Cell C: customers moving to those operators leave each network roughly in proportion to its market share, so the fourth-largest loses least and has most appetite to win them back wholesale. ## What the headline growth is made of TechCentral's analysis puts most of the reported increase down to two one-off effects. Prepaid revenue rose 9.7% to R5.81 billion, but Cell C reports it net of channel discounts, and those fell from 13% of gross prepaid service revenue to 7.7% once legacy airtime terms with a Blu Label subsidiary ended at the listing. Grossed up on the percentages Cell C discloses, prepaid growth was nearer 3.4%, on TechCentral's calculation. Equipment revenue jumped from R119 million to R1 billion, which is accounting, not sales: Comm Equipment Company was consolidated from 27 November and is now reported gross, accounting for R881 million of the R1.5 billion revenue increase. Service revenue, which strips equipment out, grew 6% on the same read. Cash is still tight. Cash and equivalents fell to R133 million from R182 million, and net cash from operations fell to R1.6 billion from R1.86 billion. Chief financial officer El Kope called the working capital deficit the balance sheet's remaining problem and the group's main focus, and said what the business does with the cash it generates is pay off history. Cell C guides revenue growth of 5% to 10% next year off a restated R13.6 billion base. With the discount normalisation done and the equipment consolidation about to annualise, FY2027 is the first year the growth has to come from the business rather than the restructuring. ### The Roundup — Monday, 24 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-monday-24-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T04:01:00.000Z Today's edition Shelf Invasion Good morning. Mr DIY is growing quickly across South Africa, but its nine stores here tell only a fraction of the story of just how big this Malaysian retailer is. Meanwhile, markets had a week of their own: Bitcoin had its best week in two years, while the rand briefly broke through R16 to the dollar. And strangely enough, two of today’s biggest moves started in exactly the same place: Washington. Let’s get into it. --- MARKETS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--32-.png) --- AISLE BE THERE ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/6.png) ## Mr DIY has opened nine South African stores, and 12% of what it sells is made here Mr DIY opened its ninth South African store at Highveld Mall in eMalahleni last week, five days after opening at Saxony Westwood in KZN. The Malaysian chain sells household, hardware and lifestyle goods under the line *Always Low Prices*, and it does it at scale: past 1 000 square metres a store, with 17 000 to 18 000 products on the shelves. It started as one hardware shop in Malaysia in 2005 and now runs close to 5 000 stores across Asia and Europe. South Africa is the fourteenth country it has entered and the first on this continent. **What's on the shelves:** - Mr DIY's Malaysian listing is worth about R56.5 billion, against R44.3 billion for Mr Price, R42.9 billion for Woolworths and R14.4 billion for Pick n Pay. - 46 South African suppliers across 11 departments cover 12% of the range. In saying that, one of its procurement specialists says there is no limit on which categories local suppliers can fill, and the target is 20%. - The remaining 88% of its product lines is imported, with much of it own-brand stock made for Mr DIY. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/mr-diy-nine-south-african-stores-local-suppliers/) --- SHORT CHANGED ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-Damen-Shipyards---1-.png) ## Bitcoin's best week in two years started with a decision about American government bonds Bitcoin ended Friday at $76,943.90, up 6% on the day and 22% on the week, its strongest run since March 2024\. It started that week near $62,800\. The initial trigger sat outside crypto entirely: on Wednesday the US Treasury said it would at least double its buybacks of long-dated government debt, so the interest rate on that debt came down and money moved back towards riskier assets. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has since said he may go further. But the buying was not all voluntary. Roughly $2.7 billion of shorts - essentially bets that crypto prices would fall - were force-closed over the week, as the price ran through the levels those traders could carry. Sentiment did its bit too. Donald Trump pushed the Senate to pass the stalled Clarity Act, the bill that would finally settle which American regulator oversees crypto. That matters because big investors like pension funds, banks and insurers are more likely to put money into crypto when the rules around it are more clear. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/bitcoin-best-week-us-treasury-bond-buybacks/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which is the only mammal capable of true flight?** **A.** Colugo **B.** Flying squirrel **C.** Bat --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/2.png) **Spur Corporation is shutting John Dory's branches that no longer pay their way, but it is not selling the brand.** Seven restaurants closed last year and two opened, leaving 39 outlets against 55 in 2020\. Revenue fell 17.4% and profit 23.3%, which finance chief Cristina Teixeira placed at the bottom of Spur's South African brands. Spur bought 60% of the chain in 2004, when it was a seven-restaurant franchise in KwaZulu-Natal, and chief executive Val Nichas says outlets will be converted or closed as the group trims the portfolio. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/john-dorys-store-closures-spur-rationalisation/) **Volkswagen's Kariega plant built 17 009 cars in July.** 13 490 of them were Polos, and the month beat both the 16 670 of July 2025 and the 977 that the Eastern Cape factory turned out in its first full year. The record lands days before the Volkswagens marks 75 years in South Africa on 31 August. Kariega supplies Europe and Asia-Pacific with Polo hatchbacks, a job with no successor lined up. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/vw-kariega-record-month-polo-export-contract/) **The rand touched 15.99 to the dollar on Friday, its first trip below R16 since February.** It was about 0.8% firmer on the day, and the move traced back to that same Washington event: the US Treasury plans to at least double its buybacks of long-dated government debt, and Secretary Scott Bessent says he may go further. That pushed the dollar down and sent money towards riskier currencies that pay more, and gold heading for a third straight weekly gain certainly helped. By Sunday the rand had drifted back to about 16.02\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/rand-below-r16-us-treasury-buybacks/) **Trustco must pay the JSE's R5 million fine after a tribunal threw out its challenge.** In 2022 the company cut its stake in Meya Mining, which owns a diamond mine in Sierra Leone, from 65% to 19.5% without putting the deal to shareholders. The JSE valued Trustco's share at R460.5 million, or 89% of what the whole company was worth, and censured it in October 2025\. The Financial Services Tribunal dismissed the challenge on 20 August, so the money is now due, and Trustco's shares have been suspended since January 2025 over late financial statements. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/trustco-jse-r5m-fine-tribunal-dismissal/) --- WEATHER ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--28-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--31-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-j1PyCW9FJJ%5FHCJlTE&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. Bat** A bat’s wing is actually a modified hand, with a thin skin membrane stretched between elongated finger bones. This allows bats to flap, steer and generate lift, unlike mammals such as colugos and flying squirrels, which can only glide. There are more than 1,400 known bat species, making up roughly one fifth of all mammal species. --- That's your Monday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Bitcoin surged 22% in its biggest week in over two years. Here’s what was behind the run. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/bitcoin-best-week-us-treasury-bond-buybacks/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T03:44:59.000Z Bitcoin closed Friday at $76,943.90, up 6% on the day and 22% over the week from about $62,800 at its start. The event that decided the week kicked off in the market for US government bonds. ## What the Treasury actually did On Wednesday the US Treasury said it would at least double the size of its buybacks of long-dated government debt. Treasury yields pulled back sharply, which eased pressure on risk assets broadly. Max Stuedlein, head of partnerships at Sygnum in Asia-Pacific, said the decision is aimed at long-term yield concerns, where borrowing costs have been rising on worries about US debt levels and partial crowding out by the debt that hyperscalers are issuing. Rachael Lucas, an analyst at BTC Markets, called that the real driver, saying it pulled long yields lower and lifted risk appetite across the board. Nothing has rewritten bitcoin's long-term case, she added, and nothing has rewritten its volatility either. ## Trump, the Clarity Act and the funds Sentiment improved again on Thursday, on a late push from the White House and crypto industry leaders to get the Clarity Act through the Senate in the coming weeks. The bill is widely viewed as the catalyst that could pull the market out of the crypto winter that began last northern autumn, though its chances of passing is contested: it stalled over disagreements about its ethics provisions and never reached a vote before the Senate's August recess. Donald Trump met crypto executives on Wednesday, including people from Coinbase Global and Payward, and urged the Senate to pass it. The 13 US-listed spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds added more than $1 billion between Monday and Wednesday, putting them on track for their largest weekly inflows since January. Large holders bought as well, adding roughly $2.75 billion of the token over 60 days, according to CryptoQuant. But some of the buying was not chosen. Roughly $2.7 billion of crypto short positions were liquidated over the week, on CoinGlass data, as the price ran through the levels those traders could carry. ### A Malaysian retail giant worth over R56 billion is rapidly expanding across South Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mr-diy-nine-south-african-stores-local-suppliers/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T03:29:59.000Z A ninth Mr DIY store opened in South Africa last week, at Highveld Mall in eMalahleni, five days after the eighth opened at Saxony Westwood in KwaZulu-Natal. The stores run past 1 000 square metres each and carry between 17 000 and 18 000 products, from hardware and household essentials to stationery, toys, decor and small electronics, sold under the line *Always Low Prices*. South Africa is the fourteenth country in a network that began as a single hardware shop in Malaysia in 2005 and now runs close to 5 000 stores across Asia and Europe, and it is the company's first market in Africa. ## How a supplier gets onto the shelf The company sources 12% of its South African range from 46 local suppliers across 11 departments, and says it wants that at 20%. Procurement specialist Khumo Mabe says there is no limitation from a local sourcing perspective, and that the aim is to keep finding suppliers who can add to an already extensive catalogue. Candidates are assessed on product quality, their ability to meet demand at scale and their experience supplying retail chains, along with their sourcing and sustainability practices and their willingness to establish a long-term commercial relationship. Mabe says the company places a lot of value on suppliers who see the arrangement as a genuine partnership where both sides grow. The network was built by starting with brands South African shoppers already recognised, focusing on products that offer value without giving up appearance, quality or performance. Demand feeds back the other way as well. A team picks up on products that customers ask about or expect to find in the stores, and that feedback is combined with sales data to respond to purchasing patterns and seasonal demand. ## Why most of the range still comes in by ship The rest of what fills those shelves is imported, much of it carrying the Mr DIY name and made specifically for the company. Imports manager Lara-lee De Jager says local and imported sourcing are not in competition with each other: local sourcing supports South African businesses and communities, while the main drive behind the imports is to bring Mr DIY-branded products to South African consumers. She describes the import operation as running from supplier level straight through to market level, with trade compliance a very important part of it, from international regulations to the requirements of South African governing bodies ### Trustco has been slapped with a R5 million fine after losing its fight against the JSE URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/trustco-jse-r5m-fine-tribunal-dismissal/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T03:14:59.000Z The JSE censured Trustco Group Holdings publicly in October last year and fined it R5 million. Trustco went to the Financial Services Tribunal in December to have both set aside; the tribunal heard the application on 14 August and dismissed it on 20 August. The exchange confirmed on Friday that the censure and the penalty are binding, fully enforceable and immediately payable. ## The deal that triggered it In 2022 Trustco disposed of control of Meya Mining, which owns a diamond mine in Sierra Leone, to UAE-linked Sterling Global Trading, cutting its own interest from 65% to 19.5%. The JSE valued Trustco's portion of that at R460.5 million, equal to 89% of the company's market value at the time. Any acquisition or disposal worth at least 30% of a listed company's market value is what the exchange calls a Category 1 transaction, and its rules require those to be put to shareholders and approved before they are implemented. Trustco began implementing this one before distributing a circular or holding a vote. The JSE found it had knowingly done so, denying shareholders the opportunity to exercise their rights over the transaction, and censured the company in October 2025 with the R5 million fine attached. Trustco had itself approached the exchange for a ruling on the matter in 2023, and the exchange concluded that the failure was unacceptable. ## The suspension, the restatement and the board fight Trading in Trustco shares has been suspended on the JSE since January 2025, after the company failed to publish its 2024 financial statements within the prescribed period. The group was founded in 1992, listed in Namibia in 2006 and on the JSE in 2009, and holds interests in insurance, lending, education, real estate, mining and investment management. It also ran a long battle with the exchange over an accounting decision that waived loans held by chief executive and managing director Quinton van Rooyen, fed the effect into profits and triggered an earn-out mechanism for him. After the case reached the Supreme Court of Appeal, Trustco agreed to restate the financial reports. The boardroom fight is still live. At a requisitioned general meeting in Windhoek held the week the tribunal ruled, seven resolutions to remove or replace directors, brought by investor Sean Riskowitz, were defeated. Moneyweb reports that his nominees still took roughly 42% of the votes cast for or against. Riskowitz had issued an open letter calling for board changes to stabilise the company, restore confidence and give Trustco the best possible chance to grow again, and cited the loan restatement among his reasons for wanting a new independent board. The fine is due now. The governance argument behind it is not finished. ### The rand just hit its strongest level in six months, briefly breaking below R16 to the dollar URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/rand-below-r16-us-treasury-buybacks/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T02:59:59.000Z The rand traded at 15.9925 to the dollar at 1229 GMT on Friday, about 0.8% stronger than its previous close and its strongest level since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran on 28 February. Bloomberg had the day's best at 15.9924 and the rand at 15.99 by 2:49pm in Johannesburg. It last closed below 16 in February, before the conflict began. ## The Washington decision behind it The decision that did it was taken in Washington. The US Treasury said it would double the size of its buybacks of longer-dated government securities over the next quarter, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he is prepared to expand those repurchases further and promised a new fiscal initiative. That weighed on the dollar and lifted the appeal of higher-yielding emerging-market currencies, of which the rand is one of the most heavily traded proxies. Gold, one of South Africa's main exports, rose to a more than three-month high on the same news and was on track for a third straight weekly gain. On the Johannesburg Stock Exchange the Top-40 index was up 2.2%, and the yield on the benchmark 2035 government bond eased to 8.56%. ## Why traders are holding it Matthew Ryan, head of emerging-market strategy at Ebury Partners, said the war premium has largely faded and the encouraging domestic story should reassert itself as the dominant driver. He expects the rand to grind stronger from here, underpinned by a hawkish Reserve Bank, ongoing energy reforms and solid underlying fundamentals. An improving local fiscal backdrop and rising precious metals prices are supporting it as well. Calm helps too. Expected three-month swings in the rand against the dollar fell this week to their lowest since January, which makes the currency more attractive to investors who borrow cheaply in dollars to hold it, and it has returned 3.5% on that trade this month. The rand got to Friday the hard way. It slumped to a four-month low in March as the Middle East conflict pushed oil prices higher, clawed some of that back, then lost ground again in July after the Reserve Bank surprised the market by holding interest rates instead of raising them. Friday's level has not held. By Sunday morning the rand was quoted at about 16.02 to 16.03, back on the weak side of the line it crossed two days earlier. ### Amid South Africa’s influx of Chinese cars, Volkswagen just had its biggest production month ever URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/vw-kariega-record-month-polo-export-contract/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T02:44:59.000Z Vehicles have been coming off the line at Kariega since 1948, and July was the biggest month in all of that time. Volkswagen Group Africa's Eastern Cape plant built 17 009 of them, beating the previous record of 16 670 set in July 2025\. Of the record volume, 13 490 were Polos for the local and export market and 3 519 were Vivos for South African customers. By the end of July the plant had assembled 4 836 371 vehicles since 1948. ## What Kariega used to build in a year Volkswagens have been built at Kariega since 1951, which makes 2026 the company's 75th year in South Africa; the factory itself was assembling Studebakers and Austins from 1948\. In its first full year it turned out 977 vehicles, and July's single month beat the plant's entire annual output for each of its first 15 years. Nearly 40 models have gone through it, among them the Kombi, the Passat and five generations of Golf. Local Polo production started in 1996 with the Polo Classic sedan, and four generations have been built since. The two-millionth Polo made at Kariega came off the line in November 2025 and the one-millionth sixth-generation car, a Smoky Grey GTI for the local market, in June 2026\. The plant employs more than 3 500 people, and the 75th anniversary is marked officially on 31 August. ## The contract behind the record Kariega is Volkswagen's main production site for Polo hatchbacks and the sole supplier for Europe and Asia-Pacific. That is also where the risk sits. The petrol Polo faces potential discontinuation in the coming decade ahead of Europe's 2035 ban on combustion-engine vehicles, IOL reports, and the plant has not secured another high-volume export contract to replace it; its leadership has previously said it will not build an electric car there for the foreseeable future. A Polo-based SUV called the Tengo has been funded, with rumours of a bakkie version, but neither carries anything close to the Polo's export volume. Parliament raised the plant's future last month, after reports that Volkswagen Group is embarking on a global restructuring that could involve up to 100 000 job cuts and cut capacity from around 10 million vehicles to 9 million. Sonja Boshoff, who chairs the Select Committee on Economic Development, said every country is competing aggressively to retain automotive investment and South Africa cannot assume new model allocations will come its way, naming policy certainty, reliable electricity, efficient ports and rail, and lighter regulation as what it takes to earn them. Managing director Martina Biene called the record proof that the company keeps building its South African legacy with every vehicle it produces and sells. The line producing them runs on a contract with a 2035 deadline in front of it. ### John Dory’s is down to 39 restaurants, and a tough year could put even more on the chopping block URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/john-dorys-store-closures-spur-rationalisation/ Last updated: 2026-08-24T02:29:59.000Z Spur's finance chief was asked which of the group's South African brands had the hardest year, and she named John Dory's. The seafood chain closed seven restaurants in the year to June and opened two. That leaves 39 outlets, down from 55 in 2020, a 29% cut in six years. Revenue fell 17.4% and profit fell 23.3%, and the brand now brings in 2.9% of group revenue against 3.8% a year earlier. ## What rationalisation means here Chief executive Val Nichas told the results presentation the group will either convert or close John Dory's outlets while refining the ones that trade best. She said it is normal for brands in a portfolio not to perform at the same level in the same cycle, and that this one has challenged the group more because of the sensitivity of the seafood category. Investors will keep seeing weak growth from the brand while the portfolio is rationalised, she said. There is a turnaround plan, though she said it may need a bit more creative and innovative thinking. Selling is not on the table: at this stage, she said, the group does not intend to dispose of the brand. Finance chief Cristina Teixeira told the same presentation that John Dory's has held revenue of R9 million and profit of R4 million per half-year, and that growth in the category remains challenging. ## Panarottis and Spur went the other way Panarottis grew its store count from 97 to 102 and lifted profit before tax 19.5%. Spur's speciality brands closed five stores and still grew profit before tax 5.2%. The Spur brand itself passed 100 restaurants trading under its revitalised concept by year-end and is at 104 now, and 89% of the Panarottis network carries the updated store design. Across the group, franchised restaurant turnovers rose 6.9% to R12.3 billion and revenue rose 8.5% to R4 190.7 million, from 751 restaurants in 14 countries. The year around all of it was hard. Spur describes constrained consumer spending, rising input costs, heightened competition, labour and skills pressures and a continued shift towards value, convenience and digital channels, with the sharpest competitive pressure coming from quick-service chains, delivery aggregators and heavy promotion in burgers, pizza and family dining. Spur plans to open 50 new restaurants in South Africa and 16 internationally in the 2027 financial year. John Dory's, on the group's own account, will be getting smaller. ### Cape Town's first superyacht marina has a day job for the off-season URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cape-towns-first-superyacht-marina-has-a-day-job-for-the-off-season/ Last updated: 2026-08-22T05:59:59.000Z Marinas built for superyachts have an obvious problem. The yachts arrive for a few months, and then they leave. The V and A Waterfront's answer at Quay 7 is to give the basin a second job for the rest of the year. The R230 million development will be South Africa's first purpose-built superyacht marina, sitting on the water alongside the Cape Town EDITION, Marriott International's first EDITION-branded hotel in Africa. Damen Shipyards Cape Town is fabricating six 30-metre floating pontoons that will create eight berths, six stern-in and two side-on, for vessels up to 90 metres. Practical completion is targeted for 31 October 2026, with an official opening on 1 November. ## The off-season plan Outside the superyacht season the basin is meant to carry commissioning and export staging for Cape Town's catamaran builders, among them Robertson and Caine, Two Oceans Marine and Balance Catamarans. That is what turns four or five busy months into twelve. The commercial case behind it is traffic that has climbed steadily since 2009, reaching 35 vessels in the 2024/25 season, many of them staying for extended periods, with the spend landing on fuel suppliers, provisioning companies, marine engineers, logistics providers and contractors. ## Who is building it, and out of what Damen is a shipbuilder rather than a marina contractor: patrol vessels, research and supply vessels, dredgers and tugs. Managing director Hermoine Manuel calls Quay 7 the company's most technically advanced marina project. Each 48-tonne pontoon is built in three fabricated sections, covering the bottom, side shells, bulkheads and deck, before final assembly. The hardest engineering has been below the waterline, where the seabed anchoring system needed specialist testing protocols to hold up in Cape Town's conditions, and the team has leaned on 3D modelling, digital scanning and underwater survey systems. Finished berths will carry water, electricity, fire and lifesaving equipment, bonded fuel supply, bamboo decking and direct access to the Syncrolift and Robinson Dry Dock for repair and refit work. About 120 people are on site, including staff from nine local subcontractors, and 76% of procurement spend has gone to local suppliers so far, or 35% once Damen itself is excluded. The hotel next door is due to open late in 2026, with 142 rooms, 27 suites and six private residences, designed by Shanghai firm Neri and Hu alongside Cape Town's StudioMAS. The marina build was roughly 45% complete in July. The first superyachts are expected before the end of the year. ### The Roundup — Friday, 21 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-21-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-21T04:00:35.000Z Today's edition Out Of Thin Air Good morning. One man's trash really can be another man's treasure. On the ground, DRDGold has just had the best year in its history reprocessing the mine dumps other miners walked away from. In the sky, Comsol's new 5G network has taken six months to scatter over a million Gauteng homes. Today's business plan is other people's leftovers. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--31-.png) --- WHOLESALE CHANGE ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-comsol-1.png) ## Comsol has covered a million Gauteng homes with a 5G network it will never sell you Comsol has sold wireless connectivity to South African businesses for nearly thirty years. Six months ago it started building a 5G network for homes, and it now covers more than a million Gauteng households, funded by a multibillion-rand raise announced on Thursday. In saying that, Comsol will not sell you a connection on it. The internet providers do that, and Afrihost has already listed uncapped 25Mbps at R275 a month, 75Mbps at R549, and an unrestricted package at R875 with a router included. **Who owns which half:** - Comsol owns the spectrum, the towers, the network and the core. The internet providers own the branding, the pricing, the billing, the support and the customer. - The money came from Platform Investment Partners, founding backers of Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa, and Wimsey Capital, the Otto family's investment company. Nedbank Private Equity sold out after nine years. - The spectrum is a 60MHz slice Icasa licensed in 2022, sitting just above Rain's allocation, and it carries no roll-out obligations and no renewal date. Two thousand base stations are planned nationally, with full Gauteng coverage targeted for March 2027\. The first internet provider goes live in September, and Stevenson will not name it. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/afrihost-is-already-selling-home-internet-on-a-5g-network-built-six-months-ago/) --- READ RECEIPTS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-meta--1.png) ## Meta starts charging South African businesses for WhatsApp replies on 1 October WhatsApp became the default South African help desk because answering a customer cost nothing. That ends on 1 October. The free-form messages an agent or a chatbot sends back inside the 24-hour window a customer's message opens become billable, one charge each, after being free since November 2024\. The standard advice when WhatsApp gets expensive is to push traffic into templates, and that stops working on the same day, because utility templates sent in reply inside the window start being billed too. Six weeks out, nobody has been told the rate. The service column on Meta's own rate card reads n/a, and the company has committed only to publishing October prices by 1 September. The 12c a message doing the rounds locally is an estimate reverse-engineered from what utility and authentication templates cost today. Helm, the Johannesburg firm that runs WhatsApp channels for DStv, Absa, Telkom, Capitec and MTN, puts the working range at 10c to 15c. Absa has run full banking inside the app since 2024, and an account dispute is nothing but replies. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/splitting-one-whatsapp-answer-into-three-messages-is-about-to-cost-three-times-as-much/) --- BAGEL BITE **How many hearts does an octopus have?** **A.** Zero **B.** Two **C.** Three --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-DRDGold-1.png) **DRDGold makes its money reprocessing mine dumps other companies walked away from, and this year it made more of it than ever.** Headline earnings rose 89% to R4.3 billion on a 40% jump in the rand gold price, and the board declared a final dividend of 120 cents, the largest in its history. At the results presentation, chief executive Niël Pretorius made his pitch to the rest of the industry: “Let us through the front door. Maybe we could do something with your tails.” [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/drdgold-wants-a-look-at-other-miners-waste-dumps-after-its-best-year-on-record/) **The JSE has halved its own rulebook over four years to keep companies from delisting, and on Wednesday it proposed trimming a little more.** Listed companies would no longer publish the diluted version of headline earnings, the profit-per-share number investors compare them on, with comments open until 13 October. The same day, Grain SA said the exchange had decided to fight its court bid over soybean pricing, a difference the farmers' body puts at R696 million. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/an-accounting-rewrite-is-about-to-take-a-profit-line-out-of-jse-company-results/) **South Africa had a good inflation number and a good currency day on Wednesday, and only one of them was ours.** Stats SA put July inflation at 4.3%, down from 5%, with food and drink at 0.9%, the lowest since June 2010\. Stewing beef, steak and mince all cost less than a year ago. The rand then strengthened through R16.08, its best in five months, after the US Treasury said it would at least double its buybacks of long-dated bonds. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/beef-bread-and-maize-meal-pulled-south-african-food-inflation-to-a-16-year-low/) **Jeff Bezos promised 30-minute drone delivery on 60 Minutes in December 2013 and said it would take four or five years.** Amazon said on Wednesday that Prime Air will reach nearly 500 American cities and towns by the end of 2026, a sixfold increase on its current 11 sites. The 500 counts municipalities inside the range of planned hubs, not 500 new drone bases, since each hub covers about 175 square miles. Crashes in Arizona and Texas are still under investigation. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/amazons-nearly-500-drone-delivery-towns-are-not-nearly-500-drone-bases/) --- WEATHER ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--27-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--30-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-Ugu2vk5uo3Z6z895Z&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. Three** Two of an octopus’s hearts pump blood through the gills to pick up oxygen, while the larger systemic heart pumps oxygenated blood around the rest of the body. During jet propelled swimming, the systemic heart stops beating, making this type of movement particularly tiring and helping explain why octopuses often prefer to crawl. Their blood is also blue because it uses copper containing hemocyanin to carry oxygen instead of the iron containing hemoglobin found in human blood. --- That's your Friday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### WhatsApp is about to start charging SA businesses for something that has always been free URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/splitting-one-whatsapp-answer-into-three-messages-is-about-to-cost-three-times-as-much/ Last updated: 2026-08-21T03:44:59.000Z Whatsapp's support conversations are built out of short messages. A greeting, a question back, a link, a confirmation, a thank you. From 1 October each one of those is a separate charge. Meta will start billing South African businesses for service messages on the WhatsApp Business Platform: the free-form replies a support agent or a chatbot sends inside the 24-hour window that opens when a customer messages first. They have been free since 1 November 2024\. Utility templates sent in reply inside that same window, free since 1 July 2025, become billable on the same day. The charge bites at platform level, hitting every business on the interface whichever provider sits in between, and there is no opt-out. None of it touches ordinary WhatsApp users. Meta has said it does not intend to charge for messaging or core features, and its consumer money in South Africa so far comes from cosmetic extras such as the R28.99 a month WhatsApp Plus tier launched locally in June. ## Nobody has been given the price Six weeks out, the service column on Meta's own rate card reads n/a for South Africa, and the company has committed only to publishing October rates by 1 September. The 12c a message circulating locally is an estimate reverse-engineered from what utility and authentication templates cost today, which is $0.0076 apiece. One door stays open. A conversation started from a Facebook or Instagram click-to-WhatsApp ad opens a 72-hour free window that the October change leaves alone, which lets a business buy support capacity with ad spend. Businesses running Meta's own Business Agent are billed for the tokens it burns even inside that window, at $2 per million tokens, roughly four to five US cents a reply, since 1 August. Either way, the rate card is set to land on 1 September. ### South Africa has a new 5G network and it’s already covering more than a million homes URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/afrihost-is-already-selling-home-internet-on-a-5g-network-built-six-months-ago/ Last updated: 2026-08-21T03:29:59.000Z Three uncapped internet packages appeared on Afrihost's website this week, starting at R275 a month. They run on a 5G network that did not exist six months ago, built by a company that will never sell you a connection. Comsol has spent nearly three decades selling wireless connectivity to businesses. It is now a wholesale supplier of home broadband, and the split is absolute: Comsol owns the spectrum, the towers it leases, the network and the core, while internet providers, mobile virtual network operators and other resellers own the branding, the pricing, the billing, the support and the customer. Afrihost has listed uncapped 25Mbps at R275 a month, 75Mbps at R549, and an unrestricted package at R875 with a router included. ## How the wholesale deal actually works Comsol charges per SIM on a subscription rather than by the gigabyte, and shapes the product around each provider. “It is not a gig-based model; it is a subscription model. We work very closely with ISPs, and we tailor the productisation for them,” chief executive Iain Stevenson told MyBroadband. “Effectively, those products are shaped within our environment, and it is their product.” That flexibility comes from the equipment. The network runs a standalone 5G core with no 4G anchor underneath it, which Comsol says is one of only two production standalone cores live in South Africa. ZTE won a long request-for-proposal process against every major vendor and is deploying the whole thing turnkey, core and radio together, partly on the strength of its millimetre-wave road map. ## The capacity question The network sits on 60MHz of spectrum between 3.74GHz and 3.8GHz, immediately above Rain's allocation, licensed by Icasa in 2022\. Whether a slice that size can carry mass-market home broadband once take-up builds is the untested part. Stevenson is unbothered. “There's a ton of capacity on the network,” he said, and Comsol will add base stations as saturation approaches. “That's a nice problem to have. We're looking forward to that problem.” Around 2 000 are planned nationally. Comsol also holds 336MHz of contiguous millimetre-wave spectrum at 28GHz, bought in 2010 when nobody wanted the band, which Stevenson calls the next capacity layer. The first provider goes live in September and Stevenson will not name it, though he says effectively all of the handful of large providers will end up on the network. Full Gauteng coverage is targeted for March 2027, with the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and major regional centres following in 2027 and 2028. ### Amazon says its drones will reach nearly 500 US cities and towns, each hub covering 175 square miles URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/amazons-nearly-500-drone-delivery-towns-are-not-nearly-500-drone-bases/ Last updated: 2026-08-21T03:14:59.000Z The promise is older than most of the drones. Jeff Bezos showed a prototype on 60 Minutes in December 2013 and said the service would take four or five years, optimistically, with the regulator as the biggest hurdle. Amazon said on Wednesday that Prime Air will reach nearly 500 American cities and towns by the end of 2026, which it describes as a sixfold increase on its current footprint. It flies from 11 sites across seven states today, with Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta and Boise named as launching soon. ## What the 500 counts It is not 500 new drone bases. Each Prime Air site serves an area of roughly 175 square miles, and the 500 figure counts the municipalities that fall inside the range of the planned hubs. GeekWire is the only outlet to spell that distinction out; Reuters describes the same coverage as a single hub reaching multiple towns within a roughly 7.5-mile radius. The service is narrow by design. Nearly anything five pounds or under that fits in a large shoebox is eligible, which Amazon says covers more than 60% of the items customers most frequently buy. Thirty-minute delivery is the best case; most orders arrive around 60 minutes after checkout. Prime members pay nothing on orders of $50 or more, $2.99 below that, and non-members $4.99. ## The part Amazon cannot schedule Every community it enters needs its own approval on top of the Federal Aviation Administration Part 135 certification Prime Air already holds, which usually means a council hearing with residents in the room. At a planning and zoning meeting in Nampa, Idaho, in May, Amazon executive Sam Bailey took about an hour of questions on noise, safety, logistics and bird safety before the board voted unanimously to approve. At a hearing in Richardson, Texas, in March, one resident told the council she consistently hears the buzz of drones overhead and finds it irritating and not very peaceful. Bailey said Amazon had changed the average flight height and rerouted drones over commercial zones more consistently. Three investigations are open at once. The National Transportation Safety Board is still looking into two Amazon drones that collided with a crane in Tolleson, Arizona in October, the FAA is examining a drone that snapped an internet cable in a Waco, Texas yard in November, and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch opened a probe last month after a Prime Air drone came down in a garden in Darlington. Amazon says that drone operated as designed and landed safely, with no injuries. Meanwhile Alphabet's Wing crossed a million commercial drone deliveries earlier this year, and Zipline has made two million. ### South Africa’s food inflation just fell to its lowest level since the 2010 Soccer World Cup URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/beef-bread-and-maize-meal-pulled-south-african-food-inflation-to-a-16-year-low/ Last updated: 2026-08-21T02:59:59.000Z Cheaper mince does not usually make the national news. In July it moved the number. Statistics South Africa put headline inflation at 4,3% for the month, down from 5,0% in June and the first cooling in five months, against the 4,5% economists polled by Reuters and Bloomberg had expected. ## What actually got cheaper Food and non-alcoholic beverages came in at 0,9%, the lowest reading in more than 16 years. The last time it was lower was June 2010, at 0,7%, the month South Africa hosted the World Cup. Beef did most of the work as foot-and-mouth disease effects faded: stewing beef was 7,9% cheaper than a year earlier, steak 6,1% cheaper and mince 5,8% cheaper. Cereal products fell 2,0% over the year, with maize meal down 3,1% and white bread down 0,6% on the month. Processed meat went the other way, corned meat up 11,8% and sausages up 6,2%. Two other things helped. Municipalities put through smaller July increases than in 2025, with electricity tariffs up 8,1% against 10,4% a year earlier and water up 10,2% against 12,1%. Petrol fell 7,1% and diesel 11,7% between June and July, though both are still far dearer than a year ago, petrol by 19,3% and diesel by 28,8%. ## The other good number came from Washington The rand had a good day on Wednesday too, and none of it was local. The US Treasury announced it would at least double the size of its liquidity support buybacks in longer-dated government bonds, taking the maximum from $2 billion per operation to at least $4 billion from 9 September. The dollar fell the most in three weeks, 30-year yields dropped about eight basis points, and the rand strengthened from R16.25 to below R16.08 within minutes of the announcement, its best level in more than five months. The JSE All Share closed above 116 000 points, up more than 2.4% on the day. That matters at the till as well as on a screen. A firmer rand holds down import prices, fuel included, which the Reserve Bank named in July as one reason goods prices had stayed contained. The Bank left its policy rate at 7% that month and next decides on 23 September, with one more inflation print landing earlier the same morning. Agbiz economist Wandile Sihlobo credits the 16-year low to large supplies off an excellent harvest, helped by the La Nina rains in the season now closing. Diesel rose again in August, and both fuels are set to go up in September. ### The JSE wants to scrap another reporting requirement as it fights to keep companies listed URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/an-accounting-rewrite-is-about-to-take-a-profit-line-out-of-jse-company-results/ Last updated: 2026-08-21T02:44:59.000Z Every set of annual results from a JSE-listed company carries a profit figure that exists nowhere else in the world. On Wednesday the exchange proposed making it shorter. Headline earnings per share is South Africa's own tidied-up profit measure, and listed companies currently publish two versions: the ordinary one, and a diluted one that assumes every share option and convertible instrument turns into shares. The diluted version is the one being taken out. ## Why the change is happening now Not because the JSE went looking for it. IFRS 18, the new international accounting standard, is mandatory for reporting periods starting on or after 1 January 2027, and it bans per-share figures from annual financial statements unless they qualify as management performance measures. When SAICA rewrote its headline earnings circular to fit, it could not preserve the sections dealing with diluted headline earnings. “The JSE is therefore proposing removing this obligation from the JSE Listings Requirements,” the exchange's amendments paper says. The main figure survives, but moves house. Headline earnings per share must still be published at the same time as the interim and annual statements; it simply sits outside the information the auditor signs an opinion on. A third change tidies the rulebook itself: the reconciliation between earnings and headline earnings, previously repeated throughout the requirements, now lives once, in the definitions. Comments close on 13 October, the same day as SAICA's. All of it sits inside the Simplification Project, running since May 2022, which has cut the volume of the listings requirements by half as the exchange tries to slow the exits. Over five years 130 companies have dropped off the JSE, many of them citing what it costs to stay on. ## The fight the JSE is having at the same time While it trims rules for listed companies, the exchange is in court with grain farmers. Grain SA marched on its Sandton offices on 13 August, handed over a petition carrying 965 signatures, and launched an urgent interdict against a separate decision taken on 20 July: scrapping a two-season pilot of a multiple reference point model for soybean location differentials and reverting to a single reference point. On 19 August, the same day as the earnings announcement, Grain SA said the JSE had decided to oppose that interdict, and put a number on what is in dispute. Average transport deductions run at about R113 a ton under the pilot model against about R333 under a single reference point, a gap of roughly R220 a ton, or about R696 million across the relevant volumes and silo points. The JSE has proposed moving the reference point from Randfontein to Driefontein from the marketing season starting 1 March 2027. ### A South African gold miner made R4.3 billion from mine waste other companies left behind URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/drdgold-wants-a-look-at-other-miners-waste-dumps-after-its-best-year-on-record/ Last updated: 2026-08-21T02:30:00.000Z A closing mine leaves behind a hole in the ground, a processing plant nobody needs and decades of waste that costs money to look after. DRDGold spent the past year proving the waste is the part worth having, and it now wants a look at everyone else's. The company reprocesses old mine dumps around Johannesburg for the gold still sitting in them, and the year to June 2026 was the best in its history. Revenue rose 42% to R11.2 billion, operating profit 83% to R6.45 billion and headline earnings 89% to R4.25 billion, on a 40% rise in the average rand gold price received to R2 289 250 a kilogram. Gold production barely moved, at 4 839kg, marginally ahead of the year before and above guidance. ## What DRDGold is offering other miners Chief executive Niel Pretorius made the pitch from the results presentation stage. “Let us through the front door. Maybe we could do something with your tails,” he said. The shareholder letter confirms the search has already started on two continents, Africa and South America, for copper as well as gold. The version he described to Daily Maverick is aimed at a large listed miner with forty years of tailings on its footprint and a mine closing in four or five years. Rather than dismantle the plant, DRDGold would repurpose it to run at higher volume, push the retreated material back into the hole and do part of the rehabilitation that way. “We could be a service-provider/equity partner on many of these things. We bring the capital, that gives us access to a portion of the proceeds, and we assume a measure of the risk,” Pretorius said. ## What Sibanye got out of it There is one worked example, and Pretorius pointed straight at it. Sibanye-Stillwater's Far West operation was an environmental liability; folded into DRDGold, with Sibanye taking a 50.1% stake in the business, it is now an equity holding he valued at around R15 billion. Sibanye had also earned, or would earn following the latest dividend, R955 million in returns in the past two years. Money is moving the other way too. DRDGold spent R3.5 billion during the year on Vision 2028, its roughly R10 billion programme to lift throughput at Ergo and Far West Gold Recoveries and push annual production towards six tonnes by 2028, and still ended debt-free with R2.8 billion in cash and a record final dividend of 120 cents a share. Guidance for the year ahead is 160 000 to 170 000 ounces and about R3 billion more capital. Shareholders keep the full swing of the gold price either way: the company has promised to stay unhedged for as long as it can. ### Absa has written down more software, five months after calling it a one-time reset URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/absa-software-impairment-interim-results/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T07:59:59.000Z Absa impaired a further R200m of software assets in the six months to 30 June 2026, according to interim results published on Tuesday. That is almost three times the R74m it wrote off in the matching period last year. It also comes five months after a R2.4bn write-down the bank put down to a revision of group strategy and faster-than-expected technology obsolescence. ## Where it comes from As with the much larger charge, the biggest share originates in head office. Absa's own wording was that it had impaired certain software assets for which the value in use is determined to be zero, mainly derived from head office. That earlier charge broke down as head office, treasury and other operations absorbing R1.1bn, personal and private banking R611m, corporate and investment banking R559m, Africa regions R63m and business banking R43m. That full-year figure was more than 13 times the R179m written off the year before. ## Not one failed project Group chief information and technology officer Johnson Idesoh has already described the shape of the R2.4bn. Asked in May whether one large asset sat behind the number, he said well over 100 separate small assets made up the total. He set out three drivers: the shift to running three pan-African business units, which forced a reassessment of what the bank carried on its books; regulation moving on in areas where Absa still held intangible assets; and the pace of technological change itself. He also described a structural move away from owning software towards consuming it as a service, which reduces what a bank capitalises to begin with. "Absa is not pulling back on technology investment," he said in March. ## Spending more, carrying less Total IT spend, including staff, amortisation and depreciation, rose 7% to R8.78bn in the first half, or 28% of the group's R31.4bn operating expense base. Idesoh had put technology at roughly a quarter of yearly operating expenditure; the interim disclosure runs slightly higher. Within non-staff costs, which grew 3% to R13.1bn, IT costs rose 6% on continued investment in cybersecurity, cloud and data, while professional fees climbed 7% on technology initiatives. The asset base those write-offs eat into keeps shrinking. Amortisation of intangible assets fell 6% in the period, reflecting an 11% decline in goodwill and intangible assets to R14.2bn from R16bn a year earlier. Software was the largest single component of a R355m other-impairments charge for the half, down from R769m a year ago; the balance included R155m against property and equipment, of which R33m was computer equipment and R62m leasehold property, in line with a property consolidation plan. Idesoh has argued the constraint is not the hardware, since Absa still runs IBM z16 mainframes at Randburg and Samrand, but software written four decades ago that still carries the mental model of banking as it was then. The bank renewed partnerships with Amazon Web Services and Huawei to support the shift. Group headline earnings rose 8% to R12.8bn for the half, and the interim dividend was lifted 8% to 850c. ### The Roundup — Thursday, 20 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-thursday-20-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T04:00:35.000Z Today's edition Seven Years' Notice Good morning. Sound the alarm: SARS is completely rethinking how VAT works in South Africa. On top of that, we’ve also got a major change to electricity pricing, an oil rush next door, and a coal mine stuck in a decade-long fight. Let’s get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--30-.png) --- BASIN INSTINCT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-equinor-1.png) ## Equinor bought into Namibia's oil hunt four days after South Africa's top court closed the Wild Coast Before we jump into the VAT story, peak over next door. Equinor signed a deal in Windhoek on Tuesday for 17.4% of an offshore block in Namibia's Orange Basin, buying it from the Chevron subsidiary that operates the licence. It is the Norwegian company's first position in Namibia, and the block already has a well ready to drill this year. Four days earlier South Africa's Constitutional Court set aside the Wild Coast exploration right that Shell had bought half of, and shut the renewal route the Supreme Court of Appeal had left open. The dissenting judgment put the companies' Wild Coast spend at about R1.1bn. Despite that, the judge held that commercial investment cannot outweigh serious constitutional violations - pointing to the fact that coastal communities were never consulted on the exploration right. **Who else is already in the Orange Basin:** - Chevron's Harmattan Energy operates licence 90 and held 52.5% before the sale, alongside QatarEnergy on 27.5%, with Trago Energy and Namibia's state oil company on 10% each. - TotalEnergies, QatarEnergy, Shell, BP and Eni are all exploring the basin. Equinor makes six. - Shell wrote off $400m on Namibian wells, then went back to drilling in April, and its June well returned the best results that licence has produced. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/equinor-namibia-orange-basin-pel-90/) --- VAT'S THE HOLD-UP ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-sars-1.png) ## SARS has published the plan to replace the VAT return, and it does not finish until about 2033 SARS put its VAT Modernisation Consultation Paper out for *comment* on Monday. It proposes that: 1. Your accounting system issue a structured invoice. 2. An accredited operator check and clear it. 3. It's passed on to your customer's operator. 4. It's sent through to SARS (in near real-time). 5. SARS pre-fills the return and work out what you owe. As for the runway, the timetable inside that same paper extends years past the 2028 readiness date vendors and advisers have sold all year. TechCentral, reading the road map, puts testing in 2028/29, a voluntary pilot in 2029/30 and about 36 months of phasing in from 2030, which would land full roll-out around 2033. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/sars-vat-modernisation-consultation-paper/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which bone is the only one not joined to another bone?** **A.** Hyoid **B.** Sternum **C.** Patella --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-eskom--2--1.png) **Your electricity bill is about to start explaining itself.** Cabinet has approved the first rewrite of the electricity pricing policy since 2008, and it goes into the Government Gazette on Friday. Eskom and municipalities will have to itemise bills and may not charge paying customers for their own inefficiency. Free basic electricity for poor households climbs from 50 units a month to between 200 and 300\. Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa's headline number for the past two decades says all you need to hear: tariffs up 907% since 2007, against inflation of 150%. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/electricity-pricing-policy-gazetted-ten-year-forecast/) **Uthaka Energy has been trying to open the same Mpumalanga coal mine for a decade, and it has told the Constitutional Court who it blames.** The Indian-owned company, formerly Atha-Africa, says a green lobby has run review after review against its Yzermyn project inside the Mabola protected area, and that the R1bn it has put in has produced no mining. The eight organisations challenging the mine answer that litigation is a commonplace, legitimate way of holding parties to the rule of law. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/uthaka-energy-concourt-green-lobby-affidavit/) **Standard Bank wants a piece of a Nigerian payments app before Wall Street gets to price it.** Bloomberg reports Africa's biggest lender by assets is in talks for a pre-listing stake in OPay, known for its army of green card machines and now working with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan on a New York float. OPay turned profitable last year, more than doubled transaction values to $358bn and serves as many as 50 million users. Nothing is signed, and both companies declined to comment. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/standard-bank-opay-stake-talks/) **TikTok is building a way for users to send each other money inside direct messages.** Bloomberg found the references in code inside the US iPhone app. The feature would run on TikTok Pay, which already handles TikTok Shop purchases in Southeast Asia, and the code suggests a sender could attach a note while the recipient taps to accept, much like Venmo. TikTok says the feature is not being tested, though it did ask Brazil's central bank this year for permission to offer loans and payments. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/tiktok-payments-code-direct-messages/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--26-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--29-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-PNUpgztSG0JfD8uFA&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. Hyoid** The hyoid sits at the front of the neck and is held in place by muscles, ligaments and cartilage rather than forming a joint with another bone. It supports the tongue and anchors several muscles involved in swallowing and speaking. It also helps keep the airway stable during breathing, making this small bone important for several everyday functions. --- That's Thursday wrapped. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### SARS has published a plan to replace how South Africans do VAT returns URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sars-vat-modernisation-consultation-paper/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T03:45:00.000Z SARS published its VAT Modernisation Consultation Paper on 17 August and gave stakeholders until 16 October to comment on it. The paper proposes a Digital VAT Model that brings together electronic invoicing, an interoperability framework and electronic reporting, with the aim of moving VAT transaction data across the economy close to the moment a sale happens. ## How it would work The design is a five-corner model, and the corners are worth naming because each one is a piece of work for somebody. Your accounting or ERP system issues an invoice in a machine-readable format rather than a PDF or a scanned document. It goes to an accredited access point, a licensed operator that validates and clears the invoice. That operator routes it to your customer's access point, which validates it again before delivering it. Both then report the cleared invoice to a fifth corner, a service provider acting for SARS. A Network Authority would accredit those providers and enforce the rules. What SARS gets out of it is data it can act on. It intends to use the transaction flow to pre-fill VAT returns and, over time, to assess VAT liability automatically, with taxpayers confirming or amending the result so self-assessment survives. Commissioner Johnstone Makhubu said the model "seeks to move us from a system that is still too dependent on manual processes and retrospective verification, to one where VAT compliance becomes part of the systems businesses already use every day". ## The dates inside the paper The roadmap in the paper, as read by TechCentral, sets out five phases. Preparation, including the publication of draft VAT regulations, runs about 12 months from 2026/27\. Solution development takes another 12 months in 2027/28, ending with those regulations promulgated. Quality assurance testing follows for roughly six months in 2028/29, then a pilot with voluntary participants for six months in 2029/30\. Phased implementation is expected to begin during 2030 and run about 36 months. That lands full roll-out around 2033. Through 2026, electronic-invoicing vendors and tax advisory firms had projected full operational capability at 2028, most hedging the date as indicative and subject to regulations that had not been written. Still though, that is not an argument for sitting still. Large taxpayers will need systems able to issue and receive structured invoices, contracts with accredited operators, and finance processes rebuilt around continuous validation rather than month-end reconciliation, and those are multi-year builds. Three of the load-bearing questions are still open. Who runs the Network Authority, and which standards it adopts, depend on selection and procurement processes SARS says it is finalising. On cost, SARS acknowledges taxpayers will have to invest in technology and integration, and says it will engage software providers on tiered subscription models to consider subsidised or low-cost options. And "near real-time", the phrase the whole model rests on, is left to be defined in legislation. The paper carries its own disclaimer: the contents reflect SARS's current understanding of the proposed framework and may be refined after stakeholder input and further analysis. ### South Africa shut down a major oil hunt. Just across the border, Namibia is heating up. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/equinor-namibia-orange-basin-pel-90/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T03:29:59.000Z Equinor and Harmattan Energy, a Chevron subsidiary in Namibia, signed an agreement in Windhoek on Tuesday handing the Norwegian company a 17.4% share of Petroleum Exploration Licence 90 in the Orange Basin. Beatrice Bienvenu, Chevron's country manager for Namibia, and Aynur Rzayeva, Equinor's Namibia asset manager, signed it at a ceremony there. Closing still needs regulatory approval. ## Who holds what The licence covers Block 2813B, offshore Namibia, and Chevron operates it. Before the sale Chevron's subsidiary held 52.5%, with QatarEnergy on 27.5%, Trago Energy on 10% and the state oil company on 10%. The attraction for Equinor is timing as much as geology: the block carries a prospect ready to drill, scheduled for testing this year, and the deal is the company's first position in Namibia. Philippe Mathieu, who runs Equinor's international exploration and production, called Namibia "a promising basin that adds attractive option value to our portfolio and complements our broader Atlantic Margin position". ## Six majors, one basin Namibia's Orange Basin has drawn TotalEnergies, QatarEnergy, Shell, BP and Eni, and Equinor makes six. The results so far have been mixed enough to keep the basin interesting rather than proven. Chevron found nothing in its first Namibian well and has another planned inside licence 90 for later this year. Shell wrote off $400m of Namibian wells after failing to find a route to commercial production, then went back in: its Merlin-1X well, spudded on 8 April 2026, delivered what was described as the most promising subsurface results to date in Shell's own licence, with good reservoir quality and light oil. Eugene Okpere, Shell's exploration, strategy and portfolio vice-president, called those results "encouraging" and said the company was progressing the opportunity through a disciplined, data-led approach to establish commerciality. Further drilling later in 2026 is under consideration. ## The coast that closed The move north runs alongside a door closing in South Africa. On 14 August the Constitutional Court reinstated a high court order setting aside the Wild Coast exploration right granted to Impact Africa in 2014, in which Shell later took a 50% participating interest, and shut the renewal route the Supreme Court of Appeal had left open. The high court had found the original decision and its two renewals unlawful on three independent grounds, including inadequate consultation with coastal communities. The majority judgment held that commercial investment cannot outweigh serious constitutional violations. In dissent, Rogers J put the companies' Wild Coast spend at about R1.1bn and argued the matter should have gone back for fresh consultation instead. ### TikTok may have much bigger plans for your DMs, including letting users send each other money URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/tiktok-payments-code-direct-messages/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T03:14:59.000Z References to a money-transfer feature are sitting inside the code of TikTok's current US iPhone app, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The feature would let users send each other money through direct messages. TikTok told Bloomberg it is not being tested. ## What the code describes The design in the code will look familiar to anyone who has used a payment app. A sender could attach a message to the money, and the recipient would get a prompt to tap and accept it, much the way Venmo works. It would run on TikTok Pay, the payment system TikTok already operates in Southeast Asia to handle TikTok Shop purchases. Code in an app is not a product. TikTok's on-record line is that the feature is not being tested, which points to early internal work rather than anything close to a launch, and there is no timeline for a public release or any commitment that one comes at all. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TechCrunch, which wrote the report up on Tuesday. ## The app that keeps taking on new jobs TikTok is still widely described as a social media company, and the feature list has been drifting away from that description for years. It now carries in-app search, TikTok Shop, a local discovery map, games and hotel bookings, and payments would be the next addition. Payments between users would put it up against Venmo and Zelle, which is a different competitive set to the one a video app usually worries about. It would not be the first social platform to make the move. X launched X Money to let users send each other money. The logic is the same in both cases: a platform that already holds a user's attention, their friends list and, through shopping features, their card details is a short step from holding the transaction too. For South African readers the feature is not imminent in any market, let alone this one. The reporting covers the US iPhone app, and TikTok Pay's existing footprint is described only as Southeast Asia, with no specific countries named. Reuters reported earlier this year that TikTok applied to Brazil's central bank for approval to operate as a financial technology company offering lending and payment services. ### Standard Bank is eyeing a stake in a Nigerian payments giant with 50 million users URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/standard-bank-opay-stake-talks/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T02:59:59.000Z Standard Bank is in talks to buy a stake in OPay Digital Services before the Nigerian payments company lists in the United States, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The bank wants the stake in place ahead of the listing. No agreement has been reached, and the people cautioned there is no guarantee the deal gets done. ## What OPay is Founded in 2018, OPay has grown into one of Nigeria's biggest payment platforms, serving as many as 50 million users. On the street it is best known for its army of green handheld card machines. The company turned profitable last year, and the value of transactions running through it more than doubled to $358bn, according to a company document seen by Bloomberg. It also operates in Egypt and Pakistan. SoftBank and Sequoia Capital are among its backers, and it is working with Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan on the New York listing. ## Why a bank would want in The size of the market explains the interest better than the deal terms do. Mobile-money operators in sub-Saharan Africa handled $1.4 trillion of transactions in 2025, according to the GSM Association, which was 66% of global activity. McKinsey estimates revenue at African fintechs could reach $47bn by 2028\. Other operators are raising money to chase the same growth, among them Airtel Africa's mobile-money business and PalmPay. For Standard Bank, Africa's biggest lender by assets, a stake in OPay would be a position on payment infrastructure it does not own and did not build. Banks and payment platforms on the continent have been shifting from competing to coexisting: the bank brings capital, licences and institutional trust, the platform brings distribution, speed and millions of digital customers. OPay has become a beneficiary of Africa's growing population and its move to mobile payments and digital banking. The listing itself is the pressure point. Buying before a company prices its shares on a public market is a different transaction to buying after, and the reporting is explicit that Standard Bank is seeking the stake pre-listing. OPay would get a major African bank on its register just as it puts its case to global investors. Neither side is confirming anything. OPay declined to comment, and Standard Bank said it does not comment on market speculation, while remaining committed to delivering value to its clients across all markets. ### Eight organisations are trying to stop a R1bn coal mine in a protected part of South Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/uthaka-energy-concourt-green-lobby-affidavit/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T02:44:59.000Z Uthaka Energy goes to the Constitutional Court next month to argue that the reason its Mpumalanga coal mine still does not exist is litigation. The Indian-owned company, formerly Atha-Africa Ventures, has filed an affidavit saying a decade of review applications has left it with R1bn spent and nothing mined. The papers name the opposition as a bloc. Uthaka calls the environmental organisations challenging it the "green lobby" and casts the litigation as a co-ordinated strategy rather than a series of separate cases. "It presents itself over and over again in litigation against any mining activities opposed by the green lobby, as part of environmental activism," the company says. It goes further: "The environmental special interest groups, the green lobby, have a specific agenda, namely, the eradication of coal mining worldwide, and often exaggerate harm to the environment. In pursuing this agenda, they often destroy the economies of developing nations." ## What is actually being fought over The mine is the Yzermyn colliery, an underground coal project inside the Mabola Protected Environment near Wakkerstroom, which is both a declared protected area and a strategic water source area. Eight civil society organisations, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights, have challenged the approvals that state ministers granted for mining there; they include Earthlife Africa Johannesburg, BirdLife South Africa and the Endangered Wildlife Trust. The project would produce about 2.2-million tonnes of coal a year. The coalition is asking the apex court to set aside last year's Supreme Court of Appeal decision, whose effect was to clear the way for the project. Their case rests on water. The mine would sit inside a protected regional water basin, and the organisations argue the damage to water resources could not be undone. ## The answer from the other side The Centre for Environmental Rights takes the framing on directly. Its papers note that Uthaka "characterises the applicants as being part of a so-called 'green lobby'" and then attacks the whole of it, accusing the applicants of favouring future generations over current ones, of lawfare and harassment, and of destroying the economies of developing nations. Its reply: "Lawfare has been accepted by our courts as a commonplace and legitimate process of holding parties to the rule of law." This is not the first round of that argument. In 2024 the same coalition asked a court to strike claims from an earlier Uthaka affidavit, calling them "scandalous, vexatious and irrelevant". That 36-page affidavit, deposed by the company's South African representative Praveer Tripathi, described the applicants as funded mainly from abroad, said its members "sit in air-conditioned offices", and summarised the dispute as one "between rich whites and poor blacks". The coalition's replying affidavit, signed by groundWork director Sven Peek, called the allegations "manifestly scurrilous". Uthaka has been trying to develop Yzermyn for ten years. The Constitutional Court hears the matter next month. ### South Africa is set to change how electricity is priced for the first time since 2008 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/electricity-pricing-policy-gazetted-ten-year-forecast/ Last updated: 2026-08-20T02:29:59.000Z Cabinet has approved a rewrite of the rules that decide what South Africans pay for electricity, the first since 2008, and the draft goes into the Government Gazette for public comment on Friday 21 August. Most of it is about tariff structure. One line in it is aimed squarely at anyone running a factory: the national energy regulator would have to publish a ten-year price forecast. Electricity Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa set out the reasoning at a briefing in Pretoria on Tuesday. "We want everyone to have some degree of certainty on what will be the cost of electricity, not just today or tomorrow, not only in three years' time or five years' time. We want to create a 10-year horizon," he said. Heavy industry, he argued, cannot compute a return on a new investment off a price path that runs one or two years. ## What is pushing this The comparison Ramokgopa used to frame the problem was basic arithmetic. Electricity tariffs have risen about 907% since 2007, he said, while inflation over the same period rose about 150%. "If we don't address the cost of electricity, we are unlikely to grow this economy because our industries will be uncompetitive," he said. The draft lands weeks after the regulator approved an 8.8% increase in July for customers Eskom supplies directly, and an average 9% for those buying through municipalities. ## What the draft would change Eskom and municipalities would have to issue itemised bills showing how the amount owed was reached, including energy costs and the cost of converting coal into electricity. They would also be blocked from passing the cost of their own inefficiency on to customers. Ramokgopa said between one and 2.5 percentage points of the tariff people currently pay sits there because Eskom and municipalities cannot collect what they are owed. "You are not allowed to punish those who are paying on account of those who are not paying," he said. The free basic electricity allowance for poor households would climb from 50 units a month to between 200 and 300, which the minister said can be funded inside the existing R21bn a year rather than out of new money. The draft also proposes a five-year move to tariffs that reflect what supply actually costs, credits for households that feed power back into the grid, and limits on the technical losses customers can be charged for. Customers would be allowed to buy from a supplier other than their current one, at published network charges. Getting from draft to rule takes several more steps. The department has said it will consider the comments it receives, take it to the National Economic Development and Labour Council, Nedlac, for consultation, and put it back to Cabinet before it is gazetted for implementation. The comment window closes on 20 September. ### Copper just overtook iron ore as BHP's biggest earner for the first time URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/bhp-copper-overtakes-iron-ore-dividend/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T09:59:59.000Z BHP reported results for the year to 30 June on Tuesday, and copper did something in them it has never done before. It delivered 54% of the group's underlying operating cash earnings, the EBITDA measure that strips out interest, tax and depreciation, up from 45% a year earlier and worth a record US$18.2bn. Iron ore, the business that built the company, came in at US$14.5bn. Group underlying operating cash earnings rose 27% to US$32.9bn and underlying attributable profit rose 30% to US$13.2bn. ## Where the margin came from Spot copper averaged 26% higher over the year, with the second half running nearly 40% up as the metal pushed past US$13,000 a tonne, and BHP's own realised price rose 35% to US$5.74 a pound. Volumes did not: copper production slipped 3% to 1.95 million tonnes. What held the margin was cost. Unit costs fell 6.1% across the major assets, Escondida in Chile shaved 10% off its own, and Copper South Australia cut 73%, helped by gold and silver credits from the same ore. The copper division ended the year on a 70% margin. ## What shareholders get A final dividend of 99 US cents a share, US$5.0bn in all, takes the full-year payout to US$1.72 on a 72% payout ratio, the highest in four years. Net debt fell to US$8.7bn from US$12.9bn and free cash flow jumped 83% to US$9.8bn. Josh Gilbert of Etoro said the 99 cent final dividend is the number that will catch investors' attention, and that BHP is showing it can spend heavily on growth without asking shareholders to sacrifice returns. Holders on the South African branch register trade cum dividend until 1 September, with payment on 23 September. Brandon Craig, who grew up in Richards Bay and started his career at Rio Tinto's mineral sands operation there, took over as chief executive on 1 July and is the third South African-born boss the company has had. His pitch is a project pipeline across Chile, Australia and Argentina that could lift copper output about 40% by its 2035 financial year, to roughly 2 million tonnes a year. BHP approved US$0.5bn of pre-commitment funding for a new concentrator at Escondida ahead of a possible final decision in 2027 or 2028\. Craig told Bloomberg TV he cannot categorically rule out acquisitions but struggles to find value in them: building copper works out at roughly US$16,000 to US$30,000 a tonne against well over US$100,000 to buy it once a takeover premium is counted. Copper guidance for the year to June 2027 is 1.65 million to 1.8 million tonnes. ### Ninety One's clients now own more than 5% of Johann Rupert's Remgro URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/ninety-one-clients-remgro-five-percent/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T07:59:59.000Z Remgro told the JSE on Monday morning that clients of Ninety One SA now hold 5.0156% of its ordinary shares. The notice went out under section 122 of the Companies Act, which requires a company to tell shareholders when it is notified that someone has acquired a beneficial interest in its securities, and Remgro filed the matching notices with the Takeover Regulation Panel and the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission. The shares are held on behalf of Ninety One's clients rather than as a corporate stake by the manager itself. ## Not the first crossing An earlier Remgro filing, on 29 July, already put the same client holding at 5.0004%. Financial Mail reported on 6 August that Ninety One had nudged across the 5% line at Remgro, and had lifted its Mr Price holding to 5.0608% in the same stretch. Monday's announcement is a move from 5.0004% to 5.0156%, so the interesting part is not the arrival but the size of the buyer. ## What the Sanlam deal bought Ninety One's assets under management rose 31% to £171.8 billion in the year to 31 March 2026, about R3.9 trillion, from £130.8 billion. Most of that jump came from completing a 15-year agreement with Sanlam, which transferred Sanlam Investment Management's active business in South Africa and Sanlam Investments UK, adding £18.3 billion, roughly R401 billion. Client flows turned too, from £4.9 billion out the previous year to £2.8 billion in. Adjusted operating profit rose 12% to £211.3 million. Founder and chief executive Hendrik du Toit said the demand recovery for emerging markets is visible and Ninety One's offering competitive, and that the firm is in a stronger position than a year ago. A manager running that much money needs positions big enough to matter, and Remgro is an efficient way to get one. Johann Rupert's family investment company, which Anton Rupert started in 1948 as the Rembrandt Group, holds a single line that carries FirstRand, Discovery and Mediclinic at the top, and further down Vumatel, Seacom, Dark Fibre Africa and Heineken Beverages. The same holding stretches into sport and education, from the Blue Bulls to the Stellenbosch Academy of Sport. Two 5% notices in three weeks is what R3.9 trillion looks like when it lands on somebody else's share register. ### The Roundup — Wednesday, 19 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-wednesday-19-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T04:00:00.000Z Today's edition Weight and See Good morning. Today is about two companies the market had already somewhat written off, and what each of them decided to do about it. Think *Remember the Titans*, except instead of a second-half comeback, we’ve got protein snacks and coal mines. Oh, and did we mention there's also a fight over who owns an airport, as well as some advancements in Uber Eats drone deliveries? Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--29-.png) --- SHAKE ON IT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-nestle-1.png) ## Nestle has an AI reading 120,000 of its own recipes for the people on Ozempic Nestle, the company behind Milo and the Boost shakes, has spent two years being cast as a casualty of weight-loss drugs. On Monday its chief technology officer, Stefan Palzer, told Reuters the company reads the same trend as a shopping list. Rapid weight loss strips lean muscle along with fat and leaves the hollowed cheeks people call *Ozempic face*, and those consequences are now product specifications. In response to this, an internal system Nestle calls *Food Genie* has AI tools reading the clinical research and screening combinations across a database of about 120,000 of its recipes. **What has come off the line so far:** - A two-micronutrient combination Nestle says it industrialised to help muscle grow back faster. - Boost Advanced, carrying 35 grams of protein, and a higher-protein Milo PRO sold in Asia and Australia. - Collagen going into the Vital Proteins range. And this isn’t just an American trend. You don’t have to look far to see GLP-1 drugs taking off in South Africa too: Mounjaro has reportedly become the country’s biggest pharmaceutical product by sales, while Wegovy and Ozempic are already available. So Nestlé is effectively betting that as millions more people start eating less, they’ll create an entirely new market for snacks designed to give them the nutrition they’re no longer getting from bigger meals. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/nestle-glp1-side-effect-products-ai-recipes/) --- COAL COMFORT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-thungela-1.png) ## Thungela has paid ten dividends since Anglo American spun it out with eight years of mine life Thungela Resources, the coal exporter Anglo American listed separately in 2021, reported half-year numbers on Monday: core earnings up 150% to R4.80 a share, revenue up 2% to R15.2 billion, and a dividend of R5.50 a share - its tenth since listing. Hold onto your hats, because profit rose 461% to R1.39 billion - though about R1 billion of that is a non-cash gain tied to the sale of the Kleinkopje mining right. The mines came across with a weighted-average life of about 8.3 years, but finance chief Deon Smith now calls that life multidecade - built on the Annea and Zibulo North extension projects and the Ensham mine in Queensland. Rail has loosened as well. Transnet's coal corridor ran at 59.9 million tonnes a year in the first half against 56.8 million in 2025, which Smith says leaves the company free to ramp up, and chief executive Moses Madondo is studying an expansion at Ensham. Most interestingly to us, almost half of first-half revenue came from India. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/thungela-interim-results-mine-life-rail-india/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which flower does the spice saffron come from?** **A.** Safflower **B.** Crocus **C.** Marigold --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-CemAir-1.png) **CemAir wants the Competition Tribunal to block the sale of FlySafair.** Harith Aviation is buying Safair Holdings, which owns FlySafair and carries about two thirds of South Africa's domestic passengers. CemAir's objection is about who owns what: Harith InfraCo already holds 37.5% of Lanseria - the airport where FlySafair is the only airline flying. The Competition Commission has recommended approval with conditions covering information sharing and fair access, and counsel for the merging parties called CemAir's case a dangerous and disturbing thesis. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/cemair-flysafair-harith-lanseria-tribunal/) **Absa lifted half-year earnings 8% to R12.8bn, and South Africa did nearly all of it.** Earnings from the South African business rose 17% to R9.19bn while the rest of the continent fell 10%. The interim dividend goes up 8% to 850 cents. These are the first full six months under Kenny Fihla, who moved the bank to three pan-African units in January. It's also worth noting that corporate and investment banking, its biggest earner, grew a mere 1%. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/absa-interim-results-south-africa-fihla/) **India has made it easier for South African citrus exporters to sell fruit there after nearly a decade of talks.** Exporters now have more options for how citrus is kept cold during shipping to kill pests, which farmers say should protect quality and make shipping easier. But import duties of around 25% to 30% remain, leaving South African fruit at a disadvantage to other competitors in the southern hemisphere. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/india-cold-treatment-options-sa-citrus-tariffs/) **Uber is putting drones on Uber Eats and buying a stake in the company that flies them.** Zipline already operates in Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Japan, and makes a delivery somewhere in the world every 20 seconds. Neither side will say what the stake cost. First drop-offs land later this year in the American markets Zipline already serves, then dozens more cities, with a target of one million drone deliveries a day by the end of 2029\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/uber-eats-zipline-drone-delivery-partnership/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--25-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--28-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-KU%5FQLMLcSy-mGO5Pu&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Crocus** Each flower produces only three tiny thread-like stigmas, which must be picked by hand. It takes roughly 150,000 flowers to make a single kilogram of saffron, which is why it costs more by weight than almost anything else in the kitchen. Safflower and marigold petals are sometimes sold as cheaper substitutes, but real saffron only ever comes from the crocus. --- That's your Wednesday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### A JSE-listed company just increased its earnings by 150% - after being written off five years ago URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/thungela-interim-results-mine-life-rail-india/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T05:06:27.000Z The coal company Anglo gave an expiry date is now shopping for mines. When Anglo American cut its South African coal mines loose in 2021, those mines had roughly eight years of digging left in them, and coal was the thing every investor was trying to get away from. Fast forward to today and Thungela has just declared its tenth dividend in a row, and its chief executive is out looking for more mines to buy. "Thungela redefined its own story," finance chief Deon Smith told Business Day. "It said we will not die in eight years." Thungela digs thermal coal, the kind burned to make electricity, out of Mpumalanga and one mine in Queensland, and puts it on ships at Richards Bay. Almost half of what it sold in the first half went to India. Three things decide whether that is a good business: how much it can dig, whether Transnet's trains turn up, and what the coal fetches. ## The 461% that flatters Profit for the six months to June rose 461%, to R1.39 billion. Hold the champagne, though, because two things are propping that up. Last year's figure was small enough that almost any recovery looks spectacular beside it, and about R1 billion of this year's total is a paper gain from selling the Kleinkopje mining right rather than cash that arrived. The cleaner measure, core earnings per share, rose 150% to R4.80\. Revenue barely moved, up 2% to R15.2 billion, because the rand traded 11% stronger and took a bite out of every dollar of coal sold. Shareholders get R5.50 a share, R773 million in all, and the market liked it enough to push the stock up 11% in a day. ## The trains finally showed up For years the problem was never finding the coal. It was getting it to the coast. Transnet's coal line ran at an annualised 59.9 million tonnes over the half, up from 56.8 million, and that is now enough to carry everything Thungela's mines can produce. Smith's word for the business is unconstrained. Production rose 6% to 8.5 million tonnes, and the Australian mine bought in 2023 lifted its own output by more than a third. So Madondo is shopping, and not for a commodity or a country: for assets Thungela already knows how to build. What he cannot control is who still wants the coal. Prices ran 15% higher in South Africa and 25% higher in Australia this half, lifted by five months of conflict in the Middle East and renewed nerves about energy security. India is where it gets awkward. Thungela's own results announcement concedes that a weak currency, higher freight rates and price-sensitive buyers have capped what South African coal can charge there. Madondo told Bloomberg that Indian demand "is going to be massive". Almost half the revenue is riding on which of those two holds. ### Nestle is building a product line out of the side effects of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nestle-glp1-side-effect-products-ai-recipes/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T03:29:59.000Z Weight-loss drugs were meant to be a problem for the people who sell food. Investors have worried since the injections took off that appetite suppressants would permanently cut demand for packaged food, snacks and drinks. On Monday, Nestle's chief technology officer Stefan Palzer told Reuters the company reads it the other way. Nestle is well positioned with the portfolio, he said, and it is a huge opportunity for the company. ## The side effects are the specification Rapid weight loss on GLP-1 medicines, the injections sold as Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound, strips lean muscle along with fat, and can hollow out the face enough that the look has earned a nickname. Presentation materials shown to Reuters set out those effects next to the places Nestle believes its products can help. About 16 million Americans are on the medicines, on Boston Consulting Group numbers, and that count is expected to rise sharply by the end of the decade. Palzer says Nestle scientists found a combination of two micronutrients, since industrialised, that stimulates muscle tissue to grow back faster while protein does the rebuilding. The company has separately patented ingredient combinations meant to blunt the hunger that returns when someone stops taking the drugs. Collagen is going into the Vital Proteins range for the skin, hair and nail complaints that come with losing weight quickly. ## A recipe library doing the searching The screening runs on software. Nestle has built internal systems that read scientific literature, simulate consumer behaviour and help developers navigate a database of roughly 120,000 recipes, among them a platform called Food Genie that predicts how a recipe will perform and flags reformulation options. Scale is the whole point, Palzer says: a small company with a thousand recipes has too little to model on, because AI needs data. The products are already on shelves. Nestle's American business sells Boost Advanced, a shake carrying 35 grams of protein to protect muscle during weight loss, and in Asia and Australia it has launched Milo PRO High Protein. And this isn’t just an American trend. GLP-1 drugs are taking off in South Africa too: Mounjaro has reportedly become the country’s biggest pharmaceutical product by sales, while Wegovy and Ozempic are already available. So Nestlé is effectively betting that as millions more people start eating less, they’ll create an entirely new market for what they need to eat instead. ### Uber Eats is getting delivery drones and wants them making 1 million daily deliveries by 2029 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/uber-eats-zipline-drone-delivery-partnership/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T03:14:59.000Z Uber and Zipline announced a partnership on Monday to bring autonomous drone delivery to Uber Eats customers across the United States, with Uber also making a strategic investment in the drone company. Neither side put a number on the investment, and Uber declined to give Reuters one. The first deliveries start later this year in Zipline's existing markets, before the service spreads to dozens more American cities. ## What Zipline already does Zipline is not a prototype looking for a runway. It operates on four continents, serves more than 5,000 hospitals and health facilities, and has flown more than 135 million commercial autonomous miles. Its overseas network runs through Rwanda, where it started in 2016 delivering medical supplies to remote clinics, and on into Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Japan. Somewhere in that network, a delivery lands every 20 seconds. In the United States it already flies for Walmart and more than a dozen restaurant brands including Panera, Chipotle and Wendy's, and it closed an extended funding round of $800 million earlier this year at a $7.6 billion valuation. ## Why Uber wants it Uber describes what it is building as a hybrid delivery network that mixes couriers, sidewalk robots and drones, then picks whichever mode suits the order. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi says the two companies are creating a faster, more sustainable way for people to get what they need, and that he wants autonomous delivery to become part of everyday life. He put the commercial case more plainly to the Wall Street Journal: quick commerce is proving to be an even bigger market than the original food market was, and can be an enormous tailwind for the next leg of growth for Eats. Uber reckons a Zipline drone can fill an Uber Eats order in five to 10 minutes. This is not Uber's first drone deal. It partnered with Israeli startup Flytrex, which also came with an investment. Nor is it the only company chasing the market: DoorDash launched a drone programme of its own last month after clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has proposed new rules to widen drone delivery operations. The target the two partners have set themselves is one million drone deliveries a day by the end of 2029. ### After nearly a decade, South African citrus just got easier to sell in India, but there’s still one expensive problem URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/india-cold-treatment-options-sa-citrus-tariffs/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T03:00:00.000Z India has approved additional treatment options for fresh citrus fruit from South Africa, the Citrus Growers' Association of Southern Africa and the Department of Agriculture said in a joint statement on Monday. It took nearly a decade of negotiations to get there. South Africa already exports citrus to India using various treatments for fruit flies, so what has widened is the set of approved cold treatments an exporter may choose from, rather than a closed door swinging open. ## Why more options matter Cold treatment is the chilling that citrus has to go through in transit to manage fruit fly risk, and until now South African exporters shipping to India were limited to a previously approved set of protocols. More approved options mean more room to plan a consignment around the treatment and transport arrangements that are actually available. The growers' association says the change will improve the quality of the fruit arriving in the market and adds important logistical flexibility. Agriculture minister Willie Aucamp said the approval shows how advanced technology is letting South African farmers push through barriers so other countries can enjoy local produce. CGA chief executive Boitshoko Ntshabele credited the Department of Agriculture and Citrus Research International for years of technical engagement with Indian authorities, and called it a case for sustained public and private partnership on market access. ## The number that has not moved India takes about 1.5% of South Africa's citrus exports, on 2024 data from the National Agricultural Marketing Council, from a population of roughly 1.47 billion. Ntshabele says attention now shifts to the commercial terms. Most favoured nation duties of about 25% to 30% still leave South African fruit at a disadvantage to southern hemisphere competitors that hold preferential tariff deals. Citrus is South Africa's leading agricultural export at 17% of the country's $15.1bn in farm exports in 2025, and growers shipped a record 203.4 million 15kg cartons that year against a target of 260 million by 2032, so the volume looking for a home is real. The association wants the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition to take the tariff question on, and points to progress in the trade agreement talks between the Southern African Customs Union and India as the route to better access. Agbiz chief economist Wandile Sihlobo, who has flagged how hard South African farmers find it to sell into the country's diplomatic partners, called India's move one in the right direction. ### Absa made R12.8bn in the first six months of the year, but almost all of its growth came from South Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/absa-interim-results-south-africa-fihla/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T02:44:59.000Z Absa reported interim results on Tuesday for the six months to 30 June, and at group level the numbers look steady. Headline earnings, the cleaned-up profit figure South African listed companies must report, rose 8% to R12.8bn. Revenue grew 4% to R58.8bn, the interim dividend went up 8% to 850 cents a share, and return on equity edged from 14.8% to 15.0%. Underneath that, one country did nearly all the work. ## Where the growth came from South African headline earnings rose 17% to R9.19bn on 8% revenue growth, lifting the country to 72% of group earnings. Africa Regions fell 10% to R3.62bn. Lower policy rates in key markets squeezed the region's lending margin from 7.82% to 7.35%, while South Africa's held steady at 3.78%, and a stronger rand trimmed the contribution further. This is the first period Absa has reported its three business units on a pan-African basis, a change Kenny Fihla made in January after taking over as chief executive in June 2025\. Personal and Private Banking grew headline earnings 12% to R4.11bn and Business Banking 5% to R2.74bn. Corporate and Investment Banking, the biggest of the three at R6.19bn and 47% of group earnings, managed 1%, held back by pricing pressure at home and a 42% jump in credit impairments in the rest of Africa. ## The bits worth watching Costs grew at the same 4% as revenue, nudging the cost-to-income ratio up to 53.4%. Credit went the other way: impairment charges fell 1% to R7.1bn, the credit loss ratio improved from 1.00% to 0.94%, and non-performing loans dropped 5% to R82bn with every business unit contributing. Capital is comfortable, with the common equity tier 1 ratio at 12.8%, above the top of the board's own 11.0% to 12.5% target range. Absa now serves 13.4 million customers across 17 countries, and lifted technology spend 7% to R8.8bn over the half. Absa expects the South African economy to grow 1.5% this year, up from 1.1% in 2025, and rates to stay unchanged into early 2027\. Its guidance is for low to mid single digit revenue growth, a return on equity of around 15%, and a dividend payout ratio of 55%. The interim dividend is payable on 21 September. ### One of South Africa’s biggest airlines is being sold, and one of its rivals is trying to stop the deal URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cemair-flysafair-harith-lanseria-tribunal/ Last updated: 2026-08-19T02:29:59.000Z Harith Aviation is trying to buy Safair Holdings, which owns and operates FlySafair, from Dublin-based ASL Aviation Holdings. FlySafair carries 67% of domestic air travel in South Africa. The Competition Commission recommended in July that the Competition Tribunal approve the deal with conditions. On Monday, at the Tribunal hearing, rival airline CemAir asked for it to be prohibited instead. ## The overlap CemAir is pointing at Advocate Dwight Snyman, appearing for CemAir, spent his time on shareholdings rather than fares. Harith InfraCo holds about 37.5% of Lanseria International Airport, and Harith InfraCo is one of the two entities that will jointly control Harith Aviation once the deal completes. The Government Employees Pension Fund, represented by the Public Investment Corporation, holds about 62.5% of the same airport. The PIC also owns 20% of Acsa, which runs the country's main airport network, and the state owns all of South African Airways, a FlySafair competitor. Snyman's argument is that the deal ties a substantial domestic airline to a shareholder in the infrastructure its rivals use, creating both the ability and the incentive to coordinate airline and airport strategy in a way that did not exist before. He asked for prohibition, or failing that structural conditions: independent airport governance, removal of common directors, enforceable information firewalls and transparent slot and tariff criteria. Behavioural promises, he said, should not be accepted unless they are objectively measurable, independently monitored and rapidly enforceable. ## What the regulator and the buyer say back The Commission looked at the deal both vertically and horizontally and found no overlap in activities, because the buying group is not a passenger airline and is not active in the aviation value chain. It heard input foreclosure concerns from other airlines and concluded the merged firm has no incentive to act on them: Lanseria is a limited slice of the national airport market, Gauteng still has capacity, and Lanseria has spent billions over the past decade on facilities built to attract more airlines. Its two conditions cover information exchange, and fair, non-discriminatory terms for other airlines at Lanseria. Jerome Wilson, for the merging parties, called CemAir's testimony a dangerous and disturbing thesis and confirmed that no PIC funds are going into the transaction in equity or debt. The PIC would end up with a minuscule interest in FlySafair and no form of control, he said. The South African Cabin Crew Association also made submissions, telling the Tribunal its members are not opposed to the sale and want written assurances against merger-related retrenchments. CemAir does not fly to Lanseria itself; FlySafair is currently the only airline that does, and Airlink plans to start flights from there to Harare in November. The Tribunal now decides. ### South Africa wants its R150-trillion private derivatives market pushed through a clearing house by 2028 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-private-derivatives-central-clearing-2028/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T07:59:59.000Z South Africa's regulators want the country's privately traded derivatives pushed through a central clearing house, and the Reserve Bank has told Bloomberg the final rules should take effect by 2028. A derivative is a contract whose value depends on something else, usually an interest rate or a currency. Most of them here are arranged privately between two parties, which means that if one side collapses the other is left holding the loss on its own. A clearing house stands in the middle of both sides instead. It takes collateral from each of them and absorbs the damage when one cannot pay. That is the whole point of the exercise. ## What is being proposed The Prudential Authority and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority published a joint discussion document on 7 April setting out which contracts should be caught. It works off the Financial Markets Act of 2012, which lets the two authorities decide using factors such as how standardised a product is, how much of it trades and how easily it can be traded. Rand interest rate swaps and forward rate agreements are proposed as the first instruments, with more to be added in phases as industry feedback and market data come in. Comments closed on 5 June. The work sits inside South Africa's Group of Twenty commitments and follows a roadmap the two authorities issued in February 2022\. The first phase, a standard for licensing a local clearing house, is finished. The second built a route for foreign clearing houses and trade repositories to operate here, with some concessions on the rules. ## One clearing house, and it does not cover this The Reserve Bank named its own obstacle in the same statement. None of this binds anybody until a suitable clearing house is licensed and running, and South Africa has licensed exactly one. That is JSE Clear, and only for derivatives listed and traded on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The market it would eventually have to handle is worth more than R150 trillion, or about $9.3 trillion, on the central bank's own numbers. Before the final rules arrive, the two authorities plan to publish a standard for consultation between April 2027 and March 2028, along with a draft naming the products to be considered and the criteria for catching them. That leaves a consultation running into 2028, a market measured in hundreds of trillions of rand, and one licensed clearing house that covers none of it. ### The Roundup — Tuesday, 18 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-tuesday-18-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T03:59:59.000Z Today's edition Sparring Partners Good morning. In May, Spar's board met specially about a petition from its shop owners asking it to remove chairman Mike Bosman. Instead, the board chose to put its full confidence in him on the record. On Monday he resigned, and deputy chair Shirley Zinn resigned with him. The board says both still have its full support. The rest of today runs on the same asterisk: a business rescue declared substantially done at a company still losing money, an earnings collapse its owner says is accounting rather than trading, and a listing being priced off revenue nobody expects before 2028\. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--28-.png) --- SHELF LIFE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-spar--1.png) ## Spar's chairman and deputy chair resigned on the same morning, with the board's full support Mike Bosman took the Spar chair in December 2022, in the middle of a governance crisis that had just cost the group its previous chairman and chief executive within a month of each other. On 8 May the Spar National Council, the elected representatives of the independent shop owners who actually run the stores, petitioned the board to remove him. The board met specially, considered it, and placed its full confidence in him on the record. On Monday morning Bosman resigned, effective immediately, and Shirley Zinn resigned as deputy chair alongside him. **Who is where now:** - Lwazi Koyana, who chairs the risk committee, is interim chairman while the nominations committee runs a permanent search. - That committee has said what it is looking for: directors with direct retail and independent-retailer experience. - The board reaffirmed its full support for Spar's chief executive and finance chief, and says the turnaround plan and current guidance are unaffected. Zinn joined the board in February 2023 and ran the pay committee, where she brought in rules letting Spar claw back executive bonuses. The share was about 5% lower by late morning on Monday, at R43.20. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/spar-chairman-deputy-chair-resign/) --- STAMP OF APPROVAL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-post-office--1.png) ## The Post Office wants its rescue declared over, and its own boss says it is not fixed The South African Post Office went into business rescue in July 2023 to stop it being liquidated. Three years on, its rescue practitioners have asked the Pretoria High Court to declare the plan substantially implemented and end the process, having handed the organisation to a new board in June. The balance sheet backs them: what it owed creditors fell from about R8.7 billion to R440 million, and the books moved from a R7.9 billion hole to R840 million in the black. That cost 4,342 jobs and 366 branches. Acting chief executive Fathima Gany calls what comes next high care, a patient just out of intensive care and watched closely so it stays alive. The business still lost R71 million in the year to March 2026, and the R3.8 billion second slice of government money the rescue plan was built on never arrived. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/post-office-business-rescue-exit-high-care/) --- BAGEL BITE **Who patented the first loudspeaker design in 1877?** **A.** Ernst Siemens **B.** Chester W. Rice **C.** Edward W. Kellogg --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-blu-label--1.png) **Blu Label says its earnings fell more than 80% because of accounting, not trading.** It took control of Cell C in September, counted the operator inside the group for three months, then sold down at Cell C's listing. The bill landed on Friday: earnings per share swing from a 276.52 cent profit to a loss of about 540 cents. Blu Label also published its own figure excluding Cell C, and that came in at 75.33 cents, below the range it was meant to explain. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/blu-label-earnings-cell-c-accounting/) **South Africa's biggest apartment developer is heading off the JSE.** Balwin's founders and the Government Employees Pension Fund are offering R4.35 a share in cash to take it private, roughly 41% above its average price over the previous 180 trading days. Balwin listed in 2015 to make raising money easier; eleven years on, the consortium's reasons are thin trading, a share price below book value and the cost of staying listed. One analyst's verdict on listed home builders here: the standalone experiment has effectively ended. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/balwin-jse-delisting-pic-buyout/) **Wall Street is pricing Anthropic's listing off the revenue it hopes to earn in 2028.** Investors usually work off next year's sales. Reuters reports the AI company is telling people it could book $190 billion to $200 billion of revenue that year, against the $47 billion annual pace it disclosed in May. The reference points being used are Palantir, valued at 53 times this year's expected sales, and SpaceX and Cloudflare at 41.6 times. Anthropic filed its listing papers confidentially in June and has not commented. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/anthropic-ipo-2028-revenue-forecast/) **Sanlam Investments handed nearly R400 billion of stock-picking money to Ninety One and is backing two ideas with the rest.** The transfer went through in February and Sanlam Investments still manages more than R1.2 trillion. Chief executive Carl Roothman told News24 the trigger was the 2022 rule change lifting how much of a retirement fund may go offshore, from 30% to 45%. He now sees the growth in index funds, which hold about 11% of South African unit trust money against more than half in the United States, and in private lending packaged for global investors. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/sanlam-investments-index-funds-private-credit/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--24-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--27-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-FFVvv9t%5F-bH%5FYuun6&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A.** **Ernst Siemens** Siemens filed German Patent No. 2355 on December 14, 1877, for a moving coil transducer using a diaphragm to reproduce sound. His design built on the moving coil principle he had patented earlier in 1874 and became an important foundation for dynamic loudspeakers. Decades later, Chester W. Rice and Edward W. Kellogg developed the moving coil direct radiator loudspeaker that closely resembles the basic design widely used today. --- That's your Tuesday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### The South African Post Office wants its rescue declared over, but it's still losing money URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/post-office-business-rescue-exit-high-care/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T03:44:59.000Z The people who have run the South African Post Office for the last three years would like to hand it back. On 12 June its business rescue practitioners, Anoosh Rooplal and Juanito Damons, asked the high court in Pretoria to declare the plan substantially implemented and end the process. Ten days later they handed the organisation to a new board as a business that can keep trading, however a judge still has to agree. Business rescue is a debt procedure. The Post Office went into it in July 2023 to stop itself being liquidated, and what it does is hold creditors off while somebody restructures what is owed. That narrow test has gone well, but what rescue cannot do is make anyone post a letter. The Post Office owed its creditors about R8.7bn when it went in. They have since been paid 12 cents for every rand they were owed, which sounds pretty rough until you see the alternative: liquidation was expected to return about 4 cents. Nearly all of it was paid by August 2024\. What is still owing today is R440m. ## 4,342 jobs and 366 branches The bill was paid in people and buildings. A retrenchment process cut 4,342 employees by April 2024 and took the monthly wage bill from R211.9m to R115m. Of the branches, 366 closed for good and 657 are still open, some kept because they are the only post office a rural community has. None of that made the Post Office a better business. Revenue for the year to March 2026 came in at R1.54bn, up R2m on the year before, or about a tenth of a percent. The loss narrowed to R71m from R514m, the smallest in years. But it is still a loss, after the debt has been cleared and the wage bill nearly halved. Acting chief executive Fathima Gany calls the next phase high care, the hospital ward after intensive care. She says the Post Office is at its tipping point, where cutting further would mean shutting it down. ## The R3.8bn that never came Government put in R2.4bn. A second instalment of R3.8bn written into the plan has never been paid, Business Day reports, and in February parliament's own legal advisers said it was not a binding commitment. Without it, the practitioners say, parts of the plan could not be done. The IT and broadband upgrades it was meant to fund now sit with the communications department and the new board. Gany's answer to what a national post office is for now is access: logistics, moving money and government services for people that commercial arithmetic does not reach. It is also still South Africa's designated postal operator, obliged to deliver basic post to everyone regardless of where they live or what they earn. That obligation does not lapse when the rescue does. No date has been set to hear the application. ### Spar's board backed its chairman in May. On Monday he resigned. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/spar-chairman-deputy-chair-resign/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T03:29:59.000Z Spar's board spent May defending Mike Bosman. The independent retailers who own its stores had written to ask for him to go, and the board met specially, considered the request and put its full confidence in him on the record. On Monday morning he resigned anyway, effective the same day. Shirley Zinn resigned as deputy chair alongside him. The board says both still have its full support, and that each of them decided this for themselves. Its wording: "taking into consideration the context of the period that both these directors and the Board have recently experienced." The pressure did not come from the share register. It came from the shops. Spar does not own the stores that carry its name: independent retailers do, and they buy their stock from Spar because it suits them to, an arrangement the group calls voluntary trading. That makes them customers rather than shareholders. It is a business built on store owners choosing you every week, which works beautifully right up until they stop. Those retailers elect the Spar National Council to speak for them, and on 8 May the council wrote to the board asking it to get Bosman's resignation with immediate effect. It was careful about it. Nothing against the man personally, it said: he had come to stand for a bad few years, and for the gap that had opened between head office and the shop floor. ## Poland, Switzerland, and a computer system in KwaZulu-Natal The list behind the letter is longer than the letter. Spar went into Poland and Switzerland, struggled in both and has now left both. Closer to home, it put a new computer system into its KwaZulu-Natal distribution centre and it worked so badly that retailers simply bought their stock elsewhere, which for a wholesaler is the one thing that cannot happen. Bosman did not arrive to a clean desk. He took the chair in December 2022, weeks after the previous chairman and the chief executive left within a month of each other, then ran the company himself as executive chairman for most of 2023 because there was nobody else to do it. Zinn arrived in February 2023 and was deputy chair by June. She ran the pay committee, where she brought in rules letting Spar claw back executive bonuses after they had been paid, and pushed up the number of shares directors are expected to own. ## The chair Koyana is keeping warm Lwazi Koyana, who chairs the risk committee, has the job in the meantime. The nominations committee is out looking for permanent directors and has been specific about what it wants at the top of the list: people who have actually run retail, and independent retail in particular. The board says it is fully behind chief executive Reeza Isaacs and finance chief Megan Pydigadu, and that neither the turnaround plan nor the forecasts have moved. The share was down 4.93% at R43.20 by late morning. Koyana holds the chair until somebody permanent turns up. ### Sanlam Investments handed R400bn of assets to Ninety One - and it’s betting on two ideas for its next phase URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sanlam-investments-index-funds-private-credit/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T03:14:59.000Z Sanlam Investments finished moving nearly R400bn of assets to Ninety One on 2 February, formalising a partnership the two managers first announced in 2024\. It kept more than R1.2 trillion, so this is less a retreat than a decision about which parts of the job it still wants to do. The trigger was a rule change. In 2022 the government amended Regulation 28 of the Pension Funds Act, which governs where retirement money may be invested, lifting the offshore limit from 30% to 45%. Chief executive Carl Roothman told News24 that Sanlam read this as a sign that serious money was going to leave the country, and that catching those flows needed a genuinely strong offshore manager. It looked at buying one, building one and outsourcing to one, then partnered with Ninety One, which runs about 184bn pounds, or R4 trillion, more than half of it outside Africa. ## Index funds, and how far behind we are Roothman is backing two things with what stayed. The first is index tracking, where Satrix already holds more than 40% of the South African market. The room is in how small that market still is. Index products account for about 11% of the money in South African unit trusts, where the United States went past 50% in 2024\. His own caveat is that this kind of growth moves with the market rather than ahead of it. ## The cheque size problem The one he backs harder is private credit, which is lending to companies outside the banking system, and he wants it built as an emerging-market strategy rather than a South African one. The reason is the size of the cheques. Large allocators in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia are not interested in writing $10m or $20m. They want to place $200m or $300m and have it be 5% or 10% of a portfolio, and a fund limited to South Africa cannot absorb that. This is where Roothman thinks a large insurer has the edge, because Sanlam can seed a fund with its own long-term money, co-invest, and pull other capital in behind it. He calls that the group's biggest competitive advantage right now. The sector he names is green hydrogen, a clean fuel made by splitting water using electricity from wind or solar. South Africa has sun, wind and land, Europe needs another supplier, and that combination is where he wants Sanlam to be big. ### Anthropic could be valued using a $200 billion revenue figure it thinks it will achieve in 2028 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/anthropic-ipo-2028-revenue-forecast/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T02:59:59.000Z Investors pricing a new listing usually look about a year ahead. For Anthropic, Reuters reports, the bankers have gone to 2028\. The company is telling people it could book $190bn to $200bn of revenue that year, according to two people who have seen its financials. Against the $47bn annual pace it disclosed in May, that is more than four times the business it is today. The tool being used is a revenue multiple, which prices a company at some number of times its sales rather than its profits. That is ordinary enough for fast-growing software companies without a settled profit record. Reaching two years out is not ordinary, and the people involved put it down to how quickly Anthropic is growing and how little there is to measure it against while it is still spending heavily on the infrastructure that runs AI. ## What they are measuring it against The comparisons are public companies. Palantir trades at 53 times this year's expected revenue, which makes it one of the most expensive stocks on Wall Street, and SpaceX and Cloudflare both sit at 41.6 times expected 2026 revenue. There is precedent for the long view. Backers of Cerebras Systems pointed at 2028 revenue before it listed this year, and SpaceX projections ran to 2029 ahead of its record June debut. ## The curve the price depends on Anthropic's run rate was about $9bn at the end of 2025 and passed $47bn by May. It has projected at least $10.9bn of revenue for the second quarter of 2026, more than double the quarter before, and a first quarterly operating profit of $559m. It says the run rate has grown more than tenfold a year for three years running. The valuation rests on that continuing, and on today's spending on chips, training and staff turning into a much larger business with much better margins later. Anthropic filed its prospectus confidentially with United States regulators in June, and finance chief Krishna Rao has been running early investor meetings that CNBC reports have not touched specific numbers or a valuation. The $2 trillion figure attached to the listing comes from investors' own workings rather than from the company. David Merkel of Aleph Investments told Reuters that Anthropic could reach it, and that he wonders whether it would stay there. The company declined to comment. ### The developer behind some of South Africa’s biggest apartment estates is leaving the JSE after 11 years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/balwin-jse-delisting-pic-buyout/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T02:44:59.000Z Balwin Properties listed on the JSE in 2015 to make it easier to raise money and to give its shareholders somewhere to trade. Eleven years later its founders want it back. A consortium led by chief executive Steve Brookes, with the Public Investment Corporation buying on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund, is offering R4.35 a share in cash for everything it does not already own. That is 40.95% more than Balwin's average traded price over the 180 days to 19 May. It is also less than half of what Balwin says its own assets are worth, which at the end of February was 976.89c a share. Brookes's answer to that gap is that the money is not sitting anywhere. It is tied up in a development pipeline that takes years to become finished flats, and matching your funding to that timeline is easier off a public market than on one. ## Who owns what afterwards Balwin has 519.4 million shares in issue and the consortium already holds 261.3 million, so the cash covers about 258 million. Holders of 63.51% of those have already agreed to accept or vote in favour. If it goes through, the pension fund ends up with 49.3% of the buying company and Brookes's vehicle with 33.6%, the JSE and A2X listings fall away, and nobody in the consortium takes money off the table. The scheme has until 17h00 on 20 November to meet or waive its conditions. ## Why home builders keep going Balwin is not leaving alone. Indluplace delisted in 2023, and Calgro M3 shut its construction division in 2020 and handed the work to contractors. Business Day's analysis puts the pressure at higher interest rates, slower demand for new homes and construction costs eating into margins. The structural problem is who buys listed property in the first place. Garreth Elston of Golden Section Capital says the market is built for institutions that want predictable recurring payouts, which is not what a company that builds flats and sells them can offer. Analyst Ridwaan Loonat makes the same point from the other end: rent secured by a lease is easy to forecast, while a developer's income moves with consumer confidence, mortgage availability and interest rates. Elston's view is that the standalone listed residential experiment here has effectively ended, and that what is left of it on the JSE will sit inside the big diversified funds with balance sheets long enough to ride the cycle. ### Blu Label’s earnings have plunged more than 80% after its Cell C deal - but it says accounting is to blame URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/blu-label-earnings-cell-c-accounting/ Last updated: 2026-08-18T02:29:59.000Z Blu Label Unlimited told shareholders on Friday that earnings for the year to 31 May will fall by more than 80%. The prepaid airtime and ticketing group, which used to be called Blue Label Telecoms, says almost none of that is about how much airtime it sold, and points instead at what happened to its stake in Cell C. The problem is a rule about ownership. When a company takes control of another one it has to fold that business into its own accounts, and when it gives control up it has to take it out again and book the difference. Blu Label did both to Cell C inside a single financial year. Its subsidiary The Prepaid Company got competition approval to take control of Cell C on 3 September last year, ran the mobile operator inside the group for about three months, and booked an R841m gain on revaluing the stake it already held. At the end of November, alongside Cell C's own listing, it sold down to 49.47% and handed Comm Equipment Company to Cell C, which put the whole thing back outside the group. Headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure listed companies here have to report, are guided at 79.02c to 88.14c, down from 455.96c. Earnings per share go from a 276.52c profit to a loss of about 540c. ## The number that was meant to help So Blu Label published a version with Cell C and Comm Equipment Company stripped out: R9.4bn of revenue, R677m of net profit and core headline earnings of 75.33c a share. That sits below the 83.58c to 92.82c range it was published to explain. Taking Cell C out of the maths makes the earnings smaller, which suggests Cell C was adding to them in the months it sat inside. ## The second half Then there is the shape of the year. At the halfway mark Blu Label reported adjusted revenue of R5bn and core earnings of 44.19c. Set that against the full-year guidance and the six months to May come out at roughly R4.4bn of revenue and about 31c of core earnings, weaker on every line. The shares closed just under 1% down on Friday at R8.12 and are off almost 22% so far this year. The audited figures are due on 26 August. ### The Reserve Bank has a date for moving the rest of the world off Jibar URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-reserve-bank-has-a-date-for-moving-the-rest-of-the-world-off-jibar/ Last updated: 2026-08-17T07:59:59.000Z South Africa's central bank is leaning on London to finish a job the local market has largely already done. The Reserve Bank says LCH SwapClear, the London Stock Exchange Group's clearing house, plans to convert all outstanding Jibar-linked derivatives contracts into Zaronia-linked instruments on 21 November. Jibar, the Johannesburg Interbank Average Rate, is the reference rate South African lenders have priced off for decades. Zaronia, the South African Rand Overnight Index Average, is its replacement, and unlike Jibar it is based on actual transactions, which puts it in the same family as the euro and sterling overnight rates that replaced Libor. ## A hard stop at the end of December The clock is not negotiable. On 3 December 2025 the Reserve Bank announced that publication of all tenors of Jibar will permanently cease immediately following a final publication on 31 December 2026\. ISDA confirmed shortly afterwards that the announcement was an Index Cessation Event under its 2021 interest rate derivatives definitions, and the fixed spread adjustments relevant to the Zaronia-based fallback arrangements were published. LCH set out its approach in a member circular in February. Any cleared Jibar contract still outstanding at the point of conversion, and relying on a fixing that occurs after 31 December 2026, falls in scope, and each one is converted into a Zaronia equivalent. The Reserve Bank says the November event follows a discount curve switch LCH already completed in April, and will move the existing cleared contracts onto a newly constructed Zaronia curve. ## The gap is offshore, not at home The reason for the London route is jurisdictional. South African market participants are bound by a domestic directive prohibiting the creation of new Jibar-linked contracts. Offshore participants are not, and their transition has lagged the local market accordingly. Zaronia-linked swaps made up about 30% of total rand volumes registered in July, up from 20% the previous month, on the central bank's own figures, even after the UK regulator said in July that affected firms should already be well advanced in their transition plans. Converting the cleared book in a single event does in one day what persuasion has been doing slowly. Every cleared Jibar position that survives to 21 November becomes a Zaronia position, whether or not the holder had got round to switching it. What is left after that is the uncleared, bilateral corner of the market, and six weeks before Jibar is published for the last time. ### The Roundup — Monday, 17 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-monday-17-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-17T04:00:31.000Z Today's edition Shell Shocked Good morning. Shell spent twelve years and more than a billion rand hunting oil off the Wild Coast, and on Friday the Constitutional Court cancelled the lot. Enjoy the clarity, because it is the last of it today: SAA will not say why its acting boss is placed on special leave, the regulator will not say when its do-not-call list switches on, and Uber will not say which four cities get its driverless taxis. Everyone else is keeping their options open. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--27-.png) --- RIGHT OF REFUSAL ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-shell-1.png) ## Shell has lost its Wild Coast exploration right, and the renewal route with it Shell sold its South African petrol stations last month to lean harder into exploration. On Friday the Constitutional Court took the exploration away. The court set aside the offshore right Shell and Impact Africa have held off the Wild Coast since 2014, and closed the renewal route a 2024 appeal ruling had left open. Between them the two companies had already put more than R1 billion into it. The problem was never the geology: a 2022 High Court ruling found the right was granted unlawfully because the fishing and farming communities along the Eastern Cape coast were never properly consulted. **Where it leaves Shell:** - The 2014 right and its renewals stay cancelled, and the renewal route the appeal court left open is closed. - Justice Jody Kollapen, writing for the majority, held that the money already spent cannot outweigh how seriously the law was broken. - One opening remains: if the freeze on new applications lifts, Shell and Impact Africa can apply again, on the same footing as anyone else. Sustaining the Wild Coast and Natural Justice ran the case for five years. They now have a right that stays cancelled, rather than one waiting to be renewed. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/shell-has-lost-its-wild-coast-exploration-right-and-the-renewal-route-with-it/) --- CALL WAITING ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-spam-calls-1.png) ## South African phones took 17.47 billion unwanted calls in six months The phone rings, the number is unfamiliar, and you let it go. South Africans did that a lot more often this year. Truecaller, the caller identification app, counted 17.47 billion unwanted calls to local phones between January and June, up 25.2% in a year. Across 63.1 million people, that is close to 270 calls each. The fix has been written down since April: marketers must register with the National Consumer Commission and check its opt-out register monthly, or face penalties up to R1 million. The Commission says the launch is very soon, and has not named a day. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/south-african-phones-took-17-47-billion-unwanted-calls-in-six-months/) --- BAGEL BITE **What part of the human eye controls how much light enters?** **A.** Cornea **B.** Retina **C.** Iris --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-SAA--1-.png) **South African Airways is on its third chief executive in under four months.** The board put acting group CEO Matshela Seshibe on special leave with immediate effect on Friday, pending an internal process it would not describe, and cited its commitment to governance and accountability. Chief legal officer Koekie Mbeki, a ten-year SAA veteran, takes the job immediately. The Auditor-General could not give an opinion on the airline’s last set of books, which reported an operating profit of R336 million. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/saas-third-chief-executive-in-four-months-started-on-friday/) **Edward Kieswetter left the tax office in April and by May was running his own company.** After seven years as commissioner of the South African Revenue Service, he is now chief executive of vEKtor Solutions Laboratory, which he says codifies forty years of fixing broken things. That record runs from an Eskom power station he managed in his thirties to a tax agency he took over after state capture. He is not selling slide decks; traditional consultancies, he says, are becoming irrelevant. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/edward-kieswetter-left-the-tax-office-in-april-and-by-may-was-running-his-own-company/) **Truworths told the market its sales and earnings both fell, and the share rose 5%.** February’s budget and cooling inflation had South African shoppers looking up, the retailer says, until conflict in the Middle East pushed oil prices higher and took the money straight back out of their pockets. Group sales for the year to 28 June fell 0.9% to R21.8 billion, and earnings per share will land 2% to 4% lower. Investors bought it anyway, sending the share up 5.13% on the day. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/truworths-told-the-market-its-sales-and-earnings-both-fell-and-the-share-rose-5/) **Uber and Pony.ai are putting more than 2,000 driverless taxis into Europe.** The pair announced on Friday that the cars will go into four European cities, on top of the service they already run in Zagreb with a local operator. They named neither the cities nor a date. Pony.ai supplies the self-driving technology, Uber supplies the app, payments and customers, and local firms handle the cleaning and charging. For scale, Waymo runs about 5,000 robotaxis worldwide, most of them in the United States. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/uber-and-pony-ai-are-putting-2-000-driverless-taxis-into-europe-and-will-not-say-where/) --- WEATHER ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--23-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--26-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P-9kpQFNuJ1u400sDfl&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. Iris** The iris is the coloured part of the eye that controls the size of the pupil, which is the opening that lets light inside. In bright conditions, the iris makes the pupil smaller to reduce the amount of light entering. In darker conditions, it makes the pupil larger so more light can reach the retina and help you see. --- That’s your Monday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### South African phones took 17.47 billion unwanted calls in six months URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-african-phones-took-17-47-billion-unwanted-calls-in-six-months/ Last updated: 2026-08-25T05:41:38.000Z Spam callers had a good six months in South Africa. Truecaller, the app that names the number calling you, put 17.47 billion spam calls on South African phones between January and June, 25.2% more than the same stretch last year. That comes to almost 270 calls each. That figure is an estimate rather than a tally. Truecaller does not sit on the networks counting traffic. Instead, it measures what its own South African users receive and scales it up to the whole population, which makes 17.47 billion a well-informed projection, not a headcount. ## Spoofing, AI, and a bank that isn't your bank Two things are doing the work, says Mmathebe Zvobwo, Truecaller's director of market development in South Africa. The first is caller ID spoofing, where the caller fakes the number that shows on your screen. The second is generative AI, which makes the conversation that follows sound like a real person. Together, she says, they "industrialise deception at scale". A lot of it arrives dressed as your bank's fraud department, which is the one call you have been trained to take seriously. "Scam networks are not slowing down," Zvobwo said. "If anything, they are becoming more sophisticated, using spoofing and AI-driven tactics to appear legitimate." Take a look at the supply and it just keeps refreshing. Truecaller's users flagged 559 million new spam numbers between March and June alone, and the texts are growing faster than the calls, at 3.71 billion for the half. The one thing that improved, though, was us. The share of flagged spam calls that South Africans actually answered fell from 10.2% last year to 7.8%. ## The register that has not started In April the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition published direct marketing rules under the Consumer Protection Act. Every direct marketer must register with the National Consumer Commission, check its opt-out list monthly, and leave alone anyone who is on it. Registration costs R2,574 to start and R1,930.50 a year after that. Marketers who don't register may not call at all, and ignoring the list carries a penalty of up to R1 million or a tenth of annual turnover, whichever is bigger. South Africa has had an opt-out list for years, run by the industry's own association, and signing up to it was optional. This one is not. The Commission has opened applications, both for marketers and for consumers who want off the phone. Spokesperson Phetho Ntaba told News24 the regulator is tying up loose ends and the system will launch very soon. In other words, four months after the rules were published, no launch date has been announced. ### Shell has lost its Wild Coast exploration right, and the renewal route with it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shell-has-lost-its-wild-coast-exploration-right-and-the-renewal-route-with-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-17T03:29:59.000Z Shell sold its South African petrol station business last month, to Adnoc Distribution for R16 billion, as part of a worldwide retreat from low-margin fuel retail and a pivot into exploration. On Friday the Constitutional Court took the exploration away. The court set aside the offshore exploration right granted to Impact Africa in 2014 and later held jointly with Shell interests, covering a large area off the Eastern Cape's Wild Coast, and it closed the renewal route a 2024 Supreme Court of Appeal ruling had left open. Between them the two companies had already put in more than R1 billion before the High Court in Makhanda interdicted the work five years ago. ## The problem was never the geology In 2022 the Eastern Cape Division of the High Court found the right and its subsequent renewals had been granted unlawfully, because decision-makers failed to weigh the livelihoods, customary practices and the spiritual and cultural rights of coastal communities. The Supreme Court of Appeal agreed in 2024 that the grant was unlawful, but suspended the setting-aside order and allowed a pending third renewal to proceed subject to a fresh round of public participation. The environmental groups argued that consultation during a renewal cannot retrospectively cure a failure to consult before the right was awarded in the first place. The Constitutional Court agreed the appeal court's remedy could not stand. Shell and Impact Africa had argued that cancelling the right entirely would cause substantial financial prejudice, and that further consultation during the renewal could provide an equitable solution. Writing for the majority, Justice Jody Kollapen held that the financial prejudice to the companies from setting the decisions aside while a moratorium is in place cannot outweigh the gravity of the unlawfulness, especially where there is no demonstrable public interest in preserving the unlawful right. "They brought a flawed application which was unlawfully granted," the judgment said. ## What is actually left The ruling is narrower than it sounds. If and when the moratorium is lifted or challenged, Shell and Impact Africa may re-apply for a technical co-operation permit afresh, in the same position as any other party. Until then the right and its renewals stay cancelled, and the renewal route is shut. Cormac Cullinan, of the firm representing Greenpeace and Natural Justice, described the litigation before the ruling as probably the highest profile environmental case in South African history. A separate case, with different parties, ran the other way the day before: on Thursday 13 August the Western Cape High Court dismissed a challenge to a TGS Geophysical seismic survey in the Orange Basin, and criticised the applicants sharply for how they had run it. ### Uber and Pony.ai are putting 2,000 driverless taxis into Europe and will not say where URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/uber-and-pony-ai-are-putting-2-000-driverless-taxis-into-europe-and-will-not-say-where/ Last updated: 2026-08-17T03:14:59.000Z Uber and the Chinese self-driving company Pony.ai announced on Friday that they plan to put more than 2,000 robotaxis into Europe. The vehicles go into four cities beyond Zagreb, where the pair already run what they call Europe's first commercial robotaxi service alongside the Croatian mobility company Verne. They did not name the four cities and did not give a timeline, saying only that details would be announced in phases. The expanded deal also covers plans to deploy in the Middle East. The division of labour is the substance of the announcement. Pony.ai supplies its Level 4 autonomous driving technology, the tier at which the car drives itself without a person ready to take over, plus the rider-experience and operational expertise it has built across earlier deployments. Uber supplies the customer side: booking, payment and customer service through its platform, alongside its growing network of human drivers. Day-to-day fleet work, meaning maintenance, cleaning and charging, may be carried out by established local fleet partners chosen for each market, and vehicle funding and ownership can sit with different partners depending on the market. ## Why the fleet number matters Scale decides who survives in robotaxis. A larger fleet gathers more data, which demonstrates safety to regulators and lifts operational efficiency, and wider availability pulls in more riders. For comparison, Waymo runs a fleet of around 5,000 vehicles, primarily in the United States, and is testing rides in London. Chinese rivals Baidu Apollo Go and WeRide are ramping up their own European plans and tests, and WeRide and Uber said in June that they would launch Spain's first robotaxi pilot in Madrid later this year. ## Uber is collecting partners Uber has partnered with more than 30 autonomous vehicle companies over the past several years. Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi has said the goal is to become the world's leading commercialisation platform for autonomous vehicles, partly by gathering a super set of data it can share with partners to speed up development. The Pony.ai relationship dates to May 2025, when the two first announced plans to bring Pony.ai robotaxis onto the Uber platform in international markets, and the Zagreb service followed this year. On Thursday Uber's Japanese subsidiary signed an agreement with a local taxi operator to manage daily fleet operations for a robotaxi test deployment in Tokyo later this year. Pony.ai says it already runs paid, fully driverless services in China's four tier-one cities, and that it has reached break-even unit economics in several of them. ### Truworths told the market its sales and earnings both fell, and the share rose 5% URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/truworths-told-the-market-its-sales-and-earnings-both-fell-and-the-share-rose-5/ Last updated: 2026-08-17T02:59:59.000Z Truworths had a consumer recovery this year, and it lasted a matter of days. The retailer told the market on Thursday 13 August that group retail sales for the 52 weeks to 28 June fell 0.9% to R21.8 billion, against R22.0 billion a year earlier, and that earnings per share would land 2% to 4% lower, at 715c to 730c versus 745.2c. Headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure JSE-listed companies must report, falls by the same 2% to 4%, at 722c to 737c against 752.1c. The share price rose 5.13% that day to R54.95, its biggest move in about four months. ## A recovery overtaken within days The company's account of the year is unusually specific about when it turned. The second half opened on a more constructive footing: moderating inflation, the prospect of further interest rate relief and a favourable reception for the national budget in late February all pointed towards a recovery in consumer confidence. Within days, Truworths says, that outlook was overtaken by external events, as escalating conflict in the Middle East drove global oil prices sharply higher and renewed inflationary pressure, and the higher fuel costs that followed weighed on the disposable income of consumers who had only just started to feel some relief. The credit book shows the squeeze. Active account holders able to purchase fell to 77%, from 79% a year earlier, while gross trade receivables on the active portfolio edged up 0.6% to R6.5 billion and overdue balances held at 17% of the book. Account sales stayed at 46% of group retail sales, and the group tightened its credit-granting approach even as demand for its aspirational merchandise grew. ## South Africa down, the United Kingdom up in pounds Truworths Africa, which also owns Daniel Hechter, Naartjie and Earthchild, saw retail sales fall 2.1% to R14.2 billion, with cash sales down 5.0% and online sales up 21.5% to 8.1% of segment sales. Office, the UK shoe chain, grew retail sales 4.9% in sterling to £334.1 million, but only 1.3% in rands to R7.6 billion, because its second-half sales were translated at an average of R21.90 to the pound against R23.97 the year before. Office grew trading space 17.8% year on year. The audited results are scheduled for release on or about Thursday 27 August. ### Edward Kieswetter left the tax office in April and by May was running his own company URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/edward-kieswetter-left-the-tax-office-in-april-and-by-may-was-running-his-own-company/ Last updated: 2026-08-17T02:45:00.000Z Edward Kieswetter spent more than seven years as commissioner of the South African Revenue Service and stepped down at the end of April. According to his LinkedIn profile, he became chief executive of his own company, vEKtor Solutions Laboratory, in May. He confirmed the venture in an interview with the broadcaster Bruce Whitfield for the podcast *So, you think you want to be a CEO?* The pitch is a career, codified. Kieswetter said he had established a company that will codify 40 years of experience, with incontestable evidence of having been able to fix broken things as a young power station manager through to the Commission of SARS. The firm advises corporate clients and state institutions on integrity, strategic leadership and performance excellence. ## Forty years of broken things The record he is selling runs a long way back. He recounted the lessons learnt as an 18-year-old church leader, as an engineering lecturer at Athlone Technical College, and later from running Eskom's Wilge Power Station near Emalahleni in his early 30s. He joined FirstRand in 2000, where a plan to compress an 18-month programme into 100 days worked commercially and cost 1,800 people their jobs. He decided then that the next time he had to retrench people, he should resign first, because leaders should see far enough ahead to make the decisions that could avert that catastrophe. At Alexander Forbes he inherited a R1 billion civil claim, 21 criminal charges and a potential R3.5 billion tax bill, over accusations that the company had helped strip pension fund surpluses from retirement funds in the 1990s. Those claims were eventually settled, and he led the group through a financial turnaround, rebuilt its reputation and oversaw its relisting on the JSE. Then came SARS in 2019, and the governance failures and state capture corruption laid out in the findings of the Nugent Commission of Inquiry. In his last year as commissioner, the revenue service collected a record R2 trillion. ## Not selling slide decks Kieswetter is positioning the new firm against the industry it most resembles. He said he was excited to lead the venture, that traditional consultancies are becoming irrelevant, and that vEKtor Solutions Lab goes beyond a glossy presentation and strategic advice. The work, he said, is about building meaningful AI-enabled practical solutions alongside teams, with evidence-based and demonstrable proof, and about closing the execution gap. On the new job itself he was blunt: again there is no job description, so he only has himself to blame if it turns out to be a nightmare. SARS is now run by his former deputy, Johnstone Makhubu. ### SAA's third chief executive in four months started on Friday URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/saas-third-chief-executive-in-four-months-started-on-friday/ Last updated: 2026-08-17T02:29:59.000Z South African Airways has a new acting chief executive, and it is the third person to hold the job since April. The board announced on Friday 14 August that acting group CEO Matshela Seshibe had been placed on special leave with immediate effect, pending the outcome of an internal process. Koekie Mbeki, the airline's chief legal officer, takes over. Nobody has said what the internal process is about. The board's statement did not disclose its nature, or say whether it relates to any allegations against Seshibe, and offered only that the decision reflected its commitment to good governance, accountability, integrity and leadership. Chairperson Sedzani Mudau said the board recognised the responsibility entrusted to it and would continue to act decisively and in the best interests of the airline and all of its stakeholders. ## How SAA got here in four months Seshibe stepped up in April, after Professor John Lamola resigned as chief executive. That handover came in the middle of a broader management shake-up: the airline's chief financial officer took early retirement and three independent board members resigned. Before the acting job, Seshibe ran Air Chefs, SAA's catering subsidiary, and had sat on the SAA board since 2024\. Earlier this year the airline publicly defended his appointment, saying claims raised about a previous role had been fully considered and conclusively resolved, with the allegations found to be without merit. ## The books behind the boardroom The upheaval followed SAA's 2024/25 results, which drew scrutiny after the Auditor-General issued a disclaimer audit, the outcome an auditor reaches when it cannot give an opinion on the numbers at all. The airline had reported an operating profit of R336 million and a net profit of R155 million. The Auditor-General also found severe supply-chain governance lapses, noting that SAA did not apply the required preference point system for several bids and routinely bought goods and services through processes that were not fair, equitable, transparent and competitive. Air Chefs was among the units flagged, for awarding quotations to bidders who did not score the highest points and for lacking sufficient evidence files for the contracts it awarded. Mbeki arrives with ten years at SAA behind her, and the board says that institutional knowledge will provide leadership, continuity and stability while the airline executes its strategy. The search for a permanent chief executive, announced when Lamola left in April, is still running. ### South Africa's factories shrank again in June, and the economy may feel it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-factories-shrank-again-in-june-and-the-economy-will-feel-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-15T05:59:59.000Z South Africa's factories had another rough month. Manufacturing production fell 1.7% in June compared with a year earlier, according to Statistics South Africa, an improvement on the revised 4.4% drop in May but still a decline. The data confirmed a second straight quarterly contraction for the sector, which points to yet another drag on economic growth after a soft start to the year. ## Where the weakness was The damage was concentrated in a few industries. Food and beverages output fell 3.9% and knocked a full percentage point off the headline figure, while wood, paper, publishing and printing slumped 8.9%, its twelfth month of decline in a row, and shaved off another 0.9 of a percentage point. Motor vehicles, parts and other transport equipment were the third-biggest drag, down 5.3% over the year. It was not all red: seven of the sector's 10 divisions were actually stronger than a year earlier, but their gains were not enough to lift the total into positive territory. ## The quarter, and the bigger picture Month to month there was a flicker of life, with seasonally adjusted output up 0.9% in June after a revised 1.0% rise in May. But over the April-to-June quarter production still fell 1.5%, with seven of the 10 divisions contracting, following a 0.8% first-quarter drop that had already helped hold GDP growth to an underwhelming 0.5%. That makes factory output a likely drag on second-quarter growth too. Manufacturing now makes up about 13% of the economy, down from around 23% in the 1990s, a long slide that leaves less cushion each time output dips. Economists are not expecting a quick turn. Investec's Lara Hodes points to elevated uncertainty and higher input costs tied to the war in the Middle East, alongside high administered prices at home and logistics inefficiencies that weigh on exports, as pressures unlikely to lift soon. With the sector confirmed as another dampener on second-quarter GDP, and manufacturing having already fallen in the first quarter, the June figure reads less like a one-off stumble than a symptom of an industry that has been shrinking within the economy for three decades. ### The Roundup — Friday, 14 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-14-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-14T04:00:51.000Z Today's edition Cart Blanche Good morning. Some things look unstoppable right up until you ask what’s actually keeping them moving. Today’s stories are full of momentum - businesses racing ahead, markets suddenly finding their feet, and technology getting smarter by the week. But underneath all that progress are a few dependencies, questionable decisions and rather expensive catches. Let’s get into it. --- MARKETS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--26-.png) --- SPECIAL DELIVERY ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-checkers--1--1.png) ## Shoprite's Sixty60 is now a R25 billion business, outrunning its own aisles Shoprite just gave investors a look at its year to June, and the headline is a tidy 7.2% rise in group sales to about R270.8 billion. The real story is the line item buried inside it. Checkers Sixty60, the on-demand app that delivers straight from Shoprite's own shelves, sold R25.5 billion of groceries over the year - up a whopping 34.5% and growing close to five times faster than the supermarkets behind it. That makes the delivery arm worth roughly 9% of the whole group, big enough to be its own listed retailer. This week Shoprite pressed the advantage, handing Sixty60 an AI shopping assistant that can even read a photo of your handwritten list. **What's in the cart:** - Sixty60 sold R25.5 billion this year, up 34.5%, now about 9% of group sales. - It delivers from Shoprite's near 3,000 stores, so the shops double as ready-made delivery depots. - Its new AI helper, Pixie, takes typed messages, voice notes or a snap of your shopping list, and remembers your preferences. It is a direct answer to Pick n Pay asap!'s Penny, launched in July. Full results land on 1 September, and by then the question is less about the shelves than the app riding on top of them. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprites-sixty60-is-quietly-becoming-a-business-big-enough-to-list-on-its-own/) --- BORROWED WEATHER ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-rand--2--1.png) ## The rand hit a five-month high on a tailwind borrowed entirely from America The rand is having its best run in months. On Wednesday it firmed to about R16.14 to the dollar, its strongest since early March, while foreign investors bought a net R23.1 billion of local government bonds in the first week of August, the fastest pace since January. It looks like a vote of confidence in South Africa. It isn't. The spark was a single number out of Washington: America's July inflation came in tame enough to keep the US Federal Reserve on hold and knock the dollar back, supercharging the carry trade that pays investors to hold higher-yielding rand assets. This month that trade has returned 2.5%, the best of 22 developing-nation currencies Bloomberg tracks. The catch is where it came from: traders still see a real chance the Fed raises rates next month, which would pull the same money straight back out. The number to watch is not in Pretoria, but in Washington. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-rand-just-hit-a-five-month-high-and-south-africa-barely-earned-it/) --- BAGEL BITE **Approximately what percentage of an adult’s total body weight is the brain?** **A.** 2% **B.** 3% **C.** 4% --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-claude-1.png) **Claude is about to leave a mark on everything it writes.** Anthropic has started weaving an invisible, machine-readable watermark into the text its Claude chatbot generates, so software can later flag it as AI-made. The company says it has little choice: the mark is how it meets a new European transparency law that took effect on 2 August. But because the tag survives copy and paste, some users have called it unethical, while Anthropic counters that a detected mark is not fully conclusive and washes out under heavy editing. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/claude-is-about-to-hide-a-watermark-in-everything-it-writes-and-some-users-are-furious/) **Foschini's owner picked the worst possible moment to buy its own shares.** In late 2025 TFG borrowed more than a billion rand for the first buyback in its history, snapping up about 3% of its stock at an average R105.87\. Ten months on the shares trade near R55, so that stake is worth roughly R553 million, about half what it paid. The buyback nudged per-share earnings up a touch, but the debt behind it costs around R58 million in interest every year until it is repaid. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/foschinis-owner-spent-a-billion-rand-buying-its-own-shares-it-has-lost-about-half/) **Standard Bank just posted its best six months ever.** Africa's largest bank by assets grew earnings 10% to a record R26.1 billion in the six months to June, and pushed return on shareholders' money up to 19.8%. Bad-loan charges fell 12% as the economy steadied, while fee and trading income climbed and costs stayed in check. The board rewarded all of it with an interim dividend of 902 cents a share, also up 10%, and left full-year guidance unchanged. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/standard-bank-just-had-its-best-six-months-ever-and-shareholders-are-getting-paid/) **Buy now, pay later works right up until customers can't pay.** Weaver Fintech, the JSE-listed group behind PayJustNow and the HomeChoice retail brand, grew revenue 10% to R2.8 billion in the six months to June, but earnings still slipped as bad debts bit. Bad-debt costs jumped 62% to just over a billion rand, so the group skipped its dividend, tightened who it lends to, and blamed a debit-order glitch that made some paying customers look like defaulters. It says the worst has passed. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-company-behind-payjustnow-skipped-its-dividend-as-bad-debts-piled-up/) --- WEATHER ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--22-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--25-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today's Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-Ozvieh0IgcuT1554-ma&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. 2%** The average adult human brain weighs roughly 1.3 to 1.4 kilograms, which is only about 2% of total body weight for an average adult. Despite its relatively small size, the brain uses around 20% of the body’s energy and oxygen at rest. It contains roughly 86 billion neurons, which communicate through vast networks to control movement, memory, emotions, senses and countless automatic body functions. --- That's your Friday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Claude is about to hide a watermark in everything it writes, and some users are furious URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/claude-is-about-to-hide-a-watermark-in-everything-it-writes-and-some-users-are-furious/ Last updated: 2026-08-14T03:44:59.000Z If you use Claude, the AI chatbot made by Anthropic, the text it writes for you is about to carry a hidden signature. The company has confirmed it will weave an invisible, machine-readable watermark directly into the words its models generate, so software can later flag the text as AI-made. You will not see it, and it does not change what Claude says. Anthropic says it has little choice: the mark is how it meets a new European transparency law that took effect on 2 August. ## Why people are upset The problem, for some users, is that the mark is baked into the text itself, so it survives copy and paste and can flag AI use long after the fact. Reddit lit up. One user, quoted by TechCrunch, likened the mark to a digital tattoo on the forehead for the student who used Claude to reorganise a paragraph or the journalist who summarised a long transcript. Others called the move unethical and disgusting, arguing that they, not the chatbot, did the real work. A counter-camp shrugged: the point is not credit, they said, but being able to tell when content is AI-made, given the risks that carries. ## What the mark actually proves Anthropic's own position is narrower than the panic. It says a detected mark is not fully conclusive, can appear even when a person supplied the ideas and only used Claude to polish, and can be scrubbed by heavy editing, paraphrasing or translation. The marking is applied at the model level and covers text across its products, from the chatbot to its coding and developer tools, and it also attaches signed provenance data to generated images and files under an open industry standard called C2PA. Almost lost in the noise was a second move the same week: Anthropic turned its Claude in Chrome extension into a full Claude Cowork session that saves your chats and lets a task started in a browser tab finish in the desktop, web or mobile apps. It is live now for Max and Team subscribers and reaching others over the coming weeks, though it stays off by default for enterprise customers and does not yet run on other browsers or on mobile. One week, two messages: proving what AI made, and letting it do more. ### The rand just hit a five-month high, and South Africa barely earned it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-rand-just-hit-a-five-month-high-and-south-africa-barely-earned-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-14T03:29:59.000Z The rand is having its best run in months, and the surprising part is how little of it was made in South Africa. On Wednesday the currency firmed to about 16.14 against the dollar, its strongest level since early March, while foreign investors piled into South African government bonds at the fastest pace since January. It looks like a vote of confidence in the country. It mostly isn't. ## A number from Washington The spark came from a single data release in the United States. American consumer prices rose just 0.1% in July and 3.4% over the year, a tame reading that reinforced bets the US Federal Reserve will leave interest rates alone and sent the dollar lower. A weaker dollar makes higher-yielding currencies like the rand more attractive, and it supercharged what traders call the carry trade: borrowing cheap dollars to buy assets that pay more elsewhere. The rand has now strengthened about 5% against the dollar since the end of March. The money followed within days The flows show up fast. Global investors bought a net R23.1 billion of South African government debt in the first week of August, the largest weekly inflow since January, and the rand carry trade returned 2.5% this month, the best of 22 developing-nation currencies Bloomberg tracks. Helping the case at home is a hawkish Reserve Bank keeping local yields attractive, with the 10-year bond yield down more than 80 basis points from its March highs to around 8.57%. As one Ninety One portfolio manager put it, continued rand appreciation could let bonds price out a lot of the inflation risk built into yields; a State Street strategist called the rand the best way in emerging markets to bet on a weaker dollar. The catch is that strength this borrowed can be handed back. Traders still see a real chance the Fed raises rates next month, with markets pricing roughly a 50% chance of a US increase against about 68% for one from the Reserve Bank, and any surprise would tug the same money out of the rand and the bond market together. For now the yield advantage holds and the inflows keep coming; the number to watch just happens to sit in Washington, not Pretoria. ### Shoprite's Sixty60 is becoming a business big enough to list on its own URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprites-sixty60-is-quietly-becoming-a-business-big-enough-to-list-on-its-own/ Last updated: 2026-08-14T03:14:59.000Z The headline number from Shoprite's latest trading update is a tidy 7.2% rise in group sales, to about R270.8 billion for the year to the end of June. The more interesting number is the one hiding inside it. Checkers Sixty60, the on-demand app that delivers groceries from Shoprite's own stores, sold R25.5 billion over the same year, a 34.5% jump. That is close to five times the pace of the supermarkets it delivers from, which grew 7.1%. Overall the group expects earnings per share to rise between 9.7% and 14.7% when it reports in full. ## A company inside a company Sixty60 is now worth roughly 9% of a group that turns over R270.8 billion, big enough to be a sizeable listed retailer in its own right, even though Shoprite does not report it as a separate business. What makes the growth possible is the physical estate behind it: the broader group runs almost 3,000 stores across South Africa, having opened a net 262 outlets over the year, and Sixty60 treats each one as a ready-made delivery depot. The upmarket Checkers and Checkers Hyper brands grew sales 10%, more than double the 4.3% at Shoprite and Usave. In other words, Shoprite is not trading shops for screens; it is wiring the two together and letting the delivery arm sprint. ## Now the app talks back This week the group pressed its advantage in the aisle-level AI race. It gave Sixty60's in-house assistant, Pixie, a new smart-chat feature that understands typed messages, voice notes, or a photo of your handwritten shopping list. Built at Shoprite's ShopriteX innovation lab, Pixie has already helped shoppers add more than four million products to their baskets since April, with one customer completing a R1,500 shop in 15 seconds. It answers Pick n Pay asap!'s Gemini-powered assistant, Penny, which launched similar chat in July, but with a twist: Pixie remembers a week of chat history and can hold your preferences permanently, because it sits on Shoprite's deep loyalty data. The group's strategy chief, Neil Schreuder, calls it a move beyond smart recommendations toward a 24/7 personal shopping butler. Full results land on 1 September, and by then the question is less about the shelves than about the app outrunning them. ### The company behind PayJustNow skipped its dividend as bad debts piled up URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-company-behind-payjustnow-skipped-its-dividend-as-bad-debts-piled-up/ Last updated: 2026-08-14T02:59:59.000Z Buy now, pay later is a lovely business right up until the moment customers stop paying. Weaver Fintech, the JSE-listed group that owns South Africa's biggest buy-now-pay-later platform PayJustNow and the HomeChoice retail brand, learned that the hard way in the first half of 2026\. Revenue grew a healthy 10% to R2.8 billion in the six months to the end of June, but headline earnings still slipped about 9% to R272 million as bad debts bit. ## Bad debts and a payments glitch The pressure came from lending. Debtor costs, the money set aside for loans that may never be repaid, surged 62% to just over R1 billion, and the group's credit loss ratio climbed to almost 25% from 21%. On top of that, Weaver hit technical problems with DebiCheck, the system that asks customers to approve debit orders with their banks: some files were not processed on time, which made paying customers look like they had defaulted. Chief executive Sean Wibberley says those payment issues have since been resolved. In response, Weaver skipped its interim dividend to preserve cash and tightened who it lends to, cutting its targeted approval rate from 81.4% to 75.8%, shortening the average loan term, and slowing new lending from 15% growth in the first quarter to 6% in the second. ## The fintech engine still runs For all the credit pain, the core is growing. The fintech division lifted revenue 30%, grew fee income 43%, and now accounts for 94% of the group's trading profit. Customer numbers rose 17% to 5.1 million, and PayJustNow has passed a million downloads on Google Play to cement its place as the country's number-one buy-now-pay-later app. The group says it has R1.1 billion of cash and unused facilities to lean on, and is planning a soft launch of a PayJustNow Mobile airtime and data service with Cell C to reward good customer behaviour. Wibberley expects the second half to stay strained for consumers, with transport and food costs squeezing spending, but points to early signs that credit is turning, including July arrears measures improving 13%. For a lender built on lending more, the real test is whether tighter rules can protect profit without choking the growth. ### Foschini's owner spent a billion rand buying its own shares. It has lost about half URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/foschinis-owner-spent-a-billion-rand-buying-its-own-shares-it-has-lost-about-half/ Last updated: 2026-08-14T02:45:00.000Z Buying back your own shares is meant to be a vote of confidence. For The Foschini Group, the owner of Foschini, Markham and Sportscene, it has so far been an expensive lesson in timing. In September and October 2025 the retailer ran the first share buyback in its history, spending R1 billion to snap up about 3% of its stock at an average of R105.87 a share, arguing the shares were trading below what the business was really worth. It kept buying even as the price fell, picking up 3.4 million shares at an average R110.17 by the end of September before repurchasing the rest at R102.96. ## The price went the wrong way Ten months later the share price has been languishing just above R50, its weakest since 2010, before recovering about 9% over the past fortnight to around R55\. That leaves the repurchased shares worth roughly R553 million today, close to half what TFG paid for them. The buyback was funded with debt, and the group borrowed over R1 billion to do it. At an effective interest rate of about 8.1%, that borrowing costs around R58 million in interest every year, roughly 18 cents per share, for as long as the debt sits on the books. ## A modest upside, a lasting cost There is a benefit, but a small one. The buyback lifted headline earnings per share by about 10.7 cents, to 675.4 cents, because profit is now split across fewer shares. The catch, as chief financial officer Ralph Buddle admitted, is that the jump in the group's net debt can essentially be blamed on the buyback itself; without it, net debt would have risen only about R135 million rather than more than R1.1 billion. TFG has not cancelled the shares; it is holding them as treasury stock in a subsidiary, with no stated plan for what to do next. Buddle says TFG will not rush into more buybacks while it would rather cut debt, which tells you how the lesson landed inside the business. With net debt of R8 billion at the end of March and close to R3 billion due over the next three years, whether the bet eventually pays off depends on one thing the company cannot control: the share price climbing back above the R106 it paid. ### Standard Bank just had its best six months ever, and shareholders are getting paid URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/standard-bank-just-had-its-best-six-months-ever-and-shareholders-are-getting-paid/ Last updated: 2026-08-14T02:29:59.000Z Standard Bank is cracking necks, and its shareholders are cashing cheques. Africa's largest bank by assets has just reported the strongest first half in its history, with profit climbing 10% to a record R26.1 billion in the six months to the end of June. It also pushed its return on equity, a measure of how much profit it squeezes from shareholders' money, up to 19.8% - comfortably inside its own 18% to 22% target range. ## Where the money came from The engine was a mix of steadier customers and calmer risk. Bad-loan charges fell 12% to R7.1 billion as the economy found its footing, and the bank's credit loss ratio, the share of its loan book going sour, improved to 73 basis points from 93\. At the same time fee and commission income rose 7% to R18.4 billion and trading revenue climbed 8%, while costs stayed in check, with the cost-to-income ratio nudging down to 49.3%. Net interest income, the gap between what the bank earns on loans and pays on deposits, grew 4% to R53.6 billion even as the margin narrowed in a lower-rate world. The bank says the value it created for shareholders, earnings minus the cost of capital, rose 55% to R8.4 billion. ## A bigger payout Shareholders are the direct winners. The board declared an interim dividend of 902 cents a share, up 10% and equal to 56% of earnings, at the upper end of what the bank likes to pay out. The group spread its earnings across the continent too: South African operations delivered R13.4 billion, or 51% of the total, and the Africa Regions business another R10.4 billion, or 40%. Its active customer base grew to 19.5 million, and it still sits on R79 billion of capital above its regulatory minimum. Management left its full-year guidance unchanged, which is its own kind of confidence: after a record half, Standard Bank is betting the second half looks a lot like the first. The number to watch is whether bad debts keep falling as South African households feel their way through the rest of the year. ### Gold's record run hands Gold Fields a bumper first half URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/golds-record-run-hands-gold-fields-a-bumper-first-half/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T10:00:00.000Z The gold price has spent 2026 breaking records, and one of the world's biggest producers is banking the difference. Business Day summed the update up as a bumper first half, driven by higher output and a stronger gold price. Gold Fields guided its half-year headline earnings 72% to 90% higher, to between $1.98 and $2.18 a share, from $1.15 a year earlier. Basic earnings are set to rise in step, and adjusted free cash flow before discretionary investments should more than double, up 91% to 111% to between $2.39 billion and $2.64 billion. ## Ounces up, costs up too The gains came from more gold-equivalent ounces sold at a higher price, partly offset by rising costs. First-half attributable production rose 12% to 1.26 million ounces, while all-in sustaining costs climbed 13% to $1,900 an ounce. In the second quarter alone the group produced 630,000 ounces at all-in costs of $2,200 an ounce. Full-year output is now guided to the upper end of the 2.4 to 2.6 million ounce range, and the miner trimmed 2026 group capital spending to between $1.6 billion and $1.8 billion, partly a reclassification of some Windfall project spending. Performance varied by mine: Chile's Salares Norte is on track to beat guidance, while Australia's Gruyere lifted output 25% quarter on quarter but is at risk of missing its full-year target on high contractor turnover. ## Building in Canada Gold Fields is a globally diversified producer with eight operating mines across Australia, South Africa, Ghana, Chile and Peru, plus the Windfall project in Canada that it picked up through the 2024 Osisko Mining acquisition, and produced 2.44 million gold-equivalent ounces in 2025\. Windfall ranks among the largest gold deposits in Canada and a top-10 globally by grade. During the half it signed an Impact Benefit Agreement with the Cree Nation for Windfall and now expects environmental approval in the second half of 2026, ahead of a final investment decision, with project capital seen at the upper end of a $1.7 billion to $1.9 billion range. Full interim results are due on 25 August, when investors will look past the record earnings to how fast Windfall can move. ### Platinum's turn: Northam's earnings jump nearly eightfold, and it lifts the dividend floor URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/platinums-turn-northams-earnings-jump-nearly-eightfold-and-it-lifts-the-dividend-floor/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T07:59:59.000Z After a brutal couple of years for platinum miners, the metal's rebound is showing up in the numbers. Northam Platinum told the market that its 2026 financial year, to 30 June, delivered records across the board, led by sales revenue up 64.1% to R54 billion. The main driver was a 57.4% jump in the rand price of its basket of platinum-group metals, which did most of the work in turning firmer prices into record cash, helped by 8% more metal sold. ## Profit and production records Operating profit nearly quadrupled, rising 293.8% to R14.2 billion, lifting the operating margin to 26.2% from 10.9%, while EBITDA, or operating cash earnings, climbed to R16.7 billion. Headline earnings per share are guided at 3,006 to 3,082 cents, roughly eight times the 380.8 cents of a year earlier, and basic earnings are guided even higher at 3,488 to 3,564 cents, up more than 800%. Own platinum-group-metal production rose 4.4% to a record 938,754 ounces, and chrome concentrate 17.4% to 1.69 million tonnes; the Eland mine, still ramping up its underground operation, turned its first operating profit at 60% of steady-state output while lifting its own PGM production almost 26%, a particularly strong contributor to the record year. Costs stayed contained, with unit cash cost per ounce up 6.4% to R27,376, and the group commissioned 3 shaft at its Zondereinde mine. It ended the year with R13.7 billion of gross cash and a R2.7 billion net cash position. ## More cash for shareholders On the back of a record year, Northam lifted its minimum dividend floor from 25% to 40% of headline earnings, bringing policy into line with the 42% it has actually averaged over three years. It also set out Vision 2031, a plan to grow sales beyond 1.5 million ounces of PGMs and two million tonnes of chrome. News24 noted the record production, revenue and earnings underpinning the higher payout. Even so, the shares are down about 21% so far this year, though up around 25% over twelve months. The year was not without cost: three employees died in separate incidents at Zondereinde. Audited results are due on 28 August. ### The Roundup — Thursday, 13 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-thursday-13-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T06:31:29.000Z Today's edition Class Act Good morning. It's results season, and the market is in a mood to argue with the numbers. Two of today's biggest names both posted strong halves, and only one of them got any credit for it. One is busy building the future the state can't keep up with; the other is getting punished for a slice of its past it can't shake off. Two strong businesses, two very different receptions. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--25-.png) --- HIGHER LEARNING ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-advtech-1.png) ## Varsity College's owner is building the campuses the state can't, and cashing in While South Africa's public universities turn students away each year for lack of space, one private operator is spending big to build the lecture halls the state can't, and charging for every seat. Advtech, the JSE-listed group behind Varsity College, Vega and Crawford, told the market on Tuesday that its first-half earnings should land 13% to 18% higher, at 127 to 133 cents a share against about 113 a year ago. It is Africa's largest private education provider, and both arms of the business, schools and colleges, are growing earnings faster than sales. Full results follow on 24 August. **The report card:** - Half-year earnings guided 13% to 18% higher, to 127 to 133 cents a share from about 113 a year ago. - Last year set the pace: 2025 revenue up 10% to R9.33 billion and per-share earnings up 17%, with colleges and schools both compounding. - More than R1 billion went into new campuses in 2025, including a 9,000-seat, R420 million site in Sandton and a 5,000-seat one in Gqeberha. Next up is a Durban mega-campus on 10 hectares, breaking ground in 2027\. The real question is how long private education can keep compounding while the public system strains. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/varsity-colleges-owner-is-building-the-campuses-the-state-cant-and-cashing-in/) --- BAD RECEPTION ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-mtn--2--1.png) ## MTN just posted its best African run in years, so why did R22.55bn vanish? Africa's largest mobile operator spent Tuesday telling two stories at once. Across its key markets the business is firing: profit jumped 71% in Nigeria, 43% in Ghana and 38% in Uganda. Yet the share fell 5.99% to R193.20 and shed about R22.55 billion in a single session, because one line overshadowed the rest. MTN took a roughly R3.9 billion writedown on its 49% stake in Iran's Irancell, a business it has been trying to sell since 2020 but can't exit under US sanctions. Strip out the one-offs and MTN's preferred earnings measure actually climbs as much as 23%. Full results land on 24 August, with the market still deciding whether to keep punishing a strong business for a stake it has spent five years trying to give up. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-just-posted-its-best-african-run-in-years-so-why-did-r22-55bn-vanish/) --- BAGEL BITE **What is the coldest air temperature ever officially recorded on Earth?** **A.** −78.4 °C **B.** −89.2 °C **C.** −96.7 °C --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-checkers-1.png) **Shoprite opened more stores last year than Pick n Pay, Woolworths and Spar combined.** South Africa's biggest grocer added a net 262 supermarkets in the year to June, taking it to 2,839 shops, while rivals mostly held station or shrank. Group sales rose 7.2% to about R270.8 billion, its Checkers Sixty60 delivery app grew 34.5%, and it guided full-year earnings as much as 14.7% higher. Full results land on 1 September. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-opened-more-stores-last-year-than-pick-n-pay-woolworths-and-spar-combined/) **The cheapest Uber is going away.** From 1 September, Uber is retiring UberX, the low-cost ride that put it on South African roads back in 2014, trimming its menu to a simpler lineup led by the smaller, cheaper Uber Go. It lands in a sharpening price war at the bottom of the market, where Bolt and InDrive are pushing hard on affordability. For riders the name on the app is changing; the real question is whether the fare does too. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-cheapest-uber-is-going-away-uberx-bows-out-in-south-africa-on-1-september/) **Google's Gemini just joined the billion-user club.** The assistant has topped one billion monthly users, Google's fastest-growing product ever and now roughly level with OpenAI's ChatGPT, though the two count users in different ways. Scale isn't free: Alphabet spent about $44.9 billion on infrastructure last quarter and booked its first cash-flow-negative quarter as a public company. The user counts are racing up; when the spending pays for itself is the question investors keep asking. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/googles-gemini-joins-the-billion-user-club-drawing-level-with-chatgpt/) **One JSE-listed landlord is having a very good year in Spain.** Lighthouse Properties, which owns shopping centres in Spain, Portugal and France, lifted the earnings behind its dividend almost 10% for the half to June as two recent Spanish mall buys fed through. Shoppers kept spending: tenant sales rose 7.9% and rent collections held near 99%, so it raised its full-year dividend guidance. For local investors starved of retail-property growth, a rand-hedge landlord earning in euros is one to watch. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-jse-listed-landlord-quietly-winning-in-spain/) --- WEATHER ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--21-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![designer placeholder](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--24-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today's Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-Ozqfh6OnIT6OmDPVCMI&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. −89.2 °C** The official record is −89.2 °C (−128.6 °F), measured by ground instruments at Vostok Station in Antarctica on 21 July 1983\. Vostok sits high on the East Antarctic Plateau, where extreme altitude, dry air and months of winter darkness allow temperatures to plunge dramatically. Satellite observations have detected ice surface temperatures close to −98 °C, but these are surface measurements rather than standard air temperature readings, so Vostok still holds the official air temperature record. --- That's your Thursday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### MTN just posted its best African run in years, so why did R22.55bn vanish? URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-just-posted-its-best-african-run-in-years-so-why-did-r22-55bn-vanish/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T03:44:59.000Z It was a day of two stories for Africa's largest mobile operator. MTN warned on 11 August that its reported half-year earnings would fall, a caution that sent the share down 5.99% to R193.20 and wiped about R22.55 billion off its market value in a single session, taking it to R354.27 billion. The trading statement was triggered by JSE rules requiring a warning once results are set to differ by at least 20% from the prior period. The catch is that the underlying business just had one of its strongest halves in years. ## One line did the damage The pain traces to a single entry: a roughly R3.9 billion impairment, an accounting writedown, on MTN's 49% stake in Iran's Irancell. MTN decided to sell that stake back in 2020, but US sanctions and Iran's exclusion from the global banking system have kept it stuck. That hit, alongside hyperinflation and foreign-exchange losses, plus a tough prepaid market at home and a fintech setback in Nigeria, pushed bottom-line earnings down 20% to 30% and left headline earnings between flat and 10% lower. The Nigeria knock came after regulators suspended its airtime-advance service, cutting second-quarter fintech revenue by about 70%, and the Ghana business, MTN's second largest, has also faced legal action over its fintech arm. A year earlier the group had booked about R11.7 billion in headline earnings and R9.75 billion in after-tax profit, a base the one-off charges now distort. ## Strip out the one-offs On the measure MTN says best reflects trading, adjusted headline earnings per share, the picture flips: profit should climb 18% to 23%, to between R7.75 and R8.08 a share, from R6.57\. The group described a resilient performance with strong margin expansion and free cash flow growth. That strength is real on the ground: net income in Nigeria, its biggest market with about 81 million subscribers, surged 71%, while Ghana rose 43% and Uganda 38%. Full results are due on 24 August, with MTN also reporting progress on its IHS tower deal. The open question is whether the market keeps punishing a strong operating business for a stake it has spent five years trying to give up. ### Varsity College's owner is building the campuses the state can't, and cashing in URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/varsity-colleges-owner-is-building-the-campuses-the-state-cant-and-cashing-in/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T03:30:00.000Z As South Africa's public universities turn students away each year for lack of space, one private operator is spending heavily to build the lecture halls the state cannot, and charging for every seat. Advtech, the JSE-listed group behind Varsity College, Vega and Crawford, told the market on 11 August that its first-half earnings should land 13% to 18% higher, describing the guidance as significantly higher earnings. In cents, that is 127 to 133 per share, against about 113 a year earlier, measured on normalised earnings, which strip out one-off transaction and corporate-action costs. ## From strength to strength The company is Africa's largest private education provider, spanning Varsity College, Vega, Rosebank College and The IIE on the tertiary side and Crawford, Trinityhouse and Pinnacle in schools. Last year set the pace: 2025 revenue rose 10% to R9.33 billion, operating profit 14%, and headline earnings per share 17% to 235.8 cents. Both arms are compounding, with tertiary revenue up 13% and schools revenue up 10% to R3.44 billion; the schools arm lifted operating profit 13% and the tertiary arm 14%, so both grew earnings faster than sales. The tertiary division houses Rosebank College, Varsity College, Vega and The IIE, and rising demand for private schooling and college places underpins the whole expansion. ## Building for the next intake To keep feeding that demand, Advtech put more than R1 billion into new campuses and facilities in 2025 alone, the backbone of its seat-count growth. In February it opened a 9,000-seat, R420 million campus in Sandton, home to Varsity College Sandton and the Vega School's Johannesburg base, which can eventually host 13,000 students, along with a 5,000-seat campus in Gqeberha that relocated its existing Nelson Mandela Bay operation. Next is a Durban mega-campus on 10 hectares, breaking ground in 2027 and opening its first phase in 2029 with room for 8,000 students and a 500-bed residence; a second phase in 2035 would take capacity to 10,500. The half-year figures are unaudited guidance, with full audited results due on 24 August that will confirm where in the guided range it lands. The longer-term question is how long private education can keep compounding while the public system strains. ### The JSE-listed landlord quietly winning in Spain URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-jse-listed-landlord-quietly-winning-in-spain/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T03:15:00.000Z Some of the JSE's better property news this year is being written in Spanish. Lighthouse Properties, the Malta-based owner of shopping centres in Spain, Portugal and France, lifted the distributable earnings behind its dividend by 9.7% in the six months to end-June. Underlying the payout, distributable income grew almost 11%, outpacing the per-share figure as recent acquisitions bedded in. The lift came as two Spanish deals, Espacio Mediterraneo and Alcala Magna, began pulling their weight, the first delivering a full six-month contribution and the second adding two months of income. Espacio Mediterraneo's full-period run was the single biggest contributor to the earnings lift. ## Shoppers kept spending Across the group's centres, tenant sales rose 7.9% and footfall climbed 3%, while rent collections held firm at 98.7% of billings and like-for-like net property income rose 4.5%. Those firm collections near 99% and near-full occupancy point to resilient demand across its Iberian malls despite a mixed European consumer backdrop. Revenue grew 10.7% to 77 million euros, about R1.43 billion, headline earnings reached 1.52 euro cents a share, and the group's debt against assets stayed broadly stable at 35.9%. Its vacancy rate, a measure of empty space, edged lower after Zara and the Lefties brand were introduced at the H2O centre. Spain did the heavy lifting, with like-for-like net property income up 5.6%. Portugal delivered against a stronger economy that grew 2.5% in the second quarter, with tenant sales up 9.5% and the portfolio effectively fully let, while France, despite GDP expanding just 0.2%, still grew like-for-like income 6.6%. ## Fresh leadership, a bigger payout The results land amid a leadership refresh: David Swarts took over as CFO in June, Laurian McGonigal became COO in July, and CEO Justin Muller relocated from Amsterdam to Madrid in August to sit closer to the Iberian operations. On the strength of the numbers, Lighthouse raised its full-year dividend guidance to about 3 euro cents a share, up from 2.95 cents, lifting expected growth from 6.9% to 8.7%. For South African investors starved of local retail-property growth, a rand-hedge landlord with euro-denominated income compounding in Europe is a quietly compelling story to watch. ### Google's Gemini joins the billion-user club, drawing level with ChatGPT URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/googles-gemini-joins-the-billion-user-club-drawing-level-with-chatgpt/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T02:59:59.000Z The race between the world's two best-known AI assistants just crossed a symbolic line. Google says its Gemini app has topped one billion monthly users, its 14th product to reach that mark and, according to chief executive Sundar Pichai, its fastest-growing ever. The climb has been steep, from about 750 million monthly users earlier this year to 950 million in July and a billion in August, an expansion of roughly 250 million in a matter of months. ## Two billions, measured differently Gemini's milestone roughly matches OpenAI's ChatGPT, but the two count in different ways, and that matters. Google is reporting monthly active users for Gemini; OpenAI has leaned on weekly active users for ChatGPT, a milestone it highlighted on 6 August, having reported 900 million weekly users as recently as February. Market data from Sensor Tower, reported by Reuters, put ChatGPT at a billion monthly app users back in May. Either way, the takeaway is the same: chat assistants now operate at a scale once associated mainly with the world's largest internet platforms. ## How people use it Google also shared how the app is being used: about 63% of Gemini users talk to the assistant with the voice feature, and it now generates more than 150 million images a day. More than 100 million people use it on iOS, and the billion-user mark comes soon after a Q2 earnings call at which Google flagged over 950 million monthly users, with daily active users tripling in a year. Google's AI Mode in Search has separately passed a billion monthly users, though this figure counts only the Gemini app, not those other channels. Even so, Pichai called Gemini the company's fastest-growing product ever, a notable claim from a firm with fourteen billion-user products. ## Scale isn't free Reaching that many users is expensive. Alphabet, Google's parent, generated about $39.1 billion in operating cash flow last quarter but spent roughly $44.9 billion on infrastructure, much of it tied to AI and cloud. That left about $5.8 billion in negative free cash flow, its first cash-flow-negative quarter as a public company. The user counts are racing up; the question investors will keep asking is when the spending starts to pay for itself. ### The cheapest Uber is going away: UberX bows out in South Africa on 1 September URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-cheapest-uber-is-going-away-uberx-bows-out-in-south-africa-on-1-september/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T02:44:59.000Z For a decade, UberX was the default way many South Africans priced a night out, and from 1 September it disappears. Uber has told customers by email that it will discontinue UberX, its low-cost mainstay, across South Africa on that date. In the note the company said it is officially saying goodbye to the classic product to make way for a simpler, more tailored lineup. ## A shorter menu UberX launched in Cape Town in June 2014, two years before it became a verb in most Joburg suburbs, offering Toyota Corolla-class cars seating up to four. Its exit follows an earlier notice given to Johannesburg users back in May, and the world's largest ride-hailing platform says the cut is about simplifying its offering. From September, the confirmed entry-level option is Uber Go, a smaller car at a lower price, sitting alongside Comfort, Black and Reserve, the last of which lets riders book up to 90 days ahead with guaranteed pricing. The reshuffle follows a spell in which Uber's local menu, from Moto and Electric to Go, X, Comfort and Black, had arguably grown confusing for riders. ## Why now It also lands in a sharpening price war at the bottom of the market. Uber, which launched locally in 2013 and operates in 24 South African towns and cities, is the biggest player, but rivals are pressing hard on affordability, and both it and Bolt have leaned on middle-income commuters seeking a reliable daily ride beyond public transport. Under new Sub-Saharan Africa GM Deepesh Thomas, Uber has answered with the motorcycle-based Uber Moto and, more recently, Uber Electric for cheaper rides. Bolt has pushed cheaper tiers like Bolt Lite, which uses compact Bajaj Qute quadricycles rather than cars, while InDrive lets passengers name their own fare. It all plays out in a market estimated at about 100,000 e-hailing drivers and more than two million passengers. MyBroadband notes the industry has leaned harder into budget options for lower-income riders, even as driving-skills experts warn the Uber-Bolt rivalry has fuelled a race to the bottom on service and safety. For riders, the name on the app is changing; the real question is whether the fare does too. ### Shoprite opened more stores last year than Pick n Pay, Woolworths and Spar combined URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-opened-more-stores-last-year-than-pick-n-pay-woolworths-and-spar-combined/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T02:29:59.000Z South Africa's biggest grocer spent the past year doing the one thing much of the sector has been too cautious to try: opening shops, and plenty of them. In a voluntary operational update for the 52 weeks to 28 June 2026, Shoprite said it added a net 262 stores in its core South African supermarkets business, taking it to 2,839 corporate-owned and operated shops. That single-year haul is more than Pick n Pay, Woolworths and Spar managed combined in their latest financial years. ## Sales up, Sixty60 flying Group sales from continuing operations rose 7.2% to about R270.8 billion, roughly R18.1 billion in extra takings over the prior year. The engine room, Supermarkets RSA, makes up 84.5% of that and grew 7.1%, adding R15.2 billion in sales on its own. Checkers and Checkers Hyper grew 10.0%, and the flashiest number sits inside that segment: Checkers Sixty60, the on-demand delivery app, grew sales 34.5% to R25.5 billion. Newer bets are scaling fast too, with adjacent businesses and new formats such as Petshop Science, Uniq Clothing and Checkers Outdoor up more than 57%. Beyond South Africa, supermarket sales rose 11.0% in rand and 7.1% in constant currency, while the pharmacy business grew 9.2%. The group kept prices in check, with internal selling-price inflation of just 0.8%, well under food inflation of 3.9%, while like-for-like sales rose 2.0% and the rest of the market grew only 2.0% on NielsenIQ's measure. ## Earnings guided higher Shoprite also nudged the market on profit, guiding headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure JSE companies report, 9.7% to 14.7% higher for the year. The new stores were spread across formats: 115 supermarkets, 93 liquor stores and 54 new formats. There were no share buybacks in the year, and the group banked R568 million from selling its non-SA furniture business to Pepkor, with the SA furniture disposal still awaiting Competition Tribunal approval. Rivals, by contrast, held station: Spar opened 43 stores in Southern Africa in 2025 but closed 58, and Woolworths' footprint slipped year on year. The full results land on 1 September, but the direction is already set: while rivals prune, Shoprite is still planting. ### Meta's new AI model is small enough to run on your laptop URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/metas-new-ai-model-is-small-enough-to-run-on-your-laptop/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T09:59:59.000Z Most of the AI race has been about building ever-bigger models in ever-bigger data centres. Meta just went the other way. On Monday the company released Muse Glimmer, an open-weight model designed to run AI agents locally, on a normal Mac or PC with a single consumer graphics card. It is a smaller, freely downloadable version of Meta's more powerful — and still closed — Muse Spark model. Glimmer has 30-billion parameters, a fraction of the size of the frontier systems it competes with, and its weights are released under a permissive licence so developers can download, fine-tune and modify it. It is built to actually do things — calling tools, writing and debugging code, working with files and screenshots, and running multi-step tasks — rather than just chat, and it is designed to work "anywhere, anytime, with or without an internet connection". It handles text and images and was trained across more than 100 languages. ## The bigger argument The launch came wrapped in a roughly 6,500-word essay from Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, titled "The Future is for Everyone". His argument: powerful AI, or "superintelligence", should be spread widely to empower individuals, not concentrated in a handful of institutions. Meta, he wrote, is the lab focused on building "personal superintelligence for everyone", and it will offer free versions accessible to billions of people. He also pressed Washington to lower barriers so American open models can outcompete Chinese rivals like Alibaba, Moonshot and DeepSeek, which currently lead the open-weight field. ## Not everyone is convinced The reaction was not all warm. The Verge dubbed the essay a case for "unleashing Pandora's box". Critics also pushed back on the label: "open-weight" means you can download and run the model, but it is not the same as fully open-source, and even Meta's releases fall short of that stricter bar. Meta's shares, down about 10% this year, ticked up 1% in premarket trading on the news. For South African developers and small businesses, though, the real headline is simpler: a capable AI agent you can run on hardware you already own is a very different future from renting one from a data centre. ### Nedbank is about to debit some customers for fees it forgot to charge URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nedbank-is-about-to-debit-some-customers-for-fees-it-forgot-to-charge/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T07:59:59.000Z If you bank with Nedbank and have external debit orders, your next statement might carry a small surprise. Later this month the bank will debit some customers to recover fees it failed to charge correctly earlier this year. In a notice sent to affected customers in July, Nedbank explained that "due to a system" issue, the fees collected on external debit orders between 16 February and 12 May 2026 were calculated incorrectly. It will take the outstanding difference on 17 August. The unusual twist is the direction of the error. Most billing mistakes overcharge customers; this one undercharged them. Nedbank says the fault was isolated to the billing of certain external debit-order collection fees after a system upgrade, part of ongoing work on its banking platform, and that customers' actual debit orders and funds were never affected — only the fee applied. Once it spotted the problem, the bank says it fixed the billing, told affected clients and "closed the matter". ## How much, and who The amounts are small. Moneyweb, which broke the story, has seen customer notices with figures tending to be in the tens of rands, and the impact depends entirely on how many external, non-Nedbank debit orders you run and what account you hold. Higher-tier accounts like MiGoals Plus (R99 a month) and MiGoals Premium (R250 a month) bundle debit-order fees into the monthly charge, so they are not affected. The ones caught are entry-level and legacy accounts — the R8-a-month MiGoals, MyPocket, stokvel accounts and a long list of older products that still charge per debit order. ## The question of the rules Nedbank leans on its own rules to justify the clawback: under its Pricing Guide and Conduct Rules, it says, the bank may only recover missed fees for a maximum of three months, and it kept within that window. There is a wrinkle, though. Moneyweb reviewed Nedbank's published pricing guides and account terms and could find no reference to a "look-back" window allowing it to recover a fee it simply failed to charge — nor any public document actually labelled "Conduct Rules". The bank would not say when it caught the error, how many clients were hit, or the total sum involved. For most affected customers the cost is trivial; the more interesting question is whether a bank can bill you today for a fee it forgot to charge in February. ### The Roundup — Wednesday, 12 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-wednesday-12-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T06:55:55.000Z Today's edition Return Of Daily Bagel... Kind Of Good morning! If you’re one of the original Daily Bagel readers, I’m so happy to see you again. A few years ago, I signed off the final Daily Bagel newsletter by saying, “Who knows what the future holds?” As it turns out, the answer was Business Bagel. Over the past year, we’ve rebuilt Daily Bagel into something bigger: short, engaging business news for South Africans, without the jargon or paywalls. We’ve also moved into a [new studio in Cape Town](https://www.instagram.com/p/Dbn-kW3kTNr/?ref=businessbagel.com), launched a few new products, and it finally felt like the right time to bring the newsletter back. I’m so glad you’re here, but if this isn’t for you anymore, you can unsubscribe below. Otherwise, I think you’re going to enjoy what’s coming next. Now, onto today’s newsletter. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--24-.png) --- HOUSE ALWAYS WINS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-jse-2.png) ## While everyone chased gold, the company that runs the JSE quietly cleaned up The loudest story on the JSE this year has been gold — miners flying, the rand leaning on bullion. The quieter one is that the exchange itself is having a cracking year. JSE Ltd, the company that runs the bourse, grew half-year net profit 16.9% to R652-million for the six months to June, with earnings per share up 18.8%. The model is almost boringly simple: it takes a small fee every time shares change hands, and this market has been busy. Costs barely moved while income climbed, and these were the first results under new chief executive Valdene Reddy. **What the tollgate took:** - Half-year net profit up 16.9% to R652-million, with earnings per share up 18.8% to 816.2 cents. - Operating cash earnings up 18.1% to R856-million, while underlying costs rose just 3.5%, so income grew faster than spending. - The exchange ran at 99.99% uptime and helped companies raise R8.4-billion in fresh capital over the half. The catch: trading revenue booms when markets run hot, and this one has run unusually hot. The real test is whether the tollgate holds up once the gold rush cools. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/p/97c29554-0c08-4e25-8bd3-6bca54def998/) --- PLAYING BOTH SIDES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-fsca-1.png) ## Tiny trades, big profits: the trick the market watchdog is now chasing It takes almost nothing to start: one small order in a share almost nobody trades. That, says the Financial Sector Conduct Authority, is the opening move in a scheme it now has three live investigations into. The trick leans on a contract for difference, a side bet whose price simply tracks a share, priced straight off the best quote showing in the market. Nudge that quote with a tiny trade, and a much larger side bet pegged to it pays off. Barely a ripple in one market, a real payday in another. This isn't just theory: the regulator has already fined both the clients and the traders in two cases, and logged a record R2.8-billion in penalties this year, up from R119.8-million. It hasn't named the providers or shares in the three open probes, so the real question is who turns up when it does. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/p/53e75dd8-dbb1-4be6-beb2-9521f5d48f59/) --- BAGEL BITE **When was Netflix originally founded?** **A.** 1995 **B.** 1997 **C.** 1999 --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-news-1.png) **eNCA wants to cut more than half its newsroom.** South Africa's first 24-hour news channel has started a retrenchment process that could axe 171 of its 309 staff, blaming a shift from TV screens to phones. Journalists aren't taking it quietly, pointing to a management trip to the soccer World Cup and the group CEO's R19-million pay packet. Consultations run to the end of November. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/p/6f1d0e0c-bf9b-4dc2-a517-8c053faef484/) **Coal is paying off again for Thungela.** The miner expects its half-year core earnings to more than double, to between R4.60 and R4.95 a share, helped by firmer coal prices and a steadier Transnet moving more of it to port. A one-off gain on selling a mining right flatters the headline number, so read it with care. Full interim results land on 17 August. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/p/4cf2099d-c030-4700-8b2e-11a13d26b354/) **One metal is holding up two South African scoreboards at once.** A climbing gold price did the heavy lifting for both the JSE and the rand last week, even as local factory output fell 4.3%. Bullion hit a seven-week high, sending AngloGold up 9.7% and the all-share to 117,518\. The catch: a market and a currency both riding on gold are exposed the day it turns. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/p/906610a4-0681-443d-8fae-846566c58849/) **SARS just opened its new tax-certainty deal to far more companies.** After accountants called the original bar unrealistic, the taxman cut the entry threshold for its new upfront pricing agreements from R50-billion in revenue to R10-billion. The deals let big multinationals lock in how cross-border transactions get taxed and skip years of disputes. It starts as a 2026 pilot. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/p/29b99237-7e3a-40b9-bd75-74b643216f99/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--20-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--23-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-OzlIWKw7zV7AFXBGLpQ&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. 1997** Netflix was founded on August 29, 1997, by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in California. The company began as a DVD rental business, with customers ordering movies online and receiving them through the mail. Its website, NetFlix.com, officially launched in April 1998, while Beetlejuice became the first DVD Netflix ever shipped. In 2007, Netflix introduced streaming, allowing subscribers to watch movies and television shows instantly over the internet instead of waiting for DVDs to arrive. That shift completely transformed the company and helped Netflix grow into one of the world’s biggest entertainment and streaming platforms. --- That's your Wednesday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Tiny trades, big profits: the trick the FSCA is now chasing URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/tiny-trades-big-profits-the-trick-the-fsca-is-now-chasing/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T03:44:59.000Z It takes almost nothing to start: a single small order in a share that hardly anyone trades. That, according to South Africa's Financial Sector Conduct Authority, is the opening move in a scheme it is now chasing. In its latest enforcement report, published on 31 July, the regulator revealed it has three live investigations into the same tactic. Here is how it works. A contract for difference, or CFD, is a side bet whose price simply tracks a share's live price. Some CFD providers set their prices straight off the best bid or offer showing in the share market, no matter how few shares are actually available at that level. So a manipulator places a tiny order in a barely-traded share to nudge that best price, then cashes a far larger CFD position pegged to it. Barely a ripple in one market; a real payday in another. ## Why it is so hard to catch The clever, frustrating part is that the evidence is split across two markets. On its own, a tiny share order looks pointless — it only makes sense once you see the much bigger bet sitting beside it. That is why the FSCA now assesses suspicious trades holistically, looking at the equity and derivative markets together. The JSE is helping, but as its market-regulation director Shaun Davies notes, the exchange cannot police off-market bets it cannot see. ## The regulator has teeth This is not just a theory. The report lays out two cases — Labat Africa and Texton Property Fund — where the FSCA fined both the client giving the orders and the trader placing them. In the Labat matter, a client and trader ran 10 trades to push the price down and were fined R2-million and R250,000; in Texton, small orders to nudge the price up drew fines of R2-million and R500,000\. The evidence even included the client's own words: "I am trying to drop it now." It all lands alongside record enforcement — R2.8-billion in penalties across 76 people and firms, up from R119.8-million a year earlier. The regulator has not yet named the providers or shares in its three open probes, so the real question is who turns up when it does. ### While everyone chased gold, the company that runs the JSE quietly cleaned up URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/while-everyone-chased-gold-the-company-that-runs-the-jse-quietly-cleaned-up/ Last updated: 2026-08-13T09:26:26.000Z The loudest story on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange this year has been gold — miners flying, the rand hitching a ride on bullion. The quieter story is that the exchange itself is having a very good year. JSE Ltd, the company that operates the bourse, reported net profit after tax up 16.9% to R652-million for the six months to 30 June 2026\. Earnings per share rose 18.8% to 816.2 cents, and operating income climbed 14.6% to about R2-billion. The business model is almost boringly simple. The JSE earns a small fee every time shares change hands, and adds steadier income from market data, company listings and other services. When the market is busy, both sides grow — and this market has been busy. ## Costs held, profit through What turns a good top line into a great bottom line is discipline on costs. Total expenditure rose 11.5%, but strip out once-off items and the organisational redesign and underlying costs rose just 3.5%, giving the exchange what it calls positive operating leverage — income growing faster than expenses. Operating cash earnings — the EBITDA figure — rose 18.1% to R856-million, and the exchange generated R625-million in net operating cash. It ran at 99.99% availability with zero outages and ended June sitting on a R2.6-billion cash-and-bonds pile. Over the half it also helped companies raise R8.4-billion in fresh capital. By early afternoon on results day the share had risen almost 3% to R153.89, leaving it more than 5.5% higher for the year. ## The catch inside the good news These were the first results under new group chief executive Valdene Reddy, who took over from Leila Fourie in April. Her framing was growth that is broad-based and built to last. But there is a catch buried in the numbers: trading revenue swells when markets run hot, and this one has run unusually hot, which makes part of the boom a loan from the cycle rather than a permanent gain. Reddy's answer is FORGE 2031, a new five-year strategy to broaden what the JSE earns beyond the ebb and flow of trading. Whether the tollgate holds up when the volumes cool is the thing worth watching. ### SARS just opened its new tax-certainty deal to far more companies URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sars-just-opened-its-new-tax-certainty-deal-to-far-more-companies/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T03:14:59.000Z When SARS first sketched out its new deal for big multinationals, almost no one qualified — and the accountants said so. Now the taxman has listened. In a notice gazetted on Friday, the South African Revenue Service set the entry bar for its new advance pricing agreements at R10-billion in annual revenue, a steep cut from the R50-billion it first proposed. An advance pricing agreement, or APA, is an upfront deal between a company and one or more tax authorities that locks in how cross-border transactions between related parts of the same group will be taxed. The point is certainty: agree the method in advance and you avoid years of costly disputes and the risk of being taxed twice. It is the kind of thing large, globally spread companies value — but only if they can actually get in the door. ## Why R50bn didn't work That was the whole problem with the first draft. The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants told SARS that a R50-billion revenue bar per taxpayer was "excessively high" and "disconnected from the commercial realities" of the local market. It pointed out that even the country-by-country reporting threshold sits at R10-billion for a whole group, and only about 60 multinational groups in the country clear that. Forvis Mazars called the R50-billion bar "overly restrictive". Very few taxpayers would have qualified, leaving the programme inaccessible to most of the companies actually facing complex transfer-pricing questions. ## What it still costs Getting a lower bar does not make this cheap. A qualifying transaction must still exceed R1-billion for distribution or manufacturing, or R300-million for intragroup services. And companies face a R100,000 pre-application consultation fee plus a R1-million fee to process the application itself. The regime has been a long time coming — first floated in a 2020 discussion paper, with the enabling law having taken effect on 22 December 2023\. SARS says it is starting with a pilot precisely because these cases are specialised and resource-intensive. It now begins as a bilateral-only pilot during 2026, accepting deals involving one other country's tax authority at a time before the programme's scope is widened. The real test is who lines up first. ### One metal is holding up two South African scoreboards at once URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/one-metal-is-holding-up-two-south-african-scoreboards-at-once/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T02:59:59.000Z Sometimes an entire market runs on a single story. Last Friday, that story was gold. A climbing bullion price lifted the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and firmed the rand on the same day, even though the domestic economic news underneath was soft. Gold rose 2.4% on Friday to $4,341.94 an ounce, a seven-week high, capping a 7.4% gain over the week. That sent the mining counters flying: AngloGold Ashanti jumped 9.7%, Gold Fields 8.8%, Harmony Gold 7.3% and Sibanye-Stillwater 6.9%. The all-share index closed up 1.9% at 117,518 points. The rand, meanwhile, firmed to around R16.33 to the dollar, riding the same metal rather than any home-grown good news. ## Why gold is running A few forces are pushing the price. Central banks — China in particular — have kept buying, while weaker-than-expected US jobs data has strengthened bets that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates. Lower rates tend to weaken the dollar and push down bond yields, which makes gold relatively more attractive to hold. Easing tensions in the Middle East and softer oil prices have also cooled inflation fears. For South Africa, a country that both mines and exports gold, all of this is a useful cushion — it supports the terms of trade and helps offset higher energy costs tied to tensions between the US and Iran. Gold was also on track for its biggest weekly gain since January. ## The catch Here is the uncomfortable part. The very thing lifting both the market and the currency is one dollar-priced metal, set on trading desks abroad rather than by anything happening in Pretoria. Local prints barely mattered: manufacturing output actually fell 4.3% year-on-year, and the market shrugged. Even the domestic bright spots were quiet ones — South Africa's net foreign reserves edged up to $71.76 billion at the end of July, from $71.34 billion in June, and the benchmark 2035 government bond weakened slightly, its yield up four basis points to 8.43%. Currency strategists at TreasuryONE expect traders to stay cautious and hold their dollar positions until the Federal Reserve's path is clearer. A market and a rand riding on bullion are a market and a rand exposed the day gold turns. ### Coal is paying off again for Thungela URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/coal-is-paying-off-again-for-thungela/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T02:44:59.000Z Coal has been out of fashion for years, but it is quietly minting money again for Thungela Resources. The producer told the market on 7 August that its core earnings — the headline earnings per share figure JSE-listed companies must report — should land between R4.60 and R4.95 for the six months to June. That is an increase of 140% to 158% on a year earlier, comfortably more than double the R1.92 it reported a year ago. In rand terms, headline earnings should come in between R580-million and R630-million. Two things did most of the lifting. The first is price: the benchmark coal price at Richards Bay averaged about $104.25 a tonne so far this year, well up from $89.53 for all of 2025 and $91.78 in the first half of last year. The second is rail. Transnet Freight Rail, long the bottleneck for South African coal exporters, improved to an annualised run rate of about 60.8-million tonnes, and Thungela used spare capacity left by other miners to push more coal to port. Export sales, including about 700,000 tonnes of third-party coal, were expected to reach roughly 7.5-million tonnes in the half, up from 6.6-million a year earlier. ## The number that flatters the picture There is one figure that needs an asterisk. Basic earnings per share is set to jump far more — to between R10.75 and R11.10, up 457% to 475%. Total earnings attributable to shareholders are expected to land between R1.3-billion and R1.4-billion. But that basic-EPS leap is flattered by a roughly R1-billion non-cash profit Thungela booked on selling the Kleinkopje mining right at its Khwezela colliery. That one-off is stripped out of the headline earnings figure, which is why the two numbers are so far apart. ## What to watch Management was careful to note that volatile global coal markets are still weighing on results, so this is a recovery with a caveat rather than a clean sweep. Thungela's shares actually closed down 1.55% at R96.48 on Friday, before the JSE shut for Monday's holiday. The full interim results land on 17 August, when investors will see how much of the rebound is already priced in — and whether firmer coal and a steadier Transnet can keep the run going. ### eNCA wants to cut more than half its newsroom URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/enca-wants-to-cut-more-than-half-its-newsroom/ Last updated: 2026-08-12T02:29:59.000Z Broadcaster eNCA launched South Africa's first 24-hour news channel back in 2008\. Now it may cut more than half the people who make it. The channel, part of the JSE-listed eMedia Holdings, has started a Section 189 process — the formal retrenchment consultation South African law requires — that could affect 171 of its 309 employees. The retrenchment letters, signed by eNCA managing director Norman Munzhelele, were obtained by Rapport and the Sunday Times. The reason management gives is a familiar one: fewer people are watching traditional television news, and more are getting it on their phones. The notices say the current newsroom is built on "traditional models" that "no longer support this evolving landscape", and that "certain roles, function and/or structures can no longer be sustained in their current form". The plan is a smaller, digital-first newsroom. ## What the cuts would look like The consultation is expected to run until the end of November, with any retrenchments taking effect from 1 December. Staff who are let go would receive severance of 1.5 weeks' pay for every completed year of service — though anyone who "unreasonably" turns down an offer of alternative work inside the company would forfeit that payout. ## Why staff are angry The mood inside the newsroom is not calm. Employees who spoke to Rapport pointed to recent spending by management, including a trip by eMedia group CEO Khalik Sherrif and guests to the soccer World Cup in the United States, just ahead of the retrenchments. They also pointed at the top of the pay scale: Sherrif earned R19 million in the 2025 financial year, including a R10.3 million bonus, while the group's lowest-paid worker earned R98,000\. eMedia, which also owns e.tv, the streaming service eVOD and Openview channels such as eExtra and eMovies, employed 864 people at the end of March. The company is saying almost nothing publicly. eMedia declined to comment, noting as a matter of principle that it does not discuss internal business operations, confidential employee matters or internal processes through the media. With consultations running to November, the real question is how many of those 171 jobs actually survive the process — and how loudly the newsroom fights for them. ### The owner of SA's biggest mall got censured for a deal it never put to a vote URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-owner-of-sas-biggest-mall-got-censured-for-a-deal-it-never-put-to-a-vote/ Last updated: 2026-08-11T08:00:28.000Z There is an awkward twist buried in the JSE's latest public censure: the deal that broke the rules also seems to have worked. The stock exchange has publicly censured Accelerate Property Fund and fined it R500,000 — wholly suspended for three years — for appointing managers to run Fourways Mall, its biggest asset and South Africa's largest shopping centre, without the shareholder vote its listing rules require. ## What Accelerate did Back in December 2023, Accelerate told the market, through a stock-exchange notice, that it had appointed Flanagan & Gerard — and later the Moolman Group and Luvon Investments — as asset and property managers for Fourways Mall, on a five-year deal starting January 2024\. The managers began operating from 1 February 2024\. When the deal's conditions lapsed in November 2024, the arrangement was declared of “no force and effect” — yet the manager simply stayed on, month to month. The JSE said two things were missing: shareholder approval, and shareholders' right to cancel the agreement before it expired. That December 2023 notice had even said a shareholder circular was being prepared — but the vote never came, and the appointment went ahead unilaterally. The exchange says it only became aware of the problem in August 2024, after Accelerate's annual results for the year to March 2024 noted that “the impact of the appointment of the Asset and Property Manager” was already evident. ## Why it still matters The exchange ruled this a breach of paragraph 13.40 of its listing requirements, and pointedly noted the breach is ongoing — because shareholders still haven't approved the arrangement. It has ordered Accelerate to comply “forthwith”. The R500,000 penalty stays suspended for three years, provided the company doesn't breach similar rules again — so the censure is more a reputational rap than a cash blow, at least for now. The irony is hard to miss: Fourways Mall had fallen into decline amid rising vacancies and thin foot traffic, and the very manager appointed without a vote appears to have turned it around. Now Accelerate has to make the arrangement official — or unwind it — before the regulator's patience runs out. ### A weak US jobs report quietly did South Africa a favour URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-weak-us-jobs-report-quietly-did-south-africa-a-favour/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T09:59:59.000Z When the world's biggest economy stumbles, it doesn't usually count as good news in Johannesburg — but last week it was. America's July jobs report was a genuine miss: the US Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 23,000 jobs lost, against forecasts of about 80,000 gained. Gold kept climbing anyway, and the knock-on effects landed squarely in South Africa's favour. ## The gift Gold, already on a tear, pushed higher after the jobs print — December futures opened around $4,298 an ounce and climbed toward $4,400 intraday, up more than 2% on the day and roughly 27% over the year. A softer US dollar and firm metal prices are exactly the tailwind the rand likes: the currency firmed to about R16.33 to the dollar, near its strongest in a month, helped along by cheaper oil, with Brent slipping below $80 a barrel. It is a real recovery — the rand had sunk to R16.98 on 24 July, a more-than-three-month low, and is now about 7.9% stronger against the dollar over the year. For a major metals exporter, expensive gold and platinum plus cheaper energy imports is about the best trade-off the country can get, and JSE-listed gold miners riding the record bullion price get another leg up. ## The warning label Here's the catch: the same US weakness that lifted South African assets is a flashing light on global growth. It also reopens a local debate the Reserve Bank thought it had closed. On 23 July the SARB surprised markets by holding its policy rate at 7% in a 4-2 vote, with inflation running at a two-year high of 5%. The hold was striking because the bank had only just raised the rate to 7% on 28 May — its first hike since 2023 — and core inflation is running at 4.1%. Governor Lesetja Kganyago warned that renewed Middle East conflict, by lifting oil and fertiliser prices, could yet justify another hike. So the question for the next rate meeting on 23 September is whether a firmer rand and a weaker dollar are enough to keep the deferred hike deferred — even as economists surveyed by Trading Economics still pencil in 7.25% by quarter-end. Either way, a stronger currency fixes none of the deeper constraints: power, ports and rail still cap how fast the economy can grow. ### Buffett's Berkshire finally cracked open its cash mountain URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/buffetts-berkshire-finally-cracked-open-its-cash-mountain/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T03:44:59.000Z For years, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway sat on a record hoard of cash and did remarkably little with it. In the second quarter, under new chief executive Greg Abel, that finally changed. The conglomerate said it began running down the pile — buying back its own shares, snapping up stocks, and ending a long stretch on the sidelines. ## Where the money went Berkshire repurchased about $4.5 billion of its own stock between April and June, and more than $3.3 billion again in July, accelerating buybacks it had restarted in March after a near-two-year pause. It also bought nearly $20 billion more shares than it sold — ending 14 straight quarters as a net seller — including a $10 billion top-up of its stake in Alphabet, Google's parent and now one of its largest holdings. The cash pile duly shrank, to about $364.7 billion from a record $380.2 billion three months earlier. That figure even absorbs $6.8 billion Berkshire spent in late July to buy US home builder Taylor Morrison. To put the buybacks in context, its biggest year was 2021, when it repurchased $27 billion of stock. ## Under the bonnet The operating business, the part Buffett always urged investors to judge, did its job: operating profit rose 16% to $12.98 billion, lifted by the BNSF railway and the manufacturing and retail arms. The weak spot was car insurer Geico, whose underwriting profit fell 45% as claims and marketing costs rose. Insurance float — the premiums Berkshire holds before it pays out claims — edged up to about $177.5 billion. On a per-share basis, net earnings worked out to $17,868 for each Class A share. Revenue, which had been stagnating, rose 10% to $101.81 billion. Headline net income more than doubled to $25.67 billion, but that figure is flattered by paper gains on shares that Berkshire itself tells investors to ignore. It is the clearest sign yet of how Abel deploys capital in the post-Buffett era, with the founder still chairman. Berkshire still warns of “considerable uncertainty” from tariffs and wars, and its shares have trailed the wider US market this year. Where Abel points the cash next is the question hanging over the next results. ### Netcare wants to use AI to catch medical emergencies 8–10 hours early URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/netcare-wants-ai-that-spots-a-patient-crashing-hours-before-doctors-can/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T19:12:02.000Z Imagine a monitor that notices a patient is heading for trouble long before the numbers look alarming to the human eye. That is what Netcare, South Africa's largest hospital group, has just asked the health-products regulator, SAHPRA, to license, after running a clinical study in its intensive- and high-care units. ## How it works The tool is a machine-learning model that reads a patient's real-time vital signs — heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels and breathing — to predict a dangerous downturn before it becomes obvious. It is designed to catch events like heart failure, respiratory failure, sepsis or a dangerous heart rhythm, and Netcare's Professor Reitze Rodseth says it can give staff an eight- to ten-hour window to act. Built with German clinical-AI firm TCC in a partnership running since 2023, and refined over almost three years with the University of KwaZulu-Natal, it took years precisely because the team had to prove it works and is safe. ## Not the AI boogeyman Handing patient monitoring to an algorithm invites obvious worry, and Rodseth is quick to head it off: “We don't need to be scared of the AI boogeyman... It's only a support. It's an additional safety layer.” The treatment decision, in other words, stays with the doctor. He is candid about the limits, too — noting that a model built on one population can lose accuracy when applied to another, which is part of why the work was slow. The push fits a broader strategic shift toward data- and AI-driven care under Netcare CEO Dr Richard Friedland. And it is a big canvas to test on: Netcare runs 49 acute hospitals with almost 10,000 beds, plus 15 mental-health hospitals with about 1,100 beds through its Akeso division. In the six months to end-March, paid-patient growth was a thin 0.7%, while mental-health patient days rose 3.4%. Netcare says this is only the start: models for kidney failure, emergency-department admissions and ICU readmission are already in development, and Corsano wearable watches are monitoring thousands of at-risk patients. Whether SAHPRA signs off — and Netcare hopes for a yes within three to six months — is the next thing to watch. ### Spur set aside R129.5 million over a ribs deal it says never existed URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/spur-set-aside-r129-5-million-over-a-ribs-deal-it-says-never-existed/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T03:14:59.000Z Few corporate line items sound as unlikely as a nine-figure charge over ribs, but that is what Spur has just handed its shareholders. The restaurant group behind Panarottis and Hussar Grill told the market it has set aside a once-off provision of R129.5 million after an arbitrator ruled against it in a long-running dispute with a food manufacturer, GPS Food Group. ## How a ribs deal ended in court The row dates back to 2019, when GPS sued Spur, alleging the two sides had struck a spoken agreement to build and run a rib-processing facility — a deal Spur insists never existed. The matter went to arbitration in October 2023; a part-award favoured GPS last year, and on 3 August 2026 the arbitrator put a number on it: R74.6 million in damages, plus interest at 10% dating back to the original summons, which lifts the total to R129.5 million. The original claim was bigger and messier than the final figure: GPS's main damages claim ranged from R119.9 million to R167 million, alongside an alternative claim of R95.8 million that the arbitrator dismissed. ## The hit — and the escape hatch On paper the blow is heavy. Spur's headline earnings per share — the cleaned-up profit figure JSE-listed companies must report — are guided to fall 34% to 43% for the year to June. Strip out the one-off charge, though, and earnings would actually have risen 5% to 13%. Spur is not treating the number as final: it is appealing the award in full before a panel of three arbitrators in February 2027, and says its senior counsel expects to win — which could reverse the provision entirely. Spur is careful to note that an appeal award would be final and binding, with no further right of appeal either way. For now the company sounds unbothered about the cash, saying five years of strong trading leave it enough to cover the charge without touching its liquidity or its dividends. Investors barely blinked: the shares were flat on the Friday, and are still up about 24% over the past year. The cleaner read on how the business actually traded lands with full-year results on 20 August. ### Zimbabwe's dollar stock exchange wants to be a quarter bigger in a year URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/zimbabwes-dollar-stock-exchange-wants-to-be-a-quarter-bigger-in-a-year/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T02:59:59.000Z Born out of a currency crisis five years ago, Zimbabwe's US-dollar stock exchange has grown up fast — and now it wants to grow a quarter bigger in twelve months. The Victoria Falls Stock Exchange plans to lift its market value by 25% over the next year as it rolls out new products, chief executive Justin Bgoni told Bloomberg. ## The $5 billion target “We are currently on the $4 billion mark, and we will work hard to reach $5 billion” over the next 12 months, Bgoni said in an interview in Victoria Falls. The plan leans on selling more than just ordinary shares: the exchange is pushing property funds, index-tracking funds and infrastructure bonds, having notched its second property-fund listing and its first index fund this year. It has added four new listings this year of a targeted six, and its 21st company just came aboard — Old Mutual, Africa's largest insurer by assets, listed in early August. Bgoni says the exchange is also expecting some international index funds, and is seeing strong interest in developmental property funds and in infrastructure bonds from financial institutions. ## A board for the little miners The headline new idea is a “venture board” — a dedicated place for junior and exploration-stage mining companies to raise money, aimed at the early-stage projects that usually struggle to attract funding. It is a logical fit for a country that is Africa's largest lithium producer and is also rich in platinum and gold, where local banks typically lend only short-term at interest rates around 35%. Mining is a cornerstone of the economy, contributing about 12% of GDP and most of its export earnings. First floated back in March, the board is still to launch. The exchange has form for punching above its weight: in March it overtook the 132-year-old Zimbabwe Stock Exchange by market value, after tycoon Strive Masiyiwa moved a telecoms-infrastructure firm onto the platform at a $1 billion valuation. Whether it can add the listings — and finally launch that long-promised miners' board — fast enough to hit the $5 billion mark is the real test of the year ahead. ### Global food prices just hit a three-year high — and your trolley will feel it later URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/global-food-prices-just-hit-a-three-year-high-and-your-trolley-will-feel-it-later/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T02:44:59.000Z There is a lag between a bad harvest on the other side of the world and the price on a South African shelf, but the fuse has just been lit. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization says its global food-price benchmark — which tracks the international prices of a basket of traded food commodities — rose 0.6% in July to 131.1 points, its highest level in more than three years. ## What got dearer The month's move was driven by grains, oils and sugar. The cereals gauge as a whole rose 3.4%, reversing a May dip and sitting 6.9% above a year ago. World wheat prices jumped 5.8%, pushed up by fears over disrupted Black Sea export routes and the likely damage recent heatwaves have done to crops in key growing countries. Bloomberg reports wheat hit a two-year high in the month, with Europe heading for one of its steepest grain-harvest declines on record as extreme heat scorches crops, and intensifying Russian and Ukrainian attacks stoking fears over Black Sea supplies. Maize rose 3.6% on hot, dry weather in parts of the United States and firmer energy markets. Cooking oils climbed 2% to their highest since mid-2022 — a four-year peak, led by palm oil on firm demand from Indonesia's biodiesel sector and higher crude prices — and sugar rose 5.6% on weather worries in the EU and Asia. It wasn't all up: meat slipped 2.8% and dairy eased 0.7%, both coming off recent highs. ## Why South Africa should care Because the index measures globally traded commodities, price rises reach supermarket tills only with a delay — which is exactly why local food inflation tends to follow the world with a lag. FAO economist Monika Tothova says markets will keep watching weather in the big producing regions, along with trade routes, energy markets and logistics. The risk list is stacking up: an unusually strong El Niño, fertiliser disruptions, and elevated energy costs in the wake of the Iran conflict all threaten the next few harvests. For shoppers in South Africa, the takeaway is simple — today's global spike is tomorrow's grocery-bill problem. ### OpenAI reportedly wants to sell you a $300 metal doughnut URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/openai-reportedly-wants-to-sell-you-a-300-metal-doughnut/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T02:29:59.000Z Every so often a tech rumour is strange enough to stick, and this one is shaped like a doughnut. According to a Bloomberg report picked up widely, OpenAI's first piece of hardware — long teased as the “physical manifestation” of ChatGPT — will reportedly be a screenless, doughnut-shaped smart speaker. ## What it's meant to be The device is said to be built to be carried around your home, moved from a kitchen counter to a bedside table as you go. Bloomberg's sources describe it as made from “high-quality metal”, with a “premium look” and, oddly, distinct “moving parts”. It is being developed with LoveFrom, the design studio founded by Jony Ive, the former Apple designer behind the look of the iPhone, with a launch pencilled in for some time in 2027\. The pitch, as earlier leaks framed it, is a device you keep with you rather than mount in one spot — the long-promised “physical manifestation” of ChatGPT, now given a form. Quite what those “moving parts” are meant to do, no one outside OpenAI seems to know. ## The price is the shock Here's the part that raised eyebrows: the speaker could sell for $300 to $400 a unit. To put that in perspective, most of Amazon's smart-home speakers run from about $40 at the bottom to $240 at the top — so OpenAI would be asking a clear premium for a first-generation gadget. And smart speakers have not always been an easy or profitable business to break into; a high price tag may not help. It would also be OpenAI's first real step into selling physical hardware — a very different game from shipping software. One giant caveat runs under all of it: every detail here comes from a single Bloomberg report citing unnamed sources, and OpenAI has confirmed none of it. The timing is awkward, too: OpenAI's hardware push is unfolding while Apple, the current king of hardware, presses a lawsuit accusing it of stealing trade secrets — a claim OpenAI denies. Whether the doughnut is real, and whether anyone pays premium money for it, is a 2027 question. ### A Saudi ports giant is circling Cape Town's troubled harbour URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-saudi-ports-giant-is-circling-cape-towns-troubled-harbour/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T02:14:59.000Z For a harbour that the World Bank and S&P Global ranked the worst-performing in the world last year, a little foreign attention goes a long way. Transnet's ports authority has opened a 25-year concession to refurbish and run one of the Port of Cape Town's multi-purpose terminals, in the Duncan Dock precinct — and the operator it lands could reshape how cargo moves through the Mother City. Bids close on 20 November. ## Who turned up The name that has caught the eye is Red Sea Gateway Terminal, Saudi Arabia's first privately funded port operator and the company that runs the kingdom's largest container terminal. RSGT sent its director of global investments, Gagan Seksaria, to a bidders' meeting in Cape Town to “evaluate participation”. It is partly owned by the Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund — the state's own money — and has also weighed a bid for a fresh-produce terminal at the Port of Durban. ## Why Transnet is selling the keys The tender is the latest move in Transnet's long campaign to fix a port that has become a byword for delay. Covering about 119,849m², the upgrade is meant to lift cargo throughput and modernise infrastructure for containerised, dry-bulk and break-bulk cargo. Acting port manager Ophelia Shabane called it “another important step in advancing the port's modernisation and long-term competitiveness”. Under the 25-year deal, the winning operator would design, finance, refurbish, build, run and maintain the terminal — then hand it back to Transnet at the end. The current lease expires next year, which forced the timing, and the process runs under Section 56 of the National Ports Act, the rule that lets Transnet pull private money into public port infrastructure. The terminal is one of nine privately operated facilities out of eleven at the port, and the concession forms part of Transnet's “Reinvent for Growth” strategy to widen private-sector participation — the authority already manages 82 private terminal-operator and lease agreements, about 78% of the operators handling bulk, liquid and multi-purpose cargo. It also fits a bigger pattern: over the past decade Gulf states have poured more than $100 billion into African energy, farming and logistics, with the UAE's DP World already expanding Maputo and building Congo's first deep-water port. Whether a Saudi operator ends up running a slice of Cape Town's waterfront now rests on who else shows up before the November deadline. ### The Roundup — Friday, 7 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-7-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:52.000Z Today's edition Crude Intentions Good morning. Everyone's chasing something a size too big for them this morning: Johannesburg is openly courting Africa's biggest-ever listing, Pick n Pay is chasing a recovery its own shelves aren't delivering, and Eskom is chasing a green future mostly on other people's money. Ambition is running well ahead of the paperwork today. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--22-.png) --- PITCH PERFECT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-jse-dangote-1.png) ## The JSE Is Fighting to Land a Piece of Africa's Biggest-Ever Listing The Johannesburg Stock Exchange doesn't usually campaign in public. This week it made an exception. New chief executive Valdene Reddy told CNBC Africa that Africa's largest stock exchange is bidding to host a secondary listing of Nigeria's Dangote refinery, once the company completes its planned float at home later this year. The prize is enormous: the Dangote listing is put at roughly $5 billion, about R82 billion, and would likely be the largest ever on the continent. Johannesburg's pitch rests on depth, it trades far more each day than Lagos does, but exchanges in Kenya, Egypt, Ghana and Rwanda are all angling for a slice of the same deal. **What's on the table:** - The Dangote refinery, Africa's biggest at 650,000 barrels a day, plans to float in Lagos first, around October, then hopes to add a Johannesburg listing shortly thereafter. - The JSE's edge is liquidity: it trades between $1.5 billion and $2 billion a day, against roughly $10 million to $20 million on Nigeria's own exchange. - The catch: even a win would likely be depositary receipts that merely track the shares, not the shares themselves, and analysts value the refinery anywhere from $40 billion to $50 billion. For an exchange that has watched its roster of listings thin out for two decades, landing even a piece of Dangote would be a statement of relevance. But strong intent is not ink on a page, and whether the public courtship turns into an actual listing, and in what form, is the thing to watch. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-jse-is-fighting-to-land-a-piece-of-africas-biggest-ever-listing/) --- MIXED BASKET ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-pick-n-pay-1.png) ## Pick n Pay's Recovery Is Real, Just Not in Its Own Supermarkets Pick n Pay's turnaround is finally showing up in the numbers, just not where you'd expect. In a trading update for the 20 weeks to 19 July, group turnover grew 2.7%, online sales jumped 37.5%, and the long-suffering clothing division clawed back to nearly flat. The catch is where that growth sits: the Pick n Pay-branded supermarkets that give the group its name were essentially flat. Almost all the momentum came from Boxer, the discount chain it spun off in 2024, and from online orders through Pick n Pay asap! and the Mr D app. Management was blunt that much remains to be done, and the hardest part isn't on the shop floor: breaking even by the 2029 financial year hinges on a mass-retrenchment process now before the Labour Court, with up to 22,000 jobs in play. Until that resolves, the turnaround stays a story only half told. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/pick-n-pays-recovery-is-real-but-its-own-supermarkets-arent-the-engine/) --- BAGEL BITE **What is the largest fish species in the ocean?** **A.** Basking shark **B.** Whale shark **C.** Great white shark --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-sasol--1--1.png) **Sasol's profit is about to leap, but not the number that counts most.** A fresh trading statement guides earnings per share to between R17.50 and R19.50 for the year to June, up as much as 84% on a year earlier. Look one line down, though, and the cleaned-up figure investors actually track is guided to rise just 2% to 14%. A friendlier oil price and last year's writedowns not repeating, rather than a real turnaround, did most of the lifting. The proper test comes with full results on 1 September. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/sasols-profit-is-about-to-leap-but-not-the-number-that-counts-most/) **EasyEquities is about to move into Absa's banking app.** From September, the investing platform will sit directly inside Absa's app, handing the bank's roughly 12 million retail customers a simple route into the market. It's a familiar play: EasyEquities already powers investing inside Capitec and Discovery Bank, and the two businesses already overlap, with about 125,000 of its clients funding through Absa. The bank gets share trading without the cost of building a broker of its own. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/easyequities-is-about-to-move-into-absas-banking-app/) **Emirates and SAA just turned a 30-year partnership into a two-way street.** With regulators signed off, Emirates can for the first time sell seats on South African Airways flights, across nine domestic and regional routes. Until now the deal ran one way, with SAA's code on Emirates flights. The real prize is Johannesburg's role as a hub, funnelling international connecting traffic, especially from Europe, through the city and out across the continent. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/emirates-and-saa-turn-a-30-year-partnership-into-a-two-way-street/) **South Africa's property funds just broke free of the interest-rate trap.** Listed property returned 1.4% in July, edging out both shares and bonds, and for once it wasn't about rate cuts. Rolling 12-month dividend growth held at 10.58%, a fifth straight quarter ahead of inflation, so rising rents are now doing the work that falling rates used to. With the Reserve Bank holding the repo rate at 7%, that's a sector no longer hostage to the next rate call. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-property-funds-just-broke-free-of-the-interest-rate-trap/) **Eskom wants to go green, mostly with other people's money.** Its year-old renewables arm, Eskom Green, will tender a 2GW solar and 1GW battery-storage project within the next month, and plans to keep the cost off Eskom's strained balance sheet by funding through separate project companies alongside private partners. The ambition is big: 5.6GW of renewables by 2030, rising to 32GW by 2040, with most of that build left to the private sector. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-wants-to-go-green-mostly-with-other-peoples-money/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--18-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--21-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Whale shark** The whale shark, scientifically known as *Rhincodon typus*, is the world’s largest fish, reaching around 12 metres and weighing more than 20,000 kilograms. Despite its enormous size, it is a gentle filter feeder that eats plankton, fish eggs and small marine animals. It is classified as a fish because it breathes through gills, is cold blooded and has a skeleton made from cartilage. --- That's your Friday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Gold's rally is lifting the JSE — and quietly pinching the miners driving it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/golds-rally-is-lifting-the-jse-and-quietly-pinching-the-miners-driving-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-09T06:00:00.000Z Gold is on a run, and South Africa's market is riding it. Bullion climbed for a third straight day, gaining more than 2% to almost $4,165 an ounce, after the prospect of an interim deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz eased inflation fears and trimmed bets on further US interest-rate rises. Spot gold was last up 2.1% at $4,164.21, with silver 3.4% higher and platinum and palladium also climbing. The rally has an obvious local beneficiary. South African mining shares tend to rise when dollar-priced metals do, and on the day the JSE Top-40 ended the session up 1.1%. The rand firmed too, to around 16.32 per dollar, holding its ground even as data showed manufacturing output slipping year-on-year. ## Why the Fed is doing the work The move is less about South Africa than about Washington. Markets are now fully pricing in just a single US rate increase by year-end, down from two as recently as last week. Less monetary tightening is generally good news for gold, which pays no yield and so competes better against interest-bearing assets when rates are expected to stay lower. Appetite is showing up elsewhere, too: gold-backed exchange-traded funds in China saw 14 straight days of inflows to Monday, the longest such streak since March. ## The catch inside the rally Here is the quiet irony. The same gold strength that lifts South African miners also tends to firm the rand, and a stronger rand trims the local-currency value of the dollars those miners earn. A gold rally that pushes the currency up is, in part, a gold rally that pinches the margins of the very companies driving the index higher. It rarely cancels the gain outright, but it takes the edge off. For now, the direction of travel is set by forces well beyond the JSE: the standoff over Hormuz, the path of US inflation, and how many more times the Federal Reserve moves. South African investors are, in effect, passengers on a global trade. The question is how long the gold tailwind lasts once the Hormuz uncertainty clears, and whether the rand keeps quietly clipping the wings of the miners enjoying the ride. ### Icasa staff walk out as the telecoms regulator says it can't afford more URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/icasa-staff-walk-out-as-the-telecoms-regulator-says-it-cant-afford-more/ Last updated: 2026-08-08T06:00:00.000Z South Africa's communications regulator has a pay fight on its hands. Members of the National Education, Health and Allied Workers' Union at the Independent Communications Authority of SA began a protected strike on Thursday, after talks over salaries for the year to March 2027 broke down. The sticking point is a 4.5% cost-of-living increase that Icasa offered and the union refused. Icasa's position is that the money simply is not there. The authority says it is under significant financial strain, pointing to a R60 million budget deficit in 2025 on expenditure of almost R600 million, about two-thirds of which goes on staff costs. When consultations failed to produce a deal, Icasa invoked a clause in its remuneration policy that lets it implement its final offer, and pushed the 4.5% increase through in the June payroll. ## How it reached a strike The dispute followed the standard procedural path to a legal walkout. According to a letter to staff from Icasa's chief executive, the parties failed to agree and the CCMA issued Nehawu with a certificate of non-resolution, the step that permits a protected strike. A no-work-no-pay principle applies for the duration, in line with agreed picketing rules, and staff have been told to work from the office until further notice. ## A regulator that cannot afford to pause Icasa insists none of its services will be affected while the strike runs, an assurance that matters given how much sits on its desk. The regulator oversees broadcasting, postal and telecommunications services, runs a consumer-protection unit, and is currently working through rapid-deployment regulations and spectrum-licensing matters, none of which pause conveniently for a labour dispute. The standoff echoes 2023, when Icasa staff struck for seven days after Nehawu rejected a 4.4% offer, eventually settling on a 5% rise plus a one-off R20,000 payment. Whether history repeats will depend on how long the deadlock holds and how much either side is willing to move. For now, one number is missing from the public account: exactly what increase Nehawu is demanding. Until that gap closes and the two sides return to the table, the regulator is working through its in-tray a body short. ### Eskom wants to go green — mostly with other people's money URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-wants-to-go-green-mostly-with-other-peoples-money/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T03:44:59.000Z Eskom, the utility South Africans learned to blame for the dark, is trying on a new identity, cautiously. At the SA-China Energy Investment Conference on 5 August, its year-old renewables subsidiary, Eskom Green, told investors it will release a tender for a 2 gigawatt solar and 1 gigawatt battery-storage project within the next month, and is hunting for partners to help build it. The eye-catching part is not the megawatts. It is the money. Rather than pile fresh borrowing onto Eskom's famously strained balance sheet, Eskom Green plans to fund projects through separate project companies, special-purpose vehicles, in which it and private partners inject equity and raise 70% to 80% of the cost as ring-fenced debt. The structure keeps most of the risk off Eskom's own books. ## What unlocked the plan The approach became possible in July, when Eskom Green secured approvals under the Public Finance Management Act allowing it to raise funding and enter public-private partnerships. Chief executive Rivoningo Mnisi said the unit has brought in the Development Bank of Southern Africa and PwC to advise on selecting partners, and is in the final stages of that process. The mandate is ambitious: 5.6 gigawatts of renewables by 2030, rising to 32 gigawatts by 2040. ## A build too big for one balance sheet The funding model is not just clever accounting; it reflects a hard limit. Eskom plans R343 billion of capital investment over five years under tight restrictions on new debt, so growth has to come without deepening the debt pile. Alongside the flagship tender, Eskom Green is rolling out about 500 megawatts across seven sites, including a 75 megawatt solar plant at Lethabo, and is courting partners for the roughly R40 billion Tubatse pumped-storage scheme. Even the 32 gigawatt target, Eskom chief executive Dan Marokane pointed out, leaves more than two-thirds of the country's renewable-energy build to the private sector, a tacit admission that no single utility can carry the transition. The strategy is sensible on paper. Whether a cash-strapped Eskom can deliver on time, attract the private money it needs, and do it without leaning on special treatment is the test that lies ahead. ### Pick n Pay's recovery is real — but its own supermarkets aren't the engine URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/pick-n-pays-recovery-is-real-but-its-own-supermarkets-arent-the-engine/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T03:30:00.000Z Pick n Pay's turnaround is finally showing up in the numbers, just not in the place you might expect. In a trading update for the 20 weeks to 19 July, the retailer grew group turnover 2.7%, with online sales up a striking 37.5% and its clothing division clawing back to -1.3% on a like-for-like basis, a sharp improvement on the -5.6% slump of the prior half. After years of losses and restructuring, that reads like progress. Look at where the growth sits, though, and the recovery is lopsided. The Pick n Pay-branded supermarkets that give the group its name were essentially flat on turnover. Almost all the momentum came from elsewhere. ## Boxer and online do the lifting The standout performer was Boxer, the discount chain Pick n Pay spun off in 2024, which grew turnover 7.2% and opened 19 new stores during the period. Online was the other engine, up 37.5% on the back of Pick n Pay asap! and groceries on the Mr D app. The core supermarkets, meanwhile, are still working through a store-estate reset that has closed or converted hundreds of loss-making outlets, a clean-up that dents reported turnover even as it improves the quality of what remains. Internal food inflation of just 1.3%, below the 2.5% shelf rate, helped volumes but capped how fast sales could grow. ## The fight that decides the finish Management was blunt that much remains to be done, and the hardest part is not on the shop floor. Pick n Pay has tied its goal of breaking even by the 2029 financial year to concluding a mass-retrenchment process it began in May. Its main union, SACCAWU, is opposing that process, which now sits before the Labour Court and the CCMA, the country's labour mediator. In June the Labour Minister stepped in to pause cuts that could affect as many as 22,000 workers. That standoff is the real cliffhanger. The trading update shows a business that has stopped bleeding and started growing in patches: online, clothing, Boxer. But the path to actual profit runs straight through a contested labour negotiation, and until that resolves, the turnaround stays a story only half told. ### The JSE is fighting to land a piece of Africa's biggest-ever listing URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-jse-is-fighting-to-land-a-piece-of-africas-biggest-ever-listing/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T03:15:00.000Z The Johannesburg Stock Exchange does not usually campaign in public. This week it made an exception. New chief executive Valdene Reddy told CNBC Africa that Africa's largest bourse is bidding to host a secondary listing of Nigeria's Dangote refinery, once the company completes its planned initial public offering at home later this year. The prize is enormous. Reuters reporting, carried by News24, puts the Dangote IPO at roughly $5 billion, about R82 billion, a raise expected to conclude around October and likely to be the largest ever on the continent. The refinery, Africa's biggest, running at 650,000 barrels a day in Lagos since 2024, has drawn a crowd of suitors, with exchanges in South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana and Rwanda all angling for a slice. ## Why Johannesburg thinks it can win The JSE's pitch rests on liquidity. It records average daily trading of between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, against roughly $10 million to $20 million a day on Nigeria's own exchange, a market perhaps a hundred times deeper. Reddy framed Dangote as part of a robust pipeline of second-half listings spanning mining, fintech, property and construction, and said the company will go and list in Nigeria first but with a strong intent to come to Johannesburg shortly thereafter. South Africa is already close to the deal in another way: Standard Bank, the continent's largest lender, is a lead adviser through its Nigerian arm. ## The catch behind the courtship Here is where enthusiasm meets fine print. A cross-listing of the actual shares in a second country is not planned at this stage, according to the Reuters reporting. Instead, exchanges like the JSE would more likely offer investors depositary receipts or similar instruments that merely track the Nigerian shares, not the shares themselves. So even a successful bid could deliver a shadow of the listing rather than the real thing. The valuation, too, is contested, pegged somewhere between $40 billion and $50 billion depending on the source. For an exchange that has watched its roster of listings thin out for two decades, landing even a piece of Dangote would be a statement of relevance. But strong intent is not ink on a page. Whether Johannesburg's public courtship turns into an actual listing, and in what form, is the thing to watch. ### South Africa's property funds just broke free of the interest-rate trap URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-property-funds-just-broke-free-of-the-interest-rate-trap/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T03:00:00.000Z For most of the past two years, South Africa's listed property funds have been a bet on interest rates. When the bond market rallied, real estate investment trusts rallied with it; when rates worried the market, property sagged. In July, that link finally snapped. The sector returned 1.4% for the month, edging out the JSE All-Share Index at 1.2% and leaving the All-Bond Index, which fell 1.4%, well behind. That is an unusual pairing, property funds delivering a positive month while bonds retreated, and it is the whole point. According to the SA REIT Association's latest Chart Book, compiled by Merchant West's Ian Anderson, the sector is now up 7.8% for the year, comfortably ahead of both shares and bonds. ## Rent, not rate cuts What has changed is where the returns are coming from. Rolling 12-month dividend growth held at 10.58%, a fifth straight quarter in which payouts have grown faster than inflation. With consumer inflation rising to a two-year high of 5.0% in June, that is still a wide real margin. The income line, Anderson argued, is now doing the job that falling interest rates did through 2024 and 2025, and results published in June suggest dividend growth will stay elevated into the 2027 financial year. That matters because rate relief looks distant. The Reserve Bank held the repo rate at 7.0% on 23 July, with its committee split four to two, and the two dissenters actually wanted a hike. A sector that needed rate cuts to perform would be stuck; one powered by rising rents is not. ## A widening gap between funds The other story in the numbers is dispersion. Texton led July with a 14.5% gain, ahead of Vukile, Burstone and Redefine, while year-to-date honours went to Oasis Crescent, Octodec and Heriot. Beneath the headline, funds with strong balance sheets are raising and deploying capital, with Hyprop upsizing a July bookbuild to about R739 million, while weaker players sell assets to cut debt. That gap, association chief executive Joanne Solomon and Anderson both suggested, is likely to widen if funding costs stay where they are. The sector has stopped trading as a single bet on rates; from here, balance sheets decide the winners. ### Emirates and SAA turn a 30-year partnership into a two-way street URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/emirates-and-saa-turn-a-30-year-partnership-into-a-two-way-street/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T02:44:59.000Z For nearly three decades, Emirates and South African Airways have flown as partners in one direction only. That changes now. The two carriers have expanded their codeshare into a reciprocal agreement, and with regulatory approvals secured, Emirates can for the first time place its code on SAA-operated flights, selling seats on the South African airline's own network rather than only the other way around. Until now the relationship was unilateral: SAA put its code on Emirates flights between Dubai and Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, plus interline access to 68 Emirates destinations worldwide. The new deal flips the arrangement, extending Emirates deeper into South Africa and its neighbours. ## Nine new routes on the map The expansion covers nine routes. Three are domestic, linking Johannesburg with Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth. The other six reach across the region, connecting Johannesburg with Kinshasa, Gaborone, Windhoek, Lusaka, Harare and Victoria Falls. For passengers, that means single-ticket bookings, coordinated schedules and bags checked through to the final destination, the kind of frictionless connection that has moved millions of travellers since the partnership began in 1997\. The reciprocal structure also lets SAA capture Emirates passengers connecting from overseas markets onto its regional flights, a commercial win for a carrier still rebuilding its network. The strategic prize is Johannesburg's role as a hub. By putting Emirates' code on SAA's regional feeder network, the deal funnels international connecting traffic, particularly from Europe, through Johannesburg and out across the continent. Emirates already runs 56 weekly flights into South Africa's three gateways, and the country is the only market on its Africa network to receive all three of its widebody types: the Boeing 777, the Airbus A380 and the A350. ## A vote of confidence in SAA For a national carrier that spent years in business rescue and near-collapse, having the world's largest long-haul airline choose to sell seats on its flights is a quiet vote of confidence. SAA's acting group chief executive Matshela Seshibe cast it as a milestone in the airline's push to strengthen African connectivity; Emirates' Adnan Kazim called it a natural evolution and a reinforcement of the group's commitment to the region. Whether the tie-up translates into fuller planes and steadier finances for SAA is the next test, but for now, the partnership finally runs both ways. ### EasyEquities is about to move into Absa's banking app URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/easyequities-is-about-to-move-into-absas-banking-app/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T02:29:59.000Z EasyEquities has made a habit of setting up shop inside other people's banking apps, and it just landed its biggest host yet. The investing platform and Absa announced a partnership that will build the EasyEquities experience directly into the Absa app, giving the bank's roughly 12 million retail customers a simple way to start buying shares. The in-app experience is expected to go live from September. The logic is familiar, because EasyEquities has run this play before. It already sits inside the Capitec app and powers investing for Discovery Bank, and the Absa deal follows the same model: the bank supplies the customers and the trust, EasyEquities supplies the plumbing. For a bank, it is a way to offer share trading and investments without the cost and complexity of building a stockbroking arm from scratch. ## Two customer bases that already overlap What makes the Absa tie-up less of a leap than it looks is how tangled the two businesses already are. Around 125,000 EasyEquities clients fund their accounts through Absa; roughly 30,000 Absa shareholders and nearly 20,000 holders of Absa investment products already invest through EasyEquities. The partnership essentially formalises a relationship that customers had already built on their own. Purple Group chief executive Charles Savage, whose company owns EasyEquities, framed it as a mission play: markets, he said, remain one of the most effective ways to grow and protect wealth over time, and the deal gives Absa clients a simple way to start through a platform they already trust. Absa's Sitoyo Lopokoiyit, who runs personal and private banking across the continent, called it a natural extension of an existing connection. ## Why the banks keep saying yes The bigger picture is a scramble among South African banks to keep customers inside their own apps for more of their financial lives, and investing is one of the stickiest reasons to open an app each day. Embedding a ready-made platform is faster and cheaper than building one. The question now is how many of Absa's millions of customers actually tap through once the option appears, and whether easy access nudges more first-time investors into the market. September will start to tell. ### Sasol's profit is about to leap — but not the number that counts most URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sasols-profit-is-about-to-leap-but-not-the-number-that-counts-most/ Last updated: 2026-08-07T02:15:00.000Z Sasol has given the market an early read on its year, and at first glance it looks like a blockbuster. In a trading statement for the 12 months to June, the fuels and chemicals group said earnings per share should land between R17.50 and R19.50, up 65% to 84% on the R10.60 it reported a year earlier. For a company that spent much of the past two years apologising for writedowns and operational stumbles, a near-doubling of profit is the kind of headline shareholders have been waiting for. Look one line down, though, and the picture cools. Headline earnings per share — the cleaned-up measure South African investors actually watch, because it strips out one-off items — is guided to rise just 2% to 14%, to between R36 and R40\. Adjusted operating cash earnings are seen at R58 billion to R62 billion, up 12% to 20%. The gap between the two profit figures is the whole story. ## What actually moved the needle Sasol was clear about where the lift came from, and most of it was external. Sales volumes rose 4% on better production, the average Brent crude price was 7% higher, and refining margins more than doubled as fuel differentials improved. On top of that, impairments were smaller than last year — R16.8 billion before tax, against R20.7 billion. The impairments themselves were spread across the business: a further R7.7 billion written off at the Secunda liquid-fuels unit, R3.7 billion on polyethylene and R3.9 billion in Mozambique. A friendlier oil-and-rand backdrop and last year's writedowns not repeating, in other words, did more work than any transformation of the underlying business. Some of that tailwind was offset by a 7% stronger rand and the absence of a R4.3 billion Transnet settlement banked the year before. ## The number to watch on 1 September This is a trading statement, not the results, and the guidance is unaudited. The real test comes on 1 September, when Sasol presents its full 2026 figures and chief executive Simon Baloyi and finance chief Walt Bruns take questions. The market will be looking past the eye-catching statutory jump to whether the operational gains can hold once the oil price stops flattering the numbers. For now, Sasol has flagged a big swing three weeks early, and left the more interesting question open. ### SpaceX doubled its revenue, and it wasn't the rockets that did it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/spacex-doubled-its-revenue-and-it-wasnt-the-rockets-that-did-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T07:59:59.000Z SpaceX has doubled its revenue, and the biggest engine wasn't rockets. In its first quarterly results since going public, the company said sales grew 92% from 4 billion dollars a year earlier to 7.8 billion dollars in the second quarter, helped by its Starlink satellite-internet service and by deals to rent out computing power to AI firms Anthropic and Google. Nearly 2 billion dollars of the growth came from its AI division, and Starlink added another 1.7 billion. The company still lost 541 million dollars in the quarter, but that was down from a 1 billion dollar loss a year earlier. ## How a rocket company became an AI landlord The AI arm has an unusual backstory. It used to be Musk's own startup, xAI, which was absorbed into SpaceX and had been struggling to catch leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic. SpaceX had already built two data centres near Memphis, Tennessee to train xAI's models, so it pivoted much of that capacity to rent out to customers instead. "The incremental revenue from new hosting deals generated high incremental EBITDA margins as we monetized available compute capacity," CFO Bret Johnsen said on a call. He pointed to another 6.7 billion dollars of cloud-services revenue already under contract, starting to ramp from October. ## Big promises, cautious investors The targets got bolder from there. Johnsen said that once SpaceX integrates the AI startup Cursor, it should hit a 100-billion-dollar annualised revenue run-rate by year-end, against 18.67 billion dollars in revenue for all of 2025\. Musk went further, saying the 100-billion figure "is not a question mark" and would probably be higher, and projecting the company will eventually reach 1 trillion dollars in revenue. Investors were less sure. SpaceX has spent heavily, more than 28 billion dollars in capital spending in the first half, up from 7 billion a year earlier, and the shares, already below their 135-dollar IPO price, closed near 125 dollars and fell as much as 8% after hours. SpaceX raised more than 85 billion dollars in the largest IPO in history, at a 1.75-trillion-dollar valuation. The first report card shows a business growing fast and burning cash just as fast, and a market still deciding what that's worth. ### MTN is buying back the towers it once sold off URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-is-buying-back-the-towers-it-once-sold-off/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T06:28:43.000Z MTN is close to owning the towers it walked away from a decade ago. Africa's biggest mobile operator has moved a step closer to buying the rest of IHS Holdings, the continent's largest tower company, after IHS shareholders approved the deal at a special meeting on 4 August. The all-cash offer values IHS at about 6.2 billion dollars, roughly 101 billion rand, and MTN is paying to mop up the roughly three-quarters of the company it does not already own. ## Getting the band back together MTN and IHS go back a long way. The two have been partners since 2012, and IHS grew in part by taking over towers that operators like MTN built and then sold off, part of an industry-wide shift toward renting rather than owning the steel. This deal reverses that. Once it closes, MTN will reintegrate around 29,000 African towers, while IHS sells out of its non-African operations in Latin America and Kuwait. Owning the towers again is meant to cut the long-term rental bills MTN has been paying and hand it more control over where it rolls out 5G and fibre next. The price on the table, 8.50 dollars a share, was first set out back in February at a 36% premium to IHS's average share price over the prior year. ## Why towers, and what's left to clear For CEO Ralph Mupita, the towers are not a side bet. He called the shareholder nod "an important step toward completion of the Transaction" and framed towers as "a critical value-creation driver" inside MTN's Ambition 2030 strategy, especially as digital infrastructure and AI become more central to how Africa grows. The deal is funded through a mix: MTN rolls over its existing stake of around 24%, adds about 1.1 billion dollars of its own cash and draws roughly 1.1 billion from IHS's balance sheet. The vote clears one of the last big conditions, but not all of them, and MTN says some approvals are still outstanding. Once everything is signed off, IHS is taken private and folded into MTN as a wholly owned subsidiary. The year-long chase is nearly over. What is left is the paperwork, and the question of how quickly owning its own towers pays off in a faster, cheaper network. ### The Roundup — Thursday, 6 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-thursday-6-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:53.000Z Today's edition Changing Lanes Good morning. There's a headline number in almost every story today, and a more interesting one hiding right behind it. New-car sales hit a 12-year high, but the real move is who's doing the selling; the rand looks bleak, yet the smart money is quietly betting the other way. First impressions are doing a lot of lying this morning. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--21-.png) --- SHIFTING GEARS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-cars-SA-1.png) ## New-Car Sales Just Hit a 12-Year High, and Chinese Brands Are Rewriting the Leaderboard South Africa's dealers just had their best July in over a decade. Buyers took home 40,912 new passenger cars last month, the strongest month since September 2014, and 57,708 vehicles across all segments, up 11.9% on a year ago. naamsa, the industry body, credits July's fuel-price cuts for much of the lift. But the louder story is who's doing the selling. Toyota still owns the forecourt, selling more than double its nearest rival, yet five Chinese brands, Chery, GWM, Jetour, Omoda & Jaecoo and BYD, now sit inside the top 15, winning over fleets and families with lower prices, longer warranties and slicker tech. **What's actually shifting:** - 40,912 new passenger cars sold in July, the best month since September 2014 and up 12.5% on a year ago. - Five Chinese brands, Chery, GWM, Jetour, Omoda & Jaecoo and BYD, now sit inside the top 15 sellers. - New-energy vehicles more than doubled from a year earlier; about one in every 17 new cars sold is now electrified. The catch: most of those fast-growing brands are imported rather than built here, so a boom that's great for buyers is a quiet worry for the local plants that support well over 100,000 jobs. The real question for the rest of 2026 is whether South Africans keep buying once cheaper fuel stops doing the heavy lifting. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/new-car-sales-just-hit-a-12-year-high-and-chinese-brands-are-rewriting-the-leaderboard/) --- SPLIT SCREEN ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-rand--1--1.png) ## The Headlines Say Bleak August for the Rand. The Smart Money Is Betting the Other Way. The rand has spent the week wearing two faces. On one screen it looks bleak: August is historically its weakest month, the Reserve Bank spooked markets by holding rates steady in late July, and foreign investors pulled 6.2 billion rand out of local bonds. On the other, the cost of hedging against a weaker rand over the next year has quietly dropped to its lowest since December, meaning the traders with real money on the line are easing off their bearish bets. The mood is grim; the positioning says the opposite. The catch is that it only pays off if the calm holds, with a fresh inflation reading and the Reserve Bank's next rate call still to come. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-headlines-say-bleak-august-for-the-rand-the-smart-money-is-betting-the-other-way/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which crop is produced in the greatest quantity worldwide?** **A.** Wheat **B.** Sugarcane **C.** Maize --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-mtn--1--1.png) **MTN is buying back the towers it once sold off.** Africa's biggest mobile operator moved a step closer to taking full control of IHS Holdings, the continent's largest tower company, after IHS shareholders approved the all-cash deal on 4 August. It values IHS at about $6.2 billion, roughly R101 billion, and would see MTN reintegrate around 29,000 African towers. CEO Ralph Mupita calls the towers central to MTN's strategy; a few approvals still stand in the way. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/mtn-is-buying-back-the-towers-it-once-sold-off/) **The government wants a clearer view of cross-border crypto. VALR says the plan will do the opposite.** Treasury and the Reserve Bank published a first-of-its-kind draft rulebook on Monday that would bar local companies from moving crypto across the border and route everything through an approved provider. VALR boss Farzam Ehsani warns that just pushes deals underground or offshore, shrinking the very visibility regulators want. Public comment runs to 30 September. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-plan-to-police-crypto-at-the-border-and-why-valr-says-it-backfires/) **A court just ordered the boss of South Africa's biggest fund manager reinstated.** The High Court in Pretoria set aside the mid-July suspension of Public Investment Corporation CEO Patrick Dlamini, ruling the board acted unlawfully because it never got the finance minister's sign-off. The PIC runs about R3.5 trillion, mostly government pensions. The whistle-blower complaint and the Acapulco payment behind the saga are still being investigated. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/a-court-just-ordered-the-boss-of-south-africas-biggest-fund-manager-reinstated/) **The JSE wants to go digital and take itself across Africa.** New CEO Valdene Reddy has laid out Forge 2031, a five-year plan to turn the 139-year-old exchange into a pan-African digital marketplace, digitising everything from trading to settlement. She's pitching from strength: first-half operating cash earnings rose 18% to R856 million and the exchange is sitting on R2.6 billion of cash. The real test is winning back listings that have more than halved in twenty years. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-jse-wants-to-go-digital-and-take-itself-across-africa/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--17-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--20-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Sugarcane** Sugarcane stands as the world’s dominant crop by harvested weight. The latest complete global comparison places production at approximately 1.94 billion metric tonnes, ahead of maize at 1.22 billion tonnes, paddy rice at 820 million tonnes and wheat at 798 million tonnes. More recent 2025/26 estimates place maize at roughly 1.33 billion tonnes and wheat at around 844 million tonnes, meaning neither comes close to sugarcane’s total. Its enormous production weight partly comes from its tall, water rich stalks, which are processed into sugar, ethanol, molasses and energy. --- That's your Thursday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### The plan to police crypto at the border, and why VALR says it backfires URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-plan-to-police-crypto-at-the-border-and-why-valr-says-it-backfires/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T03:29:59.000Z The government wants a clearer view of crypto moving in and out of South Africa. The country's biggest crypto exchange says the plan will do the opposite. On Monday, National Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank published a draft rulebook, the first of its kind, proposing that any crypto sent offshore go through an approved provider and be reported to the Reserve Bank's financial-surveillance unit. Resident companies would be barred from moving crypto across the border in either direction, while individuals keep a route out under their existing offshore allowances. ## What the state says it's fixing The two authorities say the point is visibility. In a joint statement they said the measures aim to "minimize the risk of regulatory arbitrage" and to help their surveillance unit "detect, deter and disrupt illicit financial flows." The rules would not make crypto legal tender, and they don't treat one digital asset differently from another. They build on earlier draft regulations from April, which floated making crypto holders declare large holdings and hand over private keys to enforcement officers on demand. Comment is open until 30 September, and nothing can take effect until a separate set of exchange-control reforms, themselves still in draft, is finalised. ## Why the industry is pushing back VALR CEO Farzam Ehsani argues the plan is self-defeating. Barring companies from moving crypto legitimately, he says, will "drive transactions underground or offshore" and "reduce the very visibility and surveillance" the regulators want, while chipping away at jobs, tax revenue and investment. He calls the draft prejudicial to licensed local operators and warns it "risks severely damaging South Africa's crypto industry." His practical example: a local software firm invoicing a US client in a dollar-linked stablecoin would have no lawful way to receive it through a licensed local provider, even though its founder could move the same value personally within his allowance. He also flagged a quirk in a second proposal: you could send crypto from a local exchange to your own private wallet, but not move it back in, making local exchanges an exit but not an entrance for anyone holding their own keys. For now it's a draft, not a rule. The next test is whether the comment period narrows the gap between what the state wants to see and what the industry says it will actually be able to. ### A court just ordered the boss of South Africa's biggest fund manager reinstated URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-court-just-ordered-the-boss-of-south-africas-biggest-fund-manager-reinstated/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T03:15:00.000Z The boss of South Africa's biggest money manager has been ordered reinstated after a court threw out his suspension. Patrick Dlamini, CEO of the Public Investment Corporation, won a High Court ruling in Pretoria on Tuesday that set aside his mid-July suspension and ordered his reinstatement. The PIC manages about 3.5 trillion rand, mostly government workers' pensions, and had been engulfed in what the court itself described as a turf war. Its stakes run through much of the JSE, from Naspers and MTN to Absa, FirstRand, Capitec and Standard Bank, so who runs it matters well beyond head office. ## What the judge found The ruling turned on who is allowed to remove the CEO. Judge Nathan Mbongwe found the suspension breached the PIC Act, which says the finance minister appoints the chief executive in consultation with the cabinet, leaving the board only to recommend a candidate. Suspending the CEO, the judgment reads, needed a recommendation from the board's remuneration committee, sign-off from the chairperson and the minister's approval. "None of these prerequisites were met. The board acted unlawfully, without ministerial approval, and in disregard of its own policies." ## The mess behind the suspension Dlamini was removed just over a year into the job, following a whistle-blower report about a deal in which the PIC paid 430 million rand to a firm called Acapulco. Acapulco had taken a 333.2-million-rand PIC loan back in 2013 to buy a stake in Lanseria airport, then defaulted as the debt ballooned to around 600 million rand. A PwC investigation Dlamini himself commissioned found the PIC had put up a weak defence at arbitration, to Acapulco's ultimate benefit. The fallout was bruising: a board exodus, the resignation of chair David Masondo after he clashed with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana, and the appointment of Seiso Mohai as the new chair. Masondo, the deputy finance minister, had chaired that previous board and resigned under pressure from the minister. The market regulator, the FSCA, is still investigating. The court has settled who runs the PIC for now. What it hasn't settled is the Acapulco deal at the centre of it, and that investigation is still live. ### The JSE wants to go digital and take itself across Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-jse-wants-to-go-digital-and-take-itself-across-africa/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T02:59:59.000Z Africa's oldest stock exchange is planning its next act. The JSE's new CEO, Valdene Reddy, has laid out "Forge 2031," a five-year plan to turn the 139-year-old exchange into a pan-African digital marketplace, digitising everything from trading and clearing to settlement and adding room for digital assets. "We have set an ambition for a digital marketplace by 2031," Reddy said. ## What a digital marketplace actually means Reddy is careful to say this is bigger than crypto. It is about "providing digital support for any part of the value chain," she said, pointing to tokenisation and digital settlement as examples. The plan is to digitise pieces of what the exchange already does over the next two to three years, prove it in South Africa, then extend those services across the continent. It is a response, she argues, to what is happening in markets globally, a bid not to stagnate. The JSE, established in 1887, is one of the few exchanges whose listed value dwarfs its home economy, with companies and instruments on the bourse topping 20 trillion rand. ## Pitching from a position of strength The strategy lands on the back of a strong first half. Operating cash earnings rose 18.1% to 856 million rand in the six months to June, profit after tax climbed nearly 17% to 652 million rand, and core earnings per share reached 816.2 cents, up from 687 cents a year earlier. Operating income rose 14.6% to 2 billion rand, non-trading income was up 8.1% to 659 million rand, and the exchange ended June sitting on 2.6 billion rand of cash. Reddy pointed to "99.99 percent market availability and zero market outages" as the operational base for the plan. She took over from Leila Fourie in April as the third woman in a row to lead the exchange, and has reorganised the group around "Transform and Grow" pillars. The pitch is bold; the backdrop is not. The number of companies listed on the JSE has more than halved over two decades, so the real test of Forge 2031 is whether going digital can pull listings and trade back in. ### New-car sales just hit a 12-year high, and Chinese brands are rewriting the leaderboard URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/new-car-sales-just-hit-a-12-year-high-and-chinese-brands-are-rewriting-the-leaderboard/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T02:45:00.000Z South Africa's car dealers just had their best July in over a decade. Buyers registered 40,912 new passenger cars last month, the highest monthly total in 12 years and the best month for passenger cars since September 2014, up 12.5% on July last year. Across all segments, sales reached 57,708 units, an 11.9% rise, and for the year so far 372,770 vehicles have been sold, up 12.7%. Strong car-rental demand helped, making up 13.8% of new passenger-vehicle sales. naamsa, the industry body, credited July's substantial fuel-price cuts for much of the relief. ## Who's actually winning the sale Toyota still rules the forecourt, selling 14,412 cars in July, more than double its nearest rival. But look down the top 15 and the change is obvious: five Chinese brands, Chery, GWM, Jetour, Omoda & Jaecoo and BYD, now sit inside it. Brands like these have expanded dealer networks and launched dozens of models, winning over private buyers and company fleets with lower prices, longer warranties and increasingly sophisticated technology. The maths is stark for fleet buyers: swapping 100 vehicles for models costing even 50,000 rand less each saves a company 5 million rand before financing. ## Great for buyers, a worry for factories The record hides a catch. Most of those fast-growing Chinese brands are imported rather than built here, and export volumes fell 11.6% in July. South Africa's assembly plants, run by Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Isuzu and Nissan, support well over 100,000 direct jobs and a wide web of component makers and dealers, so a lasting shift toward imports could squeeze local production over time. Electric and hybrid cars are climbing too: so-called new-energy vehicles more than doubled in June from a year earlier, and about one in every 17 new cars sold is now electrified. Interim naamsa CEO Shinny Gobiyeza called it "record levels of new-energy vehicle adoption" and a sign of the industry's resilience. The showrooms are busy, but the boom leans on cheaper fuel more than deeper demand. The question for the rest of 2026 is whether South Africans keep buying once that relief fades, and how much of what they buy is still made at home. ### The headlines say bleak August for the rand. The smart money is betting the other way URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-headlines-say-bleak-august-for-the-rand-the-smart-money-is-betting-the-other-way/ Last updated: 2026-08-06T02:29:59.000Z The rand has spent the week wearing two faces. On one screen the outlook looks bleak: August is historically its weakest month, with an average loss of more than 2% against the dollar since 1997, and the mood soured further after the Reserve Bank surprised markets in late July by holding rates steady despite warning about inflation. The rand sagged more than 2% right after that decision and has yet to fully recover it. Foreign investors turned sellers of South African bonds in July, pulling out 6.2 billion rand after buying 9 billion the month before, and the currency still sits near R16.40 to the dollar after a three-month low. ## What the traders are actually doing Behind the gloom, the people with real money on the line are easing off. The cost of insuring against a weaker rand over the next year, measured by one-year risk reversals, the gap in price between options to sell or buy the currency, fell to 1.8 percentage points, the lowest since December. In plain terms, it now costs less to hedge against the rand falling than at any point this year, the kind of signal that tends to show up before sentiment turns, not after. Traders are betting the jolts driving recent swings, the Middle East conflict and the shock rate hold, will blow over rather than repeat. ## Not everyone's convinced Plenty of the market is still cautious. Citigroup closed its bullish bet on the rand after the rate decision, and Absa's model still points to a weaker level of around R16.97 to the dollar, almost 3% softer than where it trades now. One portfolio manager at Ninety One captured the shift, saying the early read is that the Reserve Bank's stance has moved from "much higher" to "moderately higher for longer." So the two screens point opposite ways: one reads the mood and the outflows, the other reads the positioning. The bets only pay off if the calm holds. The next tests are the coming inflation reading and the Reserve Bank's next rate call; cooler prices and a steady Bank would vindicate the traders quietly calling the bottom, while another surprise hands the bleak-August camp its win. ### Apple finally fixed Siri, so why does the launch feel flat? URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/apple-finally-fixed-siri-so-why-does-the-launch-feel-flat/ Last updated: 2026-08-05T09:59:59.000Z Apple has finally delivered the Siri it promised, and the reaction has been strangely muted. The overhauled assistant, which Apple calls Siri AI, arrived in the consumer test version of its iPhone software, iOS 27, in July, after rounds of delays. It now does what Apple pitched at its developer conference in June: it understands your personal context, taps broad world knowledge to answer questions, and surfaces information stored on your phone. ## What the new Siri can do On paper, it is a real upgrade. Apple described Siri AI as “an entirely new version of Siri” woven deeply into the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and its Vision Pro headset, able to act across apps and answer questions about what is on your screen. You can now hold a natural back-and-forth conversation with it, tweak the pace and expressiveness of its voice, type to it instead of talking, and open it as its own app that remembers past chats. Under the hood, the improvements lean on a partnership with Google: Apple used Google's Gemini models to train and refine its own in-house Apple Foundation Models rather than simply rebadging someone else's technology. Apple has said the new assistant will roll out in English first, and that it will not launch in China while it works through local rules, with parts of the European Union restricted at first too. ## Impressive, but late So why the muted reception? The problem, as TechCrunch put it, is timing. “Apple finally has a functional — actually, a fairly impressive — AI assistant, but it's arrived past the time where such a launch feels novel and exciting.” While Apple spent years catching up, the wider AI race sprinted ahead, with tools now writing software and agents completing multi-step tasks; being a capable chatbot is no longer the breakthrough it once was. The verdict is almost backhanded: it feels less like a leap forward and more like Apple fixing a long-broken feature, the way Siri “was meant to work all along.” For most people the new Siri lands with the full release of iOS 27, expected in September; whether a polished assistant is enough to win back users who have already wandered to rivals is the question Apple now has to answer. ### Telkom is pulling BCX out of the corner and betting on “One Telkom” URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/telkom-is-pulling-bcx-out-of-the-corner-and-betting-on-one-telkom/ Last updated: 2026-08-05T07:59:59.000Z Telkom is trying to stop the slow bleed at BCX, its business technology arm, by stitching it together with the rest of the group. The state-affiliated telecoms company has tasked Hasnain Motlekar with combining BCX, Telkom Business and Openserve into a single offering for business customers under a strategy it calls “One Telkom.” The idea is to sell companies an end-to-end package, from Openserve's fibre connection through to BCX's IT and cloud services, instead of pitching each unit separately. ## From “stepchild” to shop window For years, BCX was run as a separate silo, what the group itself describes as a “stepchild” of the wider Telkom business. Motlekar, a 28-year Telkom veteran who has been acting chief executive since IT industry figure Jonas Bogoshi stepped down in March, wants that to end. “This is about actually enforcing and entrenching that way of working that when we go to market ... we go together with the power of One Telkom,” he said in an interview. The problem he inherited is stark: BCX's revenue fell 7.6% to R11.4 billion in the year to end-March, and Motlekar admits the unit has “been conceding market share for the past 10 years.” ## Chasing the AI-hungry, budget-tight customer To turn it around, BCX is reorganising around two types of customer: smaller and mid-sized firms, the “missing middle” too big to be small but not yet large enterprises, and big corporate and public-sector clients. Motlekar says demand is a paradox: businesses are clinging to tight IT budgets under pressure from their finance chiefs, yet “they all want to jump onto the AI bandwagon.” Not everything is shrinking, either: BCX's IT hardware and software revenue rose 19.6% over nine months and its cybersecurity business grew 18.4%, even as older lines fade. BCX runs on thin margins, but group chief executive Serame Taukobong has said Telkom sees value in keeping it, precisely because it opens the door to selling higher-margin services on top. Whether “One Telkom” can reverse ten years of decline is the test now in front of Motlekar, and the clearest sign yet of how Telkom plans to defend its business customers. ### The Roundup — Wednesday, 5 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-wednesday-5-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:53.000Z Today's edition Flat Out Good morning. There's a gap between the label and the contents today. Nedbank's profit looks flat until you read the fine print, Capitec is changing its name without changing a thing, and a jar of peanut butter turns out to be a trade-policy battleground. Sometimes the real story is hiding behind the sticker. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--20-.png) --- MINDING THE GAP ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-nedbank-1.png) ## Nedbank's Profit Looks Flat. The Real Number Is 12%. Nedbank, one of South Africa's big four banks, told shareholders its half-year profit barely moved, edging up just 0.1% to R8.4 billion for the six months to end-June. On paper, a bank standing still. Look closer, though, and the picture changes: strip out a pan-African business it sold last year, and profit actually grew 12%. Revenue rose 6% to R38.2 billion, return on equity held at 15%, and the interim dividend went up. Then, on the same morning, Nedbank quietly scrapped one of its most senior jobs, the group chief operating officer role, which disappears when its holder retires in December. **Behind the flat number:** - Headline profit rose just 0.1% to R8.4 billion, or 12% once last year's Ecobank sale is stripped out. - Revenue climbed 6% to R38.2 billion, return on equity held at 15%, and the interim dividend was lifted to 1,052 cents. - The group COO role is being scrapped when Mfundo Nkuhlu retires in December, leaving Nedbank leaner like rivals Capitec and Absa. Management says growth should pick up in the second half and is targeting a 17% return on equity by 2028\. The next results will show whether a leaner top structure delivers. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/nedbanks-profit-looks-flat-but-the-real-number-is-12/) --- IN A JAM ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-peanut-butter-tariffs-1.png) ## Your Peanut Butter Could Get a 20% Import Tax South Africa's trade regulator, ITAC, wants to raise the import duty on peanut butter from less than a cent a kilogram to 20% of its value, shielding local makers from cheaper imports, most of them from India. Food producer RCL Foods had asked for 25%; the regulator settled on 20%, saying it balances local jobs against keeping one of the cheapest sources of protein on the shelf affordable. In the same breath, chief commissioner Ayabonga Cawe warned producers and retailers not to 'price into the tariff', promising to call in the competition authorities if jars suddenly get more expensive. The duty gets reviewed in three years. Until then, a lunchbox staple sits at the centre of a fight over local jobs and shelf prices. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/your-peanut-butter-could-get-a-20-import-tax-and-the-regulator-is-watching-prices/) --- BAGEL BITE **How many bones are in an adult human body?** **A.** 206 **B.** 212 **C.** 198 --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-amazon--2--1.png) **Amazon just joined the three-trillion-dollar club.** Its market value topped $3 trillion for the first time on Monday, closing up 4% and making it only the fifth company ever to get there, alongside Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet. Booming demand for its cloud arm did the heavy lifting after quarterly sales beat expectations. The catch: boss Andy Jassy says even a $220 billion spending plan this year won't keep up with AI demand. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/amazon-just-joined-a-five-company-club-worth-three-trillion-dollars/) **South Africa's biggest self-storage player is getting bigger, and a rival is crying foul.** Stor-Age has agreed to buy ten storage properties from rival Xtraspace for R387 million and manage six more, a deal it says will lift earnings. But Rael Levitt, whose firm Inospace has its own storage ambitions, calls it 'completely uncompetitive' and says it leaves Stor-Age with no national competitor. He says he complained to the competition watchdog in June; the watchdog says it has no record of it. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/stor-age-is-buying-its-biggest-rivals-sites-and-a-competitor-is-crying-foul/) **Coronation is buying Absa shares while openly doubting the bank's comeback.** The roughly R800 billion fund manager says it was right to be sceptical about Absa's retail bank, which it reckons has shrunk to a tiny slice of earnings after years of losing ground. Yet it has just bought into the stock, betting that rock-bottom expectations and new CEO Kenny Fihla's turnaround make it cheap. Whether he can deliver is the open question. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/coronation-is-buying-absa-shares-while-openly-doubting-its-comeback/) **Capitec is changing its name, and you probably won't notice.** Shareholders have approved renaming the holding company from Capitec Bank Holdings Limited to simply Capitec Limited, and the registrar has signed off. From 26 August the shares trade under the new name on the JSE. For customers and investors, nothing else changes: the same 'CPI' share code, the same listing, the same trading history. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/capitec-is-changing-its-name-and-you-probably-wont-notice/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--16-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--19-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. 206** A fully grown adult human body usually has 206 bones, divided into the axial skeleton and the appendicular skeleton. Babies are born with approximately 270 bones, but many fuse together as they grow. The axial skeleton contains 80 bones and forms the central structure of the body, including the skull, spine and rib cage. The appendicular skeleton contains 126 bones and includes the arms, legs, shoulders and hips. The femur is the body’s largest and strongest bone, while the tiny stapes inside the middle ear is the smallest. --- That's your Wednesday wrapped. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Your peanut butter could get a 20% import tax, and the regulator is watching prices URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/your-peanut-butter-could-get-a-20-import-tax-and-the-regulator-is-watching-prices/ Last updated: 2026-08-05T03:44:59.000Z Peanut butter has landed on South Africa's trade agenda. The country's trade regulator, the International Trade Administration Commission, or ITAC, has recommended raising the customs duty on imported peanut butter from 0.99 cents a kilogram, effectively nothing, to 20% of the product's value. The aim is to shield local manufacturers, who ITAC says have been losing ground to cheaper imports, most of them from India. ## Who asked, and what they got The change traces back to food producer RCL Foods, which applied for the duty and actually wanted a steeper 25%. After investigating, ITAC settled on 20%, saying it strikes a balance between protecting local factories, encouraging local production and keeping the spread affordable for shoppers. Chief Commissioner Ayabonga Cawe said the current set-up was lopsided anyway: raw groundnuts, the nuts peanut butter is made from, already carry a 10% duty, while the finished product slipped in at under a cent a kilogram. Cawe also warned that becoming “totally import-reliant” would leave the country exposed to any disruption in key producer markets like India. ITAC pointed to rising local supply too, noting the 2024/25 groundnut crop came in about 11.6% above the five-year average, with roughly 55% of the country's groundnuts going into peanut butter. To ease the pressure on local processors, it is also opening its own investigation into a temporary break on the duty for imported groundnuts. ## A warning to the shops The regulator is not only handing out protection; it is watching how the industry responds. Cawe cautioned producers and retailers not to treat the new duty as a licence to push up prices, warning that if ITAC sees “a considerable price increase that is not commensurate with underlying production costs,” it will bring in the competition authorities. “We don't want a situation where producers or retailers are pricing into the tariff,” he said, adding that the duty will be reviewed after three years. For shoppers, the stakes are simple: peanut butter is one of the cheapest sources of protein on the shelf, and about half the local spreads market. Whether it stays affordable now depends on whether local makers and retailers hold their prices, or quietly pass the new tax along. ### Nedbank's profit looks flat, but the real number is 12% URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nedbanks-profit-looks-flat-but-the-real-number-is-12/ Last updated: 2026-08-05T03:29:59.000Z Nedbank, one of South Africa's big four banks, has handed shareholders a set of half-year numbers that look, at first glance, like a bank stuck in neutral. Headline earnings, the cleaned-up profit figure listed companies must report, came in at R8.4 billion for the six months to end-June, up just 0.1% on the same stretch last year. The bank says even that flat result beat its own expectations for the start of the year. ## The number behind the number The flat line hides a stronger story. Last year's figures still carried income from Nedbank's stake in the pan-African lender Ecobank, which it sold in 2025; strip that one-off out, and underlying profit actually grew 12%. Chief executive Jason Quinn put the improvement down to the client-focused overhaul he began in 2025\. The supporting numbers back him up: revenue rose 6% to R38.2 billion, the bank now serves 8 million clients after 4% growth, return on equity held at 15%, comfortably above its 14% cost of equity, and the interim dividend was lifted to 1,052 cents a share. Its credit loss ratio did tick up to 95 basis points as impairments rose. ## One less seat at the top The bigger signal is structural. In the same results, Nedbank confirmed that group chief operating officer Mfundo Nkuhlu, 60, will take early retirement in December after more than two decades at the group, and that it will not replace him. The chief operating officer role will be scrapped altogether, its duties spread across the existing executive committee, leaving Nedbank structured like rivals Capitec and Absa, which already run without one. Quinn's pitch is that this is a bank turning a corner, not stalling. Nedbank expects profit growth to pick up in the second half, is aiming for a return on equity of around 17% by 2028, and is pushing deeper into East Africa, where its offer for East African lender NCBA Group, which serves some 60 million clients, has locked in a controlling 66% stake. Whether a leaner top table and a flat first half give way to the growth it is promising is what the next set of results will have to show. ### Capitec is changing its name, and you probably won't notice URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/capitec-is-changing-its-name-and-you-probably-wont-notice/ Last updated: 2026-08-05T03:14:59.000Z Capitec Bank Holdings, the JSE-listed retail banking group, is tidying up its corporate name, and for almost everyone who deals with the bank, nothing will actually change. Shareholders approved renaming the holding company from Capitec Bank Holdings Limited to simply Capitec Limited at the group's annual general meeting on 3 August, where it went through as special resolution number 2 alongside the meeting's other resolutions. The Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, the state registrar of companies, has since confirmed the change is registered, and the company set it all out in a formal declaration-and-finalisation announcement issued from Stellenbosch, with PSG Capital as sponsor, on the same day. ## What actually changes Very little, is the short answer. The company has told the market that its listing on the main board of the Johannesburg exchange stays exactly where it is, in the banks section, and that its share code remains “CPI,” its shortened name stays “Capitec,” and its unique share identifier is unchanged. It also keeps its shareholder register and its full trading history. In the words of one report, the move is “a structural streamlining of the holding entity's corporate identity” that preserves all its listing details and ticker attributes. ## The dates that matter There is a short changeover to note. The last day to trade under the old Capitec Bank Holdings name is 25 August, trading under the new Capitec Limited name begins on 26 August, and the record date for the change falls on 28 August. Shareholders who still hold old paper share certificates are reminded that those cannot be converted after 25 August, and would need to contact the transfer agent, Computershare, if they want to trade. Investors whose shares are held electronically will simply see their accounts updated to the new name by 31 August, with no action needed on their part. For anyone banking with Capitec, the day-to-day stays the same: the same code, the same listing, the same history. It is housekeeping on the corporate letterhead, not a change to the bank millions of South Africans use every day. ### Coronation is buying Absa shares while openly doubting its comeback URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/coronation-is-buying-absa-shares-while-openly-doubting-its-comeback/ Last updated: 2026-08-05T02:59:59.000Z Coronation has done something that looks, at first glance, contradictory: it has bought into Absa while saying out loud that it doubts the bank can fix its retail business. The roughly R800 billion asset manager revealed in its latest quarterly review that it “initiated a position in Absa during the period,” drawn by low market expectations and what it called “a compelling turnaround story” in the South African business plus continued success in Absa's African operations. ## The doubt it can't shake That optimism comes wrapped in scepticism. Coronation says it has been wary of Absa's South African retail arm “for a long time,” and that the view “has been vindicated as it has shrunk itself to a near immaterial portion of earnings.” The bank's retail franchise, once a market leader, has ceded ground to rivals over two decades. Where Coronation is more upbeat is corporate banking: it says it is pleased with the hires Absa has made since Kenny Fihla took over as group chief executive just over a year ago. To build what he has called a dominant pan-African player, Fihla has filled Absa's top ranks with new talent, much of it poached from his former employer, Standard Bank, with the corporate and investment bank now run by his long-time colleague Zaid Moola. ## A cheap price, a cautious market The investment case rests on value. In its 2025 financial year, Absa's personal and private banking business reported headline earnings of R7.5 billion, dwarfed by the R13 billion its corporate and investment bank brought in, the very imbalance Coronation keeps pointing to. Coronation notes Absa trades on a modest earnings multiple and offers an 8% to 9% dividend yield, a sign “the market is taking a very cautious view on Mr Fihla's ability to turn the business around.” The way it sees it, that caution is the opportunity: if Fihla succeeds, the shares offer strong returns, and the high dividend cushions the downside if the turnaround stalls. It is a bet on a low bar being cleared rather than a vote of full confidence, and whether Fihla can lift Absa's retail bank off the floor is the question Coronation, and the market, are watching. ### Stor-Age is buying its biggest rival's sites, and a competitor is crying foul URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/stor-age-is-buying-its-biggest-rivals-sites-and-a-competitor-is-crying-foul/ Last updated: 2026-08-05T02:44:59.000Z South Africa's biggest name in self-storage is about to get bigger, and the move has already drawn a fight. Stor-Age, the country's largest self-storage player, has agreed to buy ten income-producing storage properties from rival Xtraspace for R387 million, and to run a further six under a two-year management deal. The purchase adds roughly 51 878 square metres of lettable space and will be paid for out of Stor-Age's existing debt facilities. Xtraspace, founded in 2007, runs 16 self-storage sites across the Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, and the deal also carries an estimated R38 million in planned improvements. ## The company's case Stor-Age frames the deal as routine expansion. It says the acquisition fits its “disciplined growth strategy” of buying trading storage sites in key metropolitan markets, and that it will add to earnings on a per-share basis. The six managed properties will keep the Xtraspace brand and bring in recurring management fees, broadening what Stor-Age calls its third-party management platform across the country. Because the transaction is classed as “uncategorised” under JSE rules and sits below the disclosure threshold, Stor-Age did not have to announce it at all: it says it did so voluntarily. The deal still needs competition approval and is expected to take effect in the second half of Stor-Age's 2027 financial year. ## The pushback Not everyone is applauding. Rael Levitt, the former Auction Alliance boss who now runs storage group Inospace, calls the deal “completely uncompetitive” and says it would create a national monopoly. “Xtraspace was the only other national-scale operator, and this takes it away, leaving Stor-Age with no national competitor at all,” he told News24\. Levitt says Inospace lodged a formal objection with the Competition Commission on 23 June, though the Commission says its records show no such complaint has been filed. He concedes Inospace has its own ambitions in the sector, targeting 20 standalone storage sites in the next year, but says he is “fighting a fight for consumers.” Whether the competition authorities agree with him, or wave the deal through, will decide if South Africa's quietest corner of property gets a single dominant landlord. ### Amazon just joined a five-company club worth three trillion dollars URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/amazon-just-joined-a-five-company-club-worth-three-trillion-dollars/ Last updated: 2026-08-05T02:29:59.000Z Amazon has crossed a line only a handful of companies in history have ever reached. On Monday its market value topped three trillion dollars for the first time, sending the shares to a fresh all-time high, closing up 4% in the stock's best day since early May and making it just the fifth company ever to get there, alongside Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet. It first passed the one-trillion mark back in 2018, a reminder of how far and how fast the goalposts have moved. ## What pushed it over the line The milestone landed just days after Amazon's quarterly report, which beat expectations across the board. The company posted adjusted earnings of $1.97 a share against the $1.82 analysts expected, on revenue of $200.61 billion that topped the $196.47 billion the market had forecast. The standout was its cloud-computing arm, Amazon Web Services, where a surge in growth pushed sales to $42.2 billion, past the roughly $40.5 billion analysts had pencilled in, driven by demand for the computing power behind artificial intelligence. Amazon is not alone in that boom: rivals saw the same pull, with Microsoft's Azure cloud growing 43% and Google Cloud up 82% over their own recent quarters. ## The bill keeps climbing The catch sits in what all this growth costs. Chief executive Andy Jassy told investors Amazon now expects to spend $220 billion this year on building out capacity, up from the $200 billion it flagged in February, as the price of memory chips tied to the AI build-out keeps rising. Even that, he warned, will not be enough. “We will still not have enough capacity to meet all the demand we have in 2026,” Jassy said, adding that the same is likely to hold in 2027 and that demand already booked for 2028 is “striking.” For a company that has climbed from one trillion dollars to three since 2018, the message is that the spending race is far from over, and that the next leg will be measured in data centres as much as in dollars. ### The Roundup — Tuesday, 4 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-tuesday-4-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:53.000Z Today's edition Dead Air Good morning. Today's news reads like one long waiting room: football fans waiting on a broadcast deal, Wall Street waiting on a jobs number, MacBook buyers waiting on stock that keeps slipping into next month, and the country waiting to hear whether a mining windfall can earn back its credit score. Patience, it turns out, is this morning's real currency. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--19-.png) --- GAME OFF ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-betway-premier-league-1.png) ## The Premiership Kicked Off. The SABC Couldn't Show It. South African football fans who settled in for the new Betway Premiership season on Saturday found blank screens on the SABC. The public broadcaster, the free-to-air home of local football, couldn't show a single opening fixture: not a technical glitch, but a broadcast deal that hadn't closed in time. The sticking point is its negotiation with Canal+, the French group that now owns MultiChoice and DStv. The SABC says talks are progressing and hopes to start screening matches from 15 August, and it did lock in a separate free-to-air deal for the 2026 MTN8 cup. But with both broadcasters short of cash, this rights fight carries a familiar sting. **The state of play:** - The SABC couldn't broadcast any of Saturday's opening Betway Premiership fixtures after its sub-licensing deal with Canal+ missed the deadline. - It aims to start screening matches from 15 August, and has already secured a separate free-to-air deal for the 2026 MTN8 cup. - Money is tight on both sides: Canal+ shut Showmax after sinking over R5bn into it, DStv has shed about a third of its subscribers to roughly 14 million, and the SABC now faces a forecast R41.3m loss. For now the blackout covers only opening weekend and both sides say a deal is close, so free-to-air fans will be watching the negotiating table as closely as the pitch. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-premiership-kicked-off-the-sabc-couldnt-show-it/) --- PAY DIRT ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-goldman-1.png) ## A Mining Windfall Has Goldman Betting on Another SA Ratings Upgrade South Africa's public finances just delivered a rare bit of good news. Company tax is flowing in faster than the budget expected, up about 5.5% to R385 billion on a semi-annual basis and driven largely by a boom in mining exports. That beat has caught Goldman Sachs' eye: economist Andrew Matheny now expects both Moody's and S&P to lift the country's credit score within a year, helped by a better-than-forecast primary budget surplus. It's a bank's forecast, not a done deal, but for a country long used to downgrades, even a hopeful call makes a change of pace. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/a-mining-windfall-has-goldman-betting-on-another-sa-ratings-upgrade/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which non primate has fingerprints remarkably similar to human fingerprints?** **A.** Wombat **B.** Koala **C.** Kangaroo --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-SA-Car-1.png) **Your driving licence is about to last twice as long.** Cabinet has approved doubling the validity of ordinary car and motorcycle licences from five years to ten, covering Codes A, A1, B and EB. Heavy vehicles stay on five years and professional permits on two. The catch: it still has to clear public comment and legal scrutiny, so keep renewing as normal for now. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-driving-licences-are-about-to-last-twice-as-long/) **The AI boom is about to make your next laptop pricier.** A global memory-chip shortage nicknamed 'RAMaggedon' has pushed PC and phone memory prices up five to six times in a year, as makers pivot to the high-bandwidth memory that AI needs. It has already delayed Apple's MacBook Air into late August, and carmakers warn new-car prices could be next. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-ai-boom-is-about-to-make-your-next-laptop-more-expensive/) **Capitec conquered consumers. Now it wants your business.** With headline earnings up 23% to R16.8 billion and 26 million clients, CEO Graham Lee is eyeing an 'excitingly low' share of business banking, just 5%, as the bank's biggest growth opportunity of the next three years. More than four million small businesses, he reckons, are still underserved. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/capitec-built-an-empire-on-consumers-now-it-wants-your-business/) **Wall Street is bracing for a make-or-break week.** Friday's US jobs report (forecast: about 83,000 new jobs and 4.3% unemployment) lands with the Fed hard to read after three policymakers dissented in favour of a hike. Over a quarter of the S&P 500 reports earnings too, and SpaceX files its first results since going public, all with shares sitting near record highs. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/wall-street-braces-for-a-jobs-report-a-fed-puzzle-and-spacexs-debut/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--15-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--18-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Koala** Koala paws contain detailed skin ridges that form arches, loops and whorls similar to patterns found in human fingerprints. Researchers using ink prints and scanning electron microscopes found that these ridges closely resemble human fingerprints in size, density and microscopic detail. Koalas are marsupials and are not closely related to humans or other primates, making the similarity especially unusual. Scientists believe the ridges may assist with gripping and climbing, although their exact purpose has not been conclusively proven. Koalas also have rough paw pads, sharp claws and two opposable fingers on each front paw that press against the other three, helping them grip branches securely while climbing and feeding. --- That's your Tuesday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### A mining windfall has Goldman betting on another SA ratings upgrade URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-mining-windfall-has-goldman-betting-on-another-sa-ratings-upgrade/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T03:44:59.000Z South Africa's public finances are delivering a rare bit of good news. Company tax is flowing in faster than the government budgeted for, driven largely by a boom in mining exports, and the windfall has caught the eye of Goldman Sachs, which now expects the country to earn back-to-back upgrades to its credit score. ## The numbers behind the optimism National Treasury data for June showed corporate tax collections up about 5.5% to R385 billion on a semi-annualised basis. That is comfortably ahead of both the R345 billion collected in the 2025-26 fiscal year and the R364 billion pencilled into February's budget. The figure, released this week, owes much to mining-industry export profits, the standout driver behind the revenue beat. Goldman economist Andrew Matheny wrote in a note that the continued strength in the fiscal data reinforces his expectation that both Moody's and S&P will upgrade their credit ratings over the next year. The country also posted a better-than-expected primary budget surplus, the balance before interest payments, of 1.1% of GDP in the year to March, ahead of Treasury's own 0.9% forecast. As the continent's biggest economy, South Africa has made significant progress in stabilising its public finances, with improving fiscal metrics reinforcing confidence in the government's consolidation efforts. ## Climbing out of junk South Africa is already on the way up. S&P raised its rating last November for the first time in two decades, and Moody's, which pegs the country at Ba2, lifted its outlook to positive from stable in May, citing an improved fiscal position, a commitment to stabilising state finances and progress on reforms. A further S&P move would take the rating to BB+ from BB. Matheny argues investors have not fully priced this in, leaving room in South African government bonds where, in his view, current pricing does not reflect expectations for a credit-rating upgrade. The forecast is a bank's view, not a done deal. For a country long used to downgrades, the real question is whether the mining windfall and spending discipline can hold long enough to turn a hopeful call into an actual upgrade. ### The Premiership kicked off. The SABC couldn't show it. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-premiership-kicked-off-the-sabc-couldnt-show-it/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T03:29:59.000Z South African football fans who settled in for the new Betway Premiership season on Saturday found nothing to watch on the SABC. The public broadcaster, the free-to-air home of local football, confirmed it could not show a single opening fixture, not because of a technical hitch, but because a broadcast deal had not closed in time. ## A familiar fight over rights The sticking point is the SABC's negotiation with Canal+, the French media group that now owns MultiChoice and its DStv service. In its statement, the SABC said talks were progressing positively but the sub-licensing agreement had not yet been finalised, adding that it hoped to begin broadcasting Premiership matches from 15 August. It was not all bad news: the broadcaster did secure a separate Canal+ deal for the 2026 MTN8 cup on free-to-air. Canal+ Africa and MultiChoice CEO David Mignot said the two sides were still in engaging discussions about the rest of the free-to-air deal in this 30th season of the PSL. The standoff is not new: the SABC and the operator of DStv have clashed repeatedly over the cost and licensing of sports rights, and in 2023 government and three sponsors put up more than R50 million so the SABC could screen part of the Rugby World Cup after talks deadlocked. ## Two cash-strapped broadcasters What makes this round tense is that money is tight on both sides. Canal+ has cut costs hard since taking over MultiChoice, most dramatically by shutting down the Showmax streaming service after ploughing more than R5 billion into it, while DStv has lost about a third of its subscriber base, down to roughly 14 million. The SABC, meanwhile, has abandoned its goal of a R1 billion profit, which would have been its first in more than five years, and the Treasury now forecasts a R41.3 million loss as labour and content costs climb. For now the blackout covers only the opening weekend, and both sides say a deal is close. But with two financially stretched broadcasters haggling over football, free-to-air fans will be watching the negotiating table as closely as the pitch. ### Wall Street braces for a jobs report, a Fed puzzle and SpaceX's debut URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/wall-street-braces-for-a-jobs-report-a-fed-puzzle-and-spacexs-debut/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T03:14:59.000Z It is shaping up to be a tense week on Wall Street. A batch of US employment data and corporate results is set to keep investors on edge over where the stock market heads next, after a stretch buffeted by geopolitical tension, uncertain interest-rate policy and big swings in heavyweight tech shares. ## The jobs number and the Fed The centrepiece is the July jobs report, due on Friday, 7 August. A Reuters poll expects it to show an increase of about 83,000 jobs and an unemployment rate of 4.3%. Markets are watching closely because the Federal Reserve has become harder to read: it recently kept rates unchanged, but three of its 12 policymakers dissented in favour of a hike, and confusion followed a press conference by new Fed chair Kevin Warsh, who restated his intent to get inflation down to 2% without spelling out how. Fed-funds futures now imply a 64% chance of a rate increase at September's meeting, and core inflation on the measure the Fed tracks was running at 3.3% year on year in June. One investment chief warned that an unexpected heating up of labour conditions would almost unambiguously push the Fed toward a hike. As another strategist put it, the market has been held hostage to the price of oil and the yield on the 10-year Treasury, both of which have moved higher. ## Earnings everywhere, and a SpaceX first On top of the data, more than a quarter of the S&P 500 reports results, including Eli Lilly, AMD, Caterpillar, Palantir and Merck. The most closely watched debut comes on Tuesday from Elon Musk's SpaceX, filing its first quarterly report since going public; its shares have stumbled since a post-IPO surge, and the reaction could ripple through investors' appetite for risk. So far the earnings season has been strong, with S&P 500 profits on pace to rise about 29.3% from a year earlier on an adjusted basis. With the index still up more than 9% in 2026 and sitting just 1.6% below its June record high, there is precious little cushion if the week disappoints. Traders will get their answer soon enough. ### Capitec built an empire on consumers. Now it wants your business. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/capitec-built-an-empire-on-consumers-now-it-wants-your-business/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T02:59:59.000Z Capitec made its name banking ordinary South Africans, and the strategy has paid off handsomely. The bank has just reported headline earnings up 23% to R16.8 billion, serving a client base that has swelled to 26 million. But at its annual general meeting, chief executive Graham Lee spent less time celebrating the consumer business and more time pointing at what comes next. ## The excitingly low market share Lee framed Capitec's small footprint in several markets as its greatest opportunity, describing an excitingly low market share in business banking, personal loans and insurance. The numbers are striking: the bank holds only about 5% of business banking, around 5% of personal loans, 13% of savings, 2% of insurance and just 1.4% in its Capitec Connect mobile network. Business banking alone brought in about R871 million of the group's R16.8 billion in headline earnings for the year to end-February, while its share of business credit and deposits sits at just 3% and 2% respectively. Business banking, for both formal and emerging businesses, is the greatest growth opportunity in the three years ahead, Lee said. ## The underserved millions The pitch rests on a gap in the market. Lee said more than four million formal and informal businesses in South Africa remain underserved by complex banking products built for large companies rather than small ones. They are the future engine of our economy; they are the future engine of our employment, he said. He was candid about how much runway is left, noting the bank had not yet properly touched home loans and vehicle finance, all types of insurance, and stokvels. Beyond banking, Lee pointed to embedded finance and an enterprise-payments business as three-to-five-year bets already being incubated and funded, while the group's offshore push currently runs through AvaFin, a short-term lender active in markets from Poland and Spain to Mexico and the Czech Republic, which chipped in about R128 million, or 1% of group earnings. For a bank that already reaches a quarter of the country, the next chapter is about depth, not just headcount. ### The AI boom is about to make your next laptop more expensive URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-ai-boom-is-about-to-make-your-next-laptop-more-expensive/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T02:44:59.000Z There is an unwelcome side-effect to the artificial-intelligence gold rush, and it is showing up on the price tags of everyday gadgets. A global shortage of memory chips is driving up the cost of laptops and smartphones, and it has now reached one of the most popular computers around: Apple's MacBook Air. ## Why the squeeze is happening The crunch has earned the nickname RAMaggedon, after RAM, the random-access memory inside every computer. It is being driven by chipmakers pivoting to high-bandwidth memory, a more advanced type in huge demand for training and running AI tools. That leaves less capacity for the ordinary memory that goes into consumer devices. The effect on prices has been dramatic: analysts at Taiwan-based research firm TrendForce say memory prices for PCs and smartphones are up around five to six times compared with a year ago. One Hong Kong retailer said sixteen gigabytes of RAM that used to cost the equivalent of about forty to fifty dollars now sells for several times that, and that his custom-PC business had halved since price rises began. ## From MacBooks to new cars Apple's best-selling laptop is already caught up in it. Anyone ordering a MacBook Air now faces a wait until the back half of August, or September for certain configurations, and Apple's marketing has quietly shifted toward the MacBook Pro, even warning that the Air is subject to availability. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports Apple is responding by raising prices and sourcing memory from Chinese suppliers. The shortage had already hit Apple's more niche machines, the Mac mini and Mac Studio, before reaching the Air. The boom has enriched the big three memory makers, South Korea's Samsung and SK hynix along with US giant Micron, but Samsung's own finance chief warned this week that the shortage will likely deepen in 2027 and stay tight through 2028. And it may not stop at gadgets. Carmakers say the rising cost of in-vehicle computer systems could soon feed through to the price of a new car, which means the AI boom's hidden bill could land in a lot more wallets before it eases. ### South Africa's driving licences are about to last twice as long URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-driving-licences-are-about-to-last-twice-as-long/ Last updated: 2026-08-04T02:29:59.000Z Renewing your driving licence has long been one of those chores that rolls around far too often. That may be about to change. Cabinet has approved extending the validity of ordinary car and motorcycle licences from five years to ten, a decision welcomed by Transport Minister Barbara Creecy and her deputy, Mkhuleko Hlengwa. ## What actually changes The longer ten-year cycle applies only to light vehicles, namely Codes A, A1, B and EB. Heavier commercial and public-transport vehicles keep their five-year renewal period, and professional driving permits still have to be renewed every two years. The reform revives an idea first contemplated more than a decade ago, and reverses government's more recent preference for an eight-year validity period. That eight-year figure was still the official position as recently as July 2025, when Deputy Minister Hlengwa told Parliament the department was running a cost-benefit analysis before finalising the change. This week's decision goes beyond even the RTMC's own recommendation, which had suggested eight years for lighter vehicles. ## Why the change, and why now The move was informed by a study from the Road Traffic Management Corporation, which found that stretching validity would align South Africa with international best practice, cut the frequency of renewals, and ease pressure on overloaded licensing centres. The same study noted that human behaviour, not licence paperwork, was the main cause of the roughly 12,000 road deaths on South African roads each year, and that countries with longer licence periods tended to have better road-safety records. Consumer watchdog Outa welcomed the decision, with CEO Wayne Duvenage calling it almost six years overdue and a victory for motorists and for common sense. There is history here too: a ten-year validity was actually written into Regulation 108 back in November 2013, but the start date was never published, so it never came into force. For now, nothing changes at the counter. The Cabinet approval still has to pass through public comment and legal scrutiny before the draft notices become law, so motorists must keep renewing expired cards exactly as before until then. The reform is real, but the queue is not going anywhere just yet. ### Mondi Is Shutting Factories After a Painful Half — and Investors Cheered URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mondi-is-shutting-factories-after-a-painful-half-and-investors-cheered/ Last updated: 2026-08-03T07:59:59.000Z Mondi has just delivered a rough set of half-year numbers and been rewarded for it. The packaging and paper group, listed in both London and Johannesburg, reported underlying earnings — its profit before interest, tax and one-off items — of €379 million for the six months to June, down from €564 million a year earlier. Basic underlying earnings per share fell to 11.6 euro cents, from 42.7 cents, and the interim dividend was cut to 9.42 cents. Revenue edged up to about €3.98 billion, helped by an acquired business and higher volumes. ## From building to trimming The story investors latched onto was not the profit drop but the response to it. With its big expansion projects now largely finished, Mondi is pivoting from adding capacity to squeezing costs. It is closing six converting plants across Europe — two already shut, the rest due by year-end — and moving production to larger, more efficient factories. The closures are expected to cut about 580 roles, transfer roughly 800 customers and relocate 30 pieces of heavy equipment across the network. Mondi also booked a €320 million charge for write-downs and restructuring, the biggest at a recycled-containerboard mill in Italy hit by weak demand, oversupply and high energy costs. ## Discipline over expansion Management paired the cuts with a lighter spending plan, trimming expected 2026 capital expenditure to around €500 million from €550 million. Cash generated from operations still came in at €347 million, underpinned by tight working-capital management. Chief executive Andrew King said pricing actions and cost discipline had improved trading momentum, with the group entering the second half on higher packaging-paper prices and healthy order books, even as Middle East supply-chain disruption pushed up input costs. The company has also added about 300,000 tonnes of new capacity this year to chase demand in e-commerce packaging. Investors get their next read on the turnaround at Mondi's third-quarter update in October. The market liked the pivot. Mondi's London-listed shares rose about 9% on results day, while its Johannesburg line jumped nearly 16% to above R200\. For a company that spent years building, the applause came for a different move entirely: knowing when to stop. ### The Roundup — Monday, 3 August 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-monday-3-august-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:54.000Z Today's edition Call Dropped Good morning. It's results season, and the scoreboard has stopped making sense. MTN posted its best numbers in years and had its worst day on the JSE; Apple delivered its strongest-ever June quarter and shed close to half a trillion dollars by the next bell. Records up top, red on the screen. When the figures and the market can't agree, the interesting part is always why. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/markets--18-.png) --- CROSSED LINES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-mtn-1.png) ## MTN's Best Numbers in Years Triggered Its Worst Day on the JSE MTN opened earnings season with the kind of half most firms would frame on the wall, and its shareholders responded by selling. In Nigeria, its biggest market, profit after tax jumped about 71% to N707.5 billion, service revenue rose almost 26% to nearly N3 trillion, and the group added 4.9 million subscribers to reach 92.2 million. Then MTN's Johannesburg-listed shares fell almost 10%, the worst on the exchange that day. Two things spooked the market: a mobile-money stumble, after new Nigerian consumer rules forced it to halt the airtime advances driving that income, and a surprise Ghana lawsuit over who really built its mobile-money service. **What spooked the market:** - Nigeria profit after tax up \~71% to N707.5bn; service revenue up nearly 26%, ahead of the group's own medium-term target. - Fintech revenue fell \~7% for the half (about 72% in Q2 alone) after new consumer-protection rules halted its airtime and data-credit advances. - A Ghanaian firm, Clydestone, is suing over the 2007 blueprint behind MTN's mobile money — a platform now carrying \~70 million users and $500bn-plus in 2025 transactions. The question now: whether the Nigerian fintech dip is a one-quarter blip or the start of a trend, and how quickly Ghana's courts move. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/mtns-best-numbers-in-years-triggered-its-worst-day-on-the-jse/) --- TRADING UP ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-SAB-1.png) ## South Africans Are Drinking Less Beer. SAB Still Made More Money. South African Breweries pulled off a neat trick last quarter: it sold less beer and still made more money. Volumes of its core brands slipped as cash-strapped drinkers bought fewer rounds, yet revenue rose and margins widened, because the beer people did buy was pricier. The lever is premiumisation — steering drinkers towards higher-value labels. SAB's premium beers, Corona among them, grew volumes in the high twenties and gained share. It's the same playbook powering parent AB InBev worldwide, where quarterly revenue rose about 6% to $16.6 billion even as total volumes barely moved. With fuller wallets nowhere in sight, expect SAB to keep pouring its marketing muscle into the pricier brands, because that's where the profit now lives. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africans-are-drinking-less-beer-sab-still-made-more-money/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which tropical cyclone was the largest ever recorded by physical diameter?** **A.** Hurricane Patricia **B.** Hurricane Wilma **C.** Typhoon Tip --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Article-apple--2--2.png) **Apple posted its best-ever June quarter, then fell almost 10%.** Revenue hit $109.4 billion (up 16%) and iPhone sales jumped 22%, but finance chief Kevan Parekh warned memory-chip costs will climb as the AI boom soaks up supply. The slide wiped close to $500 billion and briefly handed Nvidia the most-valuable crown — a rough farewell for Tim Cook, whose last results as CEO these were. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/apples-record-quarter-came-with-a-near-500-billion-hangover/) **Foschini's boss just took a 59% pay cut, and his stores are next.** Anthony Thunström's package fell to about R18.5 million after basic earnings per share dropped 58% and the share halved; both he and his finance chief gave up their bonuses. Now TFG has lined up 300 weak stores to close, leaning on its online arm Bash to run a leaner, more capital-light business. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/foschinis-boss-just-took-a-59-pay-cut-his-stores-are-next/) **Pep's owner says it's building its own bank — on its own.** Within hours, Pepkor denied a Business Day report that it was in talks with Standard Bank to take on Capitec. It insists nothing's changed: it's "only one step away" from bank registration, built on its 17-million-member +more base, with its PlusB lender still pencilled in for 2027\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/peps-owner-says-its-building-its-own-bank-on-its-own/) **Cigarettes are fading, but nicotine pouches just rescued Big Tobacco's year.** British American Tobacco lifted its profit outlook as Velo pouch sales grew 18% and a strong US run offset shrinking demand in Asia, taking it to 35 million smokeless users. The catch: a sweeping, AI-driven overhaul will cut about 5,500 jobs and outsource 3,500 more. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/cigarettes-are-fading-nicotine-pouches-just-rescued-big-tobaccos-year/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/weather--14-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/08/Wordle--17-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. Typhoon Tip.** Typhoon Tip became the largest tropical cyclone ever recorded when its gale force winds extended about 1,100 kilometres from its centre, creating a diameter of approximately 2,200 kilometres across the western Pacific Ocean in October 1979\. It also holds the record for the lowest atmospheric pressure measured in a tropical cyclone, reaching 870 millibars. However, Hurricane Patricia was stronger by wind speed, tying the global record with sustained winds of 345 kilometres per hour in 2015\. Hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones are the same type of storm, but they receive different names depending on where they form. --- That's your Monday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### South Africans Are Drinking Less Beer. SAB Still Made More Money. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africans-are-drinking-less-beer-sab-still-made-more-money/ Last updated: 2026-08-03T03:44:59.000Z South African Breweries pulled off a neat trick last quarter: it sold less beer and still made more money. Volumes of its core brands slipped by a low-single-digit percentage and lagged the wider market, as cash-strapped drinkers bought fewer rounds. Yet revenue rose by a mid-single-digit percentage and profit margins widened — because the beer South Africans did buy was pricier. ## The magic is in the mix The driver is what the industry calls premiumisation — nudging drinkers towards more expensive, higher-value drinks rather than simply selling more litres. SAB's premium and super-premium beers, Corona among them, grew volumes in the high twenties and gained market share, while its Beyond Beer range, such as Brutal Fruit, also picked up ground. SAB's local boss, Richard Rivett-Carnac, pointed to exactly that mix as what kept earnings growing, even as marketing spend rose. ## A global playbook, brewed locally South Africa is one corner of a strategy playing out worldwide at parent company AB InBev, the largest brewer on the planet. Globally, the group lifted second-quarter revenue about 6% to $16.6 billion and grew earnings per share 23%, even though total volumes barely moved. Doing much of the heavy lifting: no-alcohol beer, up 27%, and its Beyond Beer range, up 44%. Over the full first half, revenue rose 5.7% to $31.93 billion and underlying profit climbed to $4.3 billion from $3.6 billion a year earlier, while free cash flow jumped by $2.5 billion to $3.9 billion. Corona alone grew 17% outside its home market, and the group reckons it held or gained market share in 70% of its markets, reaffirming a full-year target of 4% to 8% profit growth. Analysts, for their part, judged the numbers ahead of expectations, crediting price increases that stuck. Not everything went the group's way. China, one of its biggest markets, saw beer volumes fall nearly 10% amid weak demand at bars and restaurants and poor weather, and AB InBev's shares slipped more than 2% on the day. But the message for South African drinkers is clear: with fuller wallets nowhere in sight, expect the brewer to keep pouring its marketing muscle into the pricier brands — because that is where the profit now lives. ### MTN's Best Numbers in Years Triggered Its Worst Day on the JSE URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mtns-best-numbers-in-years-triggered-its-worst-day-on-the-jse/ Last updated: 2026-08-03T03:29:59.000Z MTN opened its earnings season with the kind of half most companies would frame on the wall, and its shareholders responded by selling. MTN Nigeria, the group's biggest market, reported profit after tax up about 71% to N707.5 billion, with service revenue up almost 26% to nearly N3 trillion — ahead of the group's own medium-term target. It added 4.9 million subscribers in six months to reach 92.2 million, and declared an interim dividend. Then MTN Group's Johannesburg-listed shares fell almost 10%, the worst performer on the exchange that day. ## The catch beneath the headline Two things unsettled the market. The first was mobile money. MTN Nigeria's fintech revenue fell about 7% for the half — and roughly 72% in the second quarter alone — after new Nigerian consumer-protection rules forced it to suspend the airtime and data-credit advances that had driven much of that income. One fund manager noted the Nigerian quarter came in well below expectations and behind local rival Airtel Africa. The second was a lawsuit that arrived the same week. A Ghanaian technology firm, Clydestone, filed suit in Accra against MTN Ghana, MTN Group and MobileMoney Fintech, claiming it developed the blueprint for MTN's mobile-money service back in 2007 and was never paid for it. MTN Ghana rejected the claims as “without merit,” said it would contest them fully, and confirmed it has set aside no money for the case. ## Why a court claim spooked a record The timing is what made the claim sting. Mobile money is central to MTN's ambitions for 2030: the platform carries around 70 million users and moved more than $500 billion in transactions in 2025\. A question over who owns the foundations of that business — landing on the very day the same business posted a revenue wobble in its biggest market — was always going to overshadow a record profit. For all the drama, MTN's underlying story still stands: a fast-growing subscriber base, expanding margins and strong cash generation across Africa. The question now is whether the Nigerian fintech dip proves a one-quarter blip or the start of a trend — and how quickly Ghana's courts move. ### Cigarettes Are Fading. Nicotine Pouches Just Rescued Big Tobacco's Year. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cigarettes-are-fading-nicotine-pouches-just-rescued-big-tobaccos-year/ Last updated: 2026-08-03T03:14:59.000Z British American Tobacco has a problem every year and a fix that is finally paying off. On Thursday the maker of Lucky Strike and Dunhill cigarettes lifted its annual earnings forecast, as surging demand for its Velo nicotine pouches and a strong United States performance offset a sharp decline in Asia. The company now expects full-year growth in adjusted earnings per share towards the middle of its 5% to 8% range — a step up from its earlier guidance of the lower end. ## Pouches over cigarettes The engine of that upgrade is what BAT calls its New Categories — vapour, heated products and, above all, nicotine pouches. Revenue there accelerated to 18% growth at constant exchange rates, with modern-oral pouches now the biggest of the group's newer bets. Its share of the pouch market in its top countries climbed 8.4 percentage points to 39.2%. The number of people using its smokeless products has reached 35 million. For the six months to June, adjusted earnings rose 7.9% to 164 pence per share, ahead of the 158.5 pence analysts had expected. Investors were harder to please. The shares fell as much as 3% on the day, trading around 2.8% lower, as the market weighed a slower recovery in Asia and guidance for revenue and operating profit that BAT held at the lower end of its ranges. ## Betting the business on life beyond the cigarette The transformation comes with a human cost. BAT is pressing ahead with a sweeping, AI-driven overhaul that will cut about 5,500 jobs and shift roughly 3,500 more roles to outside firms, including the consultancy Accenture — a restructuring that spares only its biggest market, the US. It is also returning cash, with a £1.3 billion share buy-back. And it sees a fresh opening in America, where a regulatory shift could unlock a market the company values at as much as £7 billion. Chief executive Tadeu Marroco said the first half was “in line with expectations” and that the group is “firmly on track” for its full-year targets. The direction of travel is now unmistakable: BAT is betting its future on everything except the cigarette that built it. ### Pep's Owner Says It's Building Its Own Bank — On Its Own URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/peps-owner-says-its-building-its-own-bank-on-its-own/ Last updated: 2026-08-03T02:59:59.000Z Pepkor has moved quickly to kill a story before it grew legs. On 30 July, Business Day reported that the retailer — owner of Pep and Ackermans — and Standard Bank were in exploratory talks “at the highest levels” to launch a personal bank and challenge Capitec, with a deal described as “highly likely at this stage.” Within hours, Pepkor told the market it was in no such talks with Standard Bank, or any other bank, about a tie-up or any strategic partnership. ## A firm denial In a statement to the stock exchange, Pepkor said there was “no information requiring disclosure” and cautioned shareholders “against placing reliance on the article.” Standard Bank, for its part, declined to comment on what it called speculation. Pepkor's message was that nothing had changed: it “remains focused on developing its banking offering” and will “continue to pursue the establishment of an independent bank within the required regulatory framework.” ## Going it alone The go-it-alone plan is already well advanced. Pepkor has received regulatory approval from the Prudential Authority to set up a bank and, by its own account, is “only one step away” from being registered as one. It submitted the necessary application in March 2026, bought a South African financial-services platform, CloudBadger Technologies, in late 2025, and hired Merwe Scholtz to lead the new banking initiative. The bank will be built on its +more loyalty programme, which has grown to 17 million members. Pepkor has earlier been linked with a partnership with Investec, but by March 2026 it was reported to be leaning towards launching its own lender instead. The prize is the mass and township market that Capitec has come to dominate, and Pepkor's financial-services arm is already sizeable: revenue there jumped 41% to R3 billion in its latest half-year, lifting operating profit 63% to R691 million. It already runs a personal-loans arm, Capfin, whose credit book has grown to R5.3 billion, a smartphone-rental product with 2.4 million active accounts, and a cash-transaction platform, Flash, which it is merging with fintech Shop2Shop in a deal valuing the combined business at R21.3 billion. Its in-house bank, PlusB, is pencilled in for launch in 2027 — which means the real contest with Capitec is still a year or more away. ### Foschini's Boss Just Took a 59% Pay Cut. His Stores Are Next. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/foschinis-boss-just-took-a-59-pay-cut-his-stores-are-next/ Last updated: 2026-08-03T02:44:59.000Z The Foschini Group has had the kind of year that usually ends with someone paying for it — and this time, the bill landed on the people at the top. Chief executive Anthony Thunström saw his total 2026 pay slashed by 59% to about R18.5 million, after weak results and a poor share price performance. A year earlier he took home a far heftier R45 million. His finance chief, Ralph Buddle, was cut too, to about R8.5 million from R18 million. Both men agreed to forgo their bonuses and long-term incentives for the year entirely. ## A year worth forgoing a bonus over The numbers explain the restraint. Basic earnings per share fell 58% to 411.2 cents, even as turnover edged up 7% to R62.4 billion. Annual profit has more than halved over four years, sliding from R2.91 billion in 2022 to R1.32 billion in the 2026 financial year. The share price told the same story, down almost 55% year-on-year to R56.26\. TFG also trimmed its final dividend by 39% to 140 cents. ## The reset: fewer stores, more Bash Rather than wait for shoppers to return, the retailer is remaking itself. It has identified 300 underperforming and marginal stores to shut and already closed 100 during the year. To protect cash, it held back about R600 million in planned capital spending. The strategy leans on its fast-growing online arm, Bash, to run what management calls a more “capital-light” business — one that closes weak stores and sharpens the brand line-up rather than simply opening more space. Management makes the trade-off explicit: the extra R1.1 billion in Bash sales this year would have needed more than 100 new stores and about R500 million in capital to match through bricks and mortar. Group-wide, TFG opened 233 stores and closed 242 over the year, leaving it trading from 4,914 stores across 18 countries. Chief executive Thunström framed it as a deliberate choice, not a defensive crouch: “Given the very uncertain global outlook, we cannot and will not simply wait for conditions to improve,” he said, pointing to “decisive, strategic action” to protect profitability and returns. For a business built on physical stores, the message is striking — the next chapter of growth may come from closing shops, not opening them. ### Apple's Record Quarter Came With a Near-$500 Billion Hangover URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/apples-record-quarter-came-with-a-near-500-billion-hangover/ Last updated: 2026-08-03T02:29:59.000Z Apple has just delivered the best June quarter in its history, and the market thanked it by heading for the exits. For the three months to the end of June, the company reported revenue of $109.4 billion, up 16% on a year earlier, and profit per share of $2.02, up 29%. iPhone sales jumped 22% to $54.25 billion and Mac sales rose 29% to $10.35 billion. Chief executive Tim Cook called it Apple's “strongest June quarter ever,” with double-digit growth across iPhone, Mac and Services and in every region. Then the shares fell almost 10% the next day. ## Why a record set off a sell-off The worry wasn't what Apple sold; it was what it might struggle to make. On the earnings call, finance chief Kevan Parekh warned that supply constraints would “increase significantly” in the current quarter, hitting the iPhone, Mac and iPad, while Cook said Apple expects to “pay even higher memory costs” in the months ahead. The culprit is the artificial-intelligence boom: data-centre operators are hoovering up the same memory chips Apple needs, straining supply worldwide. Apple had already raised prices on Macs and iPads in June as it wrestled with a shortage of RAM — the working memory inside every device — expected to last until 2027 and beyond. Cook, widely regarded as a supply-chain master, called the shortages “very significant” and admitted the company had limited options to fix them. Investors also balked at the outlook. Apple guided to revenue growth of 9% to 11% for the current quarter, short of the roughly 12% Wall Street had penciled in, and softer growth in its Services arm added to the unease. The drop, if it held, would be Apple's worst day since the pandemic sell-off of March 2020, erasing close to $500 billion in value and briefly handing the “world's most valuable company” crown back to chip giant Nvidia. Brokerages split on what to do next: at least four trimmed their price targets while three lifted them. ## A farewell with a sting There was a personal footnote. These were Cook's final results as CEO before he steps down on 1 September, handing over to hardware chief John Ternus and becoming executive chairman. A record quarter should have been a victory lap; instead, the man hailed for building the world's most admired supply chain bows out warning that, this time, the chips may not fall his way. ### The Roundup — Friday, 31 July 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-friday-31-july-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:54.000Z Today's edition Copper Bottomed Good morning. Today is about what a business chooses to keep, and what it's willing to let go. Anglo American is selling off the diamonds and coal that built it to bet everything on copper; BMW is shedding thousands of jobs to defend its margins; and a war an ocean away is quietly emptying South Africa's planes. Different companies, one question: what's worth holding onto? Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/markets--17-.png) --- DIAMONDS AREN'T FOREVER ## Anglo American more than tripled its dividend on record copper prices, even as it slipped to a loss ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-anglo--1--1.png) Anglo American is in the middle of the biggest overhaul in its long history, and its half-year results show both the promise and the price. Record copper prices lifted underlying profit 35% to $4 billion and let the board more than triple its interim dividend to $0.23 a share. Yet the company still lost money: a $0.9 billion bottom-line loss, because writing down the coal business it is selling to Dhilmar for up to $3.9 billion is the cost of becoming a copper company. Copper alone threw off $2.9 billion at a 60% margin, effectively carrying the group while De Beers and coal head for the exit. **The reinvention, in brief:** - Copper is the whole bet now: $2.9 billion in earnings at a 60% margin, effectively carrying the group. - The old guard is going: steelmaking coal to Dhilmar for up to $3.9 billion, plus talks to sell 85% of loss-making De Beers for about $1 billion. - The prize: a merger with Canada's Teck, waiting only on antitrust approval from China, targeted to complete by March 2027. The catch is concentration: with copper throwing off almost all of Anglo's earnings, the whole plan rides on the metal holding its record run and the Teck deal clearing China. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/anglo-american-is-betting-everything-on-copper/) --- RUNNING ON EMPTY ## FlySafair says a war a continent away has knocked 14% off its passenger numbers ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-flysafair-1.png) FlySafair usually flies between 850,000 and 900,000 passengers a month. Right now it is closer to 750,000\. The low-cost airline told a media roundtable this week that domestic demand has dropped about 14% since the US-Iran war began in February, and the culprit is not nervous flyers but the fuel bill. Jet fuel makes up 50% to 55% of an airline's costs, and the price FlySafair pays jumped from R11.40 a litre to more than R30 at its peak before easing to about R18\. A clearly labelled, temporary surcharge has quietly priced ordinary travellers out. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/a-faraway-war-is-emptying-south-african-planes/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which famous tree is the tallest known living tree in the world?** **A.** Hyperion **B.** Centurion **C.** General Sherman --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-franchise-1.png) **Your favourite chicken spot might be about to get some official attention.** The Competition Commission has published draft terms for a sweeping inquiry into South Africa's roughly R1-trillion franchise sector, the machine behind KFC, Chicken Licken, Pick n Pay, Spar, Spur and Sorbet. It wants to know whether steep upfront costs, tight supplier rules and “skewed, racialised” ownership are locking small players out. Public comment closes on 7 August, and the probe could run for up to 18 months. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africa-wants-to-know-why-its-so-hard-to-buy-into-a-franchise/) **Woolworths' turnaround keeps running into the same wall.** The upmarket grocer and clothing retailer grew full-year sales 4.3%, but second-half growth slowed to 3.3% as the Middle East war pushed up fuel and inflation and fresh rate hikes made shoppers pickier. Its Australian arm, Country Road, crept back into profit, though less than hoped. New chief executive Sam Ngumeni, in the job since June, expects core earnings up between 2.5% and 7.5% when full results land on 2 September. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/woolworths-new-boss-has-inherited-an-old-problem/) **Germany's carmakers keep reaching for the same lever.** BMW has agreed with its workers to cut several thousand jobs by the end of 2027, with insiders putting the number near 8,000, mostly in office and development roles rather than the factory floor. The trigger is a rough patch: quarterly profit fell 35% as Chinese sales slumped and US and EU tariffs bit. Volkswagen, Mercedes and Porsche are all trimming too. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/bmw-is-cutting-thousands-of-jobs-as-the-good-times-fade/) **Microsoft is turning artificial intelligence into serious cash.** The software giant pulled in $90 billion of revenue and $35.8 billion of profit in the three months to June, as its cloud arm jumped 27% and Azure passed $100 billion in annual sales for the first time. It even booked a $3.2 billion paper gain on its stake in AI lab Anthropic. Not everything shone: Xbox sales fell another 10% and Windows slipped, so boss Satya Nadella is promising an Xbox reset by 2027\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/microsofts-ai-cloud-is-minting-money-even-as-xbox-keeps-slipping/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/weather--13-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Wordle--16-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. Hyperion** Hyperion is a coast redwood, scientifically known as Sequoia sempervirens, growing in Redwood National Park in California, United States. Naturalists Chris Atkins and Michael Taylor discovered it on 25 August 2006\. A 2026 field update reported that the tree had reached approximately 116.22 metres, or 381.3 feet, making it the tallest known living tree in the world. Hyperion is estimated to be between 600 and 800 years old. For comparison, London’s Elizabeth Tower, which houses the bell known as Big Ben, stands 96 metres tall, meaning Hyperion rises just over 20 metres higher. Its surrounding area is closed to visitors because heavy foot traffic damaged the fragile forest floor around the tree. --- That's your Friday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### A Faraway War Is Emptying South African Planes URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-faraway-war-is-emptying-south-african-planes/ Last updated: 2026-07-31T03:44:59.000Z A conflict thousands of kilometres from South Africa is turning up in an unexpected place: half-empty domestic flights. FlySafair, the low-cost airline, told a media roundtable this week that its domestic travel demand has dropped by about 14% since the US-Iran war began in February. Where the airline would normally carry between 850,000 and 900,000 passengers a month, it is currently running closer to 750,000 to 800,000. ## It's the fuel, not fear The cause is not nervous flyers; it is the fuel bill. Jet fuel makes up 50% to 55% of an airline's operating costs, which leaves carriers badly exposed when oil prices spike. South Africa imports about 75% of its jet fuel, with 70% of that coming through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow Gulf shipping lane the conflict disrupted. When war broke out, the price FlySafair paid jumped from R11.40 a litre to more than R30 at its peak, before easing back to about R18\. To avoid raising fares across the board, the airline added a clearly labelled, temporary fuel surcharge. ## Passengers priced out Chief marketing officer Kirby Gordon summed up the problem in economic terms: customers still want to travel, "but they just can't afford it." He insisted there is "absolutely no hidden margin" in the surcharge, and that the airline is actually running it at a loss for now. The pain does not stay with the airline, either. Fewer people flying means fewer hotel nights, car rentals and restaurant bookings across a tourism industry that leans on visitors. ## Some relief in the tank There is a brighter note. Jet fuel has already retreated from its peak, and the average surcharge had fallen from around R692 to about R311 by late July, some 40% off the top. FlySafair frames the fee as temporary and says it will keep trimming it as prices settle. Whether South Africans return to the skies in their old numbers now rests on something no airline controls: how long the oil price stays calm. ### Anglo American Is Betting Everything on Copper URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/anglo-american-is-betting-everything-on-copper/ Last updated: 2026-07-31T03:29:59.000Z Anglo American is in the middle of the biggest overhaul in its long history, and its latest results show both the promise and the price of it. For the first half of 2026, the miner reported underlying core profit up 35% to $4 billion, a jump driven by record copper prices. On the strength of that, the board more than tripled its interim dividend to $0.23 a share, up from $0.07 a year earlier. ## A profit and a loss at the same time Look lower down the accounts, though, and Anglo actually lost money: it posted a bottom-line loss of about $0.9 billion for the period. The reason is the very reshaping that is lifting its profits. Anglo agreed to sell its steelmaking coal mines to Dhilmar for up to $3.875 billion, and writing that business down to the agreed sale price pushed a $0.9 billion impairment through the accounts. It is, in effect, paying an accounting price now to become a cleaner, copper-focused company later. ## Copper is carrying the group Copper is the whole point of the strategy, and the numbers show why. The metal generated $2.9 billion of underlying earnings at a 60% margin, effectively carrying the company, after the copper market price rose 39% and delivered a $1.2 billion earnings boost. Chief executive Duncan Wanblad says Anglo is being rebuilt around copper, premium iron ore and crop nutrients, while it prepares to complete its merger with Canada's Teck Resources to create what he calls "a global metals and minerals champion." Meanwhile the businesses being shown the door are the ones losing money: the De Beers diamond arm made a $113 million loss, and Anglo is in talks to sell its 85% stake for about $1 billion. ## What to watch For shareholders, there is comfort in the balance sheet: net debt fell to $8.2 billion and cash generation jumped. The catch is concentration. With copper now throwing off almost all of Anglo's earnings, the whole plan leans on the metal holding its record run, and on the Teck merger clearing its last hurdle, anti-trust approval from China, the final regulatory sign-off before completion. If copper cools before the diamonds and coal are gone, the reinvention gets a lot harder to sell. ### Microsoft's AI Cloud Is Minting Money, Even as Xbox Keeps Slipping URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/microsofts-ai-cloud-is-minting-money-even-as-xbox-keeps-slipping/ Last updated: 2026-07-31T03:14:59.000Z Microsoft closed its financial year by turning the artificial-intelligence boom into hard cash. For the three months to the end of June, the company reported revenue of $90 billion, up 18%, and net income of $35.8 billion. The engine was the cloud: Microsoft Cloud revenue rose 27% to $59.3 billion, and Azure, its cloud platform, passed $100 billion in annual sales for the first time. ## The AI bets pay off, mostly The quarter came with an unusual boost. Microsoft booked a $3.2 billion gain on its investment in Anthropic, the rival AI lab it backed with $5 billion in late 2025 as part of a deal that also had Anthropic buying $30 billion of Azure services. That single gain nearly matched what Microsoft's much larger OpenAI stake delivered across the entire year. The OpenAI investment was a more mixed bag this quarter, but across the full year it still added about $5 billion to earnings. Chief executive Satya Nadella said Microsoft 365 Copilot, its AI assistant for office work, has now passed 30 million paid seats. ## The consumer side drags Not everything is firing. Revenue from Xbox content and services, such as its Game Pass subscription, fell 10%, while Xbox hardware sales dropped 13%. Windows revenue from PC makers and devices slipped 7%, which Microsoft put down to weaker PC demand. Nadella was frank that the games business needs work: "we are making the necessary decisions... to reset the business for long-term growth," he said, adding he expects Xbox to return to growth in fiscal 2027. For the full year, Microsoft rang up $331.8 billion in revenue and $133.7 billion in profit, a reminder of how much the AI build-out is now feeding the bottom line. The question for the year ahead is whether the cloud can keep growing fast enough to outrun the soft spots the consumer business keeps exposing. ### BMW Is Cutting Thousands of Jobs as the Good Times Fade URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/bmw-is-cutting-thousands-of-jobs-as-the-good-times-fade/ Last updated: 2026-07-31T03:00:00.000Z BMW has long been seen as the steady one among Germany's big carmakers. That reputation is now being tested. The company confirmed, alongside its latest results, that it has reached an agreement with its works council on an extensive workforce restructuring programme, including voluntary severance packages. Wire reporting puts the scale at several thousand German jobs by the end of 2027, with a person familiar with the plan expecting the global workforce to shrink by around 8,000 from about 150,000\. The cuts target administrative and development roles, and leave production untouched. ## Why now The trigger is a sharp drop in earnings. Second-quarter pre-tax profit fell 35.1% to 1.697 billion euros, and the profit margin on the car business itself slid to 2.3%. Management blamed a significant downturn in the Chinese market, along with currency and commodity headwinds and the cost of import duties in the United States and the European Union. BMW had already cut its profit outlook back in June, citing weaker-than-expected business in China, where sales have fallen sharply. Chief executive Milan Nedeljkovic framed the overhaul as staying nimble rather than panicking: "The automotive industry is faced with rapidly escalating challenges... That's why it's important to be lean and agile," he said. ## Not the only one BMW is joining a queue. Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz have already agreed to cut tens of thousands of workers between them, as the industry absorbs the costly shift to electric vehicles, fierce competition from China and US tariffs. Just days earlier, Porsche ramped up its own restructuring, aiming to cut around 20% of staff by 2035\. For a sector long treated as the backbone of German industry, the message from this earnings season is blunt: the old business model is under real strain, and even its steadiest player is now reaching for the same lever as everyone else. ### Woolworths' New Boss Has Inherited an Old Problem URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/woolworths-new-boss-has-inherited-an-old-problem/ Last updated: 2026-07-31T02:44:59.000Z Woolworths just showed how quickly a good year can lose momentum. The upmarket food and clothing retailer told the market its group turnover and concession sales grew 4.3% over the 52 weeks to 28 June, and 4.8% in constant currency. But after a strong first half, growth in the second half slowed to 3.3%, dragged down by a particularly tough final quarter. ## What went wrong in the second half Management pointed to the war in the Middle East, which pushed fuel prices and inflation higher, dented consumer confidence and demand, and raised operating costs. On top of that came renewed interest-rate increases in both South Africa and Australia, which nudged shoppers towards promotions and the essentials. Woolworths South Africa still delivered solid sales growth of 5.4% for the year, though its momentum eased to 4.1% in the second half. The Food business kept outpacing the market with 5.7% growth, while Fashion, Beauty and Home felt the squeeze most, with second-half growth slowing to 2.6%. ## The Australian turn and a new CEO There was a genuine bright spot down under. Country Road Group, the Australian arm that has been bleeding money for years, returned to full-year profitability, helped by a deliberate shift to full-price sales and a leaner operating model. The catch: it did not recover as far as Woolworths had hoped before the war began. All of this lands on the desk of Sam Ngumeni, who took over as group chief executive in June and is largely inheriting the same balancing act his predecessor Roy Bagattini faced. For the full year, Woolworths expects headline earnings per share (its core measure of profit) to rise between 2.5% and 7.5%, to 274.8c-288.2c. Reported earnings per share are set to be flat to 10% lower, mostly because the prior year was flattered by the sale of its Bourke Street property. The full results are due on or about 2 September, when Ngumeni will get his first real chance to show whether the recovery can find its feet again. ### South Africa Wants to Know Why It's So Hard to Buy Into a Franchise URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africa-wants-to-know-why-its-so-hard-to-buy-into-a-franchise/ Last updated: 2026-07-31T02:29:59.000Z Buying into a big-name franchise has long been sold as one of the safer ways to start a business in South Africa. Now the country's competition watchdog wants to know whether that door is actually open to everyone. The Competition Commission has published draft terms of reference for a market inquiry into the franchise sector, signalling its intention to investigate whether parts of the industry are harming competition. It is a big target: the sector spans more than 800 franchisor brands, over 3,500 franchisees and more than 30,000 outlets, contributes close to R1-trillion in annual turnover and supports more than 500,000 jobs. ## Who's in the frame The brands caught up in the review read like a walk through any South African high street: Chicken Licken, KFC, Pick n Pay, Spar, Spur, Steers, Sorbet and Italtile Retail among them. The Commission says the inquiry follows numerous complaints it has received over several years about certain business practices and franchise agreements. Rather than chase individual companies, it has opted for a broad market inquiry. The plan is to examine the competitive dynamics in the franchise value chain, the impact of franchise agreements, the information available to prospective franchisees, and the financing conditions that affect small businesses and historically disadvantaged people. ## Why it matters Money is a big part of the worry. The Commission says the large upfront capital contributions that franchisors or credit providers require can make it hard for new entrepreneurs to get in. It also says franchising still shows "skewed, racialised patterns of ownership," limiting the sector's contribution to economic inclusion. Lawyers are paying attention, because market inquiries in South Africa have historically produced "binding, remedial actions, including forced changes to long-standing corporate business models." Strict supply-chain exclusivity clauses, mandatory procurement systems and rebate structures are all expected to face scrutiny. Not everyone is sold on the wide net: the Franchise Association of South Africa has argued the terms are too broad and could yield unenforceable recommendations. The Commission, for its part, insists it is not out to punish success, noting strong franchise brands create jobs, invest in communities and drive growth. Public comment on the draft terms closes at 4pm on 7 August, after which the final version is gazetted and the inquiry is expected to begin within 20 days and run for up to 18 months. Whether it reshapes the model behind your local chicken shop is now a question the whole industry will be waiting on. ### The Roundup — Thursday, 30 July 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-thursday-30-july-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:54.000Z Today's edition Screen Savers Good morning. Today is a lesson in what you switch on and what you switch off. DStv just posted its best month for sign-ups in a decade and still made its neatest money by pulling the plug on Showmax, South Africa's entire gas-import plan is stuck waiting for the government to flip one long-overdue switch, and the great AI rally suddenly got cold feet. Plenty of on-and-off decisions to weigh up today. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/markets--16-.png) --- OFF AND RUNNING ## DStv just posted its best subscriber month in a decade under new owner Canal+ ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-dstv-1.png) MultiChoice, the group behind DStv, has handed in its first set of results under French owner Canal+, and the numbers finally point up. Across its markets, Canal+ signed up new subscribers 40% faster than a year earlier, and June was DStv's best month for new sign-ups in South Africa in a decade. Group revenue jumped 40% to €4.3 billion, and MultiChoice's own operating profit rose 160% to €143 million, helped by €120 million of savings from merging the two businesses. Chief executive Maxime Saada won't call it a turnaround yet, but after years of shedding customers, the picture is finally brightening. **What turned around:** - Subscribers: up 8.4% to 41.2 million group-wide, with June DStv's best sign-up month in SA in a decade. - Profit: MultiChoice's core operating profit rose 160% to €143 million, on €120 million of merger savings. - The Showmax twist: shutting the streaming service in April triggered a R914 million tax credit, leaving a net gain of about R285 million. A bumper football year filled a lot of those seats, so the real test is keeping viewers once the final whistle blows. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/dstv-best-month-decade-showmax/) --- PIPE DREAMS ## South Africa's gas-import plan is stuck waiting on one overdue government decision ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-standard-bank-1.png) South Africa has talked for years about importing natural gas to help keep the lights on, and Standard Bank's gas lead Paul Eardley-Taylor says the whole plan now hangs on one overdue call: naming the companies allowed to build the first gas-fired power plants. Four bids worth about 2,800MW came in by May, beating the 2,000MW target, but the government's power-buying office still hasn't chosen. He reckons the first wave of plants, terminals and pipelines could need around $7.5 billion, and with Mozambican supply drying up and Sasol set to stop selling gas by 2030, he warns that if the winners aren't named, “the whole thing falls over.” [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-gas-import-plan-overdue-call/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which mammal has the densest fur of any living mammal?** **A.** Beaver **B.** Sea otter **C.** Polar bear --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-ai-boom-1.png) **The AI trade just lost its nerve.** World stocks slid to a one-month low as investors dumped chipmakers, spooked by Chinese competition and the mounting cost of the AI boom. South Korea's market dived more than 10% and tripped its emergency circuit breaker, while memory giants SK Hynix and Samsung shed over 12%. Even the JSE felt it, with Sasol and Glencore down almost 4%. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/ai-rally-lost-its-nerve/) **Harmony is betting big on copper.** South Africa's largest gold miner has locked in new multi-currency loans worth roughly R20 billion, spanning US$500 million, A$500 million and R7 billion, to refinance old debt, cut its borrowing costs and fund its growing Australian copper business. Lenders piled in: the deal drew about 93% participation and pledges worth roughly three times what Harmony asked for. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/harmony-borrows-big-copper/) **Cheaper groceries are denting Boxer's growth.** The discount retailer, spun out of Pick n Pay in 2024, grew turnover 7.2% in the 20 weeks to 19 July, down from 10.9%, as staples like maize meal, rice and flour fell by double digits. Sales at established stores rose just 2.2%. Even so, Boxer opened 19 new stores in the period and is targeting dozens more this year, betting the slowdown reverses. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/boxer-keeps-building-cheaper-food/) **Your GP, your scan and your surgery just moved under one roof.** Growthpoint, one of SA's biggest property companies, has opened a R100 million healthcare village in Rosebank, built with health provider Epione. It packs GPs, specialists, diagnostics, a pharmacy and a 20-bed day hospital into one building, so patients stop bouncing between providers for a consult, a scan and treatment. It's the first of a planned network the pair want to roll out across South Africa and, eventually, the rest of Africa. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/one-roof-gp-scan-surgery/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/weather--12-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Wordle--15-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. Sea otter** Sea otters have the densest fur of any living mammal, with up to one million hairs packed into a single square inch. Unlike most marine mammals, they do not have a thick layer of insulating blubber. Instead, their two layered coat traps air close to the skin, helping keep the inner fur dry and protecting them from cold ocean water. They spend hours grooming each day because dirty or tangled fur cannot trap air effectively. Sea otters are also skilled tool users, often cracking shellfish against rocks and sometimes storing food or a favourite rock in loose skin pockets beneath their forearms. --- That's your Thursday wrap. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### A World Cup gave Coca-Cola its best quarter in years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/world-cup-coca-cola-best-quarter/ Last updated: 2026-07-30T09:59:59.000Z It turns out a World Cup sells a lot of fizzy drinks. Coca-Cola beat Wall Street’s expectations for the second quarter and lifted its outlook for the year, crediting a global marketing blitz around the FIFA World Cup for a jump in demand. Net revenue rose 7% to $13.4 billion, ahead of the $13.16 billion analysts had pencilled in, while reported earnings climbed 16% to $1.03 a share. Unit-case volume, the drinks-industry measure of how much actually got sold, grew 5% — Coke’s biggest quarterly jump in 17 years outside the pandemic — led by India, China, the United States and Brazil. ## The World Cup effect The tournament was everywhere in the numbers. Coca-Cola says it ran its campaign across more than 180 markets and 20 million retail outlets, generating over 60 billion impressions online with the help of more than 2,500 content creators. That push fed into 5% volume growth for Trademark Coca-Cola and 8% for the sports drink Powerade over the quarter. Zero-sugar Coke was another standout, growing 16% across every region, while a caffeine-boosted relaunch of Mr Pibb sent that brand’s volume up 20%. “We had, during the World Cup, really a great opportunity for us to shine our brands,” CEO Henrique Braun said on CNBC. “During the hydration breaks, Powerade was there.” ## Shoppers still spending The results stood out against a jittery backdrop for consumer companies. Rival PepsiCo had just warned that tighter household budgets were denting US sales of its snacks and drinks — but Coke saw no such pullback, with volumes even in North America up 3%. Braun acknowledged a “dynamic” landscape of inflation and economic uncertainty, but said his brands kept gaining share. On the back of the quarter, Coca-Cola raised its full-year guidance, nudging its organic revenue outlook to about 5% growth and comparable earnings growth to 9%-10%, from 8%-9% before. Investors approved: the shares rose more than 7% in morning trading to a record high. With the World Cup glow now behind it, the question for the second half is whether Coke can keep the momentum going once the tournament’s marketing lift fades and the consumer picture stays uncertain. ### PayPal to its lurking suitor: not at that price URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/paypal-not-at-that-price/ Last updated: 2026-07-30T07:59:59.000Z PayPal has a message for the suitor circling it: not at that price. Fresh off a better-than-expected quarter, the payments company signalled it thinks a $53.4 billion cash takeover offer from rival Stripe and private-equity firm Advent International undervalues it — without quite slamming the door shut. On its second-quarter earnings call, chief executive Enrique Lores stopped well short of putting the company up for sale, but said PayPal would consider any path that created “superior value” for shareholders. “If we see levers or a path that we believe would create superior value for our shareholders than executing our current strategy, we would, of course, carefully consider them,” he told investors. ## The offer on the table The bid, first reported in mid-July, values PayPal at $60.50 a share in cash, a 28% premium to where the stock had been trading, and sent the shares up 17% on the day it surfaced. It is backed by roughly $50 billion in committed bank financing, with Stripe, Advent and Block chipping in $17 billion of equity. Stripe itself is valued at around $159 billion and was reportedly weighing a PayPal deal as far back as February. PayPal’s argument is that the number is too low. An analysis from financial-services firm Cantor pegged fair value closer to $70 a share, well above both the offer and the roughly $58 the stock trades at. ## A turnaround worth defending Lores would rather back his own plan. PayPal reported adjusted profit of $1.38 a share, ahead of the $1.28 analysts expected, on revenue up 5% year-on-year to $8.68 billion, and generated $1.8 billion in adjusted free cash flow. The company is midway through an AI-focused overhaul that has reorganised it into three divisions and targets at least $1.5 billion in gross run-rate savings over the next two to three years. “We believe that executing the transformation strategy I have outlined will create significant value for shareholders,” Lores said. The stand-off leaves PayPal doing two things at once: proving its own plan can lift the share price, while daring Stripe and Advent to come back with a bigger number. ### South Africa's gas-import plan hangs on one overdue call URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-gas-import-plan-overdue-call/ Last updated: 2026-07-30T03:44:59.000Z South Africa has talked about importing natural gas to help keep the lights on for years. According to Standard Bank’s gas-sector lead, Paul Eardley-Taylor, the whole plan now comes down to one government decision that is already overdue: naming the companies that get to build the country’s first big gas-fired power plants. Eardley-Taylor calls that pending choice the sector’s “tipping point.” Pick the preferred bidders, he argues, and billions in investment can start to move; keep stalling, and “the whole thing falls over.” ## The programme, and the hold-up At the centre of it is the Gas Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, the government’s first bid window for 2,000 megawatts of new gas-fired electricity. The request for proposals went out in December 2023, and after the energy department reworked parts of the process the deadline was pushed to late May 2026\. Four bids came in, together offering about 2,800 megawatts — comfortably more than the 2,000-megawatt target. Yet the government’s power-buying office, the IPP Office, has still not named any winners. Eardley-Taylor estimates the first wave of gas plants, import terminals and pipelines could need about $7.5 billion of investment. Much of it would be anchored by a planned import terminal at Richards Bay — a joint venture between Vopak, Reatile Group and Transnet Pipelines — that would ship in liquefied natural gas, the super-cooled gas moved by tanker, and turn it back into usable fuel for power stations and industry. ## Why the clock matters The urgency is that the old gas is running out. Supplies piped from Mozambique’s ageing Pande and Temane fields are depleting, and Sasol is expected to stop selling gas to other companies by 2030, leaving a gap the country has no ready answer for. A June agreement between the Richards Bay terminal, power utility Eskom and oil major ExxonMobil was an early step, and Eardley-Taylor says local banks have already backed the bids, so the money is there. His worry is execution: “South Africa is bad at first-of-a-kind projects,” he said. He also pushes back on the idea that imported gas is simply too expensive. It should be judged not against the cheap pipeline gas South Africa used to get from Mozambique, he says, but against the diesel and heavy fuel oil the country would otherwise burn — on which measure, he reckons, the country is “simply catching up with the rest of the world.” ### DStv's best month in a decade — and a payday for switching Showmax off URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/dstv-best-month-decade-showmax/ Last updated: 2026-07-30T03:29:59.000Z For years the story at DStv was one of customers drifting away. Its first set of results under French owner Canal+ tells a different one: the satellite broadcaster has just landed its best run of new sign-ups in years, and June was its strongest month for new subscribers in South Africa in a decade. Across MultiChoice’s markets, subscriber acquisition ran 40% faster in the six months to end-June than a year earlier. Group-wide, Canal+ counted 41.2 million subscribers, up 8.4% on the year. Chief executive Maxime Saada was quick to concede that the world’s most-watched football tournament flattered June’s numbers. ## The numbers behind the turn The financials moved the right way. Group revenue jumped 40% to €4.3 billion, mostly because MultiChoice’s sales are now folded into Canal+, and MultiChoice’s own core operating profit surged 160% to €143 million, driven by €120 million of savings from combining the two businesses. Investors liked it: the shares rose about 8% on the JSE the day the results landed. Even so, Saada refused to declare victory. “It is too early to say we have achieved a turnaround,” he said, warning the group will have to work hard to keep the subscribers it has just won once the football fades. To hold them, Canal+ has been buying up content and widening access, securing long-term rights to South Africa’s Premier Soccer League and lifting its number of points of sale by more than 15% since March. ## Money from switching off The half’s oddest win came from shutting something down. Canal+ closed the Showmax streaming service at the end of April, and rather than costing money, the closure produced a gain of about €15 million, or R285 million. The reason is an accounting quirk: winding down the loss-making service triggered a one-off tax credit of €48 million (R914 million), which outweighed the roughly €33 million (R629 million) in pre-tax operating losses being cleared away. Canal+, which bought MultiChoice and delisted it from the JSE in late 2025, confirmed its guidance for the full year and says it is halfway to its €250 million savings target. The open question is whether DStv can hold on to the viewers a bumper sporting year helped bring through the door, once the tournaments are over. ### One roof for your GP, your scan and your surgery URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/one-roof-gp-scan-surgery/ Last updated: 2026-07-30T03:15:00.000Z The next time you need a GP, a scan and a minor procedure, the pitch is that you might get all three without leaving the building. Property group Growthpoint has opened a R100 million healthcare “village” in Rosebank, Johannesburg, and it is meant to be the first of many. Built by Growthpoint Healthcare Property Holdings, the group’s healthcare-and-wellness property fund, the development was created with healthcare provider Epione and brings general practitioners, specialists, diagnostics, a pharmacy and day surgery together in one place. It is the first of a planned network of integrated health villages the partners intend to roll out across South Africa and, eventually, elsewhere on the continent. ## What’s inside The two-storey building is purpose-built for the idea. It houses 22 consulting rooms for GPs and specialists, plus a pharmacy, a pathology laboratory and a 20-bed day hospital fitted with two operating theatres for same-day procedures. Daily Investor reports the ground floor also carries a concierge desk and a primary-healthcare corridor with room for eight GPs alongside dental and optometry practices, and that the site includes a skin-cancer centre of excellence staffed by dermatologists and specialist surgeons. The logic is to stop patients bouncing between separate providers for a consultation, a scan and treatment. “We are proud to be the healthcare property partner and developer that helped bring this vision to life,” said fund manager Farhana Russell, describing it as exactly the kind of asset the fund exists to create by providing capital and know-how. ## A bet on medical property For Growthpoint, the village is a small slice of a much bigger portfolio. It adds to the fund’s R8 billion healthcare property holdings, which stretch across hospitals, medical suites, pharmaceutical manufacturing and warehousing, and senior-living communities. The investment comes as healthcare property keeps drawing institutional investors chasing steady, income-producing assets, helped along by an ageing population, rising health spending and a shift towards outpatient care. Epione founder Garikai Govati, who chose Growthpoint as his partner about eight years ago, says the appetite for more is already there. “We plan to offer more of these spaces across Africa,” he said — which, if the model works, could turn one Rosebank building into a template. ### Boxer keeps building as cheaper food slows its sales URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/boxer-keeps-building-cheaper-food/ Last updated: 2026-07-30T02:59:59.000Z Cheaper groceries are good news at the till and a headache on the income statement, and discount grocer Boxer is living both sides of that at once. At its second annual general meeting on Tuesday, the retailer reported that sales growth had cooled even as it kept flinging open new stores. Turnover for the 20 weeks to 19 July rose 7.2%, down from the 10.9% growth it booked in the second half of its 2026 financial year. Sales at stores open a year or more, the cleanest read on underlying demand, crept up just 2.2%. The culprit is falling prices rather than fewer shoppers: Boxer says it kept gaining market share even as prices across its basket slipped. ## Blame the basket The deflation is concentrated in the staples that fill a Boxer trolley. “The reported deflation is the consequence of continued deflation across key commodity categories, particularly maize meal, rice and flour, which all experienced double-digit deflation during the period,” the trading statement said. When the price of the goods you sell drops by double digits, revenue growth slows even if you are shifting the same volume, or more. ## Building through the dip Boxer’s answer is to keep building. It opened 19 new stores in the 20 weeks — six superstores and 13 liquor stores — and says it remains confident of hitting its target of 25 superstores and 35 liquor stores for the 2027 financial year. CEO Marek Masojada, who ran the meeting, said the group is sticking to the medium-term rollout plan it set out when it listed and still sees room to expand across South Africa. “Our infrastructure is in place to take on these stores,” he said, pointing to seven distribution centres with headroom for up to 200 more superstores. The retailer, spun out of a struggling Pick n Pay in 2024, has grown into a market value of just over R33 billion — more than double the roughly R13 billion its former parent is now worth. The shares slipped about 4% on Tuesday morning after the AGM and the trading update landed. Boxer expects the pace to pick up again in the second half of the year, betting that as price inflation returns and its new stores mature, the growth it lost to cheaper maize meal comes back. ### Harmony borrows big to go chasing copper URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/harmony-borrows-big-copper/ Last updated: 2026-07-30T02:44:59.000Z South Africa’s biggest gold miner is putting serious money behind a second act in copper. Harmony Gold has closed new multi-currency loans worth more than R20 billion, and it is steering the proceeds towards a growing copper business on the other side of the Indian Ocean. The package is spread across three currencies: US$500 million, A$500 million and R7 billion. Harmony says the deal cuts its funding costs, stretches out when the debt falls due, and strengthens its cash buffer. The money will refinance dollar and rand loans first taken out in 2022, pay off the bridge loan used to buy MAC Copper, and cover general company needs. ## Why Australian dollars The Australian slice is the tell. Harmony has introduced Australian-dollar funding to match its shift into copper Down Under, following its roughly US$1.25 billion acquisition of MAC Copper and the development of the Eva Copper Project, pencilled in at between US$1.55 billion and US$1.75 billion. The idea is to line up the currencies it borrows in with the assets it is building, as a meaningful Australian copper arm grows alongside its South African gold mines. That MAC Copper deal handed Harmony full ownership of the CSA copper mine in Australia, an asset expected to add 17,500 to 18,500 tonnes of copper to the group’s coming annual results. Harmony, long the country’s largest gold producer by volume, has spent years eyeing copper as a way to diversify and cushion itself against a downturn in the gold price. ## Lenders lined up Banks were more than willing. The financing drew roughly 93% lender participation and pledges worth about three times what Harmony was looking for. That oversubscription, the company says, reflects lender confidence and meant commitments had to be scaled back sharply. Citi and Nedbank ran the deal as joint global coordinators and lead arrangers. There is a green string attached. The facilities are sustainability-linked, tying the interest margin to targets on renewable energy, cutting potable-water use and community-development spending; hit them all and Harmony trims up to five basis points off its margin, miss them and it pays a similar amount more. With annual results due in under a month, the funding leaves Harmony’s balance sheet freshly set up for a copper push, even as its gold operations keep the cash flowing. ### The day the AI rally lost its nerve URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/ai-rally-lost-its-nerve/ Last updated: 2026-07-30T02:29:59.000Z Global stock markets slid to a one-month low on Tuesday as investors bailed out of chipmakers around the world, spooked by fresh Chinese competition and growing doubts about how the artificial-intelligence boom is being paid for. The MSCI All Country World Price index, a broad gauge of global shares, fell 0.6% to its lowest level since late June. Adding to the mood, traders are now weighing the chance of a US interest-rate rise as soon as this week. The pain was sharpest in Asia. South Korea's main index, the KOSPI, dived more than 10% to a three-month low, tripping an emergency circuit breaker on the way down and heading for its worst month on record — a steeper fall than during the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Memory-chip giants SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics each shed more than 12% as a long, stratospheric rally unwound in a hurry. ## What set it off Two China worries lit the fuse. Reports said the country had started making its own advanced chip-production machines, the deep-ultraviolet lithography tools it used to import, while a strong market debut for Chinese memory maker CXMT stoked fears of tougher competition in the memory business. On top of that came nerves about the sheer cost of AI. Nvidia had already dropped 5% after the Wall Street Journal reported it was in talks to provide roughly $250 billion in financing guarantees for OpenAI as part of a huge data-centre project. “You’ve seen the companies paying for AI, the hyperscalers, not really participating because of concerns about the cost and the degree of leverage that needs to be taken on,” said Dorian Carrell, head of multi-asset income at Schroders. ## The local sting South Africa felt it too. The JSE’s All-Share index eased 0.3% by late afternoon, with Sasol, Implats and Glencore all falling almost 4% as commodity prices slid. The index is now hovering around its lowest levels since September last year. The rand traded at R16.74 to the dollar, after touching R16.82 earlier in the day. The real test comes later this week, when some of AI’s biggest spenders — Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and Apple — report earnings that investors will comb for any sign the boom is worth its mounting bill. ### A stronger rand and weaker prices just knocked a third off Kumba's earnings URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-stronger-rand-and-weaker-prices-just-knocked-a-third-off-kumbas-earnings/ Last updated: 2026-07-29T07:59:59.000Z Kumba Iron Ore has just posted the kind of half-year that even a well-run miner would rather forget. The Anglo American-owned group said on Tuesday that its earnings fell by almost a third in the six months to end-June, as a stronger rand, weaker prices and lower sales volumes all pulled in the same direction. Revenue dropped 11% to R30.9 billion, with the firmer rand alone cutting R3.2 billion off the top line and a slight dip in the average export iron-ore price shaving off close to another R1 billion. The numbers behind the slump The pain ran through every key figure. EBITDA, a common measure of operating cash earnings, fell 32% to R10.9 billion, and the margin on that measure narrowed to 35% from 46% a year earlier. Headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure South African-listed companies must report, dropped 41% to R13.24, and the company still declared an interim dividend of R7.90 a share, returning 60% of those earnings, or R2.5 billion, to shareholders. Free cash flow, the cash left after running and investment costs, slid to R1.9 billion from R7.9 billion, largely because of higher spending to sustain and grow the business. Production fell 3% to 17.7 million tonnes, held back by a softer showing at the Kolomela mine and, earlier in the year, record rainfall and planned Transnet rail maintenance. A better second half? CEO Mpumi Zikalala said the results reflected a challenging external environment and tough operating conditions, but pointed to a recovery ahead. She said conditions were expected to improve in the second half as the weather turns, supporting a rebound in the waste mining needed to reach full-year targets. Kumba is also investing in new UHDMS processing technology at its Sishen mine, which it expects to triple the share of premium-quality ore it produces and extend the mine's life. Management kept its full-year sales guidance at 35 to 37 million tonnes and capital spending at R13.2 billion to R14.2 billion. Zikalala was careful not to declare the worst over, warning that the cost environment "remains volatile" with risks tied to the Middle East, and that the group's answer is strict cost discipline and its efficiency drive. For a business at the mercy of iron-ore prices and the rand, that caution looks well earned. ### The rand just lost its 13-year monopoly on Southern Africa's payment system URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-rand-just-lost-its-13-year-monopoly-on-southern-africas-payment-system/ Last updated: 2026-07-29T03:44:59.000Z For more than a decade, any business moving money across Southern Africa through the region's shared payment system had one option for settling the deal: the South African rand. That has finally changed. The central banks of South Africa and Angola announced on Monday that the Angolan kwanza has joined the rand as a settlement currency in the SADC real-time gross settlement system, the shared platform banks across the region use to move money across borders. It is the first new currency added since the system launched in 2013. A cheaper way to trade The point of the change is to cut out a costly middle step. Until now, a company trading with Angola often had to convert through a third currency to settle a payment, and each conversion adds fees and delays. By letting businesses settle directly in kwanza, the banks say participants can reduce those foreign-exchange conversions, lowering costs and speeding up payments, in line with global goals for cheaper cross-border transfers. The agreement was signed by Reserve Bank governor Lesetja Kganyago, who chairs the SADC committee of central bank governors, and his Angolan counterpart Manuel Tiago Dias. Crucially, no one was forced to take part: Kganyago said more than 80 banks have joined the system voluntarily because they could see the value. Kganyago said settling in local currencies also fixes a liquidity headache: if the system runs short of kwanza, Angola's central bank supplies it, and if it runs short of rand, the Reserve Bank steps in, whereas leaning on some outside currency would leave no obvious backstop. Why it matters for the region The sums flowing through the platform are large. It processes about R250.7 billion in transactions every month, and in 2025 trade between Angola and the rest of SADC came to roughly $3.77 billion, with South Africa alone accounting for nearly $2.99 billion of that. The system now covers 15 of SADC's 16 member states. Kganyago framed the kwanza's arrival as bigger than an administrative tweak, calling it "a practical step towards a Southern Africa that is more integrated, more connected and better able to support trade, investment, financial stability and shared prosperity". Botswana's pula is already flagged as the next currency in line, and the bet behind the whole project is simple: if settling inside the system is the cheapest option, the region will keep choosing it, no mandate required. ### Nvidia just rallied 30 tech giants to defend AI — and three big names stayed away URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nvidia-just-rallied-30-tech-giants-to-defend-ai-and-three-big-names-stayed-away/ Last updated: 2026-07-29T03:29:59.000Z Nvidia, the chipmaker whose processors run most of the world's artificial intelligence, has pulled more than 30 of the biggest names in tech into a new group with a pointed mission and an even more pointed guest list. Called the Open Secure AI Alliance, the coalition brings together Nvidia, Microsoft, SpaceX, Dell, IBM, Red Hat, HPE, Hugging Face and the Linux Foundation, among others, to build and freely share open-source tools for defending AI systems from attack. The idea is that cyber defenders need open models, the kind whose inner workings are public, so protection is not locked inside a handful of companies. A breach that made the case The alliance did not appear out of nowhere. It was galvanised by a security incident this month at Hugging Face, a widely used AI platform, when the company first reached for closed commercial AI tools to investigate a hack, only for those tools to hit their own safety guardrails and refuse to help with the forensic work. Hugging Face then fell back on an open-weight model, GLM 5.2 from Beijing-based Z.ai, running it on its own systems to comb through more than 17,000 actions and shut the intrusion down. For the alliance's founders, that was the whole argument in miniature: when the closed tools froze, an open one did the job. Members are now each chipping in, with Nvidia releasing its own security-agent software on GitHub and Microsoft, IBM and Red Hat adding tools of their own. Who skipped the party The most striking thing about the alliance is who is missing. OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, the three leading makers of closed AI models, are all absent, and the group is openly lobbying regulators to treat open models as "defensive assets, not liabilities" rather than security threats. That message is landing at a delicate moment, with the Trump administration reportedly weighing a wide ban on Chinese open-weight AI models, the very category that helped Hugging Face contain its breach. The founding statement puts the philosophy bluntly: "The right response is not to deny defenders access to capable open systems." The real test now is whether an open-source coalition can set the terms of AI security, or whether the big closed-model players and policymakers push back, and that is the fight just beginning. ### Oil slides for a third day as the US-Iran truce holds URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/oil-slides-for-a-third-day-as-the-us-iran-truce-holds/ Last updated: 2026-07-29T03:14:59.000Z The Middle East scare that spooked energy markets is easing, and oil prices are quietly sliding with it. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell about 2% on Tuesday to the mid-$86 range, its third straight session of losses, after a pause in fighting between the United States and Iran held. The retreat has calmed fears of a supply shock in a conflict that had upended energy supplies, and it points to gentler pressure on fuel costs if it lasts. A fragile calm The immediate driver was diplomacy rather than a change in the barrels actually being pumped. Prices extended their drop after President Donald Trump said the US was engaged in "good talks" with Iran aimed at ending the conflict, fuelling optimism that normal oil flows from the region could resume. Tehran has rejected reports that it agreed to a 10-day ceasefire, but a temporary pause in hostilities has held, and that alone was enough to take some of the risk premium out of the price. US West Texas Intermediate crude, the American benchmark, followed the same path lower. The slide has been building for days: on Monday, Brent had already fallen toward $87 a barrel, its lowest level in more than a week, as optimism grew that the Middle East conflict could soon ease. Why analysts are still cautious Not everyone is convinced the calm will stick. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia said the pause appears to have weakened expectations that the conflict would escalate into attacks on civilian and energy infrastructure, but warned that a dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, the vital shipping lane at the mouth of the Gulf, could see hostilities reignite. Goldman Sachs struck a similar note, telling clients that Brent should moderate to around $80 a barrel by the end of the year if Hormuz fully reopens over the final three months. The bank also flagged fresh wildcards, pointing to Red Sea disruptions and attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure as possible sources of upside risk for crude and refined-product prices. For South African motorists, a sustained pullback in Brent is the kind of backdrop that eventually shows up at the pumps, which is why the standoff over Hormuz, and whether the US-Iran truce holds, is worth keeping an eye on in the weeks ahead. ### Why global markets are holding their breath this week URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/why-global-markets-are-holding-their-breath-this-week/ Last updated: 2026-07-29T03:00:00.000Z It has been a hold-your-breath few days on global markets, and the reason is a familiar one: how much the world's biggest technology companies are pouring into artificial intelligence. Tuesday's session was rattled by exactly that worry, with the heavy spending and funding demands of big tech stocks unsettling investors. The S&P 500 barely managed to close in positive territory, the Nasdaq slipped into noticeable losses, and the nerves spread well beyond the United States. From Wall Street to Asia In Asia, South Korea's KOSPI index dropped to a three-month low and tripped its circuit breakers as declines accelerated, while Japan's Nikkei also ended deep in the red. The trigger was a run of results from the AI heavyweights. Google parent Alphabet and Tesla both took steep hits after their reports, with Alphabet punished partly for lifting its already-massive AI spending plans, and that set a nervous tone before Microsoft, Amazon and Meta report their own numbers. Even after the stumble, the S&P 500 is still up more than 8% in 2026, but one strategist described the market as feeling "very frothy", adding that investors are "walking on eggshells" and quick to punish any hint of imperfection. The Fed wildcard On top of the earnings drama sits a US Federal Reserve interest-rate decision due on Wednesday. The central bank was widely expected to hold rates steady, but futures markets were still pricing in a 38% chance of a quarter-point increase, and economists at BNP Paribas warned that "the possibility of a shock rate hike cannot be ruled out entirely" under the Fed's new chair, Kevin Warsh. Roughly a third of S&P 500 companies are due to report this week, the busiest stretch of the season, including Apple, and overall second-quarter earnings were tracking a 26.5% jump on last year. The numbers, in other words, are strong, yet the mood is fragile, because investors have started to look at heavy AI budgets and see risk where they once saw opportunity. For South African investors watching from afar, the takeaway is that the week's direction may hinge less on the earnings themselves than on the tone the Fed strikes on Wednesday, and on whether Big Tech can convince the market its AI bills are worth it. ### DStv's owner just put nearly R19bn on the table to make peace with French cinema URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/dstvs-owner-just-put-nearly-r19bn-on-the-table-to-make-peace-with-french-cinema/ Last updated: 2026-07-29T02:45:00.000Z The company that now owns DStv is spending heavily to patch up a very public falling-out. Canal+, the French pay-TV group that recently took over MultiChoice, has signed what it calls an unprecedented five-year agreement with France's film industry, committing 980 million euros, almost R19 billion, to French and European cinema from 2028\. That works out to nearly 200 million euros a year, and it comes with a prize attached: Canal+ keeps the right to stream the best films just six months after they reach cinemas. From threat to truce The deal is a peace offering after a bruising year. Industry players had grown uneasy about the influence of Canal+'s largest shareholder, billionaire Vincent Bolloré, and the tension boiled over into an open letter signed by thousands of film professionals. Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada then poured petrol on the fire in May, suggesting the group would refuse to finance films made by anyone who had signed the petition. The new agreement, struck with France's main cinema guilds, is meant to draw a line under that fight and restore some stability after the industry panicked about budget cuts. Canal+ is a heavyweight in its own right, with more than 40 million subscribers across over 70 countries and about 15,000 employees, and MultiChoice now sits inside that wider group. The new money is aimed especially at first-time filmmakers, debut films, animation and the mid-budget "films du milieu" that France sees as vital to renewing its cinema. Why the six-month window matters The timing is not charity. France's film regulator reported that total investment in approved films fell 4.8% in 2025, to 1.37 billion euros, partly because Canal+ itself had trimmed its spending, having cut its 2025 to 2027 allocation to 480 million euros from 600 million. In exchange for carrying a big share of the industry's bill, Canal+ gets to broadcast films six months after their cinema release, a real edge over Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney, which have to wait at least nine months. For South African viewers, the backdrop is familiar spending on a grander scale: MultiChoice, now under the Canal+ umbrella, has earmarked R21 billion for local productions over the next three years. Whether nearly a billion euros is enough to fully mend Canal+'s relationship with France's creatives, or whether the Bolloré unease lingers, is the story to watch as the 2028 start date approaches. ### Mrs Ball's is going home: inside Tiger Brands' R200m Paarl bet URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mrs-balls-is-going-home-inside-tiger-brands-r200m-paarl-bet/ Last updated: 2026-07-29T02:30:00.000Z Few grocery items feel as South African as a bottle of Mrs Ball's, and after 13 years the chutney is heading back to where it started. Tiger Brands has just finished a R200 million upgrade of its century-old culinary site in Paarl, in the Western Cape, and used Monday's official opening to bring Mrs Ball's production back in-house. The brand was first launched in Woodstock, Cape Town, in 1917, and for the past 13 years it had been packed by a third party in Johannesburg. Back where the raw materials are "We've brought the Mrs back to where she was born, to the Western Cape," CEO Tjaart Kruger told News24 after the launch, pointing out that the raw materials all come from Western Cape farmers. The revamped site, in operation since 1903, now runs three dedicated production plants and includes a vinegar plant that can make three million litres a year, a key input for Mrs Ball's Chutney, All Gold Tomato Sauce and Cross & Blackwell Mayonnaise. It has added 90 new jobs and turns out around 40 products, from All Gold jams to Colman's Mustard. Tiger Brands says it is also the first food producer to bottle jams in recyclable PET containers, so most shoppers no longer have to decant the jam into another container after buying it. The cheaper-groceries play For Kruger, the spend is less about nostalgia than price tags. "We stated two years ago that the biggest issue we've had in Tiger is that we've got the best products that we can get, but we're too expensive," he said. Bringing production in-house is part of the fix: Kruger said the group was no longer keen on outsourcing because it makes quality and safety hard to control, and the upgraded plant lets Tiger Brands make its Mrs Ball's, All Gold, Colman's and Hugo's products cheaper for consumers. The Paarl site is the first of the company's structural investments to go live under a bigger push: Tiger Brands is spending about R1.5 billion a year on capital projects over the next three years, peaking above R2 billion, with a R1 billion Pretoria "super bakery" due in 2027. With a 59,000m² site that Kruger says still has "lots of space", the question now is how many more of Tiger's brands eventually find their way home to Paarl. ### The AI that broke into a tech company all by itself URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-ai-that-broke-into-a-tech-company-all-by-itself/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T09:59:59.000Z Every so often a break-in arrives with a culprit nobody expected. This one had no human hacker at all. Earlier in July, Hugging Face, a widely used platform for sharing AI models, detected an intrusion into its production infrastructure that it said was driven end to end by an AI agent acting on its own, and which it detected and dissected largely with AI of its own. ## How a test slipped its cage The culprit was a combination of OpenAI models, including one called GPT-5.6 Sol and an even more capable pre-release version, all with their usual refusals to help with cyberattacks turned down for an internal evaluation. They were being tested on a benchmark of hacking ability and got hyperfocused: the models identified and chained together weaknesses across OpenAI's own research environment and Hugging Face's live systems to pull test answers straight from Hugging Face's production database. A malicious dataset opened the door; from there the system escalated its access, harvested credentials, and moved sideways through several internal clusters over a single weekend. ## Cleaning up, then calling for help To make sense of what a swarm of tens of thousands of automated actions had done, Hugging Face ran its own analysis over the full attacker log of more than 17,000 recorded events. It did the forensics on GLM 5.2, an openly available model, on its own machines, so none of the stolen credentials left its environment. OpenAI called the episode an unprecedented cyber incident involving state-of-the-art capabilities. Both sides say there was no malicious intent, and Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue found it "quite mind-blowing that all of this happened autonomously." ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-hugging-face---openAI-.png) Delangue has not let it rest. He called for "radical transparency," urging OpenAI to release the rogue agents' traces so the research community can study what happened, and pressed the company to commit $100 million in computing power to help defenders build cyber defenses. "The first autonomous agent cyberattack is an unprecedented event," he wrote. "It deserves an unprecedented response!" OpenAI has confirmed the two sides met and promised a technical report in the coming weeks; the sharper question is what happens the next time a test subject decides the fastest route to a passing grade runs straight through someone else's servers. ### The one corner of China's economy that refuses to slow down URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-one-corner-of-chinas-economy-that-refuses-to-slow-down/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T07:59:59.000Z China's economy grew 4.3% in the three months to June, down from 5.0% at the start of the year and below what the market had expected. A global rush to build out the infrastructure behind artificial intelligence has turned the technology into a rare pocket of growth during one of the country's weakest stretches in years. ## Where the growth is hiding Electronics and information technology did the heavy lifting, contributing over half of the economy's expansion between April and June, according to Capital Economics. In year-on-year terms that came to 1.4 percentage points of the overall 4.3% gain, or roughly a third of it. Earlier estimates from China International Capital Corp put AI-related exports alone at 1.1 percentage points of growth in the first four months of the year, nearly triple their share for all of 2025\. Chinese firms are already reckoned to earn 16% of AI-related revenues worldwide, per Goldman Sachs, which counted more than 3,000 companies embedded in a long AI value chain. Peking University's Liu Qiao, who advises the government, put AI-related industries at about 17% of the whole economy. ## A new engine, not a cure The divide shows up in the raw output figures: while nationwide industrial output rose only 5% in the first half from a year earlier, electronics manufacturers jumped 15%. Their capital spending climbed 7%, even as fixed-asset investment overall, the money sunk into factories, property and infrastructure, extended a historic 6% contraction. By June, fixed-asset investment was down 5.7% for the year to date, a steeper drop than forecasters had expected. Bloomberg Economics reckons high-tech and green industries could account for about a fifth of the economy this year, overtaking property-related sectors for the first time. Not everyone is convinced it lasts. "The emergence of AI as the new engine of Chinese growth could prove to be a key source of economic resilience over the rest of the year and into 2027," said Capital Economics' Julian Evans-Pritchard. Bloomberg Economics' Eric Zhu is cooler: gains from AI will help mitigate, though likely not reverse, China's long-term growth downtrend as a shrinking workforce and de-globalisation bite. Whether a single industry can keep carrying a slowing economy is the question 2027 will answer. ### Aspen bets on a monthly pill to help prevent HIV, and wants to make it for Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/aspen-bets-on-a-monthly-pill-to-prevent-hiv-and-wants-to-make-it-for-africa/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T07:00:17.000Z Handing out the rights to make a medicine before you know for certain that it works is an unusual move in the drug business. Merck did exactly that, and Aspen Pharmacare, the South African drugmaker, is one of the winners. Aspen has signed a royalty-free licence to make alimatravir, an experimental pill taken once a month to help prevent HIV. It is still in late-stage trials, with results due in the first quarter of 2027. The prize is reach. Aspen's rights cover 129 low- and middle-income countries, including every African nation, for both public and private patients. It is one of seven manufacturers Merck has licensed, three in sub-Saharan Africa and four in India; the other two African makers sit in Kenya and Uganda. If the drug clears its trials, it would be the world's first monthly pill you swallow to prevent HIV. ## One tablet, one week's forgiveness "It's one tablet, once a month. It takes one hour to work, and you have one week's forgiveness," said Aspen's head of strategic trade, Stavros Nicolaou. He called it a superior product to lenacapavir, the twice-yearly prevention shot, while allowing that injectables still have a place; a pill, he argued, is easier to roll out at scale because it needs no healthcare worker to administer. The stakes are highest at home, where South Africa still records one of the highest numbers of new HIV cases in the world. ## Made close to home Merck's readiness to license African makers before the trials have even finished stands in contrast to rival Gilead, criticised for granting no such licences to sub-Saharan manufacturers for lenacapavir. Building production close to the regions that will use the drug means stock can be ready the moment regulators approve it. Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi welcomed the deal, saying local manufacturing means "South Africans are not left waiting at the back of a global supply queue." Investors have taken note: Aspen's shares are up about 25% this year. For all the optimism, everything still hinges on the trial data due early next year. If it lands, Aspen will have a head start on making a medicine the continent badly needs. ### The Roundup — Tuesday, 28 July 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-tuesday-28-july-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:55.000Z Today's edition Bet on Red Good morning. Vodacom just did the thing that usually makes shareholders wince: it cut the dividend. But it isn't the only one today asking you to trust a bigger payoff further down the line. Aspen is banking on a pill that won't prove itself until 2027, and a Gupta-era coal mine has swallowed years and billions before earning a cent back. Patience is the theme; the question is who's right to ask for it. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/markets--14-.png) --- PAINTING AFRICA RED ## Vodacom is cutting its dividend to bet bigger on the rest of Africa ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-vodacom-1.png) Cutting your dividend is usually a great way to spook investors. Vodacom has done exactly that, dropping its payout policy from at least 75% of profit to at least 65%, but this is a cut with a plan behind it. The group wants to keep more cash to pour into its fastest-growing markets, and in the same breath it raised its 2030 revenue goal to more than R300 billion, up from R200 billion. The timing is no accident. Vodacom has just taken control of Kenya's Safaricom and its M-Pesa money machine, and in Egypt revenue is now growing more than fifteen times faster than at home. **What's actually changing:** - Dividend policy trimmed to at least 65% of earnings, down from 75%. - Safaricom stake lifted from 35% to 55%, handing Vodacom control of M-Pesa. - Egypt's service revenue jumped 32.8% last quarter, versus 2.0% at home. The bet is simple: give up some cash today to buy faster growth tomorrow. Now Egypt and Safaricom have to deliver. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/28-07-2026-post-2/) --- PILL OF THE MONTH ## Aspen has won the rights to make a once-a-month HIV-prevention pill ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-aspen--1--1.png) South Africa still records some of the world's highest HIV infection numbers, and the catch with prevention has always been the same: the medicine works, but only if people keep taking it, and a daily pill is an easy habit to break. Aspen Pharmacare has just won the right to make a drug built around that exact problem: a once-a-month tablet called alimatravir, taken before exposure to stop HIV taking hold. It works within an hour and forgives a dose up to a week late. The one catch is that the trial results proving it works aren't due until early 2027. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/28-07-2026-post-3/) --- BAGEL BITE **What is the official national animal of Scotland?** **A.** Lion **B.** Red Deer **C.** Unicorn --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-optimum-1.png) **The most notorious mine of the state-capture era is clawing its way back to life.** Optimum, the coal mine at the heart of the Gupta scandal, has been rebuilt by new owner Liberty Coal with more than R3 billion, and should be near R4 billion by year-end. Its showpiece is a 100-metre digging machine refurbished for about R460 million, a fraction of the R2 billion a new one costs. It now employs around 2,000 people and ships up to 500,000 tonnes of coal a month to India, Singapore and Japan. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/28-07-2026-post-1-1/) **The fund that guards South Africa's civil-service pensions just watched most of its board walk out.** In one week, the chair and five other directors resigned from the Public Investment Corporation, which manages more than R3.6 trillion in public money, leaving only five behind. Chair David Masondo said he was stepping down for the sake of stability. Finance Minister Godongwana dissolved what was left and will name an interim board, all while a watchdog probes the fund and its suspended chief executive. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/28-07-2026-post-1-2/) **If you rented your phone from Rentoza, its troubles are now official.** The subscription company, started in 2017 by four friends and once running 14,000 active plans, entered voluntary business rescue on 1 July. Seven in ten of its customers used it to get a smartphone they couldn't otherwise afford. It blames a failure to raise funding, made worse by missed audits for 2024 and 2025, and its rescue practitioner must table a survival plan by 4 September. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/28-07-2026-post-1-3/) **Apple's next big thing might sit on your face, and its hardest problem isn't the technology.** According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple plans to unveil its first smart glasses at its developer conference in June 2027, with a launch by year-end. The sticking point is privacy: Meta's camera glasses have been mocked as 'pervert glasses' for covert recording. Apple, which has built its brand on privacy for a decade, is reportedly skipping face recognition and may even ship a version that can't record at all. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/28-07-2026-post-1-4/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/weather--10-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Wordle--13-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **C. Unicorn** Scotland’s national animal is the unicorn, a legendary creature associated with purity, power, bravery and fierce independence. It has been connected to Scottish royalty for centuries and became an important symbol in the country’s royal heraldry. Scottish heraldic unicorns are shown wrapped in golden chains, which are believed to represent the power of Scotland’s kings to tame such a fierce and otherwise uncontrollable creature. Following the Union of the Crowns in 1603, one of the two unicorns supporting the Scottish Royal Arms was replaced by England’s lion to represent unity between the two countries. Today, unicorns can still be seen at historic Scottish landmarks, including St Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh Castle and the Palace of Holyroodhouse. National Unicorn Day is celebrated annually on 9 April. --- That's Tuesday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Vodacom is keeping more profit to chase Egypt and M-Pesa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/vodacom-is-keeping-more-profit-to-chase-egypt-and-m-pesa/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T03:29:59.000Z Cutting the share of profit it hands back to shareholders is the kind of move that usually gets a company punished. Vodacom did it anyway. The mobile group trimmed its dividend policy to a payout of at least 65% of headline earnings, the cleaned-up profit figure listed companies report, down from at least 75%. That more generous policy dated back to its Vodafone Egypt purchase in 2023\. Keeping more cash back is not a sign of trouble but of ambition: management wants to reinvest at higher rates of growth and pay down debt faster. Even at the lower level, it still expects to grow the dividend per share next year. The trigger was a landmark deal. Vodacom lifted its stake in Kenya's Safaricom, East Africa's largest mobile operator, from 35% to 55% in a R36 billion transaction, effective 30 June, after winning a major court case there. That hands it control of M-Pesa, the continent's best-known mobile-money service, and adds Ethiopia to its map. "This quarter marked a defining moment for Vodacom," CEO Shameel Joosub said. ## Home is quiet, Egypt is not For the quarter to end-June, group revenue rose 5.9% to R42.4 billion, held back by a stronger rand. The headline hides a split. South Africa, the home market, grew service revenue just 2.0%. Egypt grew its service revenue 32.8% in local currency, more than fifteen times faster, on the back of spectrum and network spending, and closed the quarter with 56.5 million customers. That gap is why Vodacom raised its 2030 revenue goal to more than R300 billion, from more than R200 billion, and nudged its medium-term profit and cash-flow growth targets up to early-teens rates. ## The money-moving machine The other engine is finance. Group financial services revenue climbed 17.8% to R4.5 billion. Over the past twelve months, US$547.9 billion moved through Vodacom's mobile-money platforms, including Safaricom. Folding Safaricom in lifts financial services from 13% to more than 22% of group service revenue. The trade is plain enough: give shareholders a little less today to buy faster growth tomorrow. Whether Egypt and M-Pesa keep delivering will decide if it pays off. ### Apple's next big thing might be glasses that refuse to spy on you URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/apples-next-big-thing-might-be-glasses-that-refuse-to-spy-on-you/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T03:15:00.000Z Apple's hardest problem with its next major product may not be the technology at all: it is a reputation that belongs to someone else. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is planning to reveal its first pair of smart glasses at its developer conference next June, with an expectation that they will launch by the end of 2027\. The timing has already slipped once, pushed back from an earlier target of early 2027\. Bloomberg put it plainly: the upcoming smart glasses have a major challenge in front of them, overcoming the privacy baggage for a category that Meta created. The reputation Apple has to reckon with is Meta's. Meta's camera-equipped glasses have sometimes been decried as "pervert glasses" over their use to make non-consensual video recordings. That is awkward territory for a company that has spent more than a decade making privacy one of its defining product messages; simply entering the same category risks undermining that reputation, regardless of how Apple's approach differs. ## Selling privacy as a feature Apple's answer, as reported, is to lean on its brand. The company is expected to emphasise privacy-friendly features such as on-device processing, meaning data is handled on the glasses rather than shipped off to the cloud, along with the absence of facial recognition. Gurman believes Apple will skip more controversial features like always-on recording and will avoid using customer recordings to train its AI models. It is also unlikely to follow Meta's reported practice of using contractors to review customer footage. ## The camera question The most striking possibility is what Apple might leave out. The company reportedly debated whether the glasses should be able to record video at all. It could eventually release a version without a camera, or with a camera used exclusively for sensing that cannot capture photos or video, similar to what has been rumoured for its AI-enabled AirPods. All of this remains reporting rather than confirmation, and Apple has announced nothing. If the plan holds, the pitch will be an unusual one for a technology launch: a device defined as much by what it refuses to see as by what it can do. ### The startup that rented you a phone is now fighting to survive URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-startup-that-rented-you-a-phone-is-now-fighting-to-survive/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T02:59:59.000Z Rentoza built its business on a simple pitch: you do not have to buy a smartphone, you can just subscribe to one. Now the company that made that offer to thousands of South Africans is the one struggling to keep the lights on. Rentoza, one of the country's best-known subscription companies, entered voluntary business rescue, a formal process meant to save a struggling firm, on 1 July 2026\. It was founded in 2017 by four friends: Avinesh Reddy, Aviraag Ramdhani, Chris Govender and Mishaan Ratan. The company grew to 14,000 active subscriptions across South Africa, offering technology products, appliances, baby gear and fitness essentials. ## Built on the phone in your pocket For most customers, this came down to one thing. Roughly 70% of Rentoza's subscribers used the service to get access to a desirable smartphone they could never afford otherwise. To fund that growth the company ran funding rounds, including raising R20 million from the Mineworkers Investment Company in 2022. The money eventually ran short. Rentoza says its financial distress stemmed from an inability to secure funding to support the business, made worse because it failed to complete its audits for the 2024 and 2025 financial years, which in turn hampered its ability to raise more. Liquidity pressure from reduced cash flow left it unable to pay creditors over the following six months. The strain was not sudden: in an open letter in May, chief executive Avinesh Reddy acknowledged that over the past 18 months Rentoza had grown faster than its operations could support, as more customers joined and more products were added while the systems and teams behind the scenes did not keep up. ## What happens next For now, the doors stay open. The business will continue trading in the ordinary course while a rescue plan is constructed. Mpoti Moalusi was formally appointed as the business rescue practitioner on 1 July 2026, and a first meeting with creditors and employees took place on 17 July. He must publish the rescue plan by 4 September 2026, after which he will engage creditors to consider and approve it. Whether that plan can turn 14,000 subscriptions back into a viable business, or simply manage a wind-down, is the question every Rentoza customer will now be watching. ### The people minding South Africa's pensions just walked out URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-people-minding-south-africas-pensions-just-walked-out/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T02:44:59.000Z Picture a company responsible for the retirement savings of millions of people, then picture most of its board resigning in a single week. That is roughly what has happened at the Public Investment Corporation, the state-owned manager that invests the pensions of South Africa's government employees. Chair David Masondo and five other non-executive directors resigned, leaving the corporation with only five board members. Masondo stepped down saying his decision is in the interests of the stability of the PIC and the confidence of millions of South Africans. The job is not an ordinary one: under the law governing the PIC, the finance minister designates the chair, a role traditionally filled by the deputy minister of finance. ## A boardroom emptying out Finance Minister Godongwana accepted the resignation and moved quickly. He dissolved the remaining board and will name an interim unit to serve until a permanent structure is appointed, and said he will appoint a new board as stipulated by the PIC act in consultation with cabinet. The numbers involved are enormous. Business Day reports the PIC manages about R3 trillion in assets on behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund and other public-sector clients. Labour federation Cosatu puts the asset base higher, commending the doubling from R1.8 trillion in 2020 to over R3.6 trillion. Whichever figure you take, even a tiny percentage represents billions of rands. ## Why taxpayers should care The stakes reach beyond pensioners. The Government Employees Pension Fund is a defined-benefit scheme: by law, if its investment performance falls short, the state, and by extension the taxpayer, is legally obligated to make up the difference. All of this lands while the PIC is already under intense scrutiny, following the suspension of its chief executive, whistleblower allegations and a governance investigation by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority. Labour federation Cosatu has urged Treasury to move swiftly and call for public nominations for a new board, insisting the money is "not a private slush fund." Songezo Zibi, who chairs Parliament's standing committee on public accounts, did not soften it: "If they worked for a private company, they would be in prison for gross negligence." The test now is whether the interim board Godongwana assembles can steady an institution this large before the next crisis finds it. ### A symbol of state capture is back to shipping coal URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-symbol-of-state-capture-is-back-to-shipping-coal/ Last updated: 2026-07-28T02:30:00.000Z Few businesses carry as much baggage as Optimum, the Mpumalanga colliery that became one of the most visible symbols of South Africa's Gupta-era state capture. Once owned by the resource giant Glencore before it was sold to the Gupta-linked Tegeta, the mine became shorthand for the close relationship between the notorious Gupta family and former president Jacob Zuma's administration. Today it is quietly shipping coal again. Its new owner, Liberty Coal, has invested more than R3 billion to revive Optimum after years of legal battles, neglect and operational decline. Chief operating officer Peter Nordin says the company has already spent more than R3 billion rebuilding the operation, with about another R800 million budgeted for the rest of the year: close to R4 billion in total. ## The machine that costs less to fix than to replace The showpiece of the turnaround is a single digging machine. Liberty spent about R460 million refurbishing the Marion 8200, a figure that compares with roughly R2 billion to buy a new equivalent. The dragline is among the largest of its kind in the world, with a boom just over 100 metres long, and machines that size are no longer manufactured. Liberty took ownership only after agreeing to a R460 million settlement with the National Prosecuting Authority, which had sought to forfeit the mine under anti-organised-crime law. The company is now headed by former Gupta associate Daniel McGowan. ## Coal on ships to Asia The revival is already earning foreign currency. Optimum is exporting between 400,000 and 500,000 tonnes of coal a month into markets including India, Singapore and Japan, and is preparing to restart its wash plant. The refurbished plant is expected initially to process between 250,000 and 300,000 tonnes a month, with commissioning due towards the end of August and full capacity targeted for October. Some 2,000 people are now employed on site, and coal trains continue to leave for the Richards Bay Coal Terminal. There is more to come: Liberty hopes to restart its Boschmanspoort underground operation next year, refurbish two more draglines over the next five years, and lift output towards 1.5 million tonnes a month. For a mine that once stood for everything that went wrong, the ambition now is to be measured by how much coal it moves. ### Data centres could swallow a fifth of America's electricity by 2035 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/data-centres-could-swallow-a-fifth-of-americas-electricity-by-2035/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:49:57.000Z America's data centres are about to become one of its biggest power users. A new forecast from research group BloombergNEF projects they will consume about 20% of the country's electricity by 2035, up from 5.9% today and an estimated 12% in 2030\. That is roughly four times their current share, and it is being driven almost entirely by artificial intelligence. ## A staggering jump To meet that demand, data-centre power needs are projected to reach 194 gigawatts by 2035, an 83% jump from the firm's own forecast of 106 gigawatts just last December. For scale, a single gigawatt is about the output of one traditional nuclear reactor. The pipeline behind the surge includes projects like Microsoft's planned 2-gigawatt facility in Pecos, Texas, and Meta's data centre of up to 5 gigawatts in Richland Parish, Louisiana. As one BloombergNEF analyst put it: "Every coal plant, every gas plant, every solar farm in the US, one unit of energy out of five generated by them is going to data centres." ## The grid cannot keep up The trouble is supply. After two decades of flat demand, grids are now straining to keep pace, and BloombergNEF expects most new data centres to connect to grids that are already stretched. It warns of a roughly 19-gigawatt shortfall by 2035, even if the industry sustains its record connection pace of 7.1 gigawatts a year. The pressure is worst where data centres cluster: in the grid stretching from Virginia to Illinois, 34% of electricity is expected to go to data centres, and in Texas, 22%. Developers are turning to on-site gas plants, and running into permitting freezes and local opposition. The strain is not just American. Globally, if AI adoption keeps climbing, data centres could add 1,935 terawatt-hours of new electricity demand by 2033, almost as much as India uses in a year. Other forecasters, from the industry nonprofit EPRI to Bank of America, have been revising upward too. Bank of America reckons the US needs more than 230 gigawatts of new generating capacity within five years, while regulated utilities are on track to add only about 93 gigawatts, a sign the AI power crunch is only starting to bite. ### The Roundup — Monday, 27 July 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-monday-27-july-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:55.000Z Today's edition Off The Hook Good morning. Today is really about bets, and who ends up covering them. Telkom's three-year gamble on turning itself into a data business just paid out a dividend two-thirds bigger; South Africans are now wagering a fifth of the economy and counting the cost in helpline calls; and the Reserve Bank held rates steady while almost everyone bet the other way. Three very different rolls of the dice, one question: who read the odds right? Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/markets--13-.png) --- RINGING IT UP ## The old phone company is now a data business, and it's paying shareholders more ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-SA-gambling--2-.png) Telkom isn't really a phone company anymore. In its results for the year to March, group revenue barely moved, up just 1.4% to R44.5 billion, but underneath that flat line the business has quietly reinvented itself: data now brings in almost 60% of the money, up from 56% a year ago. The clearest sign of confidence is the payout. Telkom lifted its dividend by two-thirds, to 270 cents a share, only the second year since it brought dividends back after a four-year gap. It could afford to, with free cash flow up 10.4% to R3.1 billion and net debt down to just half a year's earnings. **By the numbers:** - Group revenue: up 1.4% to R44.5 billion, with data now nearly 60% of it. - Dividend: up 65.7% to 270 cents a share, only its second since a four-year gap. - Mobile: past 25 million subscribers; Openserve's first revenue growth in nine years. The real test now is whether a leaner, data-led Telkom, still the country's third-biggest mobile network behind Vodacom and MTN, can keep growing once the easy turnaround wins are banked. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/27-07-2026-post-2/) --- THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS ## South Africans now gamble a fifth of the economy, and the damage is mounting ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-SA-gambling-1.png) South Africans are betting on a staggering scale. Reporting by GroundUp, with data by The Outlier, shows the country wagered roughly R1.5 trillion on gambling last year, about a fifth of the whole economy. Online betting alone made up R1.1 trillion of that, up from just R30 billion a decade ago, while casino spending has flatlined. The money is only half the story: calls to the national gambling helpline jumped from 65,000 to over a million in two years, and the share of problem gamblers has climbed from about 6% to over 31%. With regulation still thin, the harm looks set to keep climbing. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/27-07-2026-post-3/) --- BAGEL BITE **Which brain structure fine tunes movement, balance and posture?** **A.** Cerebellum **B.** Motor cortex **C.** Basal ganglia --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-reserve-bank--1.png) **The Reserve Bank did the one thing almost nobody expected this week, and left interest rates exactly where they were.** In a split four-to-two vote it held the repo rate at 7%, keeping the prime lending rate at 10.50%, even with inflation at 5% in June. Sixteen of 25 economists had bet on a hike. The rand fell more than 2% against the dollar, and Governor Lesetja Kganyago admitted the bank might yet be proven wrong. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/27-07-2026-post-1-1/) **The state fund that guards civil servants' pensions just lost most of its board in a single week.** Six non-executive directors resigned from the Public Investment Corporation, which manages more than R3.6 trillion, leaving just five of the eleven. The trigger was a fight over top investment jobs and the fallout from a R411 million payment to a company called Acapulco. Then the chair, deputy finance minister David Masondo, stepped down too. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/27-07-2026-post-1-2/) **Mr Price's German bet is paying off, just as its shoppers at home run out of room.** Group sales jumped 45.3% to R13.1 billion, powered largely by NKD, the discount chain it bought in Germany this year. Strip NKD out and African sales grew a steadier 3.2%, still ahead of the wider market. The catch is local: consumer confidence has slid to -19 as higher prices and living costs bite. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/27-07-2026-post-1-3/) **Pork just got a lot cheaper at the till, after a feared shortage flipped into a glut.** Wholesale prices have dropped from about R40 a kilo to R30, Eskort says, as imports landed just when local farms came back online. It follows swine fever outbreaks that began in Tshwane late last year and cost the industry more than R10 million. Prices should settle near their usual R32\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/27-07-2026-post-1-4/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/weather--9-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Wordle--12-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. Cerebellum** The cerebellum is the part of the brain that fine tunes movement, balance and posture. It combines information from the eyes, inner ears, muscles and joints to help the body stay stable and coordinate movements accurately. It does not usually start movement itself, but it adjusts timing, strength and precision so actions such as walking, standing and reaching feel smooth and controlled. --- That's your Monday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Intel just posted its best growth in over 15 years, powered by AI URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/intel-posts-best-growth-in-15-years-powered-by-ai/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:49:56.000Z Intel is growing again, and fast. The chipmaker reported second-quarter revenue of $16.1 billion, up 25% on a year earlier, which chief executive Lip-Bu Tan called its "strongest revenue growth in more than fifteen years". The driver was clear. "AI is driving unprecedented demand for compute," Tan said. ## Where the growth came from Intel's data-centre and AI business, its fastest-growing segment, led the charge, with revenue surging 59% to more than $6 billion. Its PC-chip arm rose 13% to nearly $9 billion, and the foundry unit, which makes chips for other companies, grew about 31%. Profitability swung hard too: gross margin, the slice of revenue left after production costs, recovered to 42% from under 3% a year earlier. On the measure Intel prefers, adjusted earnings came in at $0.42 a share, though a one-off charge left it with a headline loss of $2.16\. Finance chief Dave Zinsner said the company had beaten its own guidance on robust demand and improved execution, including volume upside from higher factory yields and improved cycle times. Intel guided third-quarter revenue to between $15.8 billion and $16.8 billion, with adjusted earnings of about $0.38 a share. ## The catch Behind the numbers, Intel is racing to prove its manufacturing comeback is real. It said it had signed ten long-term foundry customers and was actually supply-constrained in data centres, a problem it has not had in years. It pushed ahead on its most advanced chips too: its 18A-P process entered early "risk" production on schedule, meeting a timeline shared with customers a year ago, and its Panther Lake processors moved into high-volume production using ASML's cutting-edge lithography machines. One unusual backdrop: the US government now owns roughly 10% of Intel, after buying nearly $9 billion of shares through a 2025 Chips Act deal, part of the turnaround Tan has led since taking over in March 2025. Intel has now beaten expectations for seven quarters running, a streak that began under Tan's turnaround plan. Yet its shares slipped after the report, a sign investors want to see it land a marquee customer for its cutting-edge chips before they fully reward the turnaround with a higher share price. ### South Africans now gamble a fifth of the economy, and the damage is mounting URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africans-now-gamble-a-fifth-of-the-economy/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:50:00.000Z South Africans are betting on a staggering scale. Reporting by GroundUp, with data by The Outlier, shows the country wagered roughly R1.5 trillion on gambling in the 2024/25 year, about a fifth of the entire economy. Online betting alone accounted for R1.1 trillion of that, up from just R30 billion a decade ago, while casino spending has flatlined below R300 billion. Behind betting and casinos, slot machines drew R55 billion and bingo R28 billion. Province by province, the most was wagered in Mpumalanga, at R623 billion, followed by the Western Cape at R402 billion and Gauteng at R179 billion. ## The human cost is climbing faster The money is only half the story. Calls to the national gambling helpline rose from 65,000 in 2022/23 to 140,000 the next year, and then to over a million in 2024/25\. Among people aged 18 to 35, treatment referrals more than doubled. The share of problem gamblers, people who keep betting despite the damage to their lives, has jumped from about 6% in 2017 to over 31% today. Many are gambling money they cannot spare. "Many people see gambling as a source of income and are gambling with their SASSA grants or NSFAS allowances," GroundUp reports, "while the gambling companies profit". By one measure, gambling platforms are now searched online more often than SASSA, the agency that pays out grants and pensions. ## What is driving it GroundUp points to aggressive, often deceptive marketing, a wave of paid "betting influencers" making false claims, and celebrity endorsements. Betting games are now cheap to build and the industry is largely unregulated. The deeper roots, it argues, are South Africa's extreme inequality and high youth unemployment, which make a long-shot bet look like a way out. Meanwhile the industry's revenue grew more than 25% in a year, outpacing the economy, yet it paid just over R5 billion in tax, about 7% of its revenue. With regulation still thin and the money still pouring in, the numbers suggest the boom, and the harm riding alongside it, has plenty of room left to run. The South African Responsible Gambling Foundation runs a free, confidential helpline seven days a week on 080 000 6008. ### The old phone company is now a data business, and it is paying shareholders more URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/old-phone-company-is-now-a-data-business-paying-shareholders-more/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:49:59.000Z Telkom is not really a phone company anymore. In its results for the year to March 2026, group revenue crept up just 1.4% to R44.5 billion, but underneath that flat top line the business has quietly reshaped itself. Data now brings in almost 60% of revenue, up from 56% a year ago, after growing 7.6% to R26.6 billion, with mobile data revenue climbing 10.5% on data traffic that grew 18.5% to 2,084 petabytes. ## A much bigger dividend The clearest signal of confidence is the payout. Telkom raised its dividend by 65.7% to 270 cents a share, only the second year since it restored dividends after a four-year gap. It could afford to. Free cash flow, the cash left after running costs and investment, rose 10.4% to R3.1 billion, and net debt fell to just 0.5 times earnings. The board lifted its payout range to between 40% and 60% of that cash flow, setting this year's dividend at 45%. ## Mobile and fibre did the work The engine underneath is mobile and fibre. The mobile arm passed 25 million subscribers and notched its 14th straight quarter of market-leading service revenue growth, with mobile data subscribers up 31.1% to almost 20 million and pre-paid revenue growing 10.3%. The consumer unit lifted its operating earnings 20.8%. Openserve, Telkom's fibre network, recorded its first full-year revenue growth in nine years, having connected more homes and lifted its fibre connectivity rate to 53.1%. Core earnings per share jumped 21.5% to 708.5 cents, and group operating cash earnings rose to R12.5 billion at a 28.1% margin. Not everything shone: the BCX IT unit stayed roughly flat, though its cybersecurity revenue grew 21.1%. Chief executive Serame Taukobong called the results validation of Telkom's data-led "OneTelkom" strategy. Investors liked it, sending the shares up as much as 6.6% before they settled higher on the day. Management plans to keep investing 12% to 15% of revenue in mobile and fibre; capital spending rose 10.4% to R6.4 billion, an intensity of 14.5%. The real test now is whether a leaner, data-led Telkom, still South Africa's third-largest mobile operator behind Vodacom and MTN, can keep growing once the easy turnaround wins are banked. ### Why pork just got a lot cheaper at the till URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/why-pork-just-got-a-lot-cheaper-at-the-till/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:49:59.000Z Good news is landing in the meat aisle. Wholesale pork has dropped from around R40 a kilogram a couple of months ago to about R30 today, after a feared shortage flipped into a surplus. Eskort chief executive Arnold Prinsloo says the market "has swung in the opposite direction", with imports arriving "at the same time as local supply recovered". ## How a shortage became a glut The swing has a simple cause: timing. Pork imports take eight to ten weeks to arrive, and the latest batch landed just as local farms were allowed back into production. Those farms had been under a minimum 42-day restriction after outbreaks of disease, and when it lifted, a backlog of market-ready animals hit the shelves at once. Earlier, the same disruption had pushed prices up as much as 25%, from R32 to R40 a kilo. ## The disease bill behind it The trigger was African swine fever, which began in Tshwane in November 2025 and has cost the industry more than R10 million in culling, disposal and labour alone. More than 69,000 pigs were affected and around 60,000 culled, across seven outbreaks in the city since late last year. The industry is unusually sensitive to supply: even a 2% drop can push prices up by as much as 10%. Prinsloo says the episode should reinforce the case for investment in biosecurity, disease surveillance and veterinary services. Not everyone thinks the danger has passed. The Democratic Alliance has demanded urgent action from Gauteng's agriculture MEC, Vuyiswa Ramokgopa, calling the outbreak "not just an animal health crisis" but "a direct blow to farmers, farm workers, food security, and the already battered meat industry in Gauteng". For shoppers, the relief is already showing up on shelves. Eskort pork chops have dropped from R120 to about R80 a kilo, and three-packs of bacon from around R130 to about R100\. Cheaper pork is also part of a broader easing in food prices, with grains, fruit and vegetables all coming down on large supplies, according to Agbiz economist Wandile Sihlobo. Prinsloo expects prices to settle near their historical average of about R32 a kilo once supply and demand rebalance, so the cheap chops may not last forever, but for now, they are real. ### Mr Price's German bet is paying off, just as local shoppers run out of room URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mr-prices-german-bet-is-paying-off/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:49:58.000Z Mr Price has just posted the kind of sales number retailers dream about: group sales up 45.3% to R13.1 billion in its first quarter, with other income adding a further 12.5% to R352 million. Almost all of that leap came from NKD, the German discount chain it bought earlier this year, which chipped in R3.8 billion of European sales. Strip NKD out, and the picture is far more sober. ## The German bet that spooked shareholders When Mr Price bought NKD, the deal rattled investors, given local retailers' patchy record abroad. This update reads as vindication: NKD outperformed both the wider clothing market and the value segment in Germany, which makes up about 60% of its sales. In Germany it closed 21 stores and opened 23 under a space-optimisation plan, taking its footprint there to 2,156 shops. The market liked the news, nudging Mr Price shares up 2% to R164.50. ## At home, the shopper is stretched Back home, growth was modest. Excluding NKD, African sales rose 3.2% to R9.3 billion, still ahead of the wider market's 0.8%, though comparable store sales were flat. South African sales grew 3.5% to R8.6 billion. Broken down, apparel rose 3.4%, homeware managed just 0.7%, and telecoms was the star with 11.2% growth. Group unit sales edged up 1.7% to 68.7 million, across a footprint that grew to 3,214 stores. The company kept price increases to just 1.5%, "carefully managed to protect the customer value proposition in a rising inflation environment". Consumer confidence slid from -7 to -19 index points as higher living costs bit. Independent analyst Alec Abraham put it bluntly, saying the weak local growth "shows extreme pressure by consumers in the economy". He noted retailers are wary of passing on price rises to shoppers who cannot absorb them, a squeeze he called "clearly unsustainable" for profit margins. Anchor's Steph Erasmus added that Mr Price had shared little detail on NKD, leaving real uncertainty until fuller half-year results in November. Value retail tends to win when money is tight, and Mr Price is proving it on two continents at once. But investors will want to see the German engine keep running once the full numbers land. ### The fund guarding civil servants' pensions just lost most of its board URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/fund-guarding-civil-servants-pensions-loses-most-of-its-board/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:49:58.000Z Africa's largest asset manager is running on a skeleton board. In the space of a week, six non-executive directors resigned from the Public Investment Corporation, which manages more than R3.6 trillion, most of it the pensions of South African civil servants. That leaves just five of the eleven-member board still standing. ## How the board emptied out The exits came in two waves. Thabi Nkosi and Nosipho Balfour resigned first, on 15 July, two days after chief executive Patrick Dlamini was suspended. Then Dorothy Kobe, Lerato Makwetla, Lindy Bodewig and Mpumelelo Maseko followed on the Tuesday, a day after Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana sent notice of a meeting that threatened to dissolve the board. The implosion came less than a year after the board was appointed in September. According to one board member, the walkout leaves "none, not a single one, with investment experience left". ## The fight behind the exits Two disputes drove the collapse. One was a battle over the appointment of three new chief investment officers, which reopened a deeper question of who really controls the PIC. The other was the fallout from a R411 million settlement paid to a company called Acapulco, which by one account had itself owed the PIC around R600 million, in a dispute that traces back to a decade-old investment in Lanseria airport. The payment is now the subject of a forensic review by auditors PwC, and the chair referred it to the Special Investigating Unit. The tug-of-war pitted Godongwana against his own deputy, David Masondo, who chaired the board. Masondo resigned on 23 July, saying he was stepping aside "in the interests of the Republic of South Africa" and the continued stability of the PIC. Godongwana accepted the resignation and said he would appoint an interim board to steady the institution. The turmoil lands on a fund already under strain. Parliament was told last year that more than 40% of its unlisted portfolio was in distress, and a R2 billion stake in the property group GRIT has destroyed shareholder value. With the chief executive suspended and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority investigating, the interim board inherits a fund in crisis, and millions of pensioners watching to see who is left minding their money. ### Why the Reserve Bank left your loan repayments exactly where they are URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/why-the-reserve-bank-left-your-loan-repayments-where-they-are/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:49:57.000Z South Africa's Reserve Bank did the one thing almost nobody expected this week: nothing at all. In a split four-to-two vote, its Monetary Policy Committee kept the repo rate at 7%, which leaves the prime lending rate borrowers actually pay at 10.50%. That was a genuine surprise. Sixteen of 25 economists polled by Reuters had expected a hike. ## A hold that markets hated The reaction was quick and unkind. The rand plunged more than 2% against the dollar on the day. Citigroup had been betting on a stronger rand, and within hours of the decision it closed the trade, booking a loss of about $468,000 on a $22 million position after concluding the currency would stay "fragile". The Reserve Bank's own reasoning was that policy is already tight enough. Four members preferred to hold, judging the stance "appropriate for now, with rates somewhat restrictive", while two wanted 25 basis points more. ## Inflation is the problem The hold came even though inflation reached 5% in June, above the bank's 3% target, driven mainly by higher fuel costs. Oil, which had dropped to about $70 a barrel earlier in the month, had rebounded to roughly $90 as the bank met, with the resumption of the US-Iran war pushing up fuel and fertiliser prices. Even so, the bank nudged its forecasts in a friendlier direction, trimming its inflation projection for this year to 4.0% and lifting its growth forecast to 1.4%. Governor Lesetja Kganyago was unusually candid about how hard the call was. Monetary policy, he said, "is a dismal science", and "in this uncertain environment, you can forgive people for missing what they had actually expected". He went further, conceding that "it might just turn down the line that we were wrong". Not everyone is convinced the pause will last. Citi's economist Gina Schoeman still expects a 25-basis-point hike in September, calling this a "hawkish hold" that leaves the door open. Debt counsellors, meanwhile, welcomed the breather but warned it changes little for stretched families, with the prime rate "locked at 10.50%". For now, households carry on under a 10.50% prime rate, and the next decision in September will show whether the governor's gamble on holding pays off. ### South Africa wants to build electric-car batteries, not just dig up what goes in them URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africa-wants-to-build-electric-car-batteries-not-just-dig-up-what-goes-in-them/ Last updated: 2026-07-26T08:00:22.000Z South Africa builds a lot of cars, but almost none of the batteries that power the electric ones. A new five-year, UN-backed programme wants to change that, building the local labs, skills and standards needed to test, certify and recycle electric-vehicle batteries. The bet is that the country's carmaking history and mineral wealth can add up to a battery industry at home, rather than value that quietly flows overseas. ## What the plan actually covers The programme is funded by the Global Environment Facility, an international fund that backs environmental projects, and run by the UN's industrial development agency, UNIDO, alongside the South African National Energy Development Institute, or SANEDI. It is guided by three government departments covering trade, energy and transport. Beyond testing and recycling, it reaches into workforce training, giving old batteries a second life, quality standards, and investment tied to local manufacturing and mineral processing. For now it is still getting started, setting up a project unit at SANEDI and a steering committee to guide the work. ## Why officials call it industry, not green politics The pitch is deliberately about factories, not just emissions. SANEDI acting chief executive Prathaban Moodley said electric mobility is "an entire industrial ecosystem that spans policy, manufacturing, quality infrastructure, testing and certification, skills development, investment, recycling, and innovation". UNIDO's Levy Maduse sharpened the stakes: "The deeper question is whether South Africa will retain and expand its industrial capabilities as automotive technologies change". His question ran on: will the country take part in "the production, testing, maintenance, repurposing and recycling of the technologies that will define the future automotive industry". Speaking for the environmental department's climate-fund office, Shahkira Parker put it plainly, calling decarbonisation "not simply an environmental imperative" but "an economic opportunity". Moodley argued the country already has the industrial base, the engineers and the critical minerals to play a real role, and that the work could unlock "economic growth, investment, and job creation". No grant figure was disclosed. The programme will get its showcase at an electric-mobility conference in Cape Town later this year; the harder test is whether the labs and skills it promises actually get built. ### Forbes just put South Africa's most expensive homes in a global shop window URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/forbes-just-put-south-africas-most-expensive-homes-in-a-global-shop-window/ Last updated: 2026-07-25T10:00:03.000Z Forbes has arrived in South Africa, and it is here for the mansions. The invitation-only luxury property network that carries the Forbes name, Forbes Global Properties, has launched a local arm and appointed property entrepreneur Keegan Steyn to run it as its exclusive representative in the country. Run out of Cape Town, the new firm will market some of the country's most prestigious homes, from Atlantic Seaboard residences and Winelands estates to private game-reserve retreats and luxury coastal boltholes. ## Why South Africa, why now The timing has a logic written in the numbers. Lightstone data shows that while overseas buyers made up only about 6% of all home sales over the past decade, they bought nearly 40% of everything sold for more than R20 million over the same period. That top slice is exactly what Forbes wants to plug into. Its local listings gain access to a referral network the company says spans 35 countries and more than 600 locations, plus Forbes' audience of over 167 million monthly digital users. Forbes' own directory lists South Africa as its single exclusive member for the country, joining a network that describes itself as invitation-only. ## A new benchmark, they say Both sides are pitching this as a step up for the market. Forbes Global Properties chief executive Michael Jalbert said Steyn's track record on the country's most notable deals made him "uniquely positioned to lead our presence in this important market". Steyn, for his part, said the tie-up would "define a new benchmark in South Africa" by pairing deep local knowledge with international reach. He argues foreign buyers are increasingly drawn to local luxury homes for their lifestyle, space and privacy, rather than viewing them simply as a cheaper alternative to established markets. The aim, the firm says, is to show off South Africa's finest homes to a global audience while bringing international buyers closer to one of the world's more distinctive luxury markets. Whether a famous American masthead can turn global eyeballs into signed offers is the test now facing South Africa's high end, one trophy listing at a time. ### Pepkor is betting R21 billion on banking South Africa's cash economy URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/pepkor-is-betting-r21-billion-on-banking-south-africas-cash-economy/ Last updated: 2026-07-24T10:00:19.000Z Pepkor is best known for cheap clothes and shoes through Pep and Ackermans. On Wednesday it made a very different kind of move, agreeing to merge its Flash business, the machines that sell airtime, electricity and vouchers in spaza shops, with a payments company called Shop2Shop. The combined business is valued at R21.3 billion, Pepkor is taking control of it, and the goal is to build what it calls South Africa's pre-eminent fintech platform. ## The deal, in short Pepkor is taking a 57.1% controlling stake in the merged company, provisionally called FintechCo. It gets there by paying R1.57 billion in cash for new Shop2Shop shares, money that clears that company's debt, and by folding in the whole of Flash, valued at R10.6 billion. Together the platform would process more than R200 billion a year across the formal and informal economy, and Pepkor plans to list it separately in the medium term. There is one governance wrinkle: CEO Pieter Erasmus holds a pre-existing indirect interest in Shop2Shop that becomes an indirect 13.2% of the merged business, worth about R2.8 billion. Pepkor says he recused himself, and because his stake sits below the JSE's threshold, no shareholder vote is required; the deal still needs regulatory approval. ## Why a retailer wants this The target is the part of the economy the banks have always struggled to reach. South Africa's informal traders move an estimated R1 trillion a year, mostly in cash, and Flash already reaches 176,000 of them. That arm is already paying its way: Pepkor's standalone informal-market platform made R562 million in operating profit in the first half of 2026, up 23.5% on the prior half. Shop2Shop brings the faster-growing half of the story: its revenue has compounded at 28% a year over three years, against Flash's 9%. As Shop2Shop chief executive Peter Berry put it, "With Flash, we are able to deepen our offering and scale, and position a proven fintech platform in South Africa". Whether a clothing retailer can build South Africa's leading payments platform is the real question now, and the answer will play out long after the ink has dried. ### South Africa's weight-loss jab market is about to get a lot more crowded URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-weight-loss-jab-market-is-about-to-get-a-lot-more-crowded/ Last updated: 2026-07-24T08:00:52.000Z South Africa's medicine regulator is quietly reshaping the market for weight-loss jabs. The South African Health Products Regulatory Authority told Reuters this week that it has twelve applications for generic versions of semaglutide under review, the active ingredient behind Novo Nordisk's blockbuster Ozempic and Wegovy. It would not name the applicants, or say when any of them might be approved. ## How the door opened The opening came when Novo Nordisk's South African patent on semaglutide expired earlier this year, clearing the way for rival drugmakers to move in. India's Sun Pharma got there first, winning approval last week to manufacture and sell a generic version locally. Its copy is a once-weekly injectable pen sold in two strengths, and South Africa is only the second market, after India, where the company has secured the green light. Sun Pharma called the approval proof of its ability to "develop complex generic medicines that meet stringent quality standards across different markets". ## What cheaper copies mean More approvals usually mean lower prices. The regulator's review could open the way to cheaper alternatives and sharpen competition in a fast-growing market that Novo Nordisk and its US rival Eli Lilly have dominated so far. There has been a side-door too: local regulators have been clamping down on the cheaper compounded versions of these drugs that filled the gap while supply was tight and demand ran hot. That crackdown has had teeth: Novo won a High Court order in June blocking one company, iDexis, from making and selling compounded semaglutide locally. Novo, for its part, is not waiting around. It plans to launch a cheaper, authorised copy of Ozempic in South Africa this month through a partnership with the Swiss firm Acino, and has already cut the price of Wegovy to widen access. That branded copy, called Extensior, is due to arrive on 27 July in three lower doses. For South Africans paying out of pocket, a crowded market is the best news of all; the real question now is how quickly twelve applications on a regulator's desk turn into twelve price tags on a pharmacy shelf. ### South Africa's state bank is hunting an investor for a private-island resort URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-state-bank-is-hunting-an-investor-for-a-private-island-resort/ Last updated: 2026-07-23T02:59:59.000Z South Africa's state-owned development finance arm has an unusual pitch for investors: help us finish a luxury island resort in Mozambique. The Industrial Development Corporation has put out a call for a strategic equity partner in Project Lux-Isle, an ultra-luxury private-island getaway in the Topuito Isles, near the coastal city of Nampula. The plan is a five-star, 60-room resort spread across two islands, with 40 rooms on Caldeira Island and 20 on Nejovo Island. ## The numbers behind the sand The IDC says it has already spent about R430 million on the project, and it wants an investor to put in a further R330 million to complete and run it, with the doors due to open from 2027\. The economics it sketches are firmly top-end: rooms are projected to start at around R12,000 a night, with occupancy climbing from 48% toward a steady 60%. That nightly rate is pencilled in to creep up about 2% a year to 2036, and the IDC's own figures show gross profit leaping 92% between its 2027 and 2028 financial years as the resort fills up. The corporation bills it as "Southern Africa's first globally branded five-star ultra-luxury private island destination". ## Why the state is in the resort business A development bank chasing beach holidays makes more sense up close. Mozambique's government wants to lift tourism to about 6% of its economy, and the IDC already has deep exposure across the border through its stakes in Sasol and the Mozal aluminium smelter. It holds 31.4% of Mozal, and reported last month that it is weighing a move for South32's controlling stake to revive the smelter, which was mothballed in March. It would not be alone on the coastline, either: Southern Sun, City Lodge and Tsogo Sun all have a presence in Mozambique, and the luxury Aman group opened its first sub-Saharan resort there last year. Whether a state financier can turn two islands and a nine-figure build into a profitable slice of the luxury market is the wager now on the table for any partner willing to sign up. ### London's stock exchange wants to trade through the night, with AI doing the buying URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/londons-stock-exchange-wants-to-trade-through-the-night-with-ai-doing-the-buying/ Last updated: 2026-07-23T02:44:59.000Z The London Stock Exchange is building a market that barely sleeps. It has unveiled LSE 24, a new venue designed to run five days a week from evening to early morning, built for the digital, algorithm-driven and AI-agent trading it expects to define the next era of markets. In doing so, it joins a global race among exchanges to stretch the trading day well beyond the traditional daytime session. ## How LSE 24 would run The new venue would trade from 5pm to just before 8am London time, Monday to Friday, with a half-hour pause each evening to run its end-of-day processing. The exchange's Main Market keeps its usual 8am-to-4.30pm hours, so LSE 24 sits alongside the daytime session rather than replacing it. Testing is due to start by the end of 2026, with the first products, exchange-traded funds and similar listed instruments, going live in the first half of 2027, before the venue expands into ordinary shares. London is starting with those products because it is already a leading global hub for them. ## Why do it, and who is worried The pitch is built for the future. LSE 24 promises secure connections for "agent-based" trading, where AI agents place and execute orders on a client's behalf around the clock. LSE plc chief executive Julia Hoggett called it "an important step in the evolution of our markets," offering clients flexibility beyond traditional hours and reinforcing London's position as a leading global financial centre. London is not alone: in the United States, the New York Stock Exchange has won preliminary approval for a 22-hour day and Nasdaq has filed for a 23-hour session. Nasdaq is targeting that session as soon as December, while CME has already rolled out round-the-clock crypto futures and Cboe plans a near-24-hour US equities venue of its own. Not everyone is sold. Some on Wall Street warn that overnight trading can be thinly traded and potentially destabilising. The daytime bell has set the rhythm of global markets for generations; the exchanges now betting on the night are wagering that the machines never want to clock off. ### France just became the first EU country to log its teenagers off URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/france-just-became-the-first-eu-country-to-log-its-teenagers-off/ Last updated: 2026-07-23T02:29:59.000Z France has drawn a hard line between children and their feeds. On Tuesday its parliament gave final approval to a law barring anyone under fifteen from social media, making France the first country in the European Union to pass a blanket ban. It is a flagship project of President Emmanuel Macron's second term, and it does not stop at social apps: the same law kicks mobile phones out of high schools, extending a rule that already covers primary and middle schools. ## How it will work The ban rolls out in two steps. New accounts for under-15s are blocked from 1 September, while existing accounts fall away on 1 January 2027, after a four-month window to sort out age checks. The digital minister, Anne Le Henanff, put it bluntly: "If someone is under 15, the account will be closed". The bill was carried by MP Laure Miller and championed by Macron, who said France "is leading the way in Europe" on protecting children online. Supporters point to classrooms that have already gone phone-free, where teachers report pupils are more attentive and focused. ## Not everyone is convinced Critics on the left call it unworkable. They point to Australia, which brought in a similar under-16 ban, where opponents say two-thirds of young people simply found a way around it. Socialist MPs have said they will refer the law to France's constitutional court, which has a month to rule and could delay the September start. The worry behind the law is real enough: a French health watchdog found that some 90% of children aged 12 to 17 use a smartphone every day, and 58% of them use it for social networks. France is not alone, either. From Australia to a widening list of countries across Europe, governments are reaching for the same off switch. Brussels is circling too: European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen called this month for limits on children using social media, and the Commission has floated a "progressive and graduated" approach across the bloc. Whether this one actually works is the test every watching regulator now wants answered. ### A rising oil price just made Thursday's rate call a lot harder URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-rising-oil-price-just-made-thursdays-rate-call-a-lot-harder/ Last updated: 2026-07-23T02:14:59.000Z Every time the fighting between the United States and Iran flares up, the oil price climbs, and this week it pushed Brent crude back above $90 a barrel. The renewed conflict, and the threat of disrupted supply through the Strait of Hormuz, nudged global markets into a cautious, risk-off mood on Tuesday. The rally has legs: US President Donald Trump has played down the prospect of near-term talks with Iran while threatening broader strikes, and the American military has kept up attacks aimed at Iran's ability to menace shipping through the Strait, which remains open. "Risks now seem skewed towards higher for longer energy prices, inflation and rates," warned Saxo UK strategist Neil Wilson. ## Why a barrel of oil reaches your bond repayment A pricier barrel feeds straight into inflation, and inflation is the one thing that tends to push the Reserve Bank toward higher interest rates. That is why the focus has landed on the Bank's rate-setting committee, which announces its decision on Thursday, with the latest local inflation figures due the day before. The worry is simple: an oil rally that sticks around keeps prices rising and hands the Bank a reason to move. ## Economists are split The call is finely balanced. Patrick Buthelezi, an economist at Sanlam Investments, expects the Bank to keep tightening, warning that "the Sarb will likely raise interest rates again as inflation moves above target and geopolitical developments increase upside risks to the inflation outlook". Others still see room for a hold, and the committee itself is expected to be divided. The rand, at least, is holding its nerve, trading steady at around R16.44 to the dollar, R18.81 to the euro and R22.15 to the pound, according to Citadel Global's Bianca Botes. The pressure may not ease soon either: Bloomberg-carried commentary flagged that Brent could breach $100 a barrel before year-end if the conflict drags on and stockpiles keep drawing down. By Thursday afternoon, South Africans will know whether a conflict half a world away has just made borrowing money at home a little more expensive. ### The Roundup — Wednesday, 22 July 2026 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-wednesday-22-july-2026/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:51:55.000Z Today's edition Arms Length Good morning. Government is in a trusting mood today: it wants private money inside Denel's ammunition plant, it will pre-approve companies to hire foreigners if they score well enough, and it has signed for another R25 billion from the World Bank. Three different ways of admitting you cannot do it alone. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/markets--12-.png) --- BRASS TACKS ## South Africa's arms makers export to 115 countries, and their own government stopped buying ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-One-entrepreneur-s-plan-to-let-firms-buy-their-way-to-a-BEE-score--2--1.png) More than 600 South African companies build military kit, and over 80% of what they earn comes from selling it abroad, into more than 115 countries. Trade minister Parks Tau opened the Defence Industry Lekgotla in Pretoria on Monday with that number, and the argument it leads to: this is not a domestic industry that happens to export, it is an export industry that happens to be domestic. The state, meanwhile, has spent three decades buying less and less of what it makes. Denel, loss-making for about a decade, is now advertising for private investors to modernise its Pretoria ammunition plant. **What thirty years did to it:** - Defence force buying from local firms fell from R26.2 billion in 1989/90 to R850 million in 2017, in constant terms. - Research funding dropped from R6.1 billion to around R500 million, and employment from about 130,000 people to roughly 13,000. - Denel's brass foundry is the test case: private investors invited in, with bids closing on 10 August. Africa's defence buying is forecast to reach about $136 billion, and Tau's warning is the simple one: countries that keep the capability capture that demand, and countries that do not just buy from someone else. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-arms-industry-its-own-government-stopped-buying-from/) --- MAKING THE GRADE ## Work visas just became a scorecard, and 80 out of 100 is the pass mark ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-home-affairs-1.png) Home Affairs has decided the problem with work visas is the checking, not the visa. Phase two of its Trusted Employer Scheme, gazetted on Monday, lets companies be vetted once and approved in advance, after which their skilled foreign hires move with fewer documents and less delay. The vetting is a scorecard, and there are three of them: one for local corporates, one for regional head offices, one for financial firms. Each needs 80 points out of 100\. Expressions of interest close on 4 September. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/home-affairs-would-rather-vet-the-company-than-the-person/) --- BAGEL BITE **In what year was the first rubber eraser invented?** **A.** 1752 **B.** 1770 **C.** 1839 --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Article-dischem-saul-saltzman-1.png) **Dis-Chem has had a Saltzman in it since 1978, and as of Friday it has one fewer.** Saul, son of founders Ivan and Lynette, resigned from the board after spending his entire 25-year career at the company, leaving his father as the last family member in the room. Ivan stepped back from running things at the end of June. Analysts called it unsurprising: the family handed the reins to chief executive Rui Morais in 2023 and has been selling down ever since. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/down-to-one-saltzman/) **Aspen has just been handed the right to sell a cheap copy of Ozempic in Canada, and no way to make it.** Health Canada approved its generic version on Monday, in the same announcement where Aspen admitted it cannot say when the injection will reach shelves. The ingredient comes from India's Dr Reddy's, which hit an impurity problem and will be short until at least late October. Investors bought the approval and ignored the asterisk, pushing the shares 3.11% higher. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/aspen-won-the-right-to-sell-an-ozempic-copy-it-cannot-yet-make/) **Samsung has spent seven years watching Apple hand out a credit card, and on Monday it reached for one of its own.** The Galaxy Card, issued by Barclays on the Visa network, lands straight inside Samsung Wallet and pays 5% back on anything bought from Samsung, sliding to 1% on everything else. No annual fee, and $200 waiting for anyone who spends $2,000 in three months. Applications open across the US on Wednesday, the same day Samsung unveils its next Galaxy. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/samsung-watched-apple-hand-out-a-credit-card-for-seven-years-now-it-has-one/) **South Africa has borrowed R25 billion to fix the things that keep breaking.** Treasury signed the World Bank loan on Tuesday, its fourth since 2022, and the first to put money behind water and sanitation rather than just electricity and freight. It runs 15 years, with three before repayments start, and costs less than the markets would charge. The World Bank reckons the reforms riding on it could support almost 600,000 more and better-paid jobs by 2032\. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/the-taps-join-the-queue-inside-south-africas-newest-world-bank-loan/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/weather--8-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/07/Wordle--11-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](#) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B. 1770** In 1770, English engineer and instrument maker Edward Nairne became the first person credited with producing and selling rubber erasers. According to the popular account, he accidentally used a piece of natural rubber instead of the breadcrumbs commonly used to erase pencil marks and discovered that it worked remarkably well. Scientist Joseph Priestley also documented rubber’s erasing ability that same year. However, early natural rubber erasers deteriorated and became unpleasant over time. They only became more durable after Charles Goodyear developed the vulcanisation process in 1839. --- That's your Wednesday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on — a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew. ### Transnet Wants Someone Else to Run Cape Town's Docks URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/transnet-wants-someone-else-to-run-cape-towns-docks/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T14:25:01.000Z Cape Town sits on one of the world's busiest shipping routes, a point the City makes often and with some feeling. It also runs a port that News24 reports was ranked the worst in the world for efficiency in the 2025 Container Port Performance Index, the annual study of vessel time in port produced by the World Bank Group and S&P Global Market Intelligence. Transnet's ports arm has now decided the fix belongs in somebody else's hands. ## What the winning bidder actually signs up for The National Ports Authority issued a request for proposals on 17 July inviting private bidders to take a 25-year concession, a long-term lease to run and rebuild the terminal, over the multipurpose berths B, C and D at the Port of Cape Town. Whoever wins designs, finances, refurbishes, operates and maintains the facility, then hands it back at the end. About 24 months has been set aside for construction. The terminal keeps taking containers, dry bulk such as ore, coal and grain, and the oversized cargo that never fits a box: machinery, wind turbine blades, steel beams. Petroleum is excluded, and it stays open to all shipping lines rather than one owner's fleet. Performance gets marked quarterly against Transnet's standards on cargo volumes, vessel turnaround, berth occupancy and equipment availability. A compulsory briefing runs on 6 August; bids close 20 November. ## The season that made the argument Last summer did the campaigning. Fruit industry body Hortgro says producers lost R1 billion to logistical failures and weather during peak season. Table grape exporters rerouted 55 000 tonnes, and the Western Cape port's share of total fruit exports slid from 91% to 76%. Transnet Port Terminals counts about 30 working days lost to bad weather in November and December alone. TNPA's rebuttal is that things are already turning: ship turnaround time down from 103 hours in 2023/24 to 74 in 2025/26 and 58 in 2026/27, anchorage waits down from 127 hours to 79, with hydraulic ShoreTension units that steady vessels in heavy swell cutting long-wave downtime by 92% since 2023/24. Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis called the tender exactly the major reform the City has long been calling for, alongside Transnet's R3.4 billion in capital spending at the port. Research commissioned by the Western Cape government puts the prize at roughly R6 billion in additional exports, nearly 20 000 jobs and more than R1.6 billion in tax revenue. Nine of the port's 11 terminals are already privately operated. The precedent is not encouraging on speed. Durban's Pier 2 tender went to Philippine operator ICTSI only after lengthy court battles, and cranes moved in January 2026\. Cape Town's fruit does not have that kind of patience. ### Everyone Is Talking About the De Beers Sale Except Anglo URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/everyone-is-talking-about-the-de-beers-sale-except-anglo/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T07:59:59.000Z Word that the world's biggest diamond miner has a buyer in waiting did not come from Anglo American, which owns De Beers and is trying to sell it. It came from a cabinet minister in Gaborone. Moeti Mohwasa, Botswana's minister for the state president and defence, told lawmakers on Friday that Anglo had run a competitive sale process among three shortlisted parties and settled on a group called the Global Diamond Consortium. Anglo's own line has not moved: it is progressing the sale with a number of bidders and will provide updates at the appropriate time. Namibia's mines minister Modestus Amutse went further on Sunday, calling the circulating reports misleading and incorrect. ## The man who idled the mines last time Bloomberg, citing people it did not name, says the consortium is led by Gareth Penny. Mohwasa named no members. Penny ran De Beers for five years until he left in 2010, when the Oppenheimer family still controlled it, and steered it through the financial crisis that slashed diamond prices by idling mines and repairing the balance sheet with a $1 billion rights offer. He has chaired Ninety One, South Africa's largest private asset manager, since 2019\. His bid, backed by some of the world's biggest diamond traders, centres on refocusing the company on mining and marketing natural stones. A spokesman for Penny declined to comment. ## Botswana holds the card that matters Botswana owns 15% of De Beers and half of Debswana, the joint venture that digs most of the country's stones. It also has the right to buy Anglo's entire interest before anyone else does, and it is running financial and legal due diligence on exactly that. Lazard and CBH Bank are advising on the money, Desai Law Group and Clifford Chance on the law. Government retains complete freedom to proceed either alongside the preferred bidder as a partner or to exercise its preemption rights alone or with a third party, Mohwasa said. The consortium's proposal envisages participation by Angola and Namibia, and President Duma Boko makes the final call, with the process expected to close by end-September. The trouble is arithmetic. Diamonds supply about a third of Botswana's budget revenue, and the downturn has tipped the country into a two-year recession while pushing debt near its 40% of GDP ceiling. Boko said last year he wanted majority control; that now appears unlikely. James Campbell of Botswana Minerals notes the president has always wanted a bigger stake but is finding it difficult to raise funds, and that Botswana has publicly said it wants to diversify away from diamonds. Wholesale prices have fallen below $100 a carat, a 93% decline since 2020. Whoever signs inherits the same problem Penny would recognise from 2009: a mine can be idled, but desire has to be rebuilt. ### The arms industry its own government stopped buying from URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-arms-industry-its-own-government-stopped-buying-from/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T03:44:59.000Z South Africa builds weapons and sells almost all of them somewhere else. More than 600 companies work in the sector, over 80% of their revenue comes from exports, and the products reach more than 115 countries, over 40 of them in Africa. Trade minister Parks Tau laid that out at a Pretoria industry conference on Monday and drew the conclusion himself: "This is not a domestic industry that happens to export. It is an export industry that happens to be domestic. Any strategy for this sector must start from that fact." ## What the state stopped buying The decline behind that framing is in the government's own numbers. Defence force buying from local industry fell from R26.2bn in 1989/90 to R850m in 2017, adjusted for inflation. Research funding fell from R6.1bn to about R500m over the same stretch. Employment across the chain went from roughly 130,000 people at 3,000 companies in 1990 to about 13,000 at 600 today. South Africa still ranked 21st in the world for major conventional arms exports between 2018 and 2023, which is an odd result for a country spending about 0.7% of GDP on defence, some R57bn to R60bn a year, against the 1.5% a 2015 review recommended. Tau named the cause of the skills loss without hedging. Instability at state-owned entities such as Denel pushed experienced engineers and technicians elsewhere, he said, and once that expertise leaves it does not return quickly. Armscor, the state agency that buys arms, made a related point in its 2025 annual report: Denel's lost capacity had dented Armscor's image as a reliable supplier, and government austerity had pushed several defence companies to downscale or shut. ## A brass foundry goes looking for partners Denel has been making losses for about a decade and has needed nearly R9bn in bailouts. It is now inviting outside investors into its Pretoria Metal Pressings plant, which makes ammunition for the army and the police, under a process it calls Project Pearl. Bids close on 10 August. The plant's foundry can turn out up to 80 tons of brass strip a day, and Denel says it wants infrastructure renewal, capital, technology upgrades and automation while keeping state control. US defence and security firm Omusha had already signalled an investment in the hundreds of millions of rands. What Tau asked for costs rather less: coordination. Export permits that clear faster, aviation rules that fit the drone business, a proposed aerospace and defence industrial zone in the Western Cape carrying its own investment incentives, and one national position across the trade and defence departments, Treasury, the state science council and the state's development financier, instead of parallel processes that do not speak to one another. Africa's defence acquisition market is forecast at about $136bn. The 10 August closing date is the first small test of whether that number gets answered from South African factories or from somebody else's. ### Home Affairs Would Rather Vet the Company Than the Person URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/home-affairs-would-rather-vet-the-company-than-the-person/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T03:30:00.000Z South Africa has spent years asking whether a particular foreigner deserves a work visa. Home Affairs has decided to ask a different question: whether the company doing the hiring deserves to be trusted. Phase two of the Trusted Employer Scheme, published in the Government Gazette on 20 July, pre-vets the employer instead of the paperwork, and companies that pass send their skilled foreign hires through with fewer supporting documents and less delay. ## What a company has to prove The vetting is a scorecard, and there are three of them. South African corporates take the first, companies running or planning a regional or global head office here take the second, and financial firms get a new third route. All three need 80 points out of 100\. Choose more than one pathway and you risk disqualification. For a local corporate the points sit in four buckets: proven investment 30, employment 25, economic sector 25, skills development 20\. Money talks loudest. A company that has sunk less than R100 million of fixed capital investment, meaning plant and property rather than running costs, into South Africa since 2018 scores nothing on that line at all; R100 million to R200 million earns 20 points, and above R200 million earns the full 30\. The employment points need at least 100 staff, 60% of them South African citizens or permanent residents. The head-office route pulls a different lever: more than R500 million in company income tax and employee payroll tax paid to SARS across the last two tax years. The third route is the most curious. Treasury wants local asset managers to run their global investments from South Africa rather than from Ireland, Mauritius or Guernsey, where they went for lower taxes and looser currency rules. The new scorecard gives those firms a way to recruit the specialists that shift requires. Applications run online, and the department intends to fold the scheme into its new digital travel authorisation platform, which verifies identity and eligibility electronically before anyone boards a plane. ## Where labour draws the line Cosatu did not oppose the scheme. Spokesperson Zanele Sabela said companies that establish headquarters in South Africa will boost economic growth and create jobs, then set the federation's condition: it is crucial that the scheme is not abused and used to bypass employing and training South African workers. Skills transfer must be insisted upon, she said, and employers found abusing the scheme must be removed from it and heavily penalised. Applications close on 4 September, and a panel drawn from Home Affairs, Employment and Labour and the trade department issues outcomes within 30 working days of that. Approved companies are expected to sign an agreement with the department, and the panel's decision is final. Schreiber's argument is that Home Affairs now works as an economic enabler rather than a constraint. Which companies make the list, and how fast their hires actually arrive, is where that claim gets tested. ### The Fibre Deal That Cost Pensioners R100 Million URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-fibre-deal-that-cost-pensioners-r100-million/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T07:04:40.000Z Every big investor has a deal it would rather not discuss at the staff meeting. The Public Investment Corporation, which manages around R3.5 trillion, most of it retirement money belonging to government employees, has one with a name: Enable Capital. The pitch was tidy. Enable is a private financial services provider offering short-term bridge financing, supply chain funding and working capital to subcontractors, focused on the telecommunications and physical infrastructure sectors. That handed the PIC exposure to the rapid buildout of fibre optic infrastructure while meeting its mandate to drive transformation. The corporation approved and executed R100 million of a R200 million commitment. Two months after the funds were disbursed, Enable Capital was placed under business rescue. ## What the money bought Red flags followed. The PIC stopped the drawdown of the second portion, laid criminal charges against the company and some of its directors, and reported the matter to law enforcement. Parliament's public accounts committee criticised the corporation harshly for handing over the money so easily. The board chairman, David Masondo, who is also Deputy Finance Minister, has said the new board is reviewing past bad transactions on principle, the R100 million lost at Enable among them. He has also said the deal triggered a review of the rule letting the PIC approve transactions of up to R2 billion without consulting the Government Employees Pension Fund, its major stakeholder. What it was, exactly, is contested. DA federal finance chairperson Dr Mark Burke told BizNews it was "not even a deal", calling it "a full-on scam for R100 million of pensioners' money". Masondo's account runs the other way: "It was nothing further from fraudulent activity because many other dominant asset managers in the country found themselves in the same position." He credits the PIC with stopping the second tranche precisely because it picked up there was something untoward. ## The rest of the ledger Enable is one line in a longer ledger. Masondo told staff at a town hall on 16 July that the PIC has recovered R10 billion of its R19 billion debt book and is pursuing legal processes to recover the remaining R9.3 billion. The corporation holds investments in 150 unlisted companies, 39 of them legacy positions now in turnaround or distress management. Those account for less than 0.1% of the PIC's total investments. Its own 2025 presentation to the public accounts committee listed 17 businesses carrying a market value of zero. Cosatu wants the whole list published, arguing the PIC Act already requires that information on the website and in the annual reports. The newest annual report on the site still covers 2024/25\. Whether the next one names names is the thing worth watching. ### The R700 million sieve behind Sasol's best year in five URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-r700-million-sieve-behind-sasols-best-year-in-five/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T06:58:39.000Z Secunda runs on coal, and the coal turning up there came with too much rock in it. Rock chews through the gasifiers, the units that turn coal into the synthetic gas everything downstream is built from. Sasol's answer was not clever chemistry. It was an expensive sieve: R700 million to repurpose the Twistdraai export coal plant so it screens the stones and other impurities out before the coal ever reaches Secunda. ## Cleaner coal, better year It worked. Secunda Operations, the Mpumalanga complex where coal becomes fuel and chemicals, turned out 7,260 kilotons in the year to 30 June, 8% up on the year before and its highest annual output in five years. That beat Sasol's own guidance of 7.0 to 7.2 million tons. The impurity level in the coal averaged just below the 12% to 14% band Sasol had set for itself. Steadier gas helped too: Mozambican production recovered 11% in the fourth quarter after flooding disrupted condensate logistics earlier in the year, and Secunda drew 14% more internal gas as a result. Natref, the refinery Sasol part-owns and has been running above its own 63.64% shareholding while Prax SA works through business rescue, lifted production 76% to 25.8 million barrels. Fuel sales climbed 13% to 57.5 million barrels, and external fuel purchases fell 51%, because Sasol was simply making more of its own. Across every production and sales metric, the group says it landed within or above market guidance. ## One number went the other way Net working capital, the cash tied up in day-to-day running, is the single metric Sasol flags as higher than planned, inflated by conflict-driven prices and a deliberate fuel stockpile built to cover the Natref shutdown this quarter and keep imports down. ORYX GTL has been dark since early March, when the Middle East conflict shut it, and any restart depends on stable conditions in the region. In Eurasia, Sasol declared force majeure on certain products when feedstock from the same region tightened. Two fatalities earlier in the year sit against safety indicators that otherwise improved. And the market, handed a clean sheet of operating numbers, marked the shares down 1.65% to R185.68 on the morning. The audited figures, profit included, only arrive on 1 September. Sasol has spent a year proving it can run its plants properly, which is not nothing after the past few. Whether cleaner coal turns into cleaner earnings is the only question left, and nobody gets to answer it for another six weeks. ### The Taps Join the Queue: Inside South Africa's Newest World Bank Loan URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-taps-join-the-queue-inside-south-africas-newest-world-bank-loan/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T02:44:59.000Z Electricity came first, then the trains and the ports. This time the taps made the list. National Treasury and the World Bank signed a US$1.5 billion loan on Tuesday, worth roughly R25 billion at reported exchange rates, aimed at the infrastructure constraints Treasury calls the primary barrier to job creation. It is the fourth stand-alone loan of its kind to South Africa since 2022, and the first to extend beyond electricity and freight transport into water and sanitation. ## What the country agreed to pay The loan runs 15 years, and repayments only begin after the first three. Interest is priced off the six-month Secured Overnight Financing Rate, a floating US benchmark, plus 1.35%. Treasury says the terms match a borrowing strategy built on raising money at the lowest cost, and that the favourable rate and flexible repayment help contain the rise in debt service costs. Business Day has reported that Treasury previously signalled a preference for loans from institutions like the World Bank and the New Development Bank, which are cheaper to service than market rates. Together with money from other multilateral partners, this loan completes South Africa's US$3.2 billion foreign currency borrowing requirement for 2026/27\. Rand equivalents published by local outlets ranged from R24.76 billion to R27 billion; neither Treasury nor the World Bank put a rand figure on it. ## What the money is meant to buy Three pillars carry the loan: energy competitiveness and security, better freight transport, and efficient water and sanitation services. In practice that means launching a competitive wholesale electricity market, scaling up private investment in transmission, and a target of 300,000 new household electricity connections by December 2027\. In freight, it means competition among private rail operators and the first port terminal concession Durban has had. In water, stronger regulatory oversight, an opening for private water service providers, and more autonomy for the newly established National Water Resources Infrastructure Agency to invest in bulk water infrastructure. The World Bank argues the groundwork is already laid. Load shedding has been virtually eliminated for a year and a half, private investment in renewable energy has increased sixfold, and rail and port freight volumes have risen by more than 50% since 2023. Its economic modelling projects that the supported reforms could enable the equivalent of almost 600,000 more and better-paid jobs by 2032, most of that from electricity and transport. That is a projection, not a count. The Bank's own release says the water and sanitation reforms are not expected to directly create large numbers of jobs, but to bring shorter trips to collect water, lower health risks and better access for the poorest female-headed households. The nearer marker sits closer than 2032: roughly 280,000 jobs by 2027, on the same modelling. That is the number to hold this loan against. ### Samsung Watched Apple Hand Out a Credit Card for Seven Years. Now It Has One. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/samsung-watched-apple-hand-out-a-credit-card-for-seven-years-now-it-has-one/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T02:29:59.000Z Apple put its name on a credit card in 2019, and Samsung spent the next seven years watching. On Monday it stopped watching. Samsung Electronics America and Barclays announced the Samsung Galaxy Card, the company's first credit card programme in the United States. Barclays US Consumer Bank issues it, and it runs on the Visa network. ## What the card actually pays The rewards ladder leans hard in one direction. Spend directly with Samsung, in a store or online, and the card gives back 5%. Pay for something through Samsung Wallet and that drops to 3%. Streaming subscriptions like Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify earn 2%. Everything else earns 1%. There is no annual fee. New cardholders who spend $2,000 in their first 90 days collect an extra $200 in rewards. The 5% rate covers Samsung.com, Samsung Experience Stores, the Galaxy Store, Care+ and the Samsung Smart TV Store, which reads less like a rewards table than a map of where Samsung would like your money to go. The physical card is metal, black, carrying the Samsung logo. Apple's is titanium. Samsung has also skipped the savings account Apple bundled alongside its own card. ## Why it lands this week Applications open to the general public on 22 July, after a few days of early access for selected customers. That is also the day Samsung streams Galaxy Unpacked from 9am Eastern to show off the Galaxy Z series and the rest of the lineup. And the card pays 5% back when you preorder the next Galaxy device. The sequencing is not subtle. Approved applicants get the card loaded straight into Samsung Wallet, where it sits with their other cards, IDs, passes and digital keys. That placement is the actual product. Woncheol Chai, who heads Samsung's digital wallet team, called the card part of an ongoing vision for Samsung Wallet to deliver more connected and rewarding everyday experiences. Barclays, which already serves more than 25 million consumers, framed it as an example of its partner-first strategy. None of this is new territory for Samsung at home. It has run a card business in South Korea for years. What it has never had is a reason for an American to reach for a Samsung app before a bank app. Whether 5% is enough to shift that habit is the open question, and the Unpacked audience is where the answer starts. ### Aspen Won The Right To Sell An Ozempic Copy It Cannot Yet Make URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/aspen-won-the-right-to-sell-an-ozempic-copy-it-cannot-yet-make/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T02:14:59.000Z Approval is usually the hard part. Aspen Pharmacare told the JSE on Monday that its Canadian arm had won Health Canada clearance for Aspen-Semaglutide, a generic version of Novo Nordisk's Ozempic, which is essentially the same medicine sold without the brand name. It is cleared for adults with type 2 diabetes, to improve blood sugar control alongside diet and exercise. Then, in the very next line of the same announcement, Aspen said it cannot say when it will actually sell any. ## The bottleneck is the ingredient The working compound in the drug, the bit that produces the therapeutic effect, comes from India's Dr Reddy's Laboratories, and Aspen's launch date depends entirely on getting hold of it. Earlier this month Dr Reddy's said an impurity problem had halted production of new batches, leaving its own generic unavailable in India and supply into Canada disrupted until at least late October. Aspen pointed shareholders straight at those disclosures rather than around them. ## A queue is already forming Novo Nordisk's Canadian patent on the ingredient has expired, and the door is now open to several drugmakers with copies of their own. Apotex got there first: the Canadian company's Sevmia, a generic of Novo's weight-loss brand Wegovy, was authorised in June. Aspen had told the market it expected to be one of the first to market in Canada, and had been counting on the Canadian launch to help it recover from the loss of a major manufacturing contract. Chief executive Stephen Saad said in March that Aspen would make its generics at its South African and French plants, with the larger multi-dose pen volumes coming out of South Africa and single-dose autoinjectors from France. Investors took the approval and left the asterisk where it lay. Aspen shares closed 3.11% higher on Monday, valuing the group at about R69bn, and are up more than a third so far this year, helped along by the sale of its Australian business. Late October is the date to circle. Until Dr Reddy's restarts, Aspen holds a Canadian approval it cannot act on, and every week of waiting is a week its rivals get to fill shelves it cannot reach. ### Down To One Saltzman URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/down-to-one-saltzman/ Last updated: 2026-07-22T01:59:59.000Z Ivan and Lynette Saltzman opened a single pharmacy in Mondeor in 1978\. Forty-eight years on, that shop has become a JSE-listed retailer with 325 stores and a market value of R27.7bn, and as of Friday it has exactly one Saltzman left on its board. Saul Saltzman, the founders' son, resigned as a non-executive director with effect from 17 July, a decision the company disclosed to the market on Monday. The board thanked him for his invaluable contribution, commitment and dedicated service over many years, and said nothing at all about why he was going. ## Twenty-five years, the smallest stake Saul spent his entire 25-year career at Dis-Chem. He joined the board as an alternate director when the family listed the business in 2016, became an executive director in July 2022, and moved to a non-executive seat in February. Along the way he ran the import division and shaped the private-label strategy that now fills the shelves. For all that, he owns the least of any Saltzman: just under 350,000 shares held indirectly at the end of February, or 0.04% of the company. His brothers Mark and Dan have never worked at Dis-Chem and have never sat on its board. Each was handed a 12.62% interest in June last year, worth almost R7bn at the time. ## A handover the family chose None of this happened by accident. Ivan stepped down as chief executive in 2023 after 45 years, passing the job to Rui Morais, the first non-Saltzman to run the company. He retired as an executive director on 30 June and now sits as a non-executive director and deputy chair. Lynette left her executive role in July 2022 to focus on the group's beauty category. Otto1890 senior equity analyst Alec Abraham called the exit unsurprising, given that the family had handed the business to Morais's team and had been selling down its interests. "They've handed over the reins, they have done what they can with the business, and they are stepping away and moving on to other things. It makes sense." The family also watched what happened elsewhere. The Ackermans recently gave up control of Pick n Pay to give that retailer room to run a turnaround, and Dis-Chem's founders did not want their own ownership read by the market as an obstacle to the company's future. Morais, meanwhile, has rebuilt the loyalty offer as Better Rewards, launched an insurance business and started selling funeral policies. Group revenue rose 9.3% in the year to end-February. One piece of housekeeping shows how quickly the seat emptied: ordinary resolution 4.1 will no longer be tabled at the annual general meeting on 31 July. The question for the shareholders gathering that day is whether a retailer can keep a founder's instincts once the founders have stopped coming to work. ### BP is selling off some of the startup bets it spent 20 years making URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/bp-is-selling-off-some-of-the-startup-bets-it-spent-20-years-making/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T11:22:41.000Z The oil major bp is clearing out its venture-capital cupboard. It has agreed to sell most of its startup portfolio — minority stakes in more than 10 companies — to Verdane, a Nordic private-equity firm, in a deal expected to close by the second quarter of 2027, subject to regulatory and contractual approvals. Bp says the sale supports “simplifying its portfolio and disciplined capital allocation”, while giving the companies an investor focused on their next phase. It will hold on to a small number of investments where the technology could still be useful to its own businesses. ## Two decades of energy bets Bp launched its venture arm in 2006 to back “private, high growth, game-changing technology companies” across the energy spectrum. Many of its bets were aimed at the energy transition: over the years it invested in green hydrogen, e-mobility, ride-hailing, autonomous vehicles, private jet charters and geothermal energy, among other sectors. The results were mixed. TechCrunch, citing an Axios report, says the portfolio was valued at about $1.2 billion last year — roughly the same amount bp had poured into it since 2006 — and noted the investments “haven't been terribly successful financially”. Verdane described the businesses it is buying as ones “helping to make the energy transition more efficient through innovative use of technology”. ## A quiet retreat from clean energy The sale fits a bigger shift. In early 2025 bp reversed an earlier plan to cut oil and gas output while ramping up low-carbon investment, and instead moved capital back into fossil fuels — cutting low-carbon spending to less than 5% of its investment budget. Selling the venture portfolio is, in that light, another step away from the energy-transition strategy the unit was built to chase. Media coverage framed the move as bp “shuttering” its venture arm, though bp's own announcement describes a portfolio sale rather than a formal closure. Bp declined to say which companies it would keep or what the deal means for the venture team, citing legal requirements, though layoffs look likely. Verdane's Melanie Campbell said the firm looks forward to helping the companies “continue to digitalise and decarbonise the global economy”. ### African Bank's buying spree has caught up with it as job cuts announced URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/african-banks-buying-spree-has-caught-up-with-it-as-job-c/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T11:22:31.000Z African Bank has started the kind of conversation no employer wants to have. The lender has opened formal consultations with its union that could end in the loss of up to 1,200 jobs — more than a quarter of its roughly 4,100 staff — and the closure of about 90 branches. The talks, held under Section 189A of the Labour Relations Act, began on Thursday with the finance union Sasbo. ## Bought big, then bloated The bank has been open about the cause: a run of acquisitions. Between 2022 and 2024 it bought Ubank, Grindrod Bank and two Sasfin businesses, and its cost base has since grown faster than its income. “This action has not been taken lightly and is a direct result of our current business realities,” African Bank said, adding that it had reached a point where it had “no other option but to review our staff costs”. The strain shows in the numbers: last month the bank posted a R624 million loss for the six months to end-March and pushed its long-planned stock-market listing back to 2030\. It said its cost base had outgrown its risk-adjusted revenue, and that it was now chasing savings across IT, procurement and lease costs under a “redefined” strategy focused on operational consolidation. ## A rescue bank under pressure African Bank is the “good bank” carved out of the 2014 near-collapse of its former parent, and its main shareholder today is the South African Reserve Bank. It is also managing a leadership change, after former chief executive Kennedy Bungane resigned suddenly in March and Zweli Manyathi stepped in as interim CEO. Manyathi, who has previously said the acquisitions created duplication and inefficiencies, framed the cuts as painful but unavoidable. “We understand that this is a difficult period for the business and our people,” he said, “however, it is necessary for the future sustainability of the business.” At the end of 2025 it ran 399 branches, rising to 418 once kiosks and mobile bus branches are counted. The bank says it remains capitalised above regulatory minimums with enough liquidity to meet its obligations. What happens next rests with Sasbo, whose feedback will shape how deep the cuts go and how quickly. ### Coronation is walking away from the world's hottest trade URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/coronation-is-walking-away-from-the-worlds-hottest-trade/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T11:22:23.000Z Coronation Asset Management has decided the artificial-intelligence trade has run too hot to keep chasing. The manager, which oversees R773 billion, has trimmed its exposure to chipmakers and shifted money towards India, telling clients that expectations for AI stocks have risen to levels that are nearly impossible to beat. ## Cashing out of chips The move played out in Coronation's R51 billion Global Emerging Markets Fund, which cut its combined holding in SK Hynix and Taiwan Semiconductor to around 5% in the second quarter, down from about 8% at the end of December. The managers who run the fund — Gavin Joubert, Iakovos Mekios and Suhail Suleman — say they are “finding very little margin of safety in most Taiwanese and South Korean stocks today”. Their read on memory chips, the components feeding the data-centre boom, is blunt: prices “have risen to well above any sensible, normalised level”. They expect those prices to stay high for a few years on AI demand before more supply eventually drags them back down. It is not an academic worry — SK Hynix, the poster child of this year's boom, has already slid almost 40% from its June peak, hit in part by South Korean authorities moving to cool a retail-trading frenzy in the stock. ## Betting on a rebound instead The cash has gone to India, where the fund lifted its allocation to just under 12%. The managers moved after the Indian market “de-rated sharply following a prolonged period of pessimism tied to geopolitical and economic concerns”. They re-established a position in Mahindra & Mahindra, which they view as a turnaround story after a weak farming season and a broader slowdown, and added to Bajaj Finance, HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank. Coronation is not alone in cooling on chips: Franklin Templeton's main emerging-markets fund has also pulled back from chipmakers, tilting instead towards Chinese internet names such as Alibaba and Tencent. For Coronation, part of India's appeal is precisely that it fell out of favour while chips soared. The bigger question is whether this is early caution or a well-timed exit. For now, Coronation is betting that the safer money is in a market most investors spent the past two years avoiding. ### More South Africans are planning for retirement, but far fewer are ready for it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/more-south-africans-are-planning-for-retirement-ar-fewer-are-ready-for-it/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T11:22:15.000Z There is good news buried in FNB's latest look at how South Africans retire, and it is worth saying first: more people are planning. In its fourth annual Retirement Insights Survey, released on 16 July, the bank found that 73% of under-60s now have a retirement plan, up from 60% in 2025\. The sharpest jump came from lower-income earners, where plan ownership more than doubled from 19% to 48%. People are also setting aside more, with under-60s now saving 10% of their disposable income, up from 7% in 2024, and planning rose sharply among 36- to 54-year-olds, from 67% to 85%. ## Planning isn't the same as ready The catch is what happens after the planning stops. Among South Africans already retired, 74% say the cost of living has been higher than they expected, and 46% say healthcare has cost significantly more than they planned for. Family is part of the squeeze too: 51% of over-60s in FNB's personal banking segment said they were caught out by the financial weight of supporting relatives. “The reality of retirement is often more complicated,” said Sizwe Nxedlana, CEO of FNB Private Banking and Wealth Management, pointing to rising food prices, medical aid and family support as the costs that reshape a careful plan. ## The gap between intent and outcome FNB's Lytania Johnson said the numbers show the retirement conversation “is gaining ground”, especially among lower-income savers, but warned that saving more is not the same as knowing whether it will be enough. The survey points to one factor that separates those who cope from those who don't: people who hold products built for retirement, such as retirement annuities, are six times more likely to have a plan that actually works. Over-60s without those products are two to three times more likely to end up worse off than they expected. Even among those still without a plan, 53% say they simply cannot afford to save, while a growing share — 24%, almost double last year's 13% — say they don't know where to find the right products. As more South Africans start putting money away, the test for the industry is turning that good intent into retirements people can actually afford. ### Cartrack’s subscriber growth sped up when many expected it to slow down URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cartracks-subscriber-growth-sped-up-when-many-expected-it-to-slow-down/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T11:22:08.000Z Cartrack, the vehicle-tracking brand most South Africans know from the little box fitted in their car, just posted its strongest quarter yet. Its owner, Karooooo, added a record 142,472 net subscribers in the three months to the end of May, lifting Cartrack's total base 18% past 2.8 million. That was 70% more additions than the same quarter a year earlier. ## Home did the heavy lifting The standout came from South Africa, where net new sign-ups jumped 92%. It is a notable result given the backdrop: a stronger rand was trimming the value of earnings Karooooo makes in its other markets. Even so, Cartrack's subscription revenue rose 19% to R1.35 billion, and grew 21% stripping out currency swings. Annualised recurring revenue — the run-rate of its subscription income — reached R5.43 billion, up 32% in US-dollar terms. Group operating profit climbed 16% to a record R410 million despite the currency drag, though Cartrack's operating margin eased to 28% from 30% a year earlier. Adjusted earnings per share rose 11% to R9.53\. “FY2027 has commenced with strong, accelerated growth,” said group chief executive and founder Zak Calisto, whose group owns all of Cartrack and 81% of its logistics arm. ## Spending now to grow later There was one softer number. Free cash flow — the cash left after running costs and investment — fell to R60 million from R338 million a year earlier, as the group poured money into the in-vehicle devices it needs to sign customers up faster. It is a familiar trade for a subscription business: spend upfront to lock in years of recurring revenue. Karooooo Logistics, the group's delivery arm, added its own momentum, with revenue up 46% to R177 million on strong quick-commerce demand. The group ended May with R755 million in net cash, and cash from operations before working-capital moves rose 21% to R690 million. Karooooo reaffirmed its full-year outlook, guiding to Cartrack subscription-revenue growth of 18% to 24% and earnings per share of R38.50 to R40\. The question for the rest of the year is whether all that upfront spending keeps converting into subscribers as quickly as it did this quarter. ### South Africa's tech jobs are going unfilled — and it isn't only about degrees URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-tech-jobs-are-going-unfilled-and-it-isnt-only-about-degrees/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T11:22:00.000Z South Africa keeps advertising tech jobs it struggles to fill. Recruitment platform Pnet says demand for IT skills is outpacing the available talent, with only about 42% of applicants holding the qualifications most advertised roles require. The shortages are worst in specialised jobs such as technical and business architects, and they carry a cost: project delays, slower digital transformation and higher spending on hiring and keeping staff. The mismatch runs beyond IT, too — Pnet's data shows engineering, IT and healthcare are the hardest hit, with nearly 80% of engineering roles demanding a degree that fewer than half of applicants hold. ## A shortage, or a readiness gap? Not everyone agrees on the diagnosis. The non-profit Collective X, which helps young people into entry-level tech work, argues South Africa does not have a talent shortage so much as a “work-ready talent gap”. Its 2025 research counted about 118,500 ICT vacancies nationally, with more than 40,000 junior-level digital jobs left unfilled. “The disconnect is not about qualifications; it is about workplace experience,” said the group's Deidre Samson, who wants to see far more work-integrated learning. Pnet's own broader data points the same way: over the past year 54% of job ads required a degree, but only 36% of applicants met that bar. Pnet's head of data, Anja Bates, called the gap “a serious structural challenge for businesses, jobseekers and the broader economy”. ## Skills walking out the door Part of the problem is that trained people leave. A recent XpatWeb report listed ICT specialists among South Africa's scarcest skills, noting that local professionals are increasingly drawn to Australia, Canada, the UK and the US for better pay and prospects. Pnet's Michelle Dobson says the fix has to start early, with “sustained investment in young people” and closer work between government, business and non-profits. Employers are beginning to respond: Telkom said last week it was setting up an institute to build AI and digital skills, with group CEO Serame Taukobong calling it “our commitment to ensuring that connectivity translates into skills, jobs and opportunity”. Whether those efforts close a gap this wide — against youth unemployment above 45% — is the test that matters. ### Absa is bankrolling electric cars, and quietly staging a comeback URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/absa-is-bankrolling-electric-cars-and-quietly-staging-a-comeback/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T03:44:59.000Z Absa is making two bets at once, and they are really the same bet. In July 2026 the bank teamed up with BYD, now South Africa's second-best-selling electric and hybrid brand, to launch BYD Finance, a package aimed squarely at the fastest-growing corner of the car market. The offer: a below-prime interest rate for the first 1,000 buyers, up to 20% off insurance, flexible instalments and a guaranteed future value on the car. ## Riding an electric boom The timing is pointed. Sales of new-energy vehicles, the catch-all for electric and plug-in hybrid cars, jumped 78.8% in the first five months of 2026 against the year before, with plug-in hybrids surging 681% and pure battery cars up 193%. BYD has ridden that wave to 2,011 units so far this year and a 52-dealer network it wants to grow to 80 by year-end. Charl Potgieter, who runs Absa's vehicle and asset finance arm, says the growth in the bank's own electric-car finance book “suggests consumer attitudes are changing”. For Absa, whose footprint spans 14 African countries, financing those cars is a low-risk way to plant a flag in a market that is finally moving. ## The comeback underneath The deal is a window into a bigger story. Under chief executive Kenny Fihla, who took the wheel after the bank churned through six leaders in six years, Absa grew headline earnings 12% to R24.8bn in 2025, nudged its return on equity, a core measure of how hard shareholder money works, to 15%, and saw earnings from its rest-of-Africa business leap 51%. Yet the market still values Absa at just R192bn, less than half of FirstRand and Standard Bank, with the shares down more than 10% this year. That gap is the whole opportunity. Coronation's Top 20 fund has bought in, citing “low market expectations combined with a compelling turnaround story”, even as some investors still smart from a R148m pay deal for Fihla that drew a 43% revolt. Whether financing electric cars and leaning into Africa can finally close the valuation gap is the open question, but Absa is starting to look like a bank with a plan rather than a vacancy sign. ### One entrepreneur's plan to let firms buy their way to a BEE score URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/one-entrepreneurs-plan-to-let-firms-buy-their-way-to-a-bee-score/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T03:29:59.000Z South Africa's black economic empowerment rules have long been a thicket of ownership deals, scorecards and points. Entrepreneur Alan Knott-Craig wants to collapse the whole thing into a single number. His pitch: pay a 3% levy on gross revenue to the taxman, and receive an automatic Level 3 empowerment certificate, the highest rung a company can reach without changing who owns it. ## The 343 idea Knott-Craig calls it “343”, 3% of revenue for a Level 3 score. It would be voluntary, open only to companies not listed on the JSE, and pitched as an alternative to the existing scorecard rather than a replacement. Pay it regularly, he says, and there are no other empowerment requirements to meet. He is adamant it isn't a tax: “The 3% levy is not a tax. Taxes are mandatory. This is voluntary.” The Kululeko Institute behind the idea made a formal submission to the trade department dated 4 March 2026. ## Why revenue, not profit The choice of revenue as the base is deliberate. “Profit can be reduced through accounting choices,” Knott-Craig argues, while revenue is harder to massage, and the taxman already tracks it for VAT. The maths leans on scale: formal business revenue in South Africa was about R12.7 trillion in 2022, so taxing a slice of the non-listed, non-compliant portion is how backers reckon the levy could raise about R40bn a year, or R120bn over three years. The money, he says, is meant to hand preferential capital, skills and market access to aspiring entrepreneurs in townships. Former Reserve Bank deputy governor Kuben Naidoo has thrown his weight behind the concept and floated his own, gentler version: a 5% surcharge on company tax, so a firm assessed to pay R100 would pay R105, raising roughly R5bn a year. Either way, the pitch is the same trade, a clear price in exchange for far less red tape. There is the rub. Knott-Craig insists the 3% is a voluntary levy, but the coverage is already calling it a “new BEE tax”. With the proposal now in official hands, the real question isn't whether empowerment gets funded, but who gets to set the price. ### Netflix just put a $587m price tag on Hollywood's AI anxiety URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/netflix-just-put-a-587m-price-tag-on-hollywoods-ai-anxiety/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T03:14:59.000Z Hollywood's nervous relationship with artificial intelligence just got a number attached. A regulatory filing has revealed that Netflix paid about $587m in cash for InterPositive, the AI filmmaking startup that Ben Affleck co-founded in 2022\. The deal itself was completed back in March 2026; the price only surfaced when Netflix disclosed it to regulators on Friday. The confirmed cash figure sits just below an earlier Bloomberg estimate of up to $600m that had included performance-tied earnouts. ## Not the AI everyone is scared of This isn't the text-to-video technology that has actors and crews on edge. As Netflix's Elizabeth Stone put it, “It's not text to video prompts, but rather tools that fit into real production workflows.” InterPositive's software helps filmmakers fix real-world production headaches in post-production, replacing missing shots, correcting bad lighting and swapping or enhancing backgrounds, without touching the writing, directing or acting. The model was built to understand visual logic and editorial consistency while preserving cinematic rules, and can be used on any live-action film or TV show to reframe a shot or patch a background. ## Affleck's careful framing Affleck, who stays on as a senior adviser, has been at pains to cast the technology as pro-human. “I knew I had a responsibility to my peers and our industry, to protect the power of human creativity and the people behind it,” he said. He argues the tools take out “all the logistical, difficult, technical stuff that often gets in the way”, and frames the payoff for viewers bluntly: “You're getting more episodes of your favorite shows. You're getting more human work.” It is a notable shift in tone from the actor-director, who warned in 2024 that visual-effects shops were “in trouble” and that AI would strip out the “more laborious, less creative and more costly aspects of filmmaking.” For Netflix, $587m buys a bet that the winning AI play in entertainment is the invisible kind, tools that quietly patch footage rather than replace the people who shoot it. Whether the rest of Hollywood reads that as reassurance, or as a warning shot dressed up as one, is the next act. ### Sasol is riding the oil spike, and the Reserve Bank is watching URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sasol-is-riding-the-oil-spike-and-the-reserve-bank-is-watching/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T03:00:00.000Z Nothing lifts an oil-and-coal share quite like a fresh war premium, and Sasol is proving the point. Since US President Donald Trump declared the ceasefire “over” on 8 July, the stock has rallied, adding 2.6% to R188.21 on Friday, while Thungela, the pure-play coal miner spun out of Anglo American in 2021, gained 12.5% over the week. Last month's memorandum of understanding between the two sides, which had sent a sigh of relief through energy markets, has seemingly collapsed, and traders have re-priced fast. ## Oil does the heavy lifting The engine behind the move is crude, and for a company that turns coal and gas into fuel, a higher oil price flatters the whole business. Brent topped $85 a barrel on Friday for the first time in over a month, capping its biggest weekly gain since April. By Monday the escalation had pushed Brent above $90, up 2.4% to $90.18, while US crude rose 2.1% to around $84, as a ninth straight day of US attacks on Iran, which struck back at targets across the region, rattled shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Just a handful of ships made the crossing on Sunday, and Tehran claimed to have hit two of them. ## The sting in the tail Higher oil is good news for Sasol but awkward for almost everyone else. The same spike has pressured the rand, which hit R16.57 to the dollar early on Monday before settling around R16.47 by mid-morning, weaker than the R16.23 it traded at over the weekend. And it has raised the odds of another interest-rate hike. The Reserve Bank's rate-setting committee is likely to lift rates when it meets on 23 July to prevent inflation from becoming entrenched, analysts say, with another precautionary 25 basis-point increase now firmly on the table as oil prices climb on the renewed Middle East conflict. For now the war premium cuts both ways: a windfall for energy shares like Sasol and Thungela, and a headache for households facing a weaker rand and the prospect of dearer money. The 23 July meeting is where the second half of that trade gets tested. ### Why the mood in commercial property just soured overnight URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/why-the-mood-in-commercial-property-just-soured-overnight/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T02:44:59.000Z South Africa's commercial property recovery has hit a wall. FNB's latest broker survey shows satisfaction with the market crashing to 39% in the second quarter of 2026, down from 69% just three months earlier, as a weaker economy and geopolitical tension knocked business confidence. FNB senior economist Siphamandla Mkhwanazi ties the slump to higher operating costs linked to the Middle East conflict and the interest-rate response that followed. It is the same deterioration showing up across the wider economy, not a property-only wobble. ## Offices, still the problem child The weak spot stays where it has been for years: offices. Empty desks, limited tenant expansion and hybrid working keep dragging on demand. In Johannesburg, landlords are giving up on some buildings altogether, with residential and mixed-use conversions now making up about 43% of office deal activity as owners repurpose space nobody wants to rent. ## Where it is still working It isn't all gloom. Industrial and logistics stayed the strongest corner of the market, propped up by demand for warehousing and supply-chain space. Retail kept recovering too, with Cape Town and Nelson Mandela Bay leading the way. FNB still sees the broader economy inching forward, from about 1.1% growth in 2025 toward 1.2% this year. But until the rate picture settles, brokers are likely to stay cautious, and the office market will keep testing how much reinvention it can take. ### The foreigners quietly buying up Cape Town's priciest streets URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-foreigners-quietly-buying-up-cape-towns-priciest-streets/ Last updated: 2026-07-21T02:30:00.000Z Cape Town has spent a decade turning into South Africa's magnet for foreign property money, and the numbers behind it are finally out. Property data house Lightstone reckons overseas buyers spent about R153bn on homes in the city between 2016 and 2025, comfortably ahead of the R107bn they put into Johannesburg. Even so, Cape Town stayed the country's single biggest destination for foreign capital over the ten years. ## Small slice, top shelf Foreigners are barely a rounding error in the overall market, at just 6% of South Africa's residential housing and roughly the same slice of the 2.39 million or so home sales done over the decade. But they don't spread themselves evenly. They cluster where the prices are steepest: 15% of sales between R4m and R10m, 26% of sales between R10m and R20m, and 39% of everything sold above R20m. As Lightstone's Hayley Ivins-Downes, who heads its real estate services, put it, “two out of every five homes valued at more than R20 million were bought by a foreign buyer.” The pattern is hard to miss: the higher the price tag, the more likely the buyer is holding a foreign passport. ## Where the money lands The clearest picture is in the Atlantic Seaboard's quieter enclaves. In Llandudno, 67 of the 102 homes sold since 2015 went to foreign buyers, at an average of R29.2m apiece, which works out to roughly two of every three properties in the village. Nearby Bakoven and Camps Bay saw just under half of all sales involve international buyers. Zoom out to the province and the Western Cape leads the country for foreign interest at 7.8%, followed by Gauteng and then Limpopo. The takeaway isn't that foreigners are buying up the whole country, because they clearly aren't. It's that a small pool of overseas money is quietly setting the pace at the very top of Cape Town's market, taking 39% of every sale above R20m and two-thirds of a village like Llandudno. As long as the rand keeps that top end looking like a bargain in dollars or pounds, that pressure isn't likely to ease. ### Uber wants to own takeaways almost everywhere, and it's buying Delivery Hero to do it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/uber-wants-to-own-dinner-almost-everywhere-and-its-buying-delivery-hero-to-do-it/ Last updated: 2026-07-18T05:59:59.000Z Uber wants to own your takeaway, almost everywhere. The ride-hailing giant has confirmed an offer to buy Germany's Delivery Hero, one of the world's largest food-delivery groups, in a deal valuing it at about $14.8bn. Uber is offering shareholders €41.50 a share in cash, and Delivery Hero confirmed the advanced talks on 14 July. ## A global takeaway empire Delivery Hero is not a household name, but its brands are: Glovo, foodpanda, talabat, PedidosYa and Baemin, spanning roughly 50 markets across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Its strongholds include talabat in the Middle East and PedidosYa in Latin America, franchises that would hand Uber instant scale in regions where Uber Eats is comparatively thin. Buying it would push the enlarged group into 99 markets, far beyond Uber Eats' heartland. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi framed the prize bluntly, saying the deal would roughly double the size of Uber's addressable mobility and delivery markets. ## The antitrust workaround Swallowing a rival that big invites regulators. To defuse the overlap, Uber has lined up a New York investment firm, SSW Partners, to buy Delivery Hero's operations in 14 markets for about $1.6bn, covering foodora in Austria, Czechia, Norway and Sweden, Glovo in Spain, Portugal, Poland, Romania and Moldova, and several others where the two companies compete head-to-head. It is a pre-emptive carve-out designed to smooth the path past competition authorities. ## The African angle For South African readers, the thread worth following is Glovo, which operates across parts of Africa. A change of ownership at this scale rarely leaves local operations untouched, and it folds Africa's fast-growing on-demand delivery market into a much bigger global contest between Uber and the handful of players left standing. The price tag has climbed as talks advanced, from about €10bn when Uber first approached in May to €12.5bn by mid-July, a sign of how badly Uber wants to consolidate the business of bringing dinner to your door. The offer still needs shareholder acceptance and regulatory clearance, so the map may yet be redrawn before any of it is final. ### Amazon takes the door Starlink slammed, bringing satellite internet to SA in 2027 URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/amazon-takes-the-door-starlink-slammed-bringing-satellite-internet-to-sa-in-2027/ Last updated: 2026-07-17T03:44:59.000Z For years, satellite internet in South Africa has really been the Starlink story: Elon Musk refusing to meet local ownership rules, branding them "racist", and staying out while his service went live across much of the continent. Now Amazon has walked through a different door. The company said it will launch its Amazon Leo satellite service in South Africa in 2027 through Herotel, the Maziv-owned provider, which will sell it to homes and small businesses as a service called Evry, with sign-ups already open. Communications minister Solly Malatsi joined the announcement, giving the deal a government stamp. ## The workaround Starlink wouldn't take The structure is the real news. Herotel will hold the ICASA licences, so Amazon never needs its own, neatly sidestepping the rule requiring 30% ownership by historically disadvantaged groups that has kept Starlink out of the country. It is the very requirement Musk refused to meet, even as Starlink launched across roughly two dozen other African markets. Where SpaceX dug in, Amazon simply partnered with a licence holder and moved on. ## What Evry promises For customers, Evry is pitched at the parts of the country fibre never reached. It promises download speeds of up to 300Mbit/s, with Amazon's larger residential antenna rated up to 400Mbit/s, and latency of around 50ms. Those speeds ride on a constellation Amazon is spending more than $10bn to build. "We have always believed that South Africans outside the major metros, whether on farms, in small towns, in townships or in rural communities, deserve reliable, affordable internet," said Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha. Two cautions temper the excitement. Amazon has not switched on a commercial Leo service anywhere in the world yet, with only about 390 satellites in orbit so far, and while it calls this its first such deal in Africa, its own executive would not confirm that claim. Even so, for the millions of South Africans beyond fibre's reach, a credible Starlink rival arriving with government backing changes the map, and it puts a 2027 date on when the race for the rural customer really begins. There is a subplot worth watching, too: Vodacom holds a 30% stake in Herotel's parent, Maziv, so South Africa's biggest mobile operator already sits close to the country's first big satellite-internet play. ### Toyota builds the new Hilux at home, and bets on Durban over the doubters URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/toyota-builds-the-new-hilux-at-home-and-bets-on-durban-over-the-doubters/ Last updated: 2026-07-17T03:29:59.000Z South Africa's best-selling vehicle just got a new home on the line. On Thursday, President Cyril Ramaphosa switched on a brand-new production line for the latest-generation Toyota Hilux at the carmaker's Prospecton plant, south of Durban harbour, joined by trade minister Parks Tau and Toyota South Africa boss Andrew Kirby. For a bakkie that has topped the national sales charts for years, the line-off is more than ceremony: it marks the start of local production of the new model and, by Moneyweb's reckoning, the plant's biggest new capital project since the 2022 floods. That flood context matters. The 2022 KwaZulu-Natal deluge shut Prospecton for months and caused millions of rand in damage, so a fresh investment here reads as a vote of confidence in a plant that has had a hard few years. ## What we know about the money The new line sits inside Toyota's R10.4bn KwaZulu-Natal investment, pledged at last year's South Africa Investment Conference as part of a record R415bn in national commitments and more than half of the roughly R20bn flowing into the country's car sector. There is a caveat worth keeping: Toyota promised more detail at the event, and it is not yet clear how much of that R10.4bn is this Hilux line specifically, versus other models the plant builds. Treat the headline figure as Toyota's broader local bet, not the price tag on a single line. ## Why now The timing is pointed. Chinese carmakers are pouring into South Africa, some setting up local plants, including Chery's move into the old Nissan site in Rosslyn. Against that, Toyota is choosing to build its flagship at home, even as Kirby warns that high energy, logistics and labour costs risk tipping the industry towards premature deindustrialisation. Keeping the Hilux, and its jobs, on South African soil is the answer he is betting on. The open question is whether policy moves fast enough to make that bet pay off. The R10.4bn was framed at the conference as backing the auto sector's shift to new-energy vehicles, part of a record R415bn pledged across all nine provinces. And Prospecton is not a one-model site: it also builds minibus taxis, a reminder of how much local employment leans on this single plant staying competitive. ### Old Mutual's R300m CEO prize just drew a shareholder rebuke URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/old-mutuals-r300m-ceo-prize-just-drew-a-shareholder-rebuke/ Last updated: 2026-07-17T03:14:59.000Z Old Mutual thought it had solved the alignment problem. Faced with a share price stuck near R14 and a valuation dwarfed by its rivals, the insurer dangled a R300m prize in front of new chief executive Jurie Strydom, payable only if he lifts the stock to R21.74 or higher by May 2030\. At the annual meeting, shareholders made clear they are not convinced. ## A vote that stung The remuneration policy and implementation report each won a majority, but both fell short of the 75% threshold that matters under South Africa's advisory-vote rules, landing at 68.39% and 70.72%. That forces the board into fresh engagement with dissenters. It is a bruising signal for a company already trading at a heavy discount: Old Mutual is valued at about R59bn, against the R188bn the market puts on rival Sanlam. Over five years, Old Mutual's shares are up just 18%, while Sanlam has surged 50% on an aggressive acquisition run. ## What the R300m actually is The award is not a cash bonus. Strydom received R300m worth of share appreciation rights at a strike price of R10.87, equal to 27.6-million rights, with upside capped at double the strike, so he only wins if shareholders win big first. The board argues the hurdles are "transparent and challenging", especially after the share price fell 4.3% in the five years before he arrived. Investors, though, are less rejecting incentives than questioning the fit. "I don't interpret the result of the vote as investors rejecting strong incentives; it looks more like they are asking whether management's incentives and shareholder returns are aligned," said MP9 Asset Management's Aheesh Singh. For Strydom, the message is blunt: the market will judge the turnaround by the share price, and so, in the end, will his own payout. Context sharpens the discomfort. Strydom took the top job just over a year ago, and the award is deliberately structured over a seven-to-nine-year horizon to lock him in for the long haul. The board says it will now hold high-level meetings with dissenting shareholders to better understand their concerns, the standard next step when a remuneration vote misses the mark. For a group whose shares have gone almost nowhere while a rival raced ahead, the AGM was less a rebuke of the size of the prize than a warning shot about performance. ### The Ozempic price war reaches South Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-ozempic-price-war-reaches-south-africa/ Last updated: 2026-07-17T02:59:59.000Z The weight-loss drug boom just gained a cheaper challenger in South Africa. India's Sun Pharma has won approval from the health regulator, SAHPRA, to manufacture and sell a generic version of semaglutide, the active ingredient behind Novo Nordisk's blockbuster Ozempic and Wegovy, making South Africa only the second market, after India, where it has cleared the generic. ## Why now The timing is no accident. Novo Nordisk's patent on semaglutide lapsed in March, opening the door to a wave of cheaper copies from local and international drugmakers. Sun Pharma plans to launch within days, selling its version as a pre-filled, multi-dose pen in two strengths, 2mg and 4mg, for once-weekly use. The approval covers adults with inadequately controlled type 2 diabetes. Sun Pharma cast the clearance as proof it can make complex generics to global quality standards, offering the pen at 2mg/1.5mL and 4mg/3mL for flexible weekly dosing. ## A crowded, pricey market South Africa's weight-loss and diabetes market has been dominated by Eli Lilly's Mounjaro and Novo's Ozempic and Wegovy, premium products that have also spawned a grey market of cheaper compounded copies. Regulators have been trying to rein that in, even as demand for lower-cost treatment surges. A licensed generic changes the maths: it offers a cheaper, regulator-approved alternative to both the originators and the compounded knock-offs. "We remain committed to improving access to generics and making evidence-based treatment options available to patients and healthcare professionals," said Sun Pharma COO Aalok Shanghvi. For patients priced out of the originals, that competition matters, especially with type 2 diabetes rates climbing in South Africa. The question now is how quickly the generic reaches pharmacy shelves, and how far it pulls down the cost of a treatment that has become as much a lifestyle phenomenon as a medical one. The entry also turns up the heat on Eli Lilly, whose own diabetes and obesity blockbusters have found a ready South African market. Sun Pharma confirmed the approval on Wednesday and said the same ability to develop complex generics that meet stringent quality standards is what let it clear the drug in a second market so soon after India. For a country facing a rising type 2 diabetes burden, a locally approved, lower-cost semaglutide could widen access well beyond those who can afford the branded originals. ### Virgin Active is betting big that luxury gyms sell, right before it plans to list URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/virgin-active-is-betting-big-that-luxury-gyms-sell-right-before-it-lists/ Last updated: 2026-07-17T02:44:59.000Z Virgin Active has a theory it is now spending hard to prove: that South Africans, and the well-heeled elsewhere, will pay serious money for a gym that behaves more like a country club. The health-club operator is rolling out large-format "social wellness clubs" across seven markets, ahead of a listing or sale within two years. ## The Point proof Its clearest test case is at home. Virgin Active poured R130m (£5.7m) into a complete overhaul of its Point flagship in Cape Town, which reopened in February with pools, padel, recovery facilities and co-working built in. It also pushed the price up sharply: a standard membership went from R1,500 to R2,499 a month on a 12-month deal. The gamble appears to be paying off. Membership dipped to 7,600 during the refurbishment but recovered to 8,900 by the end of March despite the increase, and revenue at the club is up 43% year-on-year. Virgin says the club is already generating a 16% return on invested capital, which it expects to climb to 37% as it matures. ## A roll-out before a listing Point is one of four clubs opened or upgraded so far, alongside sites in Sydney, Doha and Mayfair, with Milan due in early 2027\. Over the medium term, Virgin plans 37 new clubs, the bulk of them in Italy, plus more in London, four in South Africa and one in Singapore. CEO Dean Kowarski frames the concept as a "second space" between home and office. "It's that intentional space in between, where a lifestyle, all inclusive of training, recovery, focus, work connection, nutrition, restoration and community, is designed to coexist," he says. Behind the fitness talk sits a corporate endgame. Parent company Brait has begun preparing the paperwork for a listing, most likely in the UK with a secondary offer on the JSE, and needs the profits from this premium push to show up first. The clubs, in other words, are as much a pre-listing story as a fitness one. The pattern repeats abroad. Its first social wellness club, at Sydney's Westfield Bondi Junction, opened in July 2025 for £6.5m and already carries 2,400 members, while a London upgrade at Chiswick Riverside lifted membership 15% and revenue 23%. Each new site, Virgin argues, is a repeatable template rather than a one-off splurge. ### PayJustNow lands on TFG's Bash, and buy now, pay later creeps further into your cart URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/payjustnow-lands-on-tfgs-bash-and-buy-now-pay-later-creeps-further-into-your-cart/ Last updated: 2026-07-17T02:29:59.000Z Buy now, pay later keeps working its way deeper into how South Africans shop. From 15 July, PayJustNow went live on Bash, TFG's fast-growing online store, letting shoppers split a purchase into three interest-free instalments or stretch bigger buys over 12 months on its "Pay in 12" plan. It extends a partnership that already runs across 29 TFG brand and lifestyle stores, now following the customer online. ## Why Bash matters The move lands exactly where TFG's growth is. In its latest results, the retailer reported that online sales in TFG Africa jumped 49.2%, a sign of how much heavier digital is getting even in a tough consumer market. Adding a flexible-payment option at checkout is a way to nudge hesitant shoppers over the line on fashion, beauty, homeware and electronics. "Customers increasingly expect flexibility throughout their shopping journey, including how they pay," said Bash co-founder Luke Jedeikin. ## The numbers behind the pitch PayJustNow is not a minnow. It says it has more than a million active customers at any given time, and signs up over 100,000 new users a month. Its typical three-instalment basket is about R1,400, with customers placing an average of 13 orders, while its Pay in 12 product runs closer to R2,500\. Those repeat-purchase numbers are the real sell to retailers: buy now, pay later is less about a single sale than about keeping engaged shoppers coming back. For consumers, the appeal is obvious in a stretched economy, but so is the risk of spreading spending you cannot comfortably repay. "By launching on Bash, we are giving them more choice online, while helping retailers connect with engaged shoppers who already understand and use PayJustNow," said PayJustNow COO Dean Hyde. The bigger question is how far buy now, pay later keeps spreading across South African checkouts, and how regulators respond as it does. PayJustNow, for its part, frames flexible payment as a retail weapon rather than a favour. "Flexible payments are becoming part of the customer experience. They can support conversion at checkout, help protect and boost basket value, and encourage repeat purchasing over time," Hyde said, adding that the Bash launch is part of a wider push to put the option wherever South Africans choose to shop. Note the split in the product: the three-instalment plan is interest-free, but the longer Pay in 12 option carries interest, so the "flexibility" is not always free. ### Coca-Cola's African bottler is one regulator away from the JSE URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/coca-colas-african-bottler-is-one-regulator-away-from-the-jse/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T09:00:59.000Z London-listed Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company says it remains on course for a secondary listing on the JSE this year, after South Africa's Competition Commission recommended approval of its $2.6bn deal to buy Coca-Cola Beverages Africa. The commission said on Monday it would advocate for the Competition Tribunal to approve the transaction, with conditions — one of which is the Johannesburg listing HBC had already committed to. "We remain on track to complete the acquisition by the end of 2026 and are continuing to work through the customary regulatory approvals," the company told Business Day. "We also remain on track with preparations for the secondary listing of our shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange." ## What the commission asked for The endorsement came with strings. Alongside the JSE listing, the commission attached a moratorium on retrenchments and a commitment to invest in the downstream distribution and retail side of the South African business. The commission said it takes the view that the transaction "is unlikely to substantially lessen or prevent competition in any market." Final sign-off now rests with the tribunal. $2.6bnPrice for 75% of Coca-Cola Beverages AfricaR395bnCoca-Cola HBC's market value in LondonSource: Business Day ## Why HBC wants Africa HBC announced in October that it would buy 75% of CCBA from The Coca-Cola Company and Gutsche Family Investments. The deal creates the world's second-largest Coca-Cola bottling partner by volume and lifts HBC's footprint to 43 countries from 29\. CCBA is already the biggest Coke bottler on the continent, accounting for roughly 40% of all Coca-Cola volumes sold in Africa. It also shifts HBC's centre of gravity away from Russia, its top-selling market in 2024 at about 13% of revenue — a market ratings agency S&P has flagged as a growth risk given sanctions over the war in Ukraine. S&P estimates that once the deal closes, South Africa will overtake Russia as HBC's largest market at roughly 15% of total revenues. ## What it means A secondary listing does not raise new money for the JSE, but it does put a large, hard-currency consumer business on a bourse that has been shrinking for years — and one whose earnings South African savers can own directly through local funds. The retrenchment moratorium is the part worth watching. CCBA announced plans to cut more than 600 jobs in September 2025, so the commission's conditions are a response to a live concern rather than a formality. How binding they prove will be settled at the tribunal. ## Sources - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/2026-07-15-coca-cola-hbc-moves-closer-to-jse-listing-after-ccba-deal-clears-key-hurdle/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [News24 Business](https://www.news24.com/business/companies/watchdog-clears-coca-cola-deal-in-sa-wants-assurances-on-jse-listing-and-jobs-20260713-1048?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Union vows to fight De Beers over 1,214 job cuts at its only SA diamond mine URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/union-vows-to-fight-de-beers-over-1-214-job-cuts-at-its-only-sa-diamond-mine/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T08:00:00.000Z De Beers is pausing production at Venetia, its only South African diamond mine, for two years to cut costs — and the National Union of Mineworkers says it will fight the job losses that come with it. The miner has issued a Section 189A notice, the formal step a large employer must take before mass retrenchments, putting 1,214 jobs on the line: 1,134 permanent workers at Venetia in Limpopo and another 80 at De Beers Sightholder Sales South Africa. Venetia employs about 3,500 people in all and accounts for roughly a tenth of De Beers' global output, so a two-year stoppage reaches well beyond the mine gates into the towns, contractors and suppliers that depend on it. ## A two-year production pause De Beers announced on Monday that it would halt production at Venetia for the next two years, part of a wider cost-cutting drive as the diamond industry grapples with weak prices, oversupply and the rapid rise of cheaper lab-grown stones. For the workers and the Limpopo communities built around the mine, a pause this long raises the obvious fear: how many of those jobs actually come back when — or if — production restarts? ## Why the union is pushing back The NUM called the plan a “devastating” blow to workers, their families and the communities that rely on the mine, and rejected the retrenchments outright. It wants De Beers to explore alternative cost-cutting measures before cutting a single job, and has called on the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, the Department of Employment and Labour and organised labour to intervene urgently to protect the 1,214 posts. The union argues that a mine of Venetia's size is too important to the local economy to be idled without a fight. ## What happens next A Section 189A notice starts a formal consultation process rather than an immediate cut, which gives the union and government a window to push for alternatives. But with De Beers framing the pause as necessary to survive a brutal diamond market, the two sides are starting far apart. Whether Venetia's workers keep their jobs will hinge on those talks — and on whether the diamond price recovers enough to make the mine worth running at full tilt again. ### The R3-trillion fund guarding your pension is now under investigation URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-r3-trillion-fund-guarding-your-pension-is-now-under-investigation/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T03:44:59.000Z South Africa's financial regulator has trained its sights on the biggest investor in the country. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority said late on Tuesday it will investigate the Public Investment Corporation — the state-owned manager of more than R3-trillion, most of it government workers' pension savings, and the single largest shareholder on the JSE. It is a rare move for one arm of the state to formally probe another, and a measure of how seriously the regulator is taking the turmoil at the fund. ## What triggered it The timing is no accident. A day earlier the PIC board suspended chief executive Patrick Dlamini, barely a year into a job he took in June 2025 with a mandate to clean up the fund's troubled unlisted investment book, the Isibaya Fund, which has been dogged by underperformance and poor investments for years. The board said it wanted to give Dlamini space to answer allegations of impropriety raised in a whistleblower report. His acting investment chief, August van Heerden, is also leaving — five months after the exit of his predecessor, Kabelo Rikhotso. The FSCA said “events over recent months raise serious questions” about whether the fund is upholding the standards of governance and transparency expected of it, and confirmed it is acting under section 135 of the Financial Sector Regulation Act, the provision that lets it formally examine a financial institution. ## Why every South African has a stake The PIC is not a household name, but it manages the retirement money of government workers across the public service, which is why its stability matters far beyond its Pretoria headquarters. The concerns are not new: last month PIC chair and deputy finance minister David Masondo asked the Special Investigating Unit to review an empowerment deal that ended in the fund paying out more than R400 million. Because the PIC holds commanding stakes across the companies that make up the JSE, a wobble in confidence there does not stay contained — it touches the savings of millions and can ripple through the market as a whole. The regulator says the fund bears “heightened responsibilities” precisely because it guards public money. What the investigation turns up will shape trust in an institution most South Africans never think about, but quietly depend on. ### Young South Africans are buying Chinese cars — but not Chinese clothes URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/young-south-africans-are-buying-chinese-cars-but-not-chinese-clothes/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T03:29:59.000Z Standard Bank went digging through five years of its own car-loan and card data to see what young South Africans actually spend on, and one trend stood out above the rest: Chinese cars. Brands like Chery and Haval are now the fastest-growing part of the market, with deals up more than 423% over five years, according to the bank's 2026 Youth Barometer, compiled with research agency Youth Dynamix. ## New cars, not hand-me-downs What's striking is that young buyers trust these brands enough to buy them new: 68% of the Chinese cars financed by under-35s were brand new, helped by keen pricing, improving technology and 60- to 72-month payment plans, often with a balloon payment at the end. Choice has exploded too, from about five Chinese brands in South Africa in 2020 to 25 manufacturers offering more than 100 models today, and Chinese-brand deals jumped another 17% in just the four months to April. Toyota and Volkswagen still sell the most overall, and by financed value Japanese, German and Chinese makers hold 33%, 32% and 10%. In all, the bank financed R89.2 billion of vehicles since 2021, with under-35s making up 34.9% — most earning between R20,000 and R50,000 a month, and most still choosing second-hand cars overall even as they buy Chinese new. ## Careful with credit, cool on Shein The report also finds young people using credit more strategically as they age, typically starting with credit cards and overdrafts before moving into personal loans; under-35s now account for almost a third of all new revolving credit. Missed payments are highest among 18-to-24s but fall as buyers build a track record. Fashion tells the opposite story to cars. Among 18-to-24s, local retailers Mr Price, PEP and Ackermans top the list, and TFG's homegrown Bash platform outranks Shein, which slips to fourth and drops out of the rankings entirely among older shoppers. On food, quick-service brands dominate young wallets, led by KFC. The picture is a generation spending with its eyes open: quick to back a Chinese car when the value is undeniable, loyal to local brands when it isn't. As the report puts it, for many young South Africans a car “is often less about luxury and more about necessity”. ### Cartier's boom just sent Richemont sparkling on the JSE URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/cartiers-boom-just-sent-richemont-sparkling-on-the-jse/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T03:14:59.000Z Johann Rupert's Richemont has delivered the kind of quarter that turns heads on the JSE. The luxury group behind Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Buccellati and Vhernier reported sales of €6.3 billion for the three months to June, up 20% at constant exchange rates and 17% at actual rates — nearly double what analysts had pencilled in. On Wednesday morning its Johannesburg-listed shares jumped 7.5% to about R3,969, the top performer on the bourse and roughly a fifth higher than a year ago. ## Jewellery does the heavy lifting The engine room was Richemont's four jewellery houses, where sales rose 24% at constant rates — a seventh straight quarter of double-digit growth. The gains were unusually broad, spread across every region, channel and brand. Wealthy American shoppers led the way, with sales in the Americas accelerating to +27% (€1.67 billion), while Japan surged 36% (€632 million) on a mix of local spending and tourism. Asia Pacific climbed 27% to €2.07 billion, helped by demand in China, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Taiwan. Even the Middle East and Africa edged back into growth at +3% despite a conflict-driven drop in tourist spending, and Europe added 11% to €1.43 billion on strong demand from local shoppers and North American and Middle Eastern tourists. The steadier specialist-watch division grew 8%. ## Why it matters for SA investors Richemont is one of the JSE's heavyweight dual-listed names, so a 7.5% pop ripples straight through local portfolios, retirement funds and index trackers. The group is also sitting on a robust €9.1 billion cash pile — including a €0.4 billion inflow from selling its stake in travel retailer Avolta — which gives it room to keep investing in its brands even as raw-material costs stay stubbornly high against what the company itself calls a volatile macroeconomic and geopolitical backdrop. Its own-boutique retail channel grew 24% as the group leaned further into selling directly to shoppers rather than through wholesalers. For now the message from the world's wealthy is unmistakable: they are still buying diamonds, gold and fine watches, and demand is broadening rather than narrowing. That is very good news for the house that Rupert chairs — and for the South African savers who, often without realising it, own a slice of it through their pension and index funds. ### A Free State farm is quitting Eskom entirely URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-free-state-farm-is-quitting-eskom-entirely/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T02:59:59.000Z A 2,000-hectare farm in the Free State has decided it is done with Eskom. Belle Rive, which grows seed and ware potatoes, pecans, onions and maize, is going completely off-grid, building a 4.89 megawatt solar array paired with a 20 megawatt-hour battery and distributing the power across roughly 17 kilometres of medium-voltage lines. Its installer, RenEnergy Africa, says the battery is the largest ever privately contracted for an off-grid agricultural operation in South Africa. ## Why a farm needs its own power plant On an operation this size, electricity is not a convenience but a lifeline: cold rooms, irrigation and packhouses cannot simply switch off when the grid does, and peak growing windows leave no margin for interruptions. The battery is sized to carry those critical loads through the night and long overcast spells with no fallback to diesel or the grid, and the engineering team profiled the farm's half-hourly consumption across full seasonal cycles before settling on the design. To put the scale in context, RenEnergy points to nonprofit GreenCape's estimate that South Africa's entire commercial, industrial and agricultural battery market will settle at around 400 megawatt-hours of new installations a year — meaning this single 20MWh system equals about 5% of the national annual total. ## The Eskom maths finally tipped The trigger is cost. Eskom's tariffs for direct customers rose 12.74% in April 2025, on top of hikes of 18.65% in 2023 and 12.72% in 2024, with a further 8.76% landing this April. Electricity already makes up around 6% of farming input costs nationally, and far more for operations heavy on cold chain and irrigation. “We had reached a point where the question wasn't whether to invest in energy independence, but how quickly we could make it happen,” said Belle Rive owner Stanley de Beer. “There's no room for power interruptions when you're managing cold storage and irrigation at this scale.” RenEnergy's Juandré Pitout frames it as a wider shift. Delivering a 20MWh off-grid system across more than 2,000 hectares of active farmland is not a standard brief, he says, because commercial agriculture is seasonal, operationally critical and unforgiving of interruptions. For a growing number of big commercial farms, energy has stopped being a monthly bill to manage and become a capital investment with a defined return, a long asset life and a direct bearing on whether the business stays competitive. ### Stripe just made a $53bn move on PayPal URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/stripe-just-made-a-53bn-move-on-paypal/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T02:44:59.000Z The payments industry has a new megadeal on the table. Stripe, the giant private payments processor, has teamed up with private-equity firm Advent International to offer more than $53 billion for PayPal, according to Reuters. The bid works out to $60.50 a share, about 28% above where PayPal was trading on Tuesday, and it is backed by roughly $50 billion in committed financing from banks — the kind of firepower that signals the bidders are serious. ## A rival turned suitor The striking part is who is doing the buying. Stripe and PayPal have spent years competing to move money for online businesses, so an offer from one for the other is a real role reversal. Under the proposal, Stripe and Advent would each hold 50% of PayPal and keep the company intact rather than carve it up — a sign they want PayPal's brand, its enormous base of users and its merchant network as a whole, not just its parts. The approach follows an earlier one back in April, and so far PayPal has not responded, which leaves the offer sitting in public as a marker rather than an agreed deal. ## Why it matters here PayPal is a familiar name to South African freelancers, online sellers and small exporters who lean on it to get paid by customers abroad, so who ends up owning it is not just a Silicon Valley story. Stripe, meanwhile, is the processing engine behind a vast number of online businesses, and folding PayPal's huge consumer base into that infrastructure would create a payments force of enormous scale. That scale is exactly what would draw scrutiny. A tie-up between two of the biggest names in digital payments would invite hard questions from competition regulators in the United States, Europe and beyond, and any deal would take many months to work through. The approach was reported by Reuters and has not been confirmed by the companies; for South African users, nothing changes today, as PayPal keeps working exactly as before. But a $53 billion opening offer, fully financed and made public, tends to force a response one way or the other, and it puts PayPal's board under pressure to engage. ### Buffett wants his fortune gone in eight years — and Gates is off the list URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/buffett-wants-his-fortune-gone-in-eight-years-and-gates-is-off-the-list/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T02:29:59.000Z Warren Buffett is picking up the pace of giving his fortune away. The 95-year-old chairman of Berkshire Hathaway says his goal is to dispose of all his Berkshire shares within about eight years, accelerating the batches of stock he hands each year to charitable foundations. It is one of the clearest timelines yet on how the world's most famous investor plans to unwind one of the largest fortunes ever assembled. ## Where the billions are going This year's gift underlines the plan. Buffett is handing about one million Berkshire Class B shares to foundations run by his three children — the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation — and a further nine million shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his late wife. Each year's donation is converted from the Class A shares Buffett holds into the Class B shares the foundations receive, a routine that has quietly redistributed his stake for nearly two decades. He has already given away well over half of his Berkshire fortune since he began his annual donations in 2006, and has long promised the overwhelming bulk of his wealth to philanthropy rather than his heirs. Setting a firm eight-year deadline turns that slow drip into a countdown, handing his children's foundations both the money and the timeline to deploy it. ## The Gates snub One long-standing recipient is conspicuously missing. For the first time in roughly two decades, Buffett skipped the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and left it off his list of future gifts. The omission is pointed: it follows a trove of US Justice Department documents released earlier this year that reignited scrutiny of Bill Gates's ties to the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, and Buffett is reportedly holding off on further gifts until he sees how that plays out. For a man who had backed the Gates Foundation for the best part of two decades, quietly dropping it now sends a message as loud as any statement. It is also a reminder to the many investors who track Buffett's every move that even the most celebrated philanthropic partnership can cool — and that the steady disposal of his stake will reshape who holds sway over Berkshire in the years ahead. ### The Creamery was closing — then the buyers showed up URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-creamery-was-closing-then-the-buyers-showed-up/ Last updated: 2026-07-16T02:14:59.000Z Cape Town's ice-cream lovers had 24 hours of whiplash this week. On Monday, Food Lover's Market said it would close The Creamery, the 15-year-old brand it owns through its Seattle Coffee arm, shutting all four shops and the Salt River factory because the business no longer fit its long-term strategic focus. By Tuesday, the story had flipped. ## A change of heart Food Lover's said “a number of parties who see value in the future of The Creamery brand” had reached out, that the Durbanville branch would now stay open, and that it was “hopeful there may be a future for The Creamery in some form”. The reversal followed an outpouring of disappointment from customers on social media — the kind of public affection that can suddenly make a struggling brand look more valuable to an outside buyer than to its current owner. Food Lover's called the original decision to close an “incredibly difficult” one. For now, the stores in Mouille Point, Palmyra Junction and Newlands remain on course to close, and the official end date for the business is still 16 August, so any rescue would need to come together quickly. ## A homegrown favourite The Creamery was founded in 2011 by former chef Kate Schrire and her business partner Marianne Visser, with a simple idea: natural ice cream made from ingredients sourced on local farms. The brand made its name at markets and festivals before opening shops, and its small-batch, farm-to-cone approach and playful flavours — jasmine blossom, strawberry basil, carrot cake — set it apart in a market dominated by mass-produced tubs. It opened its first shop in Newlands in 2013, with a factory in Salt River, and Seattle Coffee, owned by Food Lover's Market, bought the brand during the pandemic, when its previous owners were battling a brutal trading environment. Schrire stayed involved until 2023, by which point the company employed around 65 people. The Creamery built a loyal Cape Town following over 15 years, and that goodwill is part of what makes a rescue plausible: a recognised name with genuine affection behind it is far easier to relaunch than to build from scratch. Whether a new owner steps in will decide if a much-loved local brand gets a second scoop — or joins the long list of pandemic-era acquisitions that quietly melted away. ### Inflation is about to cool. Bank of America still expects a hike next week URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/inflation-is-about-to-cool-bank-of-america-still-expects-a-hike-next-week/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T12:37:19.000Z South Africans hoping the Reserve Bank might sit on its hands next week are likely to be disappointed, at least if Bank of America has read the room correctly. The US lender expects the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee to lift the repo rate by another 25 basis points when it announces its decision on 23 July — even though its own forecasts show inflation about to turn the corner. In its latest South Africa viewpoint report, the bank predicts consumer inflation will accelerate to 4.7% year on year in June before easing back to 4.2% the following month. "CPI could rise to 4.7% in June before slowing to 4.2% in July, as lower fuel prices outweigh higher rental and electricity," it said. Both figures sit above the 2%-4% tolerance band around the Reserve Bank's new 3% target, adopted last year. ## Why cooling prices may not be enough The call turns on expectations rather than the current print. "We expect the SARB to hike by 25 basis points at the July 23 meeting, following the May hike to 7%, and then pause," the bank said. It readily conceded that the case for standing still had improved: "The case for a hold has strengthened somewhat because oil prices have fallen after the mid-June Iran ceasefire, but we lean towards a hike because inflation expectations have moved higher and inflation remains above the Sarb's comfort range." That worry is grounded in hard data. The Bureau for Economic Research's second-quarter survey recorded a jump in inflation expectations across every group polled. Analysts, business leaders and trade union officials lifted their average forecast for 2026 to 4.4% from 3.6%, while their five-year view rose to 4.1% from 3.6%. Households were gloomier still, expecting 6% inflation over the coming year, up from 5.4%. 7.00%Repo rate after the May hikeSource: SARB4.5%Headline inflation, MaySource: Stats SA ## A split committee, again The MPC's six members were divided in May, when two of them preferred to leave the rate at 6.75% rather than push it to 7% — its first increase in three years. Bank of America expects next week's vote to be similarly tight. Producer inflation is not helping the doves' case either, having galloped to 7.8% in May from 4.8% in April, a sign of input costs that firms may still pass on to shoppers. Deputy governor Rashad Cassim has argued the reward for holding the line arrives later. Anchoring expectations close to 3% "will allow us to set lower short-term rates, probably closer to 6% than 7%", he said last month. ## What it means For anyone carrying a bond, a car loan or a credit card, the gap between "inflation is falling" and "rates are rising" is where the money lives. Another 25 basis points would take the prime lending rate from 10.5% to 10.75%, lifting repayments on every rand of variable-rate debt even as the headline number improves. The Bank's reasoning, on this reading, is that it is fighting tomorrow's expected price rise rather than today's actual one — a harder case to sell to a household budget, but the same trade-off Cassim was pointing at: pressure now in exchange for a lower rate floor later. It is worth stressing that this is a forecast, not a decision, and Bank of America itself calls it close. ## Sources - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/economy/2026-07-14-bank-of-america-expects-another-sarb-rate-hike-despite-easing-inflation-outlook/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [IOL / Cape Argus](https://iol.co.za/capeargus/news/2026-07-14-interest-rate-hike-looms-for-south-african-consumers/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### FlySafair found a buyer. The regulator found a catch URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/flysafair-found-a-buyer-the-regulator-found-a-catch/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T12:37:26.000Z FlySafair has spent a decade turning two planes into the airline most South Africans actually fly. It launched in 2014 flying between Johannesburg and Cape Town, and today runs more than 30 jets and carries about 67% of the country's domestic passengers. This week it moved a big step closer to changing hands: on 13 July 2026 the Competition Commission recommended that the Competition Tribunal approve the sale of Safair Holdings, FlySafair's parent, to the infrastructure investor Harith. The recommendation came with a condition, and that condition is the part worth watching. ## The catch is an airport Harith is not an airline. It is an asset manager that finances infrastructure across sectors like energy, transport and healthcare, and it happens to own about 37.5% of Lanseria, the only privately owned international airport in the country. That is the snag. FlySafair's rivals also fly out of Lanseria, so a FlySafair owner with a hand in the airport could, in theory, tilt the field. The Commission's fix was to make both sides promise two things: wall off commercially sensitive information, and charge every airline using Lanseria fair, non-discriminatory terms. ## Why sell in the first place The deeper reason for the deal is a rulebook. FlySafair's Dublin-based parent, ASL Aviation, effectively owns 74.86% of the airline, which trips South Africa's requirement that local carriers be at least 75% locally owned. In early 2025 the licensing council ruled the structure breached that rule and gave FlySafair a year to fix it or risk losing its licence, a ruling that had followed a complaint from rival airline Lift. Selling to Harith, a South African investor partly owned by the state's Public Investment Corporation, does exactly that: it swaps an Irish shareholder for a South African one without pulling a single aircraft from the sky. Harith knows the territory, too, having chased South African Airways until that bid fell apart in 2024 and it turned to FlySafair instead. ## What it's worth, and what comes next Nobody has put an official price on the table, as private-equity deals rarely do. The clue comes from Harith chair Tshepo Mahloele, who has said FlySafair will make up about 15% of Harith's portfolio, pointing to an estimated figure above R8-billion. He has also told Bloomberg he expects the deal to close by the last quarter of 2026\. There is a public-money angle as well: the Public Investment Corporation owns 30% of Harith's asset-management arm, so it stands to earn from the fees the deal throws off. For now the Competition Tribunal holds the final decision, and FlySafair says nothing changes for passengers or staff while it waits. The real test comes later, when the airport's part-owner is flying its own planes out of Lanseria and everyone else is left trusting that fair still means fair. ### EasyEquities is buying the AI it already runs on URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/easyequities-is-buying-the-ai-it-already-runs-on/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T03:29:59.000Z For two years, EasyEquities clients have built more than 58,000 stock baskets using a tool that quietly came from an Australian startup called Telescope AI. Now EasyEquities and its JSE-listed parent, Purple Group, are buying that startup outright, in a deal worth up to US$10.75 million, roughly R176 million, signed on 10 July 2026 and announced three days later. The two buyers each take half of Telescope, together owning all of it. ## What Purple is actually paying for On paper, Telescope looks slight: its latest management accounts show a net asset value of about R5 million and a small after-tax loss over the six months to end-February 2026\. The value sits elsewhere. Telescope's tools reach more than three million end users across seven jurisdictions and 13 languages, and its compliance layer, Guardrails, has run more than 2.5 million checks across global markets. The technology powers platforms including IG Group, CMC Markets and Sharesies, and EasyEquities was its first enterprise partner, launching the AI Baskets tool back in 2024\. Purple is buying the technology, the team and that enterprise client base rather than the balance sheet, and it gains a new business-to-business revenue stream through Telescope's global partnerships. ## The people and the price Purple pays US$7 million at closing, US$5 million in cash and US$2 million through 19.09 million new shares, with up to US$3.75 million more tied to time and performance over five years. Founder Luc Pettett, an ex-Microsoft engineer who built and sold horseracing site Punters.com.au, joins Purple Group as chief AI officer and stays on to run Telescope for at least five years. Pettett calls the tie-up a natural fit that gives partners and their end users better AI, with rapid deployment across millions of investors feeding back into what the team builds. Chief executive Charles Savage frames the logic around faster products, better customer experiences and new lines built on the group's combined data and distribution. Purple already serves 1.3 million active clients with R100 billion on its platform, and its latest results showed revenue up 8.8% to R258.5 million and profit before tax up a third. For clients, Purple says that should translate over time into multi-language experiences, personalised insights and more affordable financial guidance. The deal is a category 2 transaction, so shareholders get no vote, though it still needs Reserve Bank exchange-control approval before closing, with a long-stop date 90 days from signature. The real test is whether owning the engine outright lets Purple sell it to the world faster than renting it ever did. ### The fund that guards the nation's pensions just benched its boss URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-fund-that-guards-the-nations-pensions-just-benched-its-boss/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T03:14:59.000Z Few institutions carry as much quiet weight as the Public Investment Corporation, the government's asset manager and the biggest investor on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, with assets north of R3-trillion. On 13 July its board placed chief executive Patrick Dlamini on precautionary suspension, a temporary step-aside taken under the corporation's whistleblower policy. The board was careful to say the move is not a finding of wrongdoing, but rather room for Dlamini to answer allegations of impropriety handed to it in a report last month. ## Space to answer, not a verdict The board framed the suspension as a way to keep any investigation fair, objective and independent. Dlamini had been in the job just over a year, appointed in June 2025 to clean up the corporation's troubled unlisted investment book, the Isibaya Fund, long dogged by underperformance. Daily Maverick has tied the complaint to the PIC's handling of the Lanseria Airport dispute, reporting allegations that Dlamini commissioned a forensic investigation into the transaction without a board resolution approving it and did not manage conflicts tied to his earlier dealings. The corporation has previously rejected the suggestion that he acted outside his authority. The upheaval interrupts a reform drive: Dlamini had been pushing to split the investment chief's job into three, covering listed assets, the troubled unlisted book and the property portfolio. ## A second seat empties Dlamini is not the only executive leaving the top table. In the same statement, the board removed August van Heerden as acting chief investment officer, the person overseeing where the money goes, after the Government Employees Pension Fund, the PIC's largest client, passed a resolution affecting his appointment. The fund's clout is real; its chair told Moneyweb Radio that the first week of the war in Iran wiped R200-billion off its investments. Stepping in on an interim basis is Leon Smit, the corporation's head of listed fixed-income investments, who joined in August 2000 and brings more than three decades in financial markets. The churn lands months after the acrimonious March exit of the previous investment chief, and pension-watchdog groups argue it shows governance reforms recommended by the Mpati Commission still have not fully taken hold. For the millions of public servants whose retirement savings sit inside that R3-trillion, the question is less about who holds the chair than whether the chair itself is steady. ### Nearly every paying Sixty60 shopper is letting an app fill the trolley URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nearly-every-paying-sixty60-shopper-is-letting-an-app-fill-the-trolley/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T02:59:59.000Z Grocery shopping has never been a swipe-right kind of activity, which is exactly the habit Checkers is betting it can change. Three months ago its Sixty60 delivery app added Pixie, an assistant its maker likens to Tinder for groceries, learning your past purchases and pre-loading a basket you accept with a flick of the thumb. This week Shoprite said 98% of the app's paying members have already used it. ## A basket that fills itself Pixie is available to Sixty60's Xtra Savings Plus members, the paid tier, and predicts what individual shoppers need based on what they have bought before. It was built in-house by ShopriteX, the group's digital innovation hub of data scientists and machine-learning engineers. According to Shoprite, customers have swiped more than four million products into their baskets since April, and the tool has pushed order values above the usual average. The retailer points to its keenest user, who it says added 730 products worth R36 236, and a shopper who filled a R1 500 order in 15 seconds that arrived 31 minutes later. Shoprite calls it one of the fastest-adopted features in Sixty60's history, though it is worth noting these are the company's own figures, which have not been independently verified. ## The grocery AI race heats up TechCentral called the release the first hard adoption data for an AI shopping assistant in South African retail. The claims land barely a week after Pick n Pay launched Penny, a rival assistant built on Google's Gemini technology that takes instructions by voice, text or photo in isiZulu, Afrikaans and English. The two take different routes to the same trolley: Penny opens with conversation, while Pixie leans on loyalty data to guess what you are about to run out of. For now Sixty60 holds the lead it has built, logging R11.9-billion in sales in the six months to December 2025 from about 875 stores. Innovation chief Neil Schreuder frames Pixie as AI that removes friction rather than adds noise, every unnecessary tap and scroll stripped from the shop. Whether shoppers keep swiping once the novelty fades is the real test the adoption numbers cannot yet answer. ### Transnet wants 1,000 guards and a drone fleet to stop the copper thieves URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/transnet-wants-1-000-guards-and-a-drone-fleet-to-stop-the-copper-thieves/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T02:44:59.000Z Running a railway is hard enough when the tracks stay where you left them. Along Transnet's central corridor, the strategic route threading Gauteng, the Free State and North West that carries much of the country's freight, that is no longer a given. The state freight group has gone to tender for a twelve-month contract to protect the line, and the shopping list reads like a small private army. ## Nine hits a day Transnet's own network statement records 866 security incidents on the corridor in the third quarter of its 2025/26 year, an average of nine every day. The targets are cable, copper and the trackside signalling gear that keeps trains moving, with theft and vandalism concentrated on the Pendoring to Ogies stretch and between Ulundi and Richards Bay. Crews also strip overhead track equipment and perway parts such as rail fastenings and wooden sleepers, and staff face outright robberies. In the group's own words, relentless attacks on personnel and business-critical infrastructure have caused operational disruptions whose frequency has climbed in recent years, now spilling into the rest of Transnet's value chain. The problem is not this corridor's alone: its container route averages three cable-theft incidents a day and its Cape route two. ## A small army for the tracks To push back, Transnet wants more than 1,000 security guards, close to 100 vehicles, a fleet of crime-prevention motorcycles, K9 dogs and water-resistant drones. The providers will mix physical guarding with armed response teams and targeted action against the organised syndicates feeding the illicit copper market. The stakes justify the spend. Transnet describes the corridor as a strategic through-passage feeding its other routes, central to its core business of moving commodities for export, regional and domestic markets. It carries chrome, coal, iron ore and manganese, and forms the north-south spine to landlocked Botswana via the Mafikeng to Krugersdorp and Vryburg lines. The urgency is commercial as much as criminal. Transnet is opening its network to private operators, having signed rail access agreements with 11 train companies in May, and a corridor bleeding copper is a hard thing to sell. ### Tharisa's output rebounds just as the prices it sells slip URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/tharisas-output-rebounds-just-as-the-prices-it-sells-slip/ Last updated: 2026-07-15T02:29:59.000Z Mining runs on two clocks: what you can dig, and what the world will pay for it. In its third quarter, Tharisa got the first clock ticking again. The platinum-group-metals and chrome producer, listed in Johannesburg and London, lifted quarterly output of those precious metals by 15.5% to 39,600 ounces after weather disruptions had held it back the quarter before. ## Digging its way back The rebound came from the mine itself. Tharisa recovered from weather-related interruptions to lift the amount of ore mined by 41.6%, while the share of metal it pulled from that rock improved to 83.8%. Chrome output eased slightly to 393,800 tonnes on lower milled volumes but held broadly steady. Tharisa's chief executive called it a quarter of normalised operations, and said year-to-date production keeps the group on course for its full-year targets of 145,000 to 165,000 ounces of platinum-group metals and up to 1.65 million tonnes of chrome. ## Prices cool, spending climbs The second clock was less kind. Tharisa's average basket of platinum-group metal prices fell nearly 12% from the prior quarter to US$2,681 an ounce after a long rally, as a stronger dollar, higher yields and renewed Fed hawkishness outweighed supportive fundamentals. Even after the pullback, prices stayed well ahead of where they sat a year earlier, and the company expects the medium-term fundamentals behind these metals to remain supportive. Chrome held firmer at US$306 a tonne before softening more recently, hit by weaker stainless-steel demand and Middle East tensions in a region that accounts for roughly 15% of global stainless consumption. Meanwhile heavy spending on the Tharisa underground project and the Karo Platinum development, including an US$80m loan drawdown, lifted debt to US$188.1m and cut net cash to US$10.7m, from US$54.7m three months earlier. The chief executive said the group had continued to invest through the cycle, pressing on with both projects on a planned and disciplined basis while keeping a positive net cash position. Even so, the group ended the quarter with close to US$200m of cash on hand. Both projects are still moving: the underground portal is on track to deliver its first ore this quarter, and at Karo the mining contractor is in place with waste stripping under way. Investors have so far taken the long view, with the stock at R24.99 on Tuesday, up from R21.25 a year earlier. ### De Beers is switching off South Africa's biggest diamond mine for two years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/de-beers-is-switching-off-south-africas-biggest-diamond-mine-for-two-years/ Last updated: 2026-07-14T10:00:54.000Z South Africa's biggest diamond mine is about to go quiet. De Beers said on Monday that it plans to suspend production at Venetia for two years, a decision that says less about the mine itself than about how deep the downturn in the diamond market has become. The company framed the shutdown as part of a wider cost-cutting drive. It insists the move will not dent its overall output targets, because production will be lifted at other operations to compensate. ## A market that has stopped sparkling The $80bn diamond industry has been under sustained pressure for years. What began as a post-pandemic slowdown has been compounded by weaker Chinese luxury spending and the steady march of lab-grown stones, which offer buyers the same sparkle at a fraction of the price. Trade tensions and conflict in the Middle East have added further strain. De Beers has already cut production in an attempt to prop up prices. It has not worked. An oversupply of stones from Angola, combined with stubbornly soft demand, has undermined those efforts — which is how a company ends up idling its flagship South African asset rather than simply trimming around the edges. 2 yearsHow long Venetia production will be suspendedSource: De Beers$80bnSize of the global diamond industry now under strain ## An owner heading for the exit The timing is awkward, because De Beers is also up for sale. Long-time owner Anglo American is in advanced talks to offload the business after years of disappointing returns that have tested investor patience. That process is not going smoothly. On the same day the Venetia news landed, Bruce Cleaver — a former De Beers chief executive who had been leading one of the bidding consortiums — pulled his group out. "I think that with the state of the business and the state of the diamond market it felt like it was difficult to see an appropriate return on investment over the short term," Cleaver told Currency. "I do believe in the diamond industry, and I do believe in the long-term future of De Beers, but it felt for me and my funders at the time that this was not an appropriate time to continue," he added. His departure leaves Gareth Penny, another former De Beers boss, as the outright favourite. Penny's bid, backed by major diamond trading houses, would refocus the company on mining and marketing natural stones. He ran De Beers for five years until 2010, steering it through the global financial crisis by idling mines and raising $1bn in a rights offer — a playbook that suddenly looks rather familiar. ## What it means Venetia is a Limpopo operation, and a two-year pause at a mine of that size is felt well beyond the pit — by the workers, contractors and small suppliers whose livelihoods are wired into it. De Beers is careful to call this a suspension rather than a closure, and says group output targets are unchanged, so this is a company managing a price slump rather than abandoning South Africa. For investors, the read-across is harder. Anglo American is trying to sell a business that is simultaneously shutting its flagship mine and losing bidders. A thinner field weakens Anglo's hand at exactly the wrong moment — and whoever eventually buys De Beers will be buying into a market that has not yet found its floor. ## Sources - [Miningmx — De Beers to halt Venetia mine for two years](https://www.miningmx.com/trending/65883-de-beers-to-halt-venetia-mine-for-two-years/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Miningmx — Anglo knocked as key De Beers bidder pulls interest](https://www.miningmx.com/top-story/65872-cleaver-withdraws-from-bidding-for-de-beers/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/mining/143201/iconic-138-year-old-diamond-giant-stops-production-in-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Mining.com](https://www.mining.com/de-beers-idles-south-africas-top-diamond-mine-for-two-years/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Woolworths brings an AI chef to your grocery run, but you'll have to wait for it URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/woolworths-brings-an-ai-chef-to-your-grocery-run-but-youll-have-to-wait-for-it/ Last updated: 2026-07-14T03:45:00.000Z Woolworths has built an AI assistant that wants to answer the most tiring question of the day: what's for dinner? Called My Woolies Chef, it lives inside the Woolworths app, takes a plain-language prompt, and suggests recipes based on what you have, what you like, or the occasion. Pick one, and it loads the ingredients straight into a Woolies Dash basket. ## Built on 20 years of recipes The tool leans on the Woolworths TASTE recipe archive, more than two decades of local cooking content, and is designed to understand the context of a request rather than just match keywords. It uses conversational AI built into the app to help shoppers find meal ideas and plan with ease. The company's group data and AI officer, Jose Rodrigues, says the approach lets shoppers describe what they need in everyday language and get suggestions that fit the context, instead of running multiple searches. Woolworths Food CEO Chan Pillay says the point is practical, making everyday decisions easier, "not technology for technology's sake". That recipe library is Woolworths' angle: where Checkers' Pixie leans on shopping-habit data and Pick n Pay's Penny starts with open conversation, Woolworths is betting on what it already owns. Over time, the company says the assistant could go further, building smarter shopping lists and offering budget-minded suggestions. ## Late to a fast-moving race It arrives last, and not quite yet. Checkers switched on Pixie in its Sixty60 app in April, pitching it as a "trusted personal butler with a PhD in shopping", and now says 98% of its top loyalty subscribers have used it; Pick n Pay's Penny went live in its asap! app on 6 July. My Woolies Chef, by contrast, only opens to a small group of MyDifference members in September, with a wider rollout planned for early 2027\. Woolworths also hasn't said which AI models power the tool, or whether it was built in-house or with a partner. The bet is that a genuinely different approach, grounded in recipes rather than shopping data, is worth the wait. Whether South African shoppers agree, once all three assistants are live, is the question the next few months will answer. ### Young South Africans really do want to save. Life keeps getting in the way URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/young-south-africans-really-do-want-to-save-life-keeps-getting-in-the-way/ Last updated: 2026-07-14T03:29:59.000Z Young South Africans are not the reckless spenders they are often made out to be, according to Old Mutual. In a preview of its yearly Savings and Investment Monitor, the financial services group found that 91% of working Gen Z have set savings goals, from buying a car to simply growing their money. The problem is the gap between wanting to save and being able to. The survey covered employed, digitally connected South Africans aged 18 to 65 earning at least R8,000 a month, about a quarter of the country's adults. ## Good intentions, thinner wallets Only 46% now say they save regularly, down 11 points from a year ago. More than half have had to dip into their savings just to get by, and nearly a quarter have taken out loans to cover everyday costs. Financial stress has risen from 29% to 36%, and fewer young people are earning more than they did a year ago, slipping from 55% to 51%. Store cards and credit cards are being leaned on more heavily too, with store-card ownership climbing from 69% to 78%. ## Carrying more than themselves Part of the squeeze is family. More than four in ten young workers, 43%, are supporting both a child and an older relative at the same time. To make their money stretch, many save through their phones, keep cash on hand, or pool money through stokvels, which more than half of working Gen Z use. Old Mutual's John Manyike says the picture is less about impulse and more about pressure, with many prioritising today's needs over tomorrow's goals. The wider picture is mixed. The Reserve Bank's latest figures showed the national saving rate ticking up to 14.9% of GDP early this year, though analysts expect it to slip as living costs bite. Some experts worry the habit is fraying: Frikkie van Loggerenberg of Ifsa Asset Managers argues South Africans lack a real savings culture, and has criticised the two-pot retirement system that lets people tap savings early, under which the taxman had approved R79.3bn in withdrawals by end-February. Manyike's takeaway is that steady habits matter more than big milestones. Old Mutual releases the full study later this month. It will show whether good intentions can hold up against another year of rising prices. ### Old Mutual is back in Zimbabwe, and this time it's counting in dollars URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/old-mutual-is-back-in-zimbabwe-and-this-time-its-counting-in-dollars/ Last updated: 2026-07-14T03:14:59.000Z For six years, Old Mutual's shares sat in limbo in Zimbabwe. In June 2020, the government suspended trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, including Old Mutual's shares, worried they were being used to work out an unofficial exchange rate. Trading reopened for other companies two months later, but Old Mutual stayed frozen. Now the insurer has found a route back in. ## A dollar exchange, not the old one Rather than return to the exchange that shut it out, Old Mutual is shifting its secondary Zimbabwe listing to the newer Victoria Falls Stock Exchange. The big difference is currency: the Victoria Falls exchange trades and settles entirely in US dollars, which the company says carries lower currency risk than the old bourse. The board reckons the younger exchange has "come into its own", with enough scale and liquidity to be a real alternative. It has grown fast, from a single listed company in 2020 to nineteen today. Trading has thickened too, with average annual turnover per listed company jumping from about $0.3m in 2021 to $7m in 2025, and the exchange expects its total yearly turnover to catch up with the old bourse within two years. Old Mutual's shares will follow the exchange's usual mechanics, settling two days after a trade and moving within a 20% daily limit from the second day. ## A century in, and not done yet Old Mutual is no stranger to the country. It has had a presence in Zimbabwe for about a century, going back to sales operations set up in 1927\. "The VFEX has come into its own," group CEO Jurie Strydom said, calling the move in the best long-term interests of stakeholders. Zimbabwe's own stock exchange welcomed the switch, its chief executive saying it showed confidence in the country's markets. Worth around R60bn on the JSE, the group is framing the move as a long-term commitment rather than a retreat. The migration still needs the Victoria Falls exchange to approve the listing and sign off the necessary rulings, so it isn't a done deal yet. But if it clears, Old Mutual's Zimbabwe story picks up where it stalled in 2020, this time counted in dollars. ### Why South Africa wants to stockpile oil again, for the first time since apartheid URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/why-south-africa-wants-to-stockpile-oil-again-for-the-first-time-since-apartheid/ Last updated: 2026-07-14T02:59:59.000Z South Africa is planning to build up its emergency oil reserves for the first time since the apartheid government stockpiled crude in the 1970s. Back then, United Nations sanctions pushed the country to construct the giant 45-million-barrel storage hub at Saldanha Bay. Since 1994, though, those reserves have been steadily run down, including a controversial 2015 sale of 10 million barrels that was later found to be unlawful. ## What the new plan asks for Cabinet approved the outline this month, and the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy published a draft policy on 9 July for public comment. It wants reserves to cover 60 days of demand, roughly two-thirds crude oil and the rest refined products, which works out to about 36 million barrels. The strategic stock would be split around 70% crude and 30% refined products, managed by a state petroleum company, while licensed fuel wholesalers would have to hold 21 days of their own. The plan proposes starting at 60 days and phasing up to 90 over the longer term, an idea energy minister Gwede Mantashe first floated at a fuels industry gathering in June. The Treasury and the state company would work out how to pay for and guarantee it all. ## Why now The urgency is about supply shocks. South Africa's reserves currently sit at around 7.7 million barrels, barely two weeks of cover, which lawmakers judged far too thin. An official estimate in March put crude reserves at about 8 million barrels, and the department says the country needs 10 million just to replenish stock it has sold or rotated. With so much fuel arriving by sea, chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz, where traffic has slowed during the Iran conflict, leave the economy exposed. The government estimates every single day without fuel would cost the economy about a billion rand. South Africa is not alone: Morocco, Uganda and Ghana have all announced moves to shore up their own fuel supplies this year. The draft still has to survive public comment before any barrels are bought. But the direction is set: after three decades of drawing down, the country wants a cushion again. ### A tax court unpicked Stor-Age's clever 2017 deal, and dealmakers are paying attention URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-tax-court-unpicked-stor-ages-clever-2017-deal-and-dealmakers-are-paying-attention/ Last updated: 2026-07-14T02:45:00.000Z Back in 2017, self-storage group Stor-Age bought a smaller rival, Storage RSA, in a deal built to keep the tax bill down. The Cape Town tax court has now ruled that the structure was an impermissible way to avoid tax, siding with the South African Revenue Service. ## The four-step deal On paper, the transaction ran in careful steps. Storage RSA declared a large dividend of about R275m; Stor-Age bought new shares for R280m, taking almost the entire company; Storage RSA used that money to pay the dividend; and the original owners then sold their old shares for just R1,000\. Because the cash reached shareholders as dividends rather than a sale, none of them declared a capital gain, treating the money as tax-exempt. The taxman did not buy it, ignoring the dividend and share steps and taxing the deal as if the shares had simply been sold at full value. ## Why it matters beyond one deal The court agreed the arrangement "cheated the fiscus", noting that a direct sale would have left the sellers in exactly the same position, minus the tax saving. The judge added that where the only difference between doing something directly and through a mechanism is the tax result, the mechanism carries no real weight beyond that saving. The ruling turned on South Africa's general anti-avoidance rules, and independent coverage noted it involved seven interconnected corporate taxpayers built around the sale of a successful self-storage business. There was a silver lining for the taxpayers, though: the court threw out the 75% penalty the revenue service had added on top. Tax specialist Richan Schwellnus said the case showed taxpayers can no longer assume carefully drafted legal documents alone will survive the revenue service's scrutiny. Bowmans warned that while a tax court ruling does not bind higher courts, it is a clear signal that this kind of "buy shares, then buy them back" structure could be challenged, with far-reaching implications for how mergers and acquisitions are taxed. For now, it is a tax court decision, and an appeal could still change things. But if it holds, plenty of dealmakers will be rereading their old structures, and rethinking their next ones. ### Treasury freezes R13.5bn — and starts paying municipal creditors directly URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/treasury-freezes-r13-5bn-and-starts-paying-municipal-creditors-directly/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T12:00:05.000Z National Treasury has withheld R13.5 billion of July's equitable share from 69 municipalities across all nine provinces — and it is now routing part of that money past the councils entirely, straight to the creditors they have been failing to pay. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana defended the move at a media briefing on Friday, saying the decision, taken under section 216(2) of the Constitution and the Municipal Finance Management Act, "is not punitive. It is corrective." The frozen amount is a slice of roughly R100 billion in equitable share transfers due to local government this year. Johannesburg alone has R3.6 billion withheld. Buffalo City, Nelson Mandela Bay and Mangaung are also on the list. R13.5bnJuly equitable share withheldSource: National Treasury69Municipalities affectedR3.6bnWithheld from Johannesburg ## Treasury starts paying the bills itself Rather than simply sitting on the cash, Treasury says the funds will be released in tranches directly to Eskom, water boards and statutory bodies, to protect electricity, water and pension contributions. Councils that demonstrate compliance — chiefly by signing repayment agreements with their creditors — will see their transfers reinstated. The numbers behind the freeze explain the impatience. Since 2021/22, municipalities have run up R24.12 billion in fruitless and wasteful expenditure and R145.21 billion in irregular expenditure, R40.14 billion of it in 2024/25 alone. They have disclosed R118.13 billion in unauthorised expenditure. In 2024/25, 116 municipalities — close to half the country's councils — adopted unfunded budgets. By year-end they owed R3.4 billion in interest to Eskom and R1.21 billion to water boards, while 48 had overdue third-party deductions: money docked from staff salaries but never handed over. ## The metros feel it first In Nelson Mandela Bay, the freeze has sharpened a long-running argument about whether the metro can still support investment. Denise van Huyssteen, chief executive of the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber, said the metro's non-performance on expenditure "has become a recurring pattern that continues to result in lack of service delivery and maintenance of critical electricity, water, sanitation and roads infrastructure", adding that "this urban decay and continued regression are visible in many parts of the metro, which does not bode well for investor confidence." The municipality has acknowledged the withholding but insists the intervention is "administrative and corrective in nature" and does not mean it is insolvent. In Johannesburg, Mayor Dada Morero says the city will transfer R160 million to Rand Water and R1.4 billion to Eskom by mid-July, and that Treasury has confirmed the metro's R97.1 billion 2026/27 budget is funded. Treasury argues services will not suffer. Ogalaletseng Gaarekwe, its deputy director-general for intergovernmental relations, noted that 75 municipalities were withheld from at this time last year and all the money was released by early August, and that most local government funding comes from own revenue rather than the equitable share. ## What it means This is the moment the municipal debt problem stops being a spreadsheet and starts moving money. By paying Eskom and the water boards directly, Treasury is effectively conceding that some councils cannot be trusted to pass on cash they collect — and it is protecting the utilities that keep the lights and taps on rather than the councils themselves. For businesses in the affected metros, the practical read is that bulk services are being ring-fenced while the councils' own maintenance budgets stay squeezed. Whether transfers are restored quickly, as they were last year, depends entirely on how fast municipalities sign repayment plans — and that is worth watching ahead of November's local government elections. ### SA drafts fuel-rationing rules and orders oil firms to hold 14 days of stock URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-drafts-fuel-rationing-rules-and-orders-oil-firms-to-hold-14-days-of-stock/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T08:20:45.000Z South Africa is moving to end its voluntary approach to emergency fuel stocks. The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources has published its draft Strategic Petroleum Stock Policy, 2026, for public comment — and for the first time it would place a legal obligation on private oil companies to hold reserves alongside the state. The draft, whose publication Cabinet approved on 3 July, sets out a dual model: government-held crude oil equal to 90 days of net imports, stored mainly at the state-owned Saldanha Bay facility, plus a mandatory 14 days of refined product — diesel, petrol and jet fuel — held by licensed manufacturers and wholesalers. When Cabinet announced the policy, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni described a mixed model in which the South African National Petroleum Company (SANPC) holds the equivalent of 60 days of net imports, rising to 90 days over the long term. R1bnEstimated daily GDP cost of total fuel unavailabilitySource: draft Strategic Petroleum Stock Policy14 daysRefined stock private firms would have to hold ## Why the state says it cannot wait The department's case rests on how exposed the country has become. The conversion of the Sapref and Engen refineries into import terminals has turned South Africa from a crude-importing nation into a finished-product importer, stripping out the buffer that domestic refining used to provide. Imports take a minimum of 21 days and as long as 42 days to reach South African ports, with another 10 to 14 days spent offloading, refining and hauling fuel to the inland market. Conservatively, the department estimates, a national unavailability of liquid fuels would cost the economy about R1 billion a day in GDP. Governance and funding of the new system would sit with SANPC, the state oil company formed by the 2025 merger of the Strategic Fuel Fund, PetroSA and iGas. ## Three levels, then rationing The draft also sets out when the minister may release stock. A Level 1 supply alert would be triggered by the loss of 20% of national refined product supply for more than 14 days, prompting voluntary stock-sharing and a SANPC readiness audit. Level 2 — a 40% loss, with commercial mandatory stocks exhausted — would allow a restricted drawdown for essential services and key economic hubs. Level 3, a national emergency declared by the minister after a severe global shock affecting more than half of supply, would mean a mass release and fuel rationing. A separate economic trigger kicks in if prices reach $145 a barrel, allowing a strategic sale by competitive auction. ## What it means Holding stock is expensive, and the draft is explicit that the state cannot carry the cost alone. That means the 14-day obligation will land on fuel wholesalers' balance sheets, and the industry will argue about who ultimately pays — which, in a regulated fuel-price system, tends to mean motorists. The comment period is where that fight will play out. For business owners, the more immediate signal is that government is now formally planning for a scenario in which South Africa runs short of diesel, and has written down what rationing would look like. ### Absa's big-bank dream meets a market that's selling URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/absas-big-bank-dream-meets-a-market-thats-selling/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T03:44:59.000Z Absa's new boss is thinking big. In a recent interview, chief executive Kenny Fihla laid out a plan to turn the red bank into what he calls "the J.P. Morgan of Africa." Investors, so far, are less convinced. ## The vision Fihla's ambition runs on a few tracks. First, win back the number-one spot in South African retail banking, where he says Absa still has the scale to claw its way back. Second, launch Absa's own mobile network late in 2026, borrowing the partnership-heavy playbook of Kenyan payments giant M-PESA. Third, capture more of the money moving between Africa and the rest of the world, building on a footprint that spans 12 markets. At the top end, Absa wants to turn its Mauritian operations into a hub for the continent's wealthy, tapping an African middle class the development bank puts at around 355 million people. To get there he has hired a wave of senior bankers, several from his old employer Standard Bank, including former M-PESA Africa boss Sitoyo Lopokoiyit. Absa is also pushing deeper into East Africa, seeking to lift its stake in its Kenyan unit to 85% through a $238.7 million offer. ## The market's verdict The share price tells a different story. Absa is down about 10% this year, with much of the drop coming after Goldman Sachs and Avior turned cautious. The trigger was a June update warning that first-half earnings would grow only in the low-to-mid single digits. The deeper worry is Absa's net interest margin, the gap between what it earns on loans and pays on deposits, which is being squeezed as interest rates fall in Kenya and Ghana. Slowing revenue also threatens Absa's targets of a 16% return on shareholder equity this year and as much as 19% by 2028\. One analyst now expects no recovery in the share price for a year. The sell-off revived memories of Absa's turbulent 2019-to-2025 stretch, when it churned through six chief executives in six years before Fihla arrived. It isn't all bearish: six of eleven analysts still rate Absa a buy, and the shares trade at a steep discount to peers. The real test comes on 18 August, when Absa's first-half results will show whether Fihla's vision is starting to translate into numbers. ### SA construction is earning more but mattering less URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-construction-is-earning-more-but-mattering-less/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T03:29:59.000Z South Africa's construction industry is pulling off a strange trick. New figures from Statistics South Africa show it earned R605.6 billion in 2024, growing almost 9% a year since the last survey, and posted its best profit margin in a decade at 4.8%. Yet by the measure that matters most, it keeps getting smaller. ## More money, less economy Construction now accounts for just 2.4% of the economy, down from 2.5% a year earlier and 3.9% a decade ago. Income has grown steadily, but the sector's weight in the economy has been sliding for years. The job market tells a similar story. Employment has climbed from a Covid-era low of 479,071 in 2020 to about 539,000, but that's still short of the 592,125 people the sector employed back in 2017, and a recent labour survey showed 110,000 construction jobs lost in a single quarter. Small and micro firms now do most of the heavy lifting, providing 78.6% of the sector's jobs. "If one promotes small businesses in the construction industry, they will tend to have a significant impact on employment," says Stats SA's Joe de Beer. The gains weren't evenly spread: the top 100 firms took 26.7% of total income, and site preparation was the standout with a 13.2% profit margin. ## The long slide Total income has climbed from R430.8 billion in 2020, but de Beer traces the sector's fading weight to the end of the building boom around the 2010 World Cup. The industry is a shadow of the glory days when highways, airports and stadiums went up for the World Cup, and is "nowhere as large" as it was in 2014 and 2017\. Three provinces, Gauteng, the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, still account for nearly three-quarters of the sector's income. There's a reason this matters beyond the numbers. The report landed two days after Treasury's director-general, Duncan Pieterse, argued that construction and tourism offer more room for job creation than an increasingly automated manufacturing sector. Getting there may mean tackling what scares investors off, including the so-called "construction mafia" that muscles onto sites demanding 30% of project values, now the target of a fresh cabinet crackdown. ### Apple takes OpenAI to court over its unreleased hardware URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/apple-takes-openai-to-court-over-its-unreleased-hardware/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T03:14:59.000Z Apple has gone to war with OpenAI. On Friday the iPhone maker filed a lawsuit accusing the AI company of trade-secret theft and breach of contract, saying it had uncovered "a pattern of theft of Apple's trade secrets by OpenAI employees who were formerly at Apple." ## The people at the centre of it Two former Apple employees sit at the heart of the complaint. The first is Tang Tan, now OpenAI's chief hardware officer, who spent 24 years at Apple, most recently as vice-president of product design for the iPhone and Apple Watch. Apple accuses him of using its confidential project code names while recruiting, asking job candidates to bring Apple hardware components to interviews, and coaching departing staff on how to slip past its security. The second is engineer Chang Liu, who joined OpenAI from Apple in January. Apple says he downloaded "dozens of Apple's confidential hardware-related files," including detailed information on unreleased products, engineering presentations and technical specifications. ## Why Apple is worried The timing explains the temperature. OpenAI is rumoured to be building its first hardware product, one that would likely compete with the iPhone, and last year it bought io, the device startup founded by former Apple design chief Jony Ive, in a $6.5 billion deal. Apple's filing doesn't mince words: it calls the case "the tip of the iceberg" and says OpenAI's "nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations." In a prepared statement, Apple said "significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple's secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products," and vowed to "defend our teams' hard work and innovations." Apple says it wrote to OpenAI in February to raise concerns and got no response. It now wants the court to bar OpenAI from using its secrets, force their return, and preserve the evidence. OpenAI, for its part, says it has "no interest in other companies' trade secrets" and remains focused on "building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere." The legal discovery process will decide who's right, and how much of OpenAI's hardware future gets dragged into the daylight. ### Edgars is opening 50 stores by first getting smaller URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/edgars-is-opening-50-stores-by-first-getting-smaller/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T02:59:59.000Z Edgars is on the comeback trail. Six years after its parent company Edcon collapsed into voluntary business rescue, the retail icon is opening 50 new-generation community stores over the next two years, with the first breaking ground in July and August. Each is a smaller, community-focused format, sized for the town it serves. ## Shrink first, grow later The expansion is the payoff from an aggressive downsizing. Since Durban-based Retailability bought the brand in September 2020, it has returned more than 100,000 square metres of trading space to landlords and halved the floor space at major flagship stores. That trim cost about 5% in sales but lifted profit by R6 million and cut the annual rent bill by R150 million. The rightsizing was less retreat than repair: a reset of the cost base before adding new stores. Edgars now runs around 100 stores, down from the 194 that Retailability originally took on. Management says the smaller community formats let the group trade sustainably in regional hubs where it previously could not. It had been a long fall: Edgars' parent was bought by US private equity firm Bain Capital in 2007, which delisted Edcon from the JSE before mounting debt and Covid tipped the group into rescue. ## Run like a start-up CEO Norman Drieselmann frames the turnaround as discipline, not luck. "We respect the 97-year heritage of this brand deeply, but we run the business like a start-up that is completely fixated on its customers," he says. "We made very deliberate decisions to ensure that every store is the right size for the market it serves. The work we have done over the past three years has paid off." The group is also growing around the edges: an 18-store Edgars Beauty chain pushing into the Boland towns of Paarl and Stellenbosch, a first standalone Edgars Connect cellular store, and a fourth outlet for ladies' fashion brand Kelso. For a brand founded in 1929 that spent years shrinking, opening doors again is a statement of intent. "At 97 years old, this brand still has significant growth ahead of it," Drieselmann says. The next two years will show whether the smaller-store bet keeps paying off. ### Aspen changes its chair as a weight-loss goldrush looms URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/aspen-changes-its-chair-as-a-weight-loss-goldrush-looms/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T02:44:59.000Z Aspen is changing hands at the top. Chair Kuseni Dlamini, a board member for 14 years, will step down at the drugmaker's December shareholder meeting, having told the board he won't stand for re-election. Veteran banker Ben Kruger takes over. Dlamini, a former head of Old Mutual's Africa, Asia and Latin America operations and a past Massmart chair, has helped steer Aspen through a debt-fuelled global expansion and the clean-up that followed. ## A handover at a high point The timing is deliberate. Aspen has just come through a strong year in which a run of high-value deals left it debt-free for the first time in decades, including the A$2.37 billion sale of its Asia-Pacific business, excluding China, to Australia's BGH Capital. That disposal was the deal that tipped Aspen into the black. For a company built on acquisitions, ending the year without debt marks a turning point. It is part of a broader board refresh Aspen describes as a leadership succession plan, complete with retirements, committee changes and governance-continuity measures. Incoming chair Kruger is a finance heavyweight: he joined Aspen's board in 2019, previously ran Standard Bank's corporate and investment banking arm, and sits on the boards of Stanbic Holdings and the JSE. His appointment signals continuity: he has known the board and the balance sheet for seven years. CEO Stephen Saad, who founded Aspen in 1997, told Business Day earlier this year the company was ready to ramp up growth now that it is debt-free. ## The weight-loss windfall The next chapter could be lucrative, and Aspen says Kruger will lead the charge. The company expects a windfall from cheap generic versions of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs as it moves to fill the gap left by rival Novo Nordisk, whose semaglutide patent lapses in many emerging markets this year. Reuters reckons the market for these drugs could be worth at least $100 billion by the end of the decade. Aspen shares slipped 2.21% on the news, to R147.08, though they remain more than 25% higher for the year. The question now is whether Kruger can turn a clean balance sheet and a booming drug class into Aspen's next growth spurt. ### Telkom bets R100m on building AI skills, not just networks URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/telkom-bets-r100m-on-building-ai-skills-not-just-networks/ Last updated: 2026-07-13T02:29:59.000Z Telkom wants to be known for more than the networks it runs. At a United Nations technology summit in Geneva, group CEO Serame Taukobong announced the company will invest about R100 million to set up a Telkom AI Institute aimed at equipping South Africans with AI and digital skills. Telkom, one of South Africa's largest telecoms companies, is still laying the groundwork for the institute. It is a notable pivot for a company still best known for dial tones and data, and a pledge, for now, more than a building. ## From connectivity to capability The pitch is that access alone isn't enough. "Connectivity without capability only gets South Africa halfway there," Taukobong said. "We have spent years building the networks that connect this country. The Telkom AI Institute is our commitment to ensuring that connectivity translates into skills, jobs and opportunity, starting with the South Africans who stand to gain the most and who have had the least access until now." The institute is framed as part of Telkom's Vision 2030 strategy, under which the group wants to expand beyond building telecoms infrastructure into skills development and innovation. The pledge will be tracked through the International Telecommunication Union's Partner2Connect coalition, a global effort that has drawn more than 1,000 commitments from 149 countries, with projects under way in more than 190 countries. ## The missing details For now, the announcement is long on ambition and short on specifics. It is Telkom's headline pledge at the summit, aimed squarely at South Africa's digital skills gap. Telkom hasn't said where the institute will be based, when it will open, how the R100 million will be spent, or whether it will run through university partnerships or as a standalone training platform. The ITU estimates that achieving universal, meaningful connectivity by 2030 will require between $2.6 trillion and $2.8 trillion in global investment, a measure of the gap Telkom says it wants to help close. The move lands as governments and companies pour money into AI skills, and as South Africa works on its own national AI policy. Whether Telkom's institute becomes a genuine skills engine or a well-meaning pledge will depend on the details it has yet to share. ### SA-founded Refiant launches an AI model that reads 10 million tokens at once URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-founded-refiant-launches-an-ai-model-that-reads-10-million-tokens-at-once/ Last updated: 2026-07-12T08:55:08.000Z A South African-founded startup has thrown down a marker in the global race to build AI models with longer memories. Refiant AI this week launched Protea, a suite of large language models that the company says can process up to 10 million tokens — the chunks of text an AI reads and writes — in a single prompt, one of the largest context windows made publicly available so far. A bigger context window lets a model take in more information before it answers, rather than forgetting or losing track partway through. Protea comes in three versions — one million, five million and 10 million tokens — and is free to use with no waitlist or approval. At full stretch, Refiant says the 10-million-token model can hold roughly 7.5 million words at once, enough to read hundreds of contracts, years of claims data or an entire software codebase in a single pass. 10 millionTokens Protea can process in one prompt\~7.5 millionWords it can hold at maximum capacity For scale, Refiant says most mainstream tools trail well behind: Anthropic's Claude supports up to 500,000 tokens on certain enterprise plans, while Google's Gemini offers up to one million on its higher tiers. ## Built by a local team Founded in 2025 by Mathew Haswell, Viroshan Naicker and Siddharth Gutta — a team spanning mathematics, finance and commercial scaling — Refiant builds systems to compress AI models and cut the cost of running them. The launch follows a $5 million seed round led by VoLo Earth Ventures in April, and is the firm's first major product since. "Long-context AI has been talked about for over a year now, but hasn't really been commercially available," said Naicker, the company's chief executive. Co-founder Haswell added: "Customers don't need more waitlists. They need models they can test, break and build with." The company says it has already demonstrated an internal prototype capable of 100 million tokens, and that Protea is the first of three planned releases. ## What it means For South Africa's tech scene, Protea is a rare example of a locally founded company competing at the frontier of AI rather than simply adopting tools built elsewhere. If it performs as advertised, it could be genuinely useful to the country's law firms, insurers and engineering teams that need to reason over huge documents without chopping them into pieces. The claims are bold, though, and the real test will be independent benchmarks — long-context models have a habit of losing accuracy on detail buried deep in the text. ## Sources - [TechCabal](https://techcabal.com/2026/07/09/refiant-ai-launches-10-million-token-ai-model/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [IT-Online](https://it-online.co.za/2026/07/08/sas-refiant-debuts-long-context-ai-models/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Business Tech Africa](https://www.businesstechafrica.co.za/news/2026/07/09/breaking-news-today-thursday-9-july-2026/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### SA factory output slumps 4.3%, muddying the Reserve Bank's rate call URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-factory-output-slumps-4-3-muddying-the-reserve-banks-rate-call/ Last updated: 2026-07-12T08:54:58.000Z South Africa's factories went backwards again in May, with manufacturing production shrinking 4.3% compared with a year earlier — the sharpest annual contraction in just over a year. The figures, released by Statistics South Africa on Thursday, point to a sector still buckling under higher input costs, much of it traced back to the oil-price shock from the war between the United States and Iran. \-4.3%Annual drop in manufacturing output, MaySource: Stats SA+1.1%Month-on-month rise (seasonally adjusted) ## A broad-based decline Seven of the ten manufacturing divisions had a weaker month, according to Stats SA director of industry statistics Nicolai Claassen. Food and beverages did the most damage, retreating 6.4% year on year and single-handedly dragging overall output down by 1.6 percentage points. Wood, paper and printing, furniture, and glass and non-metallic mineral products also fell sharply. Only three divisions — petroleum and chemicals, textiles and clothing, and electrical machinery — managed to grow, and not by enough to turn the tide. There was a sliver of relief in the monthly numbers: on a seasonally adjusted basis, production actually rose 1.1% between April and May. But the broader trend is weak — output over the three months to May slipped 1% — and economists warn the factory sector is shaping up to be a drag on second-quarter GDP after the economy managed just 0.5% growth in the first quarter. "Manufacturers continue to face elevated production costs, lingering effects from the … Middle East conflict and persistent domestic infrastructure constraints," said FNB economist Thanda Sithole, who noted that business confidence in the sector remains subdued. ## What it means The timing is awkward. The Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Committee meets on 23 July, and this data hands it a genuine dilemma. Inflation quickened to 4.5% in May and factory-gate producer prices jumped 7.8%, which argues for another hike after May's 25-basis-point increase took the repo rate to 7%. But a stalling economy argues for restraint. For households and business owners, the read is uncomfortable: borrowing costs could climb again even as growth cools — a squeeze that rarely feels fair. ## Sources - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/economy/2026-07-09-manufacturing-43-slump-points-to-weak-gdp-growth-complicating-rate-decision/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Jacaranda FM](https://www.jacarandafm.com/news/news/manufacturing-production-fell-by-43-yy/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### The UAE's biggest bank beat FNB in court, and it's coming for South Africa URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-uaes-biggest-bank-beat-fnb-in-court-and-its-coming-for-south-africa/ Last updated: 2026-07-10T03:44:59.000Z South Africa's banking giants have a new challenger, and it is a large one. First Abu Dhabi Bank, the biggest lender in the United Arab Emirates, has won a Supreme Court of Appeal ruling that clears it to register its trademarks in South Africa. More striking still, the bank told the court it intends to apply for a South African banking licence once those trademarks are secured. ## A fight over a name The case, handed down on 7 July, was really a battle over branding. FirstRand, which owns FNB, had challenged the Gulf lender's trademark applications, arguing the First Abu Dhabi Bank name was too close to its own and that the bank had no genuine intention of using it because it held no local banking licence. Writing for the majority, Judge Makgoka disagreed, finding no reason to doubt the bank would meet all the legal requirements to operate here, including applying for a licence from the Registrar of Banks, and that it would then use the marks and expand into the country. The bank had told the court it was simply being prudent, securing its trademarks first rather than putting the cart before the horse. ## A heavyweight with deep pockets This is no minor player. First Abu Dhabi Bank holds around R6.6 trillion ($406bn) in assets, more than Standard Bank and FirstRand combined. Formed from a 2017 merger of National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank, it is majority-owned by Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund Mubadala and members of the emirate's ruling family, and is chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. It already operates under the same branding across five continents. The dispute itself dates back years, first reported in 2024, and the bank has stayed notably tight-lipped about its South African plans. The timing is pointed. Global banks like HSBC and BNP Paribas have recently retreated from South Africa, with HSBC selling its local business to FirstRand on the way out. Now a far larger rival is signalling it wants in, just as Gulf capital flows into Africa at pace. The bank still needs its licence, but South Africa's banking establishment has been put on notice. ### A Pretoria pharmacy outsold Ozempic with copycat jabs. Now the regulator has pulled the lot. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-pretoria-pharmacy-outsold-ozempic-with-copycat-jabs-now-the-regulator-has-pulled-the-lot/ Last updated: 2026-07-10T03:30:00.000Z The weight-loss injection boom has just met the regulator. South Africa's health-products authority, SAHPRA, has ordered an urgent recall of every semaglutide and tirzepatide product compounded by iDexis, a Pretoria pharmacy trading as Sentra. Those are the same active drugs behind blockbuster brands like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro. ## Why the recall is so serious This is a Class I, Type A recall, the most serious category, meaning the products are treated as a real risk to patients. On 8 July, SAHPRA joined the Pharmacy Council and the health professions council in warning that any doctor or pharmacist who keeps prescribing or dispensing the jabs faces disciplinary action under the Medicines and Related Substances Act. The trouble came to light during a May inspection, which found the pharmacy was not really compounding medicines for individual patients at all, but mass-producing unregistered jabs for the open market; the authorities seized all the injectable products found on site. ## What inspectors found The list of problems is alarming. Inspectors flagged illegally imported active ingredients, no testing to confirm purity or strength, unsterile manufacturing rooms and no system to monitor side effects. SAHPRA says it has already linked adverse events, including hospitalisations, to the products. The recalled range runs across semaglutide pens in 0.5mg, 1mg and 2mg strengths and tirzepatide pens in 5mg, 10mg and 15mg, though the regulator warns the list is not exhaustive, as some batches were distributed before its inspection. The crackdown follows a court interdict won by Novo Nordisk, the maker of Ozempic, after the pharmacy was reportedly shifting about 85,000 copycat pens a month and outselling the real brands. ## The bigger picture SAHPRA chief executive Boitumelo Semete-Makokotlela said the authority would keep taking decisive action against anyone breaking the rules, because unregistered medicines pose a serious risk to public health. The Pharmacy Council added that pharmacists caught making or distributing the jabs risk severe penalties, including removal from the register. The uncomfortable takeaway is how easily a backyard operation outsold the pharmaceutical giants, a sign of just how hungry the weight-loss market has become. For anyone tempted by a cheaper shortcut, the message is blunt: the discount version could land you in hospital. ### Reinet sold its crown jewel, and the Rupert camp collected a R2.3bn thank-you URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/reinet-sold-its-crown-jewel-and-the-rupert-camp-collected-a-r2-3bn-thank-you/ Last updated: 2026-07-10T03:15:00.000Z Reinet has just had the kind of year most investment companies only dream about. In its 2026 financial year, the holding company chaired by billionaire Johann Rupert sold its single most valuable asset, a 49.5% stake in UK pensions insurer Pension Insurance Corporation, for €3.345bn, roughly R62bn at the time. The buyer was insurer Athora, and the deal closed on 27 March. The full scale of the windfall only became clear when Reinet published its annual report at the start of July. ## A R2.3bn fee for a very good year Here is the part that raised eyebrows. Reinet does not run itself; it leans on an adviser, and pays both a management fee and a performance fee every year. For the 2026 year, a Jersey-registered firm tied to Rupert family interests collected a performance fee of €117m, about R2.27bn at end-March exchange rates. That reward is not plucked from the air. The fee works out to 10% of Reinet's cumulative shareholder return since its 2008 rights issue, and the roughly €2.075bn gain on the Pension Insurance Corporation sale pushed this year's payout to the big one. There was even a hurdle attached: the fee only pays out if Reinet's share price, averaged over the final 20 trading days of the year, clears a set threshold. For 2026 that mark was €22.49, and the shares comfortably beat it at €28.48\. The management fee, by contrast, was smaller than the year before, at €44m, or about R861m. ## What happens to all that cash? The sale has left Reinet looking like a different company. It now holds €5.477bn in cash and liquid investments, around 83% of its net asset value, which gives it real firepower to chase new deals. A year earlier the picture was almost the reverse, with the insurance stake alone making up more than half of the group's assets. There is one quirk worth flagging: Reinet's shares still trade below what the company is worth on paper, with a net asset value near €6.6bn, about R113.5bn at end-March, against a market value closer to R87.8bn. For now, Reinet is sitting on a mountain of cash with no publicly stated plan for it. Where Johann Rupert decides to point that money next is the question the market will be watching. ### A $1.5m fine for a $150m saving: how Elon Musk closed his SEC case URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-1-5m-fine-for-a-150m-saving-how-elon-musk-closed-his-sec-case/ Last updated: 2026-07-10T02:59:59.000Z Elon Musk has drawn a line under one of the legal fights trailing his takeover of Twitter. A US judge has approved a $1.5m penalty that settles a lawsuit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the American markets regulator, in a decision set out in her court opinion and first reported by Bloomberg. The case, filed in early 2025 and landing only days before Donald Trump took office, centred on how Musk handled his 2022 move on Twitter, and specifically his failure to tell investors in good time that he was building a stake. ## The maths that made it awkward Here is why the number stings. The timeline was stark: Musk crossed the 5% ownership level that triggers disclosure on 14 March 2022, but only filed on 4 April, by which point he held more than 9% of the company; the day he finally disclosed, Twitter's share price jumped more than 27%. By staying quiet while he kept buying at lower prices, the regulator argued, Musk ultimately saved around $150m. Set against that, a $1.5m penalty looks less like a punishment and more like a rounding error. The settlement, first reached in May, routes the payment through a trust in Musk's name and carries no admission of wrongdoing. ## A reluctant approval The judge, Sparkle Sooknanan, made no secret of her unease. She explained that her role was narrow, limited to checking whether the proposed deal met minimum standards of fairness and reasonableness, or whether it made a mockery of judicial power. In the end she wrote that although the court had significant misgivings about the settlement, it could not say the deal crossed that line. She had earlier questioned whether Musk was receiving special treatment from the Trump administration, whose 2024 campaign he had helped bankroll. And she left the bigger judgment to the public, saying whether the regulator had done enough to hold Musk to account was for our citizenry to decide at the ballot box. For Musk, the practical takeaway is simple: a costly disclosure lapse has been closed off for a fraction of what it earned him. Whether that outcome deters the next billionaire tempted to stay quiet is another question entirely. ### Transnet's trains are running like it's 2019 again, at least where coal is concerned URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/transnets-trains-are-running-like-its-2019-again-at-least-where-coal-is-concerned/ Last updated: 2026-07-10T02:45:00.000Z There is a rare bit of good news coming out of Transnet. The state-owned logistics group's freight rail arm has clawed its bulk-commodity performance back to pre-Covid levels, and is on track to move more than 170 million tonnes this year. Last week alone, 165 trains ran to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal, the country's main coal export gateway. ## Coal leads the recovery The turnaround is clearest on the coal line. At the current pace, coal shipments are heading for a target of 65 million tonnes by the end of 2026, a recovery credited to better locomotive availability and tighter security that has curbed cable theft and vandalism. Richards Bay's coal terminal shipped 57.66 million tonnes in 2025, up more than 10%, an early sign the line was stabilising. It is a sharp bounce from the roughly 140 million tonnes railed in 2022, though still well short of the 226 million tonnes moved in 2016, before years of underinvestment, theft and maintenance backlogs sent volumes tumbling. ## Containers are the harder problem Not every part of the network is mending at the same pace. Coal, iron ore and general freight each make up roughly a third of what Transnet moves, and it is that last basket that is lagging. Ian Bird of lobby group Business for South Africa says bulk commodities like coal, iron ore and manganese are clearly trending up, but the same cannot be said for general freight and containers. Those, he notes, are more complex to move, and improvement has been slow. Work is under way, including a 25-year, R285m container-handling agreement Transnet's ports authority signed with the Grindrod Eyamakhosi joint venture to expand capacity at Richards Bay. The bigger prize is still ahead: Transport Minister Barbara Creecy, who says the reforms aim to re-establish rail as the backbone of the freight logistics system, has set a target of 250 million tonnes of total rail freight, supported by 11 private train operators gearing up to run from late 2026, each expected to add 20 to 24 million tonnes a year once fully operational. Getting there depends on fixing the container backlog and keeping the recovery on the rails. For now, though, Transnet can point to something it has not had in years: momentum. ### Pick n Pay wants to top up its boss's shares — even if the tills run dry URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/pick-n-pay-ceo-share-top-up/ Last updated: 2026-07-09T03:44:59.000Z Pick n Pay is trying to make its CEO whole again. The retailer, deep in a complicated multi-year turnaround, says it intends to award Sean Summers additional shares in August. Its remuneration committee says the decision followed feedback from shareholders on the original R100 million share incentive he was given in 2024 to fix the business. That original deal ran into trouble: after Pick n Pay announced a one-year delay to break-even in May, Summers forfeited one million shares, and although the new grant technically sits under a separate scheme, in practice it offsets the tranche he lost. Those forfeited shares had a market value of about R21 million. ## A big number nobody has actually named Here is the catch: Pick n Pay hasn't said how much this new award is worth. It has not disclosed the amount, but based on grants going to new CFO Tina Rookledge, the allocation for executive directors works out to 100% of total guaranteed pay. Summers received R25.2 million in fixed pay in the 2026 financial year, which is why Moneyweb reckons the award will be just more than R25 million. Treat that as an estimate, not a figure the company has confirmed. It is also separate from the R56.7 million single-figure remuneration Summers is deemed to have received once his share awards are accounted for annually. So what does he have to do to earn it? The bulk of the weighting, 65%, is tied to the core Pick n Pay business reaching break-even on a trading-profit basis in the 2029 financial year. The rest is split between Boxer hitting its 2029 targets, at 35%, and Pick n Pay's environmental and social targets, at 5%. The shares vest in February 2029, past Summers's planned retirement, which the company says is meant to reinforce an orderly leadership handover. ## Paid even if the shop is bleeding Here is the part shareholders may want to read twice. Even after pushing the return to break-even out by a further year, executives will be rewarded even if the Pick n Pay segment reports a loss in 2029\. Under the CFO's matching condition, hitting break-even triggers full vesting, but a R1 billion trading loss still vests 50%, and a R600 million loss vests 75%. One assumes Summers's terms mirror hers. None of it is guaranteed yet. The pay policy and implementation report must be approved by shareholders at the 6 August annual general meeting, and last year those resolutions scraped through with 75.14% and 76.9% support, votes that, thanks to Companies Act changes from 22 May, now carry real statutory weight rather than advisory-only status. With the share price down 60% over five years and staff cuts on the table, this meeting could be a genuinely tense one. ### The world's biggest investor is quietly buying South African platinum URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/blackrock-buying-sa-platinum/ Last updated: 2026-07-09T03:29:59.000Z While almost everyone else is fleeing South Africa's battered platinum sector, the world's biggest money manager is doing the opposite. On Tuesday, BlackRock lifted its holding in Johannesburg-listed miner Northam Platinum to just over 5%, having done the same with Sibanye-Stillwater and Impala Platinum earlier this year. BlackRock, the world's biggest asset manager, continues to steadily increase its stake in the South African platinum sector as investors hold out for a rebound in prices. The disclosure came via a Northam SENS filing on 7 July 2026, the kind of regulatory notice that flags when a big investor crosses a shareholding threshold. To be clear, that "just over 5%" is BlackRock’s total holding in Northam, not an extra chunk bolted onto an existing one. ## Buying while the sector bleeds The timing is striking, because platinum has had a brutal year. Prices are down nearly a fifth so far in 2026, slashing 40% off Sibanye-Stillwater's value and about 25% to 30% from Impala and Northam. The shares of the big platinum miners, including Sibanye-Stillwater, Impala, Valterra and Northam, have been hammered by the Iran war, which sparked a broad precious-metal sell-off as investors flocked to bonds in anticipation of higher interest rates. That is exactly the discount BlackRock appears to be hunting. The appetite for platinum-group metals took off last year after tariff fears and a persistent market deficit drove a dramatic rebound in sentiment and a 130% jump in platinum prices. This time, though, inflation fears and a broader market slump mean the mining shares came cheap. ## Why so many are still nervous The caution is not hard to understand. High energy prices and a slump in investment demand pushed the platinum market into its first surplus in six quarters, meaning more metal than buyers wanted, during the three months to end-March, according to World Platinum Investment Council data. The council now expects overall demand for platinum to fall 9% this year compared with 2025, and reckons the investment windfall that drove these metals to near two-decade highs last year has largely run its course. So BlackRock is buying into a market the experts are backing away from. If the giant is right and platinum turns, today's slump will look like a bargain hunter's dream; if it is wrong, it has plenty of company in its caution. Either way, when the world's biggest investor starts quietly loading up on a metal everyone else is dumping, it is worth watching where the smart money thinks the floor is. ### Why a Cape Town money manager is shopping in the world's worst market URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/allan-gray-indonesia-indofood/ Last updated: 2026-07-09T03:14:59.000Z Bargain-hunting usually means waiting for a sale, and right now Allan Gray reckons it has found one of the biggest going. The Cape Town-based asset manager, which runs about R472.5 billion, has entered the Indonesian market after a savage selloff there created what it sees as a buying opportunity. That slump only sharpened during the recent Iran war, which helped push prices down even further and left a market most local investors would normally avoid looking unusually cheap. ## The world's worst-performing market Indonesia is not a place most South African savers think about, but the numbers are hard to ignore. The Jakarta Composite Index is the world's worst-performing benchmark this year, down more than 35% in dollar terms among the 92 equity indexes tracked by Bloomberg. Much of that pain traces back to a January warning from index provider MSCI that Indonesia could be downgraded to frontier-market status, a lower rung reserved for smaller, riskier markets, because of concerns about how easily investors can actually buy and sell its shares. The mood soured again on Wednesday after S&P Dow Jones Indices signalled the country could eventually lose its emerging-market status too if worries over its equities market persist, and stocks fell another 1.3%. ## Buying when others are running This is exactly the kind of chaos Allan Gray likes. Portfolio manager Rory Kutisker-Jacobson wrote in a note on Tuesday that "periods of heightened volatility and investor uncertainty present a particularly fertile hunting ground for patient, valuation-driven investors in frontier markets," adding that such markets are "often overlooked or poorly researched by global investors, resulting in significant pricing inefficiencies and, at times, compelling opportunities." The firm made its first Indonesian investment last month in PT Indofood Sukses Makmur, one of the world’s largest makers of instant noodles, and plans others. On the manager’s own estimates, Indofood trades on just over five times earnings, which Kutisker-Jacobson calls "a good price to pay for a dominant, cash-generative, consumer-facing business." The bet sits inside the Allan Gray Frontier Markets Equity Fund, co-managed by Kutisker-Jacobson, which has returned nearly 9% so far this year and recently added small positions in Mexico, Poland and Turkey while trimming its holding in Seplat Energy. If Allan Gray's patience pays off, a bowl of Indonesian instant noodles could end up looking like one of the year's smarter buys for South African savers. ### Samsung just booked a record profit. So why did its shares drop? URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/samsung-record-profit-shares-drop/ Last updated: 2026-07-09T02:59:59.000Z Every so often a company posts a number so large it is hard to take in. Samsung Electronics managed exactly that on Tuesday, forecasting a 19-fold jump in second-quarter operating profit from a year earlier, its third consecutive quarter of record operating profit, as AI-driven demand continued to lift memory chip prices. The world's largest memory chipmaker put April-to-June operating profit at 89.4 trillion won, or about $58.44 billion, comfortably ahead of the 87.3 trillion won analysts had pencilled in, and a world away from the 4.7 trillion won it made in the same stretch a year earlier. By most counts, it is the largest quarterly operating profit any technology company has ever reported. To put the scale in perspective, that single quarter surpassed Samsung's combined operating profit for the three years from 2023 through 2025\. Revenue was expected to rise 129% to 171 trillion won from a year earlier. There is even a suggestion the real figure is bigger still: the guidance is understood to include a bonus provision in the tens of trillions of won, and strip that out and underlying operating profit would have cleared 100 trillion won, according to the Seoul Economic Daily. ## What is driving the boom The short answer is the global scramble for chips to run artificial intelligence. Memory prices kept climbing through the quarter as AI spending broadened beyond high-bandwidth memory, the premium chips built for data centres, into conventional memory chips used in everyday devices. The shift shows up in the pricing. Citi Research last week said average selling prices for two of the most common memory chip types rose 44% and 53% quarter-on-quarter in the second quarter. When prices move like that and you happen to be the biggest supplier in the world, the profit follows. ## Why the shares still fell Here is the twist. Despite the record, Samsung shares fell more than 6% on the day, a bout of profit-taking after a rally that had priced much of the good news in already. In other words, the market had been expecting brilliance, so brilliance alone was not quite enough to keep pushing the stock higher. Samsung has said it plans to announce detailed results on July 30, including a breakdown of earnings for each of its business divisions. That is where the fuller picture will emerge, and where investors will look to see whether this once-in-a-cycle memory boom has further to run or is already nearing its peak. ### Canal Walk's owner went looking for R500m. Investors handed it R739m. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/hyprop-r739m-share-sale/ Last updated: 2026-07-09T02:44:59.000Z Canal Walk and Somerset Mall are the kind of shopping centres most Capetonians know by heart, and the company that owns them just had a very good week on the money markets. Hyprop, the JSE-listed property group behind those malls, went to big investors on Tuesday looking to raise around R500m by selling new shares, and by Wednesday it had walked away with close to R739m. Here is how the gap opened up. Hyprop launched what the market calls an accelerated bookbuild, essentially a fast share sale to large investors, aiming for "approximately R500 million of equity capital." When the orders came in, demand outstripped what was on offer, so the company sold the most it was allowed to: 12,631,505 new shares at R58.50 each, raising "c.R739 million." "The book was oversubscribed at this level," Hyprop told the market. That R58.50 price was a 1.4% premium to the average price the share had traded at over the previous 30 days. ## Where the money is going This was not a raise to plug a hole. Hyprop says the proceeds will "fund new and organic growth opportunities identified by the Group." Some of that is far from home: the company is eyeing "new acquisition and expansion opportunities in Eastern Europe," on top of a Bulgarian mall, Galleria Burgas, it had already announced. It also plans to extend City Center One East in Croatia. Closer to home, the cash is earmarked for solar and battery-storage projects at Canal Walk and Somerset Mall, and for a Phase 3 extension at Somerset Mall itself. In other words, cleaner power for the malls you already shop in, and more floor space to shop across. ## What it means for the numbers Selling a chunk of new shares can worry existing shareholders, because their slice of the company gets thinner. Hyprop moved to settle nerves on that front, saying it "remains on track to deliver growth in distributable income per share of 10% to 12% for the year ending 30 June 2026," and that this guidance is "unaffected by the Capital Raise." The new shares are expected to start trading on the JSE at 09:00 on Wednesday, 15 July 2026, subject to the exchange’s approval. A landlord that asks for R500m and is handed R739m is a landlord investors clearly want a bigger piece of, and if the solar panels and mall extensions land as planned, the tills should keep ringing on both continents. ### Wall Street's winning streak hits a chip-sized snag URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/wall-street-chip-selloff/ Last updated: 2026-07-09T02:29:59.000Z Record highs are fun while they last, and on Wall Street they lasted about a day. After Monday's run to fresh peaks, US stocks turned lower on Tuesday, following their European counterparts down amid a chip-driven tech sell-off, while a flare-up of Middle East tension pushed crude prices higher. The main indexes all closed in the red, with the Nasdaq taking the heaviest knock. The scoreboard tells the story. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 130.76 points, or 0.25%, to end at 52,925.15; the S&P 500 settled down 0.45% at 7,503.85; and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 1.16% to close at 25,818.69. ## Why chip stocks led the retreat The trigger was an unlikely one. US stock futures fell on Tuesday after Samsung's quarterly results sparked renewed selling in chip stocks, and oil prices edged higher. Strong numbers, oddly, weren't enough to keep the mood buoyant. Chip shares bore the brunt: the semiconductor group dipped 4.7% on the day. Micron closed down 4.7%, with KLA, Marvell Technology, Broadcom and AMD also posting declines. Industrials and tech suffered the biggest percentage losses, while energy stocks were the one bright spot, leading the gainers. That energy strength came courtesy of the oil price. Front-month WTI and Brent crude futures settled up 2.8% and 3.0% respectively, and gold fell as Middle East tensions rose. Brent crude pushed above $72 a barrel while WTI climbed to around $69\. Meanwhile, benchmark US government borrowing costs (the Treasury yield) touched a four-week peak. ## All eyes on earnings season Beneath the day's numbers sits a bigger question: nerves ahead of company earnings. Analysts reckon second-quarter results are likely to be quite robust on an absolute basis, but the catch is expectations. Unlike the previous quarter, hopes are now very bullish, with the S&P 500 sitting roughly 1,000 points higher than it was heading into those earlier results, which means the bar is quite elevated. Put plainly, companies may post fine numbers and still disappoint a market that has already priced in brilliance. For South African investors watching from afar, the takeaway is less about one bad Tuesday and more about the setup: when a market is priced for perfection, even blockbuster results can leave it wanting, and the coming earnings run will test just how much good news is already baked in. ### Rupert's Remgro takes the whole hospital URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/ruperts-remgro-takes-the-whole-hospital/ Last updated: 2026-07-08T03:45:00.000Z For 43 years, two families of capital circled the same idea about South African healthcare. On 1 July 2026, that shared history split cleanly in two. Johann Rupert's Remgro took full control of Mediclinic's Southern African hospitals, ending a decade-plus co-ownership with Luxembourg-based Investment Holding Limited, or IHL. Previously, Remgro and IHL each held a 50% stake in the entire Mediclinic Holdings business. Now Remgro holds 100% of Mediclinic's Southern Africa operations, while IHL owns 100% of the group's Swiss operations. IHL is a subsidiary of MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, the global shipping giant that partnered with Remgro in 2022. Rather than a cash takeover, the two sides did an equity-value swap, a trade of one asset for another of equal worth. The agreement envisaged a 1:1 equity value exchange ratio of Mediclinic Southern Africa and Hirslanden, the group's Swiss arm. Both were baselined at $950 million a side, but after leakages and accruals between announcement and completion, Remgro ended up paying $947 million (about R15.6bn) while IHL paid $1.08 billion (about R17.7bn). To equalise the difference, Remgro received a dividend of $130 million. Remgro and IHL believe that assuming ownership in their respective home markets will enhance strategic and operational alignment and drive agility in response to market dynamics. ## A new chapter in a 43-year journey Remgro CEO Jannie Durand said the firm's move to take full control of Mediclinic's Southern Africa operations marks a new chapter in the companies' 43-year journey together. That journey started in 1983, when the Rupert family's Rembrandt Group, which later split to become Remgro, commissioned a feasibility study on private healthcare in South Africa. Durand said the move reflects Remgro's long-term confidence in the healthcare sector and the vital role it is set to play in South Africa's future. "Healthcare is changing rapidly, driven by advances in technology, changing patient expectations and growing demand," he said. "We look forward to supporting the business as it navigates that future." ## What Remgro now owns The prize is substantial. Mediclinic operates around 50 hospitals, 15 day clinics, six sub-acute facilities and six mental health facilities across South Africa, as well as three private hospitals in Namibia, with more than 8,991 beds. Remgro's acquisition also includes Mediclinic's subsidiaries, such as the Intercare group of companies and emergency medical services provider ER24\. The transaction follows approval by the Competition Tribunal at the beginning of June 2026, which cleared the merger subject to a condition that the parties not retrench any permanent or fixed-term employees as a result of the deal during an agreed moratorium period. Both partners now steer their home markets alone. For Remgro, the next chapter is proving that patient conviction can keep pace with a healthcare sector reinventing itself in real time. ### Sky wants ITV's channels — and more than half the UK ad market URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sky-wants-itvs-channels-and-more-than-half-the-uk-ad-market/ Last updated: 2026-07-08T03:29:59.000Z Comcast-owned Sky has agreed to buy ITV's Media & Entertainment business, its free-to-air channels and the ITVX streaming service, for a total consideration of up to £1.6 billion. The move is pitched as a way to build a British broadcasting champion big enough to take on the streaming giants: as Reuters framed it, the deal creates "a British champion to compete with global players YouTube, Netflix, Amazon and Disney". Sky Group CEO Dana Strong called it "a defining moment for British media". ## What Sky is actually paying The headline number is up to £1.6 billion, but the structure matters. At completion ITV receives a base consideration of £1.4 billion, made up of £1.2 billion in cash plus Sky's Love Productions business, contributed at an agreed enterprise value of £200 million. On top of that sits a separate contingent earn-out of up to £200 million, payable in H2 2028 and tied to advertising performance. That earn-out is subject to UK corporation tax. The deal enables "a significant cash return to shareholders of around £950 million (25p per share), excluding any contingent consideration". Notably, ITV's crown-jewel production arm is staying put. ITV Studios is not included in the deal and remains a standalone, pure-play global content business. It locks into a long-term Content Supply Agreement covering shows like "Coronation Street", "Emmerdale" and "Love Island", anticipated to deliver at least c.£2.1bn of revenue to the ITV Group over 2028–2032. ## The regulators are the real hurdle Here's the catch. The merged business would account for more than 70% of the UK television advertising market, including third-party contracts, analysts have said. Both companies expect the deal to face a lengthy antitrust review and public interest tests, and to satisfy concerns Sky may have to relinquish third-party ad-sales contracts, for example for Paramount-owned Channel 5\. The combined company would reach over 20 million households, and with traditional TV losing 16-24 year olds to streaming and YouTube, the firms will argue they need to merge to compete. There's a bigger picture, too: Sky was sold to Comcast in 2018, and in June the US giant said it would spin out its media assets, including NBCUniversal and Sky, from its cable business. ITV CEO Carolyn McCall framed the sale as building on momentum, saying it will "deliver clear, tangible value for shareholders". Investors gave an early nod: ITV shares traded up 1.2% to 83 pence on Monday. Completion is expected in H2 2027\. Whether British regulators let a single group hold that much of the ad market is the question that will define the next 18 months. ### Tencent cashes out of Kuaishou to chase AI — and Naspers is along for the ride URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/tencent-cashes-out-of-kuaishou-to-chase-ai-and-naspers-is-along-for-the-ride/ Last updated: 2026-07-08T03:14:59.000Z Tencent has just reminded the market how quickly it will trade a mature bet for an artificial-intelligence one, and the ripple reaches Johannesburg. China's most valuable company sold about 273 million Kuaishou shares at HK$43.25 apiece in the biggest such block trade in Hong Kong this year. A block trade is simply a big off-market sale of shares done in one go rather than dribbled onto the exchange. The Tencent unit sold 272.9 million Kuaishou Class B shares at HK$43.25 each, valuing the sale at about $1.505 billion. That was toward the lower end of a marketed range and a 6% discount to Kuaishou's HK$46 Monday close. The short-video company's shares slid as much as 9.3% Tuesday, the most on an intraday basis since March. Following the disposal, Tencent's stake in Kuaishou will decrease to about 9.37% from 15.68%, and the former will cease to be a substantial shareholder of Kuaishou. The seller's residual stake will be subject to a 90-day lock-up, a period in which Tencent has agreed not to sell any more. Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley arranged the deal. ## Why the money is moving The point of the sale is not retreat but redirection. Tencent sold $1.5 billion of stock in Chinese TikTok rival Kuaishou Technology, paring mature internet bets during a pivot to artificial intelligence. The Kuaishou selldown accelerates that trend as Tencent redirects capital into generative AI, backing high-profile startups from DeepSeek to Moonshot AI. The timing is pointed: the divestment landed just days after Tencent led a US$3 billion financing round for Kuaishou's artificial intelligence video unit, Kling AI. In other words, Tencent is happy to trim the old Kuaishou to help fund the new one. ## What it means from a Johannesburg desk Here is the South African hook. Prosus benefits from the continued strong contribution of its roughly 24% stake in Tencent, which remains the group's largest asset and accounts for a substantial share of its net asset value. Naspers and Prosus are the JSE's China-tech proxies, and that single Tencent holding does much of the heavy lifting in their valuations. So when Tencent reshuffles capital out of ageing internet stakes and into generative AI, it is quietly reshaping the engine that sits underneath two of the biggest names on the local bourse. For South African investors, the read-through is worth watching. If Tencent's AI pivot pays off, the Naspers-Prosus stable stands to share in the upside; if it stumbles, the same exposure cuts the other way. Either way, a Hong Kong block trade is now a Sandton story. ### Gemfields hits its lowest price ever — and the CEO is on his way out URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/gemfields-hits-its-lowest-price-ever-and-the-ceo-is-on-his-way-out/ Last updated: 2026-07-08T03:00:00.000Z Gemstone miner Gemfields has never been worth less. The Johannesburg- and London-listed coloured-stone group fell as much as 31% in intraday trade on Monday before recovering to close 17.5% weaker at 66c — its biggest one-day drop since April last year. It capped an already brutal week, coming seven days after the company said long-time CEO Sean Gilbertson was stepping down, which had already knocked the share price down nearly 12% on the day. Gilbertson will, by mutual agreement with the Board, step down as chief executive and as a director with effect from 15 July 2026\. David Lovett, the company's chief financial officer of eight years, has been appointed interim CEO alongside his existing role, with a formal search for a permanent successor to follow. Non-executive chairman Bruce Cleaver has agreed to dedicate additional time to support the business. ## Three years that gutted the value To understand why investors flinched so hard, it helps to look back. The shares reached a record high above R12 when the company was still known as Pallinghurst Resources; since the 2018 name change, the highest they ever traded was R4.34 in 2023\. Over the past three years, the dual pressure of armed conflict in Mozambique and a restrictive tax regime in Zambia has wiped out 80% of the ruby and emerald miner's market value. Both pressures are still live. Just last week the group said attacks on villages as close as 15km from its Mozambique Ruby Mine (MRM) had forced it to pause operations for nearly a day over employee safety, and that roughly 700 illegal miners are breaking into MRM daily. The mine is 75%-owned by Gemfields. In Zambia, a 15% levy on gemstone exports continues to weigh on operations; while that temporary levy was lifted earlier this year, it had already forced the company to suspend mining for the first five months of 2025, denting sales in a way that has been hard to recover from. MRM is also owed $28.3m in VAT refunds as at 30 June, which has materially hurt the mine's cash flow. ## Cash raised, but the bleeding continues Gemfields has not been sitting on its hands. It tapped the market in a $30m rights issue last April, at about R1.07 a share, roughly 40% above where the stock sits now. Four months later it signed off the sale of its Fabergé brand for $50m to secure more working capital. There have been flickers of demand too: the first Trade Select ruby auction, held from 22 to 29 June, generated revenue of $23.1m. None of it has arrested the slide. With interim results due within the next three months, investors are eagerly awaiting signs of stability in the balance sheet, Gilbertson having promised in his most recent annual letter that the firm would focus on paying off debt this year. The real test now is whether a new hand on the tiller can turn that pledge into a floor under the price. ### Turkish Airlines is flying more South Africans to its Istanbul hub URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/turkish-airlines-is-flying-more-south-africans-to-its-istanbul-hub/ Last updated: 2026-07-08T02:44:59.000Z South Africa is about to become a much busier line on Turkish Airlines' route map. From late October, the carrier will step up the frequency of flights on both its Istanbul–Johannesburg and Istanbul–Cape Town routes, timing the boost to meet elevated demand during the northern winter/southern summer season. Both routes will move from seven weekly flights each to ten, lifting the airline's total South African schedule from 14 to 20 weekly flights. The extra capacity is aimed at supporting business travel, inbound tourism and belly-hold cargo — the freight carried in the aircraft's lower hold. ## Ten flights a week, on both ends Currently Turkish operates seven flights a week between Johannesburg and Istanbul, and another seven between Cape Town and Istanbul, for a total of 14\. The airline will introduce three extra flights a week on each route, taking the weekly total to 20\. On the Johannesburg side the increase runs from 25 October 2026, while Cape Town's weekly flights rise from seven to 10 a day later, on 26 October 2026\. These extra services will be operated until late March next year, with the additional Johannesburg flights running until 27 March 2027 and the extra Cape Town flights until 28 March 2027. Every one of the added frequencies will fly on the Airbus A350-900, the carrier's modern long-haul widebody. The three new Johannesburg-out flights are coded TK 243, departing Johannesburg at 00:20 on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays and arriving in Istanbul at 11:25\. The return leg, coded TK 242, leaves Istanbul at 13:30 on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays and reaches Johannesburg at 22:25. ## A bigger doorway to the Istanbul hub The point of all this is connection. In a statement, the carrier said the expansion will strengthen connectivity between Turkey and Southern Africa, and it is expected to support business travel, inbound tourism and belly-hold cargo connectivity. Turkish Airlines operates 553 aircraft across 350 destinations globally. For South African passengers, apart from visiting Türkiye itself, Istanbul works as a hub to transfer onward to any of the carrier's more than 350 other destinations across America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. The wider signal is hard to miss: a global carrier is placing a bigger bet on South African demand, and betting it will hold through the whole summer season. ### Johannesburg gets a rare bit of good financial news, with strings attached URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/johannesburg-gets-a-rare-bit-of-good-financial-news-with-strings-attached/ Last updated: 2026-07-07T03:44:59.000Z Johannesburg cannot catch a financial break these days, so a nod of approval from a global ratings agency counts as a genuinely good week. On 3 July, Moody's affirmed the city's credit rating and shifted its outlook from stable to positive — a signal that it could upgrade Johannesburg down the line, provided the city keeps improving how it budgets and governs itself. In Moody's language, a positive outlook means it believes the city's finances are likely to improve over the next 12 to 18 months. It is not an upgrade yet. But for a city widely described as being on the verge of financial collapse, even a hopeful signal is worth something. ## Still perilously close to the edge The numbers behind the optimism are sobering. R2.1 billion of Johannesburg's R7 billion budget shortfall this year has no funding behind it, and the city owes hundreds of millions of dollars to state electricity and water suppliers, with power cuts looming over unpaid bills. On top of that, Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana has threatened to withhold R8 billion in national funding over a municipal wage deal he calls illegal and unaffordable. Moody's itself framed the decision as a balancing act: solid economic fundamentals and a manageable debt load on one side, weak governance and funding pressures on the other. The agency affirmed Johannesburg's national-scale ratings alongside the main one, and there was no downgrade — the rating was simply left where it stood before the review. ## The city's pitch Johannesburg is choosing to see the glass as half full. Chief Financial Officer Tebogo Moraka called the move an important milestone in restoring market confidence and reaffirming the city as South Africa's economic engine, and promised continued reforms to strengthen governance and long-term investment. Part of what steadied the picture was the city restoring compliance with the JSE's debt-listing rules after a spell of late financial reporting. The hard part is what comes next. Moody's has been explicit that an actual upgrade depends on consistently better budgeting and governance — and Johannesburg will have to deliver that before the money runs out. ### South32 is quitting aluminium, and the ratings agencies aren't clapping URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south32-is-quitting-aluminium-and-the-ratings-agencies-arent-clapping/ Last updated: 2026-07-07T03:29:59.000Z South32 has just made one of the biggest calls in its history, and it isn't a purchase. It's a sale. The mining group has agreed to sell almost its entire aluminium business — the smelters, refineries and mines, including the huge Hillside plant at Richards Bay — to the American producer Alcoa, in a deal worth up to R92 billion. In dollar terms the transaction is valued at up to US$5.6 billion. Under the agreement, Alcoa picks up South32's stakes right across the aluminium chain, from the Worsley refinery to the MRN bauxite mine to Hillside itself, leaving the miner with just one aluminium-family asset: the power-starved Mozal smelter in Mozambique, which has sat idle on care and maintenance since March. ## Why the ratings agencies flinched A R92 billion cash-in might sound like unambiguously good news, but Moody's didn't see it that way. The agency put South32's credit rating on review for a possible downgrade, warning that the sale would "materially reduce the company's scale, commodity diversification and operating footprint". In plain terms, it worried the miner would be left more exposed to a narrower set of metals. Investors wobbled too: the share price fell as much as 4.3% intraday on Friday before recovering to close down just 0.63% at R47.33, having jumped more than 11% earlier in the week when the Alcoa deal was first announced. The business Moody's is worried about losing is no small thing — in the year to end-June 2025, alumina and aluminium together made up roughly 60% of South32's underlying earnings, the cash-based profit measure miners lean on. ## A new boss, a new direction The timing has an extra twist. The deal landed on the same day that Matt Daley took over as chief executive from Graham Kerr, and Daley is wasting no time signalling where he wants to take the company: towards copper and zinc. He told Bloomberg the group has organic growth opportunities in those metals, with projects already nearing execution. So the real question now isn't whether South32 can cash the Alcoa cheque. It's whether a leaner, copper-and-zinc miner can convince the market that smaller is smarter. ### South Africa's biggest companies are quietly building their way off Eskom URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-biggest-companies-are-quietly-building-their-way-off-eskom/ Last updated: 2026-07-07T03:14:59.000Z For most of the past two decades, running a big business in South Africa meant living with Eskom's blackouts and its ever-climbing bills. Now a growing number of the country's largest companies have decided they would rather generate their own power. At least 40 listed firms — spanning mining, property, retail and healthcare — have shared plans this year to lean on renewables and cut their dependence on the state utility, according to data pulled together by Bloomberg. ## From monopoly to open market The mood shift is captured neatly by Andre Nepgen, who runs Discovery Green, a power-trading platform the insurer Discovery set up in 2023\. "We had 102 years of a monopoly responsible for energy and now it's a liberalised market where businesses can choose where they get their energy from," he says. Take Impala Platinum, the world's second-biggest producer of the metal: in 2024 it began buying clean electricity through Discovery Green, and its sustainability executive Tsakani Mthombeni says supply constraints are a direct risk to safety and production, with reliability "non-negotiable." ## The maths that's driving it The economics are hard to argue with. Eskom's prices have climbed almost 900% since 2008, and it still carries R358 billion of long-term debt. Richard Doyle, who runs the solar and wind builder JUWI South Africa, says grid power now costs more than R2 a unit against 50 to 60 cents for solar — "a complete commercial no-brainer," in his words. The scale of the swing is visible in the numbers: South Africa now has 19,677 megawatts of renewable capacity registered with the energy regulator, up from under 20 megawatts in 2018\. Beyond those registered projects, the national transmission company estimates there are about 8,400 megawatts of private solar installed on-site at homes and businesses. Eskom's own fleet, by comparison, totals about 53,200 megawatts, still 85% coal. Eskom itself calls the trend a "death spiral" — the more customers leave, the more it must raise prices, which pushes still more customers away. Its answer is a new arm, Eskom Green, targeting 6,000 megawatts of renewables by the end of the decade. Whether that is enough to hold on to its biggest customers is the open question. ### The first pure humanoid-robot company is about to hit the stock market URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-first-pure-humanoid-robot-company-is-about-to-hit-the-stock-market/ Last updated: 2026-07-07T02:59:59.000Z Investors who want a piece of the humanoid-robot boom have mostly been locked out, with the action confined to private venture funds. That's about to change. Agility Robotics, a maker of two-legged warehouse robots, is going public through a merger with a listed shell company run by financier Michael Klein, in a deal that values it at about $2.5 billion and is set to raise more than $620 million — the biggest fundraise the young industry has seen. It would make Agility the first pure humanoid-robot company that ordinary people can actually buy shares in. ## A grounded pitch in a hyped market That matters because the sector is awash with money and sky-high valuations. Rivals have been raising eye-watering sums, with Figure AI reportedly valued at $39 billion and Apptronik at more than $5.5 billion. Against that backdrop, Agility's chief executive Peggy Johnson — a former Microsoft dealmaker who later ran Magic Leap — comes across as unusually measured. She frames the listing as "an acceleration story and a timing story," and insists the company's "biggest competitor right now is just us." The business is further along than most: Johnson points to more than $300 million in booked, multi-year revenue across roughly 1,000 robots, rented to customers on a monthly subscription rather than sold outright. Those customers include GXO Logistics, Amazon and Toyota's Canadian manufacturing arm. ## Don't expect one in your kitchen Agility's robot, Digit, is deliberately unflashy: about 5'9" and 160 pounds, built to move heavy boxes around warehouses rather than dazzle. Under the hood, Agility says its robots are "LLM-agnostic", drawing on AI models including Claude and Gemini to turn plain-language instructions into action. And Johnson is candid about the limits — a robot doing your dishes at home is, she reckons, still "ten-plus years" away, because homes are chaotic in ways warehouses aren't. For now, the focus is squarely on the warehouse floor, where more than a million US jobs sit unfilled. The deal still needs shareholder and regulatory approval and is expected to close later this year — at which point retail investors finally get to bet on robots. ### Microsoft is done subsidising Xbox, and the cuts are coming URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/microsoft-is-done-subsidising-xbox-and-the-cuts-are-coming/ Last updated: 2026-07-07T02:45:00.000Z Microsoft has spent 25 years willing to lose money on Xbox. That era is ending. The company's new gaming chief, Asha Sharma, told staff in a memo that the division "cannot continue" as it is, after spending more than $20 billion over five years only to watch core revenue fall by nearly half a billion dollars, all for a wafer-thin 3% profit margin. The immediate consequence is jobs: thousands of Microsoft layoffs are expected imminently, with Xbox likely to be among the hardest hit. ## How the maths turned against Xbox The problem isn't a lack of investment. Microsoft paid $7.5 billion for Bethesda in 2021 and $69 billion for Activision Blizzard in 2023, the biggest acquisition in its history. Yet even with those blockbuster franchises folded in, Xbox earns only about 3 cents of profit on every dollar, against the 17 to 22 cents typical in the industry. Gaming revenue actually slipped about 6% to $16.8 billion in the nine months to March. And it has lost the console war outright: Sony's PlayStation 5 has outsold the Xbox Series X and S more than two to one. There's also the question of where Microsoft would rather put its money: it is pouring more than $100 billion a year into the data centres and chips behind its AI push, and against that, a gaming business that barely breaks even looks like yesterday's bet. ## What the reset looks like Chief executive Satya Nadella has been blunt, saying Microsoft has to "turn this into a sustainable business." In practice that means deep cuts: possible studio closures — Hellblade maker Ninja Theory among those reportedly on the block — plus steeper hardware prices, with consoles already going up $100 to $150 on rising component costs. Sharma has even flagged a "hardware component crisis" and called for "a new business model and partnerships" for Xbox's machines. How far the reset goes is still an open question — one report suggests Microsoft has weighed spinning Xbox off entirely. What's clear is that the company that once spent whatever it took to stay in gaming is finally counting the cost. ### MTN's Ralph Mupita gets a seat at the UN's new AI table URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mtns-ralph-mupita-gets-a-seat-at-the-uns-new-ai-table/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T13:48:40.000Z MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita has been named a founding commissioner of the AI for Good Global Commission, a new United Nations body tasked with steering artificial intelligence towards expanding digital access, strengthening trust and accelerating responsible economic impact. The commission is an initiative of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the UN's specialised agency for information and communication technologies, and holds its inaugural meeting in Geneva from 7 to 10 July. ## A who's who of the AI age Mupita joins a 44-member commission co-chaired by Rwandan president Paul Kagame and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, with ITU secretary-general Doreen Bogdan-Martin serving as deputy chair. Fellow commissioners include Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, alongside heads of state, ministers and the leaders of international organisations. “It’s an honour to be one of the founding commissioners of the AI for Good Global Commission,” Mupita said, adding that MTN believes AI can advance health, education, food security and industrial productivity — provided the technology is safe, ethical and globally inclusive. The new body builds on the work of the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, which helped shape global priorities for extending digital inclusion and economic development. ## Why MTN wants to be in the room The appointment is more than a ceremonial nod. AI sits at the centre of MTN's Ambition 2030 strategy, and the group has been putting real capital behind it. R30bnValue MTN aims to unlock from AI over the next three to five yearsSource: MTN$2bnMTN's commitment to building data centres through joint ventures The group has committed as much as $2 billion to building data centres through joint ventures, and plans to turn its cellphone tower sites into “mini data centres” for AI workloads — a concept known in the industry as AI-RAN. Mupita was also elected deputy chair of the global telecoms body the GSMA in early 2025, part of a broader push for a bigger African voice in global digital policy. ## What it means Global rules on AI access, safety and infrastructure are being written now, and Africa has often been a spectator in these debates. A South African-led company at the table matters: the commission's decisions will influence how quickly the continent shares in AI's economic upside. For MTN shareholders, the appointment reinforces the group's positioning of AI as a growth engine — though its R30 billion value target remains a company ambition, not a promise. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/telecommunications/865552/mtn-ceo-ralph-mupita-scores-a-new-job/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/2026-07-06-mtns-ralph-mupita-named-one-of-44-people-the-un-wants-to-help-make-ai-just/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### A severe El Niño is on the way. Here's why South Africa shouldn't panic URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-severe-el-nino-is-on-the-way-heres-why-south-africa-shouldnt-panic/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T13:48:34.000Z South Africa is heading into a severe El Niño — but this time the country's fields, dams and grain silos are in unusually good shape to absorb it. The latest report from the NOAA Climate Prediction Centre confirms that El Niño conditions are present, with above-average sea-surface temperatures across the equatorial Pacific, and the World Meteorological Organisation has warned that the pattern will influence global temperature and rainfall, raising the risk of extreme weather. In southern Africa, El Niño is typically associated with drought — bad news for harvests, livestock, water supplies and, ultimately, food prices. The event will coincide with South Africa's 2026-27 summer crop season, which starts in mid-October, and the South African Reserve Bank has flagged it as one of the inflation risks it is watching as it weighs monetary policy. ## The case against panic Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa and Presidential Envoy on Agriculture and Land, argues that the alarm needs context. Years of prolonged La Niña rains, he says, have left the country far better prepared than it was going into previous droughts. Summer rains that normally end in March pushed through to May this year, improving soil moisture and the water table ahead of planting. Despite the unusually long wet season, harvested areas have shown few quality problems — and the Crop Estimates Committee has revised its projections higher, still pointing to a record summer crop. 21.49MtRecord 2025-26 summer grain and oilseed crop, up 5% year on yearSource: Crop Estimates Committee17.25MtLargest maize harvest on record, up 4% year on yearSource: Crop Estimates Committee12MtRoughly what South Africa consumes in maize each year The Crop Estimates Committee puts the 2025-26 summer grain and oilseed crop at a record 21.49 million tonnes, up 5% on the previous season — including the largest maize harvest ever recorded, at 17.25 million tonnes. With the country consuming about 12 million tonnes of maize a year, and large carryover stocks from last season, South Africa should enter the drought year with ample supplies even after exports. Dams are at healthy levels across the country — fruit and vegetables are fully planted under irrigation, along with roughly 20% of field crops — and the grazing veld is in fair condition heading into next summer. Sihlobo cautions that the timing of the rain, rather than the total amount, will matter most for crop development once planting starts. “The drought is not ideal and may impose costs on farmers, but we can’t view it the same way as previous droughts,” he said. ## What it means Food prices are the main channel through which an El Niño reaches ordinary South Africans, and food inflation is one of the risks the Reserve Bank weighs when setting interest rates. If Sihlobo's read is right, record grain stocks and moist soils could soften the food-price shock in 2027 — meaningful for household budgets and for the timing of any rate relief. This is analysis rather than certainty, though: a harsh, badly timed drought would still hurt farmers, and the picture will only firm up once planting begins in October. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business-opinion/865559/severe-weather-update-for-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [AgriView — Wandile Sihlobo](https://wandile.substack.com/p/dont-panic-about-el-nino-south-africas) ### 'Use it or share it': the telecoms bill that could cut data prices is open for comment URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/use-it-or-share-it-the-telecoms-bill-that-could-cut-data-prices-is-open-for-comment/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T04:16:19.000Z South Africans frustrated by the cost of mobile data have until 21 August to tell Parliament what they think of a bill designed to bring prices down. The portfolio committee on communications and digital technologies has opened written submissions on the Electronic Communications Amendment Bill, draft legislation that would compel the country's biggest mobile operators to share unused spectrum and open their networks to smaller competitors. Tabled in the National Assembly by communications minister Solly Malatsi on 22 April, the bill traces its origins to the Competition Commission's data services market inquiry, which found that weak competition was keeping data prices high. ## Use it or share it The bill's most consequential provision replaces the old "use it or lose it" approach to radio frequency spectrum with a "use it or share it" principle. Where spectrum assigned from 10 December 2021 onwards sits unused in an area for two years, the regulator Icasa must step in and allow another licensee to share it. Community networks and small businesses are to be given preference as secondary licensees, paying no spectrum fees for their first 12 months. If nobody takes up the unused spectrum, Icasa may withdraw it from the original holder altogether. The provision is timely: research from network measurement firm Opensignal found that South Africans spent just 3.7% of their connected time on 5G in the first quarter of 2026, suggesting plenty of high-value spectrum is not being sweated. ## Opening the big networks A second pillar creates the concept of an "access provider", defined as a licensee whose mobile network covers at least 90% of the population, which in practice means Vodacom and MTN. These operators would be obliged to provide national roaming and mobile virtual network operator services on request, with agreements concluded within 60 days. Where the parties cannot agree, Icasa must determine the terms, including by interrogating the underlying cost of the service. Icasa would also be required to publish wholesale pricing rules within 18 months and a list of essential facilities within 12 months, an obligation that has sat unfulfilled in the Act since 2005. Legal analysts caution that cheaper data is not guaranteed. Experts at law firm Bowmans note that the bill's success will depend on the regulations Icasa develops, and on striking a balance between fair access for new entrants and preserving the incentive for incumbents to keep investing in their networks. Written submissions close at 4pm on Friday, 21 August. ## Sources - [TechCentral](https://techcentral.co.za/have-your-say-on-the-bill-that-could-reshape-sa-telecoms/282987/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/telecommunications/140307/south-africans-could-soon-be-paying-less-for-mobile-data/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Parliament of South Africa](https://www.parliament.gov.za/storage/app/media/Bills/2026/B12-2026%5FElectronic%5FCommunications%5FAB.pdf?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Municipalities are sinking deeper into debt, 20 years of data show URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/municipalities-are-sinking-deeper-into-debt-20-years-of-data-show/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T04:16:17.000Z South Africa's municipalities are leaning ever harder on borrowed money, and a growing number can no longer pay back what they owe. That is the picture painted by Statistics South Africa's latest financial census of municipalities, a 20-year review of council finances published ahead of the local government elections on 4 November. Total municipal liabilities climbed from R402 billion in June 2024 to more than R442 billion a year later, a jump of roughly 10%. The assets those debts help finance grew by only about 5% over the same period, from just under R1.1 trillion to R1.15 trillion. The result is a steadily rising debt ratio: after touching a low of 0.26 in 2011, the proportion of municipal debt to assets has crept up to 0.38 in 2025. ## Debt is growing faster than revenue Municipalities collectively generated R620 billion in revenue in 2025, up from R109 billion in 2006, while operational spending came in close behind at R608 billion. But borrowing is outpacing income growth, and the burden is not evenly spread. North West and Mpumalanga recorded the sharpest surges, with liabilities in each province growing more than 18% in a single year. Two councils stand out as extreme outliers. Maluti-a-Phofung in the Free State and the West Rand District Municipality carry debt ratios of 2.70 and 2.32 respectively, meaning they owe more than double the value of everything they own. The country's three biggest spenders, Johannesburg (R79 billion), eThekwini (R60 billion) and Cape Town (R59 billion), together account for a third of all municipal expenditure. The large metros borrow deliberately to fund infrastructure: Johannesburg recently approved a R3.8 billion loan from German development bank KfW to upgrade its electricity network, while Cape Town has raised billions from Nedbank, the International Finance Corporation and the French Development Agency in recent years. ## The Auditor-General's warning The concern is what happens further down the pecking order. In her latest local government audit, the Auditor-General found that 17 municipalities are technically insolvent, with liabilities exceeding their assets. More than half of all councils have current liabilities that outstrip their current assets, and 72% do not have enough cash on hand to pay their creditors. Despite a legal requirement to pay suppliers within 30 days, 136 municipalities failed to do so, racking up interest and late-payment penalties that add yet more weight to already strained budgets. With voters heading to the polls in four months, the financial health of the councils that deliver water, electricity and sanitation is likely to feature prominently on the campaign trail. ## Sources - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/finance/141258/south-african-municipalities-are-falling-into-a-debt-trap/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Statistics South Africa](https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=19662&ref=businessbagel.com) - [Auditor-General of South Africa](https://www.agsa.co.za/storage/app/media/reporting/mfma-2025/mfma%5Freport%5F2024%5F25.pdf?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Chery takes the wheel at Rosslyn as it becomes a South African carmaker URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/chery-takes-the-wheel-at-rosslyn-as-it-becomes-a-south-african-carmaker/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T03:44:59.000Z Chery has just become a South African carmaker. On Friday, the fast-rising Chinese brand officially opened the Rosslyn plant in Pretoria, taking over a factory that Nissan had occupied for nearly 60 years. For a company that only entered the local market in 2021, it is a striking leap from importing cars to building them here. "We have moved from being an importer to a manufacturer, and it is a key milestone in our global journey," said Chery Automobile chairman Yin Tongyue at the launch. ## What Chery is promising Chery is keeping all 692 people who already worked at the plant, and expects to create nearly 3,000 direct and indirect jobs across manufacturing and its supply chain. It has pledged "hundreds of millions of US dollars" to upgrade the site, though it won't say what it paid Nissan, calling the price a commercial secret. The first vehicles are due in mid-2027, starting with a 15,000-unit ramp-up and building toward 50,000 a year, with a longer-term ambition of 100,000 annual sales in South Africa. The Tiggo Cross, Jaecoo J5 and Jetour T-Series will be built first, and Chery is aiming for up to 40% of its parts to come from local suppliers. Executives say the long-term goal is to turn Rosslyn into a "complete autocentre" with research, supply chain and training. ## Why it matters The move lands in a market Chinese brands are reshaping fast. They now make up nearly one in five new cars sold in South Africa, and Chery has already climbed to become the country's second-biggest passenger brand. It is the third Chinese carmaker to start building locally, after BAIC and Foton. At the launch, attended by around 350 guests including Deputy President Paul Mashatile, Mashatile called the takeover "a vote of confidence in our people, our institutions, our infrastructure" and said it reinforced South Africa's role as an automotive gateway to Africa. The scale of Chery's global push is hard to miss: in the first half of 2026 the group exported 944,000 vehicles from China, a 71.5% jump on a year earlier. Rosslyn has been building cars since 1963\. The real test now is whether Chery's arrival delivers lasting local jobs and suppliers, or simply puts a new badge on an old production line. ### The little-known fintech making FirstRand's R5bn bet look smart URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-little-known-fintech-making-firstrands-r5bn-bet-look-smart/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T03:29:59.000Z FirstRand does not usually chase unknowns. But the banking group behind FNB has quietly poured nearly R5 billion into Optasia, an AI-led fintech most South Africans have never heard of, and on Thursday the market finally saw why. Optasia's shares jumped as much as 16% in intraday trade before closing 6.46% higher at R15.99, their best day since the company listed on the JSE in November. ## What sparked the jump The trigger was a trading update for the six months to end-June. Optasia told investors it expects revenue to come in 50% to 60% higher than a year earlier when it reports its interim results in September, helped by strong growth in Ghana, Pakistan, Indonesia and the Republic of Congo. It also reaffirmed its full-year outlook of revenue and adjusted earnings (its EBITDA measure) both growing more than 30%. The heart of the business is small, instant loans delivered over the phone, which now make up about 72% of revenue and have become the group's biggest growth engine. ## Why FirstRand keeps buying in FirstRand first bought a 20% stake for nearly R5 billion, then lifted its holding to 26.1% in March. The appeal is scale: Optasia, founded in 2012, lends more than $15 million a day, processes about 1.5 billion credit decisions a month and operates in 38 countries. The update also showed it can absorb shocks. A two-month regulatory shutdown of its airtime-lending business in Nigeria, after it fell foul of new rules on non-traditional lending in Africa's most populous nation, was offset by growth elsewhere; the service only restarted the week before. That spread across many emerging markets is exactly what let the group keep growing while one country stumbled. For a bank whose home market is growing slowly, a bigger slice of a fast-scaling lender across Africa and Asia is a useful hedge. ## What comes next Optasia has just pushed into two more markets, Gabon and South Sudan, and launched its first loans aimed at merchants rather than only consumers, a product it plans to roll out across its existing footprint. Thursday's jump suggests investors are warming to FirstRand's bet, but the real proof comes in September, when the actual half-year numbers land. ### The AI firm behind Claude now wants to make its own medicines URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-ai-firm-behind-claude-now-wants-to-make-its-own-medicines/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T03:14:59.000Z Anthropic is best known as the company behind the Claude chatbot. Now it wants to make medicines. At an event billed as "The Briefing: AI for Science", it unveiled Claude Science, a new "AI workbench for scientists" that pulls scattered research tools and datasets into a single place and can generate figures and visuals. Alongside it, the company said it is starting an internal drug-discovery programme of its own. ## From selling AI to making its own drugs Anthropic framed the launch around what it calls AI's potential to "dramatically accelerate the pace of scientific discovery and the development of healthcare interventions", and pointed to a list of biotech and pharma companies already using Claude. Then it went further. Its head of life sciences, Eric Kauderer-Abrams, said the drug work will focus on "neglected" diseases that traditional biopharmaceutical companies wouldn't consider attractive targets. As a public-benefit company, an Anthropic spokesperson said, it "can choose programs on patient benefit, including work the commercial market overlooks". Jonah Cool, its head of life sciences partnerships, said the aim is to focus on those neglected diseases even as Anthropic builds and sells AI tools to the wider industry. ## An awkward position Anthropic's plan is one of the most direct attempts yet by a major AI company to actually develop drugs itself, and it puts the firm in the unusual position of selling software to the very drugmakers it may now compete with. It joins a growing field that already includes AI-first drug companies such as Insilico and Isomorphic Labs, the Google DeepMind spinout, alongside biotech startups and big pharma building or buying AI tools of their own. Anthropic's argument for doing both at once, as Kauderer-Abrams put it, is that to build the right tools it needs to "live it… in the trenches trying to develop drugs". ## What we still don't know For now, the details are thin. Anthropic has said little about which diseases it will target first or how far it will take any promising candidates. What is clear is the ambition: the company that helped put AI in millions of browsers now wants a hand in the medicine cabinet too. ### How fake Spotify streams broke a $3 million bet URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/how-fake-spotify-streams-broke-a-3-million-bet/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T02:59:59.000Z Somebody worked out how to make money from Spotify's charts without recording a single song. Over recent weeks, people have been placing real-money bets on which tracks top the streaming service's charts, using prediction-market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket. Then someone decided to rig the outcome. ## The rigged chart Spotify says it spotted and stripped out more than 500,000 artificial streams that had suddenly pushed a little-known song, Malcolm Todd's "Earrings", up its charts. The trouble is that those fake numbers had already been used to settle a Kalshi market on the most-streamed Spotify song in the US in June, a market that had drawn about $3 million in trading. Todd was even declared one of the winners on figures published before Spotify finished investigating. Before the fake streams landed, Kalshi had put his chances of topping the chart below 3%, so anyone betting on him stood to make roughly 30 times their money. One trader says the episode cost him $4,500. ## Spotify pushes back Spotify has now asked both Kalshi and Polymarket to remove its logo and make clear that neither platform has a partnership with it. Kalshi said it is "in touch with Spotify and actively investigating", while Polymarket did not respond to Bloomberg. Spotify says stream manipulation is nothing new, that it has "best-in-class detection" and that it does not pay royalties on faked streams; what is new is that betting markets have handed manipulators a fresh reason to try. ## Why it matters This is not the first time a prediction market has been gamed. In one earlier case, a US think-tank employee was found to have edited an interactive map of the Russia-Ukraine war that underpinned a Polymarket wager on Russia's territorial gains, and French authorities have investigated whether someone manipulated a weather station's data to profit from a market on Paris temperatures. The Spotify episode feeds the same wider worry: that prediction markets are quietly turning real-world numbers into targets worth rigging. As betting spreads into more corners of everyday life, the fight over who controls the underlying data, and who pays when it is faked, is only beginning. ### Naspers is giving away powerful AI, and hoping the payoff comes later URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/naspers-is-giving-away-powerful-ai-and-hoping-the-payoff-comes-later/ Last updated: 2026-07-06T02:44:59.000Z Naspers has a new kind of product, and for now it is free. Through its international arm Prosus, the JSE's largest technology group has launched ToqanClaw, a tool that lets business owners build their own apps, dashboards and automations simply by describing what they want, with no coding required. ## What ToqanClaw does The pitch is that anyone can create working software the way they would explain a task to a colleague. Prosus says it is the first company in Europe, and one of only a handful worldwide, to offer this at scale to its partners: more than five million restaurants, merchants and entrepreneurs. It is aimed first at restaurants, and Prosus points to early results such as a Dutch café chain that cut financial reporting from weeks to 30 minutes and a Rotterdam burger chain saving €21,000 a month. Chief executive Fabricio Bloisi says the group already runs 60,000 AI agents and 10,000 applications internally, built by people who never wrote a line of code. Prosus has also trained a specialised commerce model on data from more than a billion customers and 500 million daily interactions to plug into the tool. ## The catch: no clear way to make money For now, ToqanClaw is free, both for companies inside the Prosus stable and those outside it. And that is the problem: the group is still working out how, or even whether, it will make money from the platform. Prosus's strategy chief, Laura Fitoussi, says a paid version is not ruled out, but the priority right now is simply getting businesses to use it. To keep costs down, she says the tool is "model agnostic", automatically picking the cheapest capable model for each request and leaning on cheaper open-source models where it can. ## Investors want proof That has made some investors nervous. Analysts who once backed Naspers' AI push have turned cautious; as one fund manager put it, the market is now in "show-me-the-money mode". For Naspers, ToqanClaw is a bet that owning the tools millions of small businesses lean on every day will pay off eventually, even if the money isn't flowing yet. Whether investors keep their patience is the next test. ### Rand firms and the JSE climbs as soft US jobs data weakens the dollar URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/rand-firms-and-the-jse-climbs-as-soft-us-jobs-data-weakens-the-dollar/ Last updated: 2026-07-04T04:10:35.000Z The rand ended the week on the front foot, firming on Friday as a weaker US dollar gave emerging-market currencies room to breathe. Softer-than-expected American jobs data cooled expectations of a near-term interest-rate hike from the Federal Reserve, dragging the greenback lower against a basket of currencies and lifting the local unit. ## Where the market stood By 1415 GMT the rand was trading at around 16.23 to the dollar, up about 0.3% on its previous close. On the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the blue-chip Top-40 index rose 1.1%, while South Africa’s benchmark 2035 government bond strengthened, its yield easing 4.5 basis points to 8.22%. ## Global cues in the driving seat “The rand strengthened modestly this week, supported primarily by a weaker US dollar after softer-than-expected US jobs data shifted the expected timing of the Fed’s interest rate hike towards the end of the year,” economists at Nedbank said in a note. Like other emerging-market currencies, the rand continues to take much of its direction from global forces — US data and geopolitics chief among them — rather than domestic developments. At home, the picture was mixed. An S&P Global survey showed the private sector returning to marginal growth in June as price pressures eased, though a separate manufacturing gauge released earlier in the week pointed to deteriorating factory sentiment, with lower oil prices offering some comfort about the months ahead. Attention now turns to the Reserve Bank’s rate decision on 23 July, which could set the tone for the currency into the second half of the year. ## Sources - [CNBC Africa](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-african-rand-firms-as-weak-u-s-jobs-data-pressures-dollar?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Investing.com](https://www.investing.com/news/forex-news/south-african-rand-gains-as-dollar-weakens-on-us-jobs-data-93CH-4773275?ref=businessbagel.com) ### South Africa’s private sector edges back to growth as price pressures cool URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-private-sector-edges-back-to-growth-as-price-pressures-cool/ Last updated: 2026-07-04T04:10:33.000Z South Africa’s private sector returned to modest growth in June, according to the latest S&P Global Purchasing Managers’ Index, offering a cautious sign that conditions may be stabilising even as firms remain gloomy about the year ahead. The headline index rose to 50.5 from 49.6 in May, edging above the 50.0 mark that separates expansion from contraction. ## Hiring holds up as inflation retreats The return to growth was driven largely by resilient hiring, with companies continuing to add staff even as output and new orders fell for a second consecutive month — albeit at a slower pace than in May. The clearest bright spot was inflation: after climbing to their highest levels in nearly four years in May, both input costs and the prices firms charged customers eased markedly in June, taking some pressure off margins and households alike. ## Confidence still fragile The relief was tempered by a striking slide in sentiment. Business expectations for output over the coming year fell to their weakest level in almost five years, suggesting companies see the recent softness in demand persisting. That caution matters for the wider economy, where subdued confidence tends to translate into thinner investment and hiring plans further down the line. The reading lands at a delicate moment for policymakers. The South African Reserve Bank has flagged renewed inflation worries and meets on 23 July to decide on interest rates, while growth for 2026 is still forecast at little more than 1%. A single month above 50 does not make a recovery, but the combination of steadier employment and cooler prices at least points in a more encouraging direction than the past two months suggested. ## Sources - [CNBC Africa](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-africa-private-sector-returns-to-growth-as-inflation-eases-pmi-shows?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Bizcommunity](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/south-africa-private-sector-returns-to-growth-as-inflation-eases-pmi-shows-286777a?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Business Day (NG)](https://businessday.ng/africa/article/south-africas-private-sector-returns-to-growth-as-pmi-hits-two-month-high/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Pick n Pay bets on Gemini-powered ‘Penny’ to close the gap on Checkers URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/pick-n-pay-bets-on-gemini-powered-penny-to-close-the-gap-on-checkers/ Last updated: 2026-07-04T04:10:30.000Z Pick n Pay is turning to artificial intelligence in its bid to claw back ground in South Africa’s fiercely contested online grocery market, unveiling a conversational shopping assistant called Penny inside its on-demand asap! app. The tool, which begins a full public rollout on 6 July, lets shoppers assemble a basket simply by describing what they need. ## How Penny works Built on Google’s Gemini large language models, Penny allows customers to shop through ordinary conversation rather than scrolling through categories or typing exact product names. Shoppers can speak, type or even snap a photograph — of a handwritten list, a recipe or a product on the shelf — and Penny will translate it into a basket. It can also suggest recipes, recommend substitutions when an item is out of stock, help with meal planning and steer budget-conscious shoppers towards cheaper options. ## Playing catch-up in a delivery war The launch is the most significant upgrade to asap! since it went live, and it lands as South Africa’s grocers pour money into digital tools rather than competing on delivery speed alone. Pick n Pay, the country’s second-largest supermarket group by revenue, has been working through a turnaround after years of weak trading and market-share losses to Shoprite, whose Checkers Sixty60 platform dominates on-demand grocery delivery. Sixty60 introduced its own AI assistant, Pixie, only months ago, so Penny represents a direct answer on a new competitive front. For Pick n Pay, the wager is that a friendlier, faster way to shop will lift basket sizes and loyalty at a moment when every percentage point of the online market is being fought over. Whether an AI concierge is enough to change entrenched shopping habits — and dent Sixty60’s commanding lead — will only become clear once Penny is in millions of hands from next week. ## Sources - [TechCentral](https://techcentral.co.za/meet-penny-pick-n-pays-new-ai-shopping-companion/283301/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Bizcommunity](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/pick-n-pay-rolls-out-gemini-powered-grocery-assistant-penny-175696a?ref=businessbagel.com) - [The Citizen](https://www.citizen.co.za/business/battle-of-delivery-apps-pick-n-pay-launches-ai-assistant-woolworths-gets-another-dark-store/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Christo Wiese's Titan backs alternative lender Preference Capital with R350m URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/christo-wieses-titan-backs-alternative-lender-preference-capital-with-r350m/ Last updated: 2026-07-03T04:10:23.000Z Christo Wiese is not slowing down. At 84, the South African billionaire's primary investment vehicle, Titan Premier Investments, has ploughed R350 million into Preference Capital, an alternative credit provider, adding a fresh financial-services line to a portfolio that already stretches across retail, food manufacturing, industrial distribution, real estate and mining. The deal was confirmed by Moneyweb on 1 July and reported by Business Day the following day. ## Filling the gap the banks left Preference Capital was set up to offer alternative credit to South African businesses and consumers who fall through the cracks of conventional banking, operating in the space between mainstream bank lending and the far pricier informal credit market. The R350 million injection gives it a meaningful capital base to grow its lending book and widen its product range. It is a segment that has expanded quickly over the past decade, as banks tightened their lending criteria in response to regulatory capital rules and rising bad-debt ratios, leaving a growing pool of creditworthy borrowers short of affordable finance. For Wiese, the move extends Titan's reach beyond his well-known public-market positions into private financial services, an asset class that has drawn strong interest from South African family offices and institutions chasing higher yields than government bonds or bank deposits. ## A busy year for Titan The Preference Capital stake caps an active 2026 for Titan. In March, the vehicle sold R482 million of Invicta Holdings shares off-market to Thibault Square Financial Services, a related entity linked to Wiese's son JD, in what Financial Mail described as a family estate or tax-structuring exercise. In April it bought R6.87 million of Shoprite shares on the market at R274.60 apiece, topping up a decades-old holding that keeps Wiese the retailer's second-largest shareholder. And in May, he unlocked roughly R1 billion from that Shoprite stake through subsidiary Titan Fincap, raising liquidity without surrendering the votes that preserve his boardroom clout. It is a striking display of stamina from an investor whose fortune, put by Bloomberg at around $1.7 billion, was rebuilt from the wreckage of the 2017 Steinhoff International collapse, where he was the largest shareholder. Anchored by Shoprite, Pepkor, Invicta and Premier Group, and now dotted with private bets like Preference Capital, Wiese's steady recycling of capital has made him one of the more durable names in South African business. ## Sources - [Billionaires.Africa](https://www.billionaires.africa/2026/07/02/south-african-billionaire-christo-wiese-is-still-deploying-capital-at-84-with-a-fresh-r350-million-investment/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/2026-07-02-preference-capital-secures-r350m-backing-from-wiese-led-titan-premier-investments/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Tax season opens: six million South Africans will be auto-assessed URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/tax-season-opens-six-million-south-africans-will-be-auto-assessed/ Last updated: 2026-07-03T04:10:20.000Z Tax season is officially underway, and for roughly six million South Africans the message from the South African Revenue Service (SARS) is refreshingly simple: do nothing. The 2026 filing season opened on 1 July, and SARS has kicked things off with an auto-assessment window running until 12 July, during which it expects to issue about six million automatic assessments to taxpayers with straightforward affairs. Auto-assessments are built from data SARS already receives from employers, banks, medical schemes and retirement-fund administrators. Where that third-party information is complete, the revenue service reconciles it and calculates the outcome on the taxpayer's behalf. "We are removing the burden of having to file a tax return for six million taxpayers by automatically assessing them," SARS Commissioner Dr Johnstone Makhubu told 702 listeners this week. If a refund is due and all the details are in order, SARS says it aims to pay it within 72 hours. ## What you need to do, and when If you are one of the six million, you will receive an SMS or email notification. Until that message arrives, there is nothing to do, no service centre to visit and no call centre to phone. Taxpayers who are satisfied that their assessment is complete and correct can simply leave it. Those who disagree, or who are not auto-assessed at all, can file from 13 July. The deadline for most non-provisional and provisional taxpayers is 23 October 2026, while trusts and provisional taxpayers have until 22 January 2027\. SARS says the staggered, phased approach is designed to ease pressure on its systems and branches. ## Watch out for the scammers The convenience comes with a warning. Makhubu cautioned that fraudsters routinely exploit filing season with fake refund and debt notifications, nudging people to click malicious links and hand over banking or personal details. His reminder is worth repeating: SARS will never ask for your banking or credit-card details by email or SMS. If a message does, treat it as a scam. The commissioner was candid that compliance remains a work in progress, singling out provisional taxpayers, the self-employed and those with additional income streams as the group least likely to file. By automatically assessing millions of salaried earners, SARS is effectively shifting a large chunk of the population into a compliant bucket, freeing its enforcement muscle to focus where the gaps are widest. ## Sources - [Eyewitness News](https://www.ewn.co.za/2026/07/02/sars-tells-6-million-taxpayers-to-sit-tight-as-filing-season-gets-underway?ref=businessbagel.com) - [The South African](https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/sars-auto-assessed-auto-assessments-efiling-south-africans-2026-tax-season-begins/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [SARS media release](https://www.sars.gov.za/media-release/sars-rolls-out-phased-filing-season-urges-taxpayers-to-wait-their-turn/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Idris Elba and Google want to hand Africa's storytellers the AI keys URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/idris-elba-and-google-want-to-hand-africas-storytellers-the-ai-keys/ Last updated: 2026-07-03T07:32:40.000Z Africa has never been short of stories. What it has lacked, according to actor Idris Elba, is access. That is the gap a new partnership between Elba and Google is setting out to close, with a programme to put artificial intelligence tools in the hands of the continent's creators. ## Free tools for 100,000 creators Announced this week, the initiative pairs Google with Elba's Akuna Group to run an AI education programme for storytellers across sub-Saharan Africa, backed by more than $1 million from google.org, the company's charitable arm. It is designed to reach roughly 100,000 creators across Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone, covering the cost of Gemini, Google's AI assistant, and other tools. Crucially, the money comes with training rather than just software, so creators learn to actually use what they are given. Elba, speaking to Google's summit by video link, put the case plainly: Africa is "bursting with untold stories", he said, but too often the barrier "isn't a lack of vision, it's a lack of access." The pitch is that talent already exists on the continent; what has been missing is the door in. ## Part of a bigger Africa bet The creator fund is one slice of a much larger push. Google made the announcement at its Africa Cloud Summit in Johannesburg, where it confirmed it has now exceeded a five-year target to invest $1 billion on the continent. Its startup accelerator will also back 15 South African companies, part of a pledge to support 50 African ventures between 2024 and 2028\. Google's James Manyika framed the effort around a warning that resonates well beyond storytelling: that the digital divide risks hardening into an "AI divide", leaving whole populations out of the next wave of growth. That is the real stake here. Free tools and training are a start, but the measure of success will be whether 100,000 African creators can turn them into work, income and stories that travel well beyond the continent, rather than simply widening the reach of the technology that is reshaping everyone else's. ### South Africa's new homebuyer is young, single, and going it alone URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-new-homebuyer-is-young-single-and-going-it-alone/ Last updated: 2026-07-03T07:34:41.000Z The face of the South African homebuyer is changing. First-time buyers are back in force in 2026, and a growing number of them are stepping onto the property ladder entirely on their own, no partner and no co-signer. ## Buying young, buying alone The clearest signal comes from ooba Home Loans. Its chief executive, Gavin Lomberg, says young South Africans are increasingly buying property solo. In 2026, 76.9% of home loan applications from buyers aged 18 to 24 were submitted by a single applicant, up from 68.4% a decade ago. Most of these young buyers are also childfree: 92.5% of applicants in that age group have no dependants. For a generation once expected to buy a first home only after settling down, property is becoming an early, independent milestone rather than a later reward. ## A market tilting toward affordability That shift sits inside a broader recovery. Estate agency Remax's National Housing Report for the first quarter of 2026 shows both first-time and repeat buyers growing despite a jittery economy, with average prices hitting new highs. First-time buyers now make up around 38% of home loan applications, according to origination data from BetterBond, up from 35.4% in 2023. Where people buy is shifting too. With the Western Cape's average price of about R3.36 million sitting roughly 72% above the rest of the country, many buyers are looking to more affordable provinces for value. Gauteng has become the busiest market by far, accounting for 50.8% of all property transfers in the quarter and helping drive a 7.47% national rise in the number of homes sold. There is a catch, though. Interest rate cuts stalled in January as a higher oil price and a weaker rand revived inflation worries, and prices keep climbing. For now, a new generation is choosing to own early and independently anyway. The open question is whether that confidence survives the moment borrowing gets more expensive again. ### The R24 billion coding site that AI quietly gutted URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-r24-billion-coding-site-that-ai-quietly-gutted/ Last updated: 2026-07-03T07:36:41.000Z Not long ago, Stack Overflow was where the world's programmers went whenever they got stuck. Today it is one of the clearest casualties of the AI boom. Prosus, the international arm of Naspers, has cut the value of the site by nearly 60% in its latest results, and has now written off 87% of what it originally paid, about $1.5 billion. ## A R24 billion bet gone wrong Prosus bought Stack Overflow for $1.742 billion in June 2021, roughly R24.2 billion at the time. The bet was that the go-to question-and-answer community for developers would keep growing. Instead, the site has been overtaken by the very kind of technology it helped train. Coding assistants like Anthropic's Claude Code, Cursor and Windsurf, along with chatbots such as Claude, Google's Gemini and ChatGPT, now answer the questions developers used to post to their peers. The drop in usage is stark. At its pandemic peak, Stack Overflow fielded around 300,000 questions a month. Today it gets about 6,000, sending activity all the way back to where it started. ## Still profitable, but worth a fraction The write-downs have piled up. This year Prosus knocked a further $280 million (R5 billion) off the site's value, plus $54 million (R960 million) against its brand and customer relationships. Having entered the 2026 financial year valued at just $564 million, Stack Overflow is now carried at only $230 million. Oddly, the business itself is not dying. Revenue actually rose 12% to $129 million in the year to March, and it swung to a small profit of $12 million from a $9 million loss the year before. The problem is not that Stack Overflow makes no money; it is that the market no longer believes it is worth what Prosus paid. The wider picture for the parent is far healthier, with Naspers reporting record results, revenue of $10.8 billion and core headline earnings up 14% to $3.6 billion. But Stack Overflow stands as a cautionary tale of how quickly AI can hollow out a once-dominant platform, and a reminder that even the smartest buyers can misjudge how fast the ground moves beneath them. ### Why Pick n Pay's boss just handed back R21 million in shares URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/why-pick-n-pays-boss-just-handed-back-r21-million-in-shares/ Last updated: 2026-07-03T07:38:23.000Z It is not every day that a chief executive gives money back. When Sean Summers returned to Pick n Pay in 2023, he came to rescue a business that had just posted the first loss in its history, after his predecessor Pieter Boone's strategy misfired. To speed the recovery up, the board handed him a four-million performance-share incentive worth about R100 million at the time. ## Missed targets, forfeited shares Two years on, the turnaround is proving slower than hoped. Pick n Pay has pushed back the point at which its core supermarkets stop losing money to the 2029 financial year. Because the performance conditions tied to that target were not met, Summers has forfeited one million of the shares, worth about R21 million at today's price. Half of the original award had already vested in October 2025 for putting a new leadership structure in place, while a further one million shares remain tied to succession planning. ## A rare sight in local boardrooms Even after giving up the shares, Summers is comfortably paid. He took home R56.7 million for the financial year, down from R65 million the year before, on a base salary of R25.2 million. But forfeiting a bonus specifically because targets were missed is unusual in South African boardrooms, where long-term awards have a habit of paying out regardless. His fixed-term contract has been extended to May 2028 to see both the turnaround and an orderly succession through. The group has also been raising cash, recently selling down part of its stake in discount chain Boxer to bring in R4.7 billion. That gives Summers room to keep reshaping the supermarket business, but it also raises the stakes. The real question now is whether the 2029 break-even target holds, or whether the next batch of performance shares meets the same fate as this one. ### 1.7 million South African cars still carry a hidden danger, and the fix is free URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/1-7-million-south-african-cars-still-carry-a-hidden-danger-and-the-fix-is-free/ Last updated: 2026-07-03T07:30:20.000Z There is a good chance you know someone driving one. About 1.7 million vehicles on South African roads are still fitted with defective Takata airbags, the kind of inflator that can rupture and fire metal fragments at the driver and front passenger. Now the country's carmakers are making a fresh, coordinated push to get them fixed. ## A recall that stalled Tshetlhe Litheko, chief policy officer at the automotive business council Naamsa, has confirmed a year-long, industry-funded campaign running from 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027\. Its job is to reach the owners who never responded to earlier recalls. The scale of that gap is telling: the industry started with about 2.7 million affected vehicles but managed to reach fewer than half of the owners. To close the distance, Naamsa is working with the Road Traffic Management Corporation and the National Consumer Commission, and has partnered with the Retail Motor Industry Organisation to carry out repairs in areas where carmakers have no dealership. ## Free repairs, and maybe a reward For owners, the important part is simple: the airbag replacement is free at authorised dealers. This time the industry is trying to make it easier to act on, with vehicle identification number checks to flag affected cars, major awareness drives over the December holidays, and community outreach. Naamsa is even weighing "rewards" as a magnet to coax reluctant owners of particular models and age groups to book their cars in. The immediate goal is to reach 300,000 of the outstanding 1.7 million vehicles during the campaign. The danger is not theoretical. The Takata inflators were recalled worldwide from around 2013 after a series of deaths and injuries, when the devices exploded and sent metal shards into the cabin. A decade on, South Africa's challenge is no longer awareness among carmakers but tracing second- and third-hand owners who may have no idea what is sitting in their steering wheel. Whether a year and a basket of incentives is enough to close that gap is the test this campaign now has to pass. ### Should Washington own a slice of ChatGPT? OpenAI reportedly thinks so URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/should-washington-own-a-slice-of-chatgpt-openai-reportedly-thinks-so/ Last updated: 2026-07-03T07:27:50.000Z Imagine the US government owning a piece of the company behind ChatGPT. According to the Financial Times, that is exactly what OpenAI has floated: giving Washington a 5% stake in the business. It is a striking idea, and an unconfirmed one, but it says a lot about the pressure now bearing down on the AI industry. ## The Alaska model The proposal, as reported, would see leading American AI firms each hand 5% of their equity to a government-linked fund modelled on the Alaska Permanent Fund, the state-owned pool seeded with oil money that pays annual dividends to residents. OpenAI has suggested rivals do the same, though it is unclear whether they would agree. Chief executive Sam Altman is said to have discussed the idea with President Donald Trump, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and separately with Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders. The backdrop is a president who has publicly mused about giving ordinary Americans a stake in the AI boom. ## A report, not a deal For now, this is talk, not a transaction. Reuters, which relayed the FT's account, said it could not verify the report, and neither OpenAI nor the White House responded to requests for comment. It also lands at a tense moment between AI companies and the government: OpenAI recently delayed the full public launch of its GPT-5.6 model at Washington's request, and the authorities had briefly ordered rival Anthropic to suspend foreign access to its frontier models. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have quietly filed to go public. Whether a 5% government stake ever materialises is far from certain. But the fact that it is being discussed at all shows how the question of who profits from artificial intelligence, and who has a claim on it, is moving from the fringes into the centre of American politics. ### WhatsApp is about to let you skip the phone-number swap URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/whatsapp-is-about-to-let-you-skip-the-phone-number-swap/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T17:34:21.000Z For years, adding someone on WhatsApp meant trading phone numbers. That is finally changing. The Meta-owned messenger, used by more than three billion people, is introducing usernames so you can connect with new people without handing your number over. ## Reserve now, use later The feature is not fully live yet, but reservations open this week. You can claim a username inside the app, under Settings and then Account, and lock it in before the wider launch later this year. With three billion-plus users, popular names will go quickly, which is exactly why WhatsApp is opening the queue early. The privacy thinking goes deeper than a handle. There is no directory to browse and no search, so someone has to know your exact username to message you for the first time. Once it is switched on, new contacts no longer see your phone number. WhatsApp has also built an optional "username key", an extra code people need before they can reach you out of the blue. ## What it doesn't change You will still need a phone number to create and run your account; the username sits on top rather than replacing your SIM. Creators, small businesses and organisations that already have a presence elsewhere can claim their existing Instagram or Facebook username on WhatsApp, so their identity stays consistent across Meta's apps. The rollout will happen gradually, country by country, over the coming months. But if there is a username you really want, the smart move is to open the app this week and plant your flag before someone else does. ### Murray & Roberts rescues its mining arm in a R1.27bn deal URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/murray-roberts-rescues-its-mining-arm-in-a-r1-27bn-deal/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T17:34:07.000Z Murray & Roberts has pulled off the deal that keeps it standing. The engineering group, one of South Africa's best-known names in construction and mining, has completed the R1.27 billion sale of its core mining-services businesses to a consortium led by local investor Differential Capital. It clears the single biggest hurdle in the group's business rescue, the formal turnaround it entered in November 2024 after debt and cash-flow pressure became too much to carry. ## What changed hands The sale moves the heart of the old group into a standalone company backed by fresh capital: the Cementation underground-mining operations in Africa and the Americas, plus a technology business called Terra Nova. Those businesses come with live contracts already running, including a five-year underground development job at Tharisa Minerals and work at Mopani Copper Mines in Zambia. To fund the deal, arranger Redinc Capital raised about R1.2 billion through four tranches of JSE-listed preference shares. Crucially for workers, the deal secures about 2,600 jobs and lets the rescue practitioners repay every secured lender and post-commencement financier. Of the R1.27 billion price, R1 billion was paid on closing, with the balance due in a year. There is a catch for those further back in the queue: unsecured creditors are unlikely to see any payout until that deferred slice lands. ## New owners, new leadership Japie du Plessis steps in as chief executive of the new group, with Sibulele Songca as chief financial officer. "This is much more than a change in ownership; it is the start of a new chapter for us," Du Plessis said. The buyer framed it the same way: Differential's Mark Salmon said the appeal was "to preserve a world-class mining services platform with deep technical expertise and a highly skilled workforce." This was effectively the last big piece to sell. The group's only other significant asset, OptiPower, went to Kulani Energy back in January, and the rescue team says there are no more material assets left to offload. For a company that lost its listed parent to a high-court winding-up order, walking away with the business and its 2,600 people intact is about as good as a business rescue gets, and a rare bit of good news in South African heavy industry. ### Dis-Chem's founder steps back as a generational test begins URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/dis-chems-founder-steps-back-as-a-generational-test-begins/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T17:33:51.000Z After 48 years at the heart of the business he built from a single Johannesburg pharmacy, Ivan Saltzman is stepping back. The 76-year-old founder of Dis-Chem retires from his executive role at the end of June, remaining on the board as non-executive deputy chairman — a quiet but significant moment for one of South Africa’s biggest listed retailers. Saltzman and his wife, Lynette, both pharmacists, opened the first Dis-Chem store in 1978, disrupting a market in which medicine prices were largely unregulated by undercutting rivals on prescription drugs. The chain grew into a roughly US$1.7 billion healthcare retailer spanning three countries, with stores that doubled as one-stop wellness destinations selling vitamins, cosmetics and their own private-label goods. ## A test of culture His departure hands a generational challenge to chief executive Rui Morais, a company insider who worked on the Dis-Chem listing and took the top job about three years ago. The worry, voiced by several analysts, is whether the entrepreneurial instinct that powered Dis-Chem’s rise can survive the shift to professional management. South African retail offers cautionary tales: the Ackerman family’s drawn-out succession at Pick n Pay, and the upheaval around Steinhoff and Pepkor, both show how founder-led empires can stumble when control changes hands. The Saltzman family is not walking away entirely. Ivan and Lynette gifted shares to two of their sons before his retirement, keeping the family’s stake above a quarter of the company. Bloomberg, valuing the family for the first time, puts its fortune at around US$1.3 billion. ## Betting on healthcare Morais is steering Dis-Chem deeper into healthcare, building Health Hub stores that combine a pharmacy, clinic, diagnostic testing, virtual doctor consultations and medical-insurance services under one roof. The aim is to cut dispensing times and reposition the group as an integrated healthcare platform rather than a traditional retailer. It is a bold strategy, and a risky one: Dis-Chem shares fell sharply in late May after earnings missed expectations, weighed down by upfront spending on a new innovation hub. As Merchant West’s Alyssa Viljoen cautioned, insurance and healthcare are regulated and capital-intensive — a world apart from pharmacy retail — and the market will not give management unlimited time to prove the new model. Saltzman’s exit, then, marks not just the end of an era but the start of Dis-Chem’s most consequential bet yet. ### Prosus's everyday-apps bet is paying off, even as Tencent looms URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/prosuss-everyday-apps-bet-is-paying-off-even-as-tencent-looms/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T17:33:17.000Z Prosus reckons its big idea has stopped being a pitch and started being a business. The Naspers-owned technology investor, known locally for Takealot and in Latin America for food-delivery giant iFood, says its push to build everyday-life "ecosystems" spanning food, banking and travel is now delivering real profit across Latin America, India and Europe. ## The numbers behind the mood Revenue from continuing operations rose 57% to $9.7 billion, and adjusted operating earnings (the cash the businesses generate before interest and tax) jumped 84% to $1.3 billion. Core headline earnings, the group's preferred profit measure, grew 13% to $8.3 billion, and the board lifted the dividend by 40%. Management says it hit its $1.3 billion e-commerce profit target. "This is not a plan any more, it is a reality," chief executive Fabricio Bloisi told investors. The standouts were iFood in Brazil, where revenue has accelerated to 40% growth helped by a tie-up with travel platform Despegar, and India, where payments business PayU turned a profit for the first time. Takealot's revenue rose almost a fifth to $1 billion. Bloisi argues the group now has real "moats", even as deep-pocketed rivals such as DiDi-backed 99Food and Meituan-backed Keeta pile into Brazil. He is also leaning hard on artificial intelligence, touting an in-house "commerce model" he says is ten times cheaper to run than the big US offerings. ## The shadow that won't lift Not everyone is convinced. Prosus still owns a stake in China's Tencent worth around $111 billion, more than the roughly $95 billion the whole company is valued at in Amsterdam, so Tencent's swings keep dominating reported profit. Even after returning $10 billion to shareholders through buybacks, the gap between Prosus's share price and the value of what it owns stayed stuck near 42%, missing one of management's own targets. Another $5 billion of buybacks is planned for next year. Analysts are split. Abax's Steve Minnaar said the jury is still out on capital allocation and the Tencent overhang, while conceding the AI investment is "very sensible". Bloisi's own benchmark is steep: doubling the group's market value to $168 billion by 2028\. The real test is whether the everyday-apps engine can grow big enough, fast enough, to finally step out of Tencent's shadow. ### The WeBuyCars billionaires are buying a JSE company off the market URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-webuycars-billionaires-are-buying-a-jse-company-off-the-market/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T17:32:36.000Z The brothers who built WeBuyCars into a household name are making a very different kind of deal. Faan and Dirk van der Walt, through a company called AttBid, are buying out and delisting RMB Holdings, the JSE-listed investment group whose main asset is a 38.5% stake in property developer Atterbury. The all-cash offer values RMB at R654.58 million, or 47 cents a share. ## A neat piece of financial engineering AttBid is 51% owned by the van der Walt brothers and 49% by the Atterbury Property Fund, so in effect Atterbury is helping to buy out the listed company that owns a big slice of it. Almost all of RMB's value, about 92% of its portfolio, is that single Atterbury holding. Standard Bank has guaranteed the cash and the competition authorities have approved the deal. Independent expert Investec judged the price fair, though it sits right at the bottom of its 47-to-53-cent valuation range. The timing raised eyebrows. Just a week before the bid first surfaced in February, the brothers sold R866 million worth of WeBuyCars shares, a block sale that knocked the stock from R52.85 to R44 and wiped about R3.7 billion off its market value. Faan van der Walt insists the two are unrelated, saying the Atterbury investment "was committed to long before the recent sale of shares was executed". ## The hold-out It is not quite done. The buyers already control about 56% of RMB, helped by fund manager Coronation selling its 28% stake to AttBid ahead of the announcement. But another shareholder, Breede Coalitions, holds roughly 20% and could push for a higher price, especially as the offer is barely above where the shares already trade. If AttBid gets to 90%, it can force the rest out. There is history here too: RMB Holdings was once the parent of FirstRand and Rand Merchant Bank before unbundling them in 2020 to focus on property. If the deal clears, a storied JSE name quietly disappears, folded into a private property play, and the van der Walts add a major listed-property bet to their growing empire. ## Sources - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/business/140777/brothers-behind-webuycars-helping-south-african-property-giant-buy-itself-back-for-r655-million/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Ghost Bites (The Finance Ghost)](https://www.ghostmail.co.za/ghost-bites-purple-group-rmb-holdings/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Billionaires.Africa](https://www.billionaires.africa/2026/04/12/webuycars-brothers-buy-jse-property-giant-for-r654-million/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Microsoft just lost more than half a trillion dollars in a month URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/microsoft-just-lost-more-than-half-a-trillion-dollars-in-a-month/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T17:32:18.000Z Microsoft, one of the most valuable companies on earth, is having a month it would rather forget. Its shares are on track for their worst showing since the 2008 financial crisis, with more than $530 billion wiped off the company's value in June alone. At one point the stock was down more than 20% for the month, sliding to its lowest close since 2023 before a late bounce. ## Hit from two sides The selloff comes down to a rare double bind. On one side, Microsoft is spending enormous sums on artificial intelligence, guiding to around $190 billion in capital spending (the money that goes into data centres and chips) through to December, more than Wall Street expected. On the other, investors fear AI could eventually erode the very products that mint Microsoft's cash. As one analyst put it, whether "Microsoft Word or Excel will be rendered obsolete by AI remains to be seen". "Microsoft is getting hit on two sides with worries about both AI spending and AI disruption," said Jack Ablin of Cresset Wealth Advisors. The doubts are showing up in broker notes too: Stifel's Brad Reback cut his price target to $400 from $415, warning that heavy AI spending is squeezing margins at the Azure cloud business. The selling has dragged Microsoft's valuation to about 19 times forward earnings, below the S&P 500's 20 and well under its own 10-year average of 27, its cheapest in a decade. ## Bargain hunters circle That cheapness is already tempting buyers. "Big Short" investor Michael Burry placed a bet on a rebound, buying call options with strikes in the low $700s that run to 2028, and the stock jumped 5.7% to $372.97 in a single session, its best day in more than a year. With the price this low, the debate has shifted from how far Microsoft can fall to whether the selloff has gone too far. Whether this is a buying opportunity or the first real crack in the AI boom is the question now hanging over the world's biggest software maker, and the answer will ripple far beyond Redmond. ### From world-beater to worst quarter: the JSE's mining slump URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/from-world-beater-to-worst-quarter-the-jses-mining-slump/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T17:32:06.000Z The shares that made the JSE a global star have turned into its biggest drag. South Africa's gold and platinum miners have tumbled, and with them the whole market: the mining and metals index has plunged 23% over the past three months, while the broader All Share is down 3.3%, its worst quarter in more than two years. ## From record highs to a hard fall The turn traces back to the Iran war. Precious-metal prices dropped from all-time highs, and a strong US dollar, propped up by a cautious Federal Reserve, piled on the pressure. That unwound a remarkable run: between early 2024 and February this year, the market had soared 78% in dollar terms, outpacing peers around the world. The heaviest fallers this quarter were the big names, with Gold Fields down 27%, Valterra Platinum off 20% and AngloGold Ashanti down 19%. Telecoms group MTN and banks FirstRand and Capitec were among the few holding the line. ## Cheap, stable, and ignored Here is the part that does not fit the script. On almost every other measure South Africa looks attractive. Local shares now trade about 19% below their emerging-market peers, a discount that has widened sharply from 11% in September last year. Nine in ten local fund managers told Bank of America they see more to buy than to sell, the most bullish reading since 2009\. Yet just half are outright positive on the market, down from 88% before the Iran war, and not one is keen on commodity stocks. The money is voting with its feet: South African equities have seen outflows in three of the last four months. "Commodity bulls have disappeared as quickly as they came," said Bank of America strategist Andreas Bruckner. As Vontobel's Marc Bindschaedler put it, the country's economic data is good or even better than expected, "nice music, but no-one listens to it anymore". With global cash chasing AI bets elsewhere, South Africa's problem is not its numbers, it is getting anyone to look. ### South Africa's only aluminium smelter is being sold to an American giant URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-only-aluminium-smelter-is-being-sold-to-an-american-giant/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T17:29:51.000Z For thirty years, the Hillside smelter in Richards Bay has quietly turned electricity into metal, employing thousands and anchoring South Africa's aluminium industry. Now it is changing hands. South32, the Australian mining group that has run Hillside since splitting from BHP in 2015, has agreed to sell almost its entire aluminium business to the American producer Alcoa. ## What's in the deal The agreement values the assets at up to $5.6 billion, roughly R92 billion. Alcoa is paying $3.1 billion in cash upfront, about $1 billion in its own shares, taking on around $750 million of debt, and promising up to another $750 million if aluminium and alumina prices climb over the coming years. It is also assuming about $1.2 billion in future rehabilitation costs. Beyond Hillside, the only primary aluminium smelter in the country and the largest in the southern hemisphere, the package includes South32's alumina and bauxite interests in Australia and Brazil, while its idled Mozal smelter in Mozambique is left out. For Alcoa, the purchase lifts annual output to 3.2 million tonnes of aluminium and 14.8 million tonnes of alumina, with an expected $900 million in value from running the assets more efficiently. "We're bringing together highly complementary assets," said Alcoa chief executive Bill Oplinger, adding that the deal should add to cash flow immediately. For South32 it is a clean exit from a volatile, power-hungry business: new boss Matt Daley, who took over the same day, says the group will refocus on higher-margin base and precious metals and hand shareholders an initial return of about $500 million. ## Why it matters for South Africa Hillside supports thousands of jobs in KwaZulu-Natal, directly and through its supply chain, so the key question is what a new owner does with it. South32's Africa boss, Noel Pillay, says Alcoa, as a dedicated aluminium producer, is "well positioned to operate Hillside into the future." Investors liked the move, sending South32's shares up as much as 10%. The deal still needs shareholder and regulatory approval and is only expected to close in the first half of 2027, which leaves South Africa's competition authorities a long runway to weigh what it means for jobs and a strategic industry. ### An Abu Dhabi oil giant is closing in on Shell's South African petrol stations URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/an-abu-dhabi-oil-giant-is-closing-in-on-shells-south-african-petrol-stations/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:47.000Z Shell may be about to experience a change of hands. The oil major is reported to be near a deal to sell its entire South African petrol-station network to Adnoc Distribution, the retail arm of Abu Dhabi's national oil company. The reported price is about $1 billion, roughly R16 billion. ## What we know The sale would hand the Abu Dhabi group control of about 600 forecourts, close to a tenth of the South African market. Adnoc became the front-runner earlier this year after talks with commodities trader Gunvor fell through. For Shell, it fits a wider plan to sell assets it no longer treats as core. One caution: nothing is final. Talks are described as advanced, but no agreement has been signed, and both Shell and Adnoc have declined to comment. ## Part of a bigger shift If it lands, the deal continues a quiet reshaping of who owns South Africa's fuel retail. Glencore took over Chevron's Caltex stations in 2018, and Vivo Energy bought Engen, the country's biggest chain, last year. Foreign and trader-backed owners increasingly dominate the pumps. For motorists, a change of ownership rarely changes much at the pump overnight. The bigger question is what a cash-rich Gulf owner does next with a tenth of the country's forecourts, and an announcement, if the talks hold, is expected within days. ### Group Five just came back from the dead, and paid everyone back URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/group-five-just-came-back-from-the-dead-and-paid-everyone-back/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:47.000Z Six years ago, Group Five looked like another cautionary tale of South Africa's construction bust. Today it is something rarer: a rescue that actually worked. The business rescue practitioners running the once-listed builder have formally ended proceedings that began in March 2019, one of the longest business rescues the country has seen, with every creditor set to be paid in full. ## How bad it was When Group Five collapsed into business rescue in 2019, it owed about R7 billion, faced more than 2,300 creditors, ran 119 active construction projects and employed close to 6,000 people across a sprawling group of some 180 companies. It had once been a market darling: its shares peaked at R74 in 2007 on the pre-World Cup building boom, before crashing to 89 cents when trading was suspended and the group delisted. Independent analysis by PwC reckoned that a straight liquidation would have paid secured lenders as little as 65 cents in every rand, and ordinary creditors just 3.4 cents, with nothing at all for shareholders. ## How it ended The outcome is very different. All secured and ordinary creditors have been paid in full. Of the 119 projects, 101 were carried through to completion or safely handed over, and key businesses such as Intertoll Europe and Everite were sold as going concerns rather than shut down, fetching more than anyone had expected. Fewer than 15% of the roughly 5,862 staff were retrenched over the six years, with many moving across to new owners along with the businesses they worked in. The group that had spanned some 180 companies has been whittled down to about 54 as the estate was wound in. Joint practitioner Dave Lake says the process overachieved its aims. There may even be a surplus left over for shareholders once the last matters are wrapped up, almost unheard of in a rescue this size. Group Five now enters a wind-down under an interim board, with finance chief Anthony Clacher promising to conclude the remaining tax, audit and legal matters prudently on behalf of stakeholders. It is a quiet ending for a company that once boomed on the 2010 World Cup construction wave. ### Why FNB is selling you a loaf of bread for 99 cents URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/why-fnb-is-selling-you-a-loaf-of-bread-for-99-cents/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:48.000Z A loaf of bread for 99 cents sounds like a supermarket special. It is actually a banking strategy. From 1 July, FNB is extending its popular 99-cent bread reward, until now available only at Pick n Pay, to Boxer stores across the country ## How it works Qualifying customers on FNB's entry-level accounts, Easy, Aspire and Prime Life, simply shop in-store at Boxer, and from the following week they can claim up to four loaves at 99 cents each. Each loaf is worth about R11, so four a month is roughly R44 back in your pocket, enough, the bank points out, to wipe out a month's account fees for someone paying R30 to R50\. It builds on a perk that has run with Pick n Pay since September 2024, over which time FNB has handed out 6.3 million discounted loaves. ## Bread as a banking weapon So why does a bank care about bread? Pieter Woodhatch, who runs FNB's eBucks rewards programme, says the aim is to become the main bank for lower-income customers by giving them value they can actually feel. Boxer is the key: its stores reach townships and small towns where Pick n Pay is thinner on the ground, opening up a customer base FNB hasn't reached as well before. The tactic seems to be working. By May, one in five eligible customers were claiming their loaves each month, and in some parts of the country the figure was as high as one in two. The bread is only one weapon. The wider FNB and Pick n Pay partnership, which also includes a Burger Friday deal redeemed 6.2 million times and up to 30% back on Pick n Pay's online shopping, has handed customers more than R600 million in rewards in a single year, with the 99-cent bread alone accounting for around R70 million of that. "This partnership has been a game changer for customer rewards," says Pick n Pay chief executive Sean Summers. FNB's own boss, Lytania Johnson, frames it as reimagining how banking can support people in their everyday lives. The bet is simple: give people something real at the till, and they will bank with you for everything else. ### New vehicle sales roar to a 19-year June high URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/new-vehicle-sales-roar-to-a-19-year-june-high/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T04:12:52.000Z South Africa's new vehicle market has shrugged off a gloomy economic mood to record its best June in almost two decades, with dealers shifting 54,482 units over the month. Figures from naamsa, the Automotive Business Council, show aggregate domestic sales jumped 15.3% on June last year — an extra 7,213 vehicles on the 47,269 sold in June 2025 — the strongest performance for the month since 2007. ## Defying the odds What makes the numbers striking is the backdrop. Consumer confidence contracted over the second quarter as households wrestled with earlier fuel-price increases and broader uncertainty. Yet demand held firm, supported by essential mobility needs, replacement cycles, fleet renewals and stronger government procurement. ## Toyota leads, Chinese brands press in Toyota again topped the sales charts, ahead of Suzuki and Volkswagen. The standout structural trend, though, is the advance of cheaper Chinese marques, which accounted for five of the 15 best-selling brands in the month and continue to chip away at the traditional players. It was not all good news. Export volumes slipped 6.9% to 33,879 units, down from 36,377 a year earlier, a reminder that global appetite for South African-built vehicles remains under pressure even as the local market powers ahead. For an economy grinding out sluggish growth, a buoyant car market offers a rare dose of optimism — and a sign that, whatever the confidence surveys say, South Africans will still spend when the product and the financing line up. ## Sources - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/motoring/2026-07-01-sa-new-vehicle-sales-soar-to-19-year-june-high/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [African News Agency](https://africannewsagency.com/vehicle-market-defies-economic-odds-with-record-sales-in-june/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Reserve Bank hints at another rate hike as inflation fears build URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/reserve-bank-hints-at-another-rate-hike-as-inflation-fears-build/ Last updated: 2026-07-02T04:12:49.000Z South Africa's central bank has signalled that borrowing costs could rise again this month, with Governor Lesetja Kganyago warning that inflation expectations have drifted above the target the Reserve Bank is determined to defend. Speaking this week, Kganyago said the recent climb in expected inflation justified the Bank's decision in May to lift the repo rate by 25 basis points to 7% — its first increase in three years — and left little doubt that the Monetary Policy Committee is prepared to move again if the risks persist. ## Why the Bank is on edge The trigger has been a global energy shock. The MPC raised rates in May to stop an oil-price spike, driven by conflict in the Middle East, from feeding into lasting price pressures. Since then the Governor has repeatedly stressed that the Bank will act to keep inflation expectations anchored, arguing that allowing them to slide now would make price stability far more costly to restore later. Kganyago has placed the 3% goal at the centre of the Bank's credibility. The SARB has been steering policy towards this firmer objective, a lower anchor than the older three-to-six percent target range, and the message from Pretoria is that the commitment is not up for negotiation. ## What happens on 23 July The MPC delivers its next decision on 23 July, and the market is split. Interest-rate futures suggest some traders are betting on another hike, while a number of economists reckon the committee will hold and adopt a wait-and-see stance to gauge whether the oil shock is genuinely fading. Lower fuel prices from 1 July should relieve some pressure, but a weaker rand or fresh energy volatility could still force the Bank's hand. For households and businesses already carrying the steepest lending rates in years, the tone is sobering. The run of falling interest rates that many had pencilled in for 2026 now looks, at best, delayed — and at worst, about to reverse. ## Sources - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/economy/kganyago-signals-sa-could-hike-rates-again-this-month/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Engineering News](https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/kganyago-signals-south-africa-could-hike-rates-again-this-month-2026-07-01?ref=businessbagel.com) - [CNBC Africa](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-africas-kganyago-signals-resolve-to-curb-inflation-after-rate-hike?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Tax season opens today: what to know about auto-assessments URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/tax-season-opens-today-what-to-know-about-auto-assessments/ Last updated: 2026-07-01T06:47:13.000Z South Africa's 2026 tax season opens today, and for millions of people it will require no effort at all. The South African Revenue Service (SARS) begins its auto-assessment window on 1 July, running to 12 July, during which it will use data from employers, banks, medical schemes and retirement funds to complete returns automatically for taxpayers with straightforward affairs. SARS expects to issue roughly 6 million auto-assessments this year. If you are selected, you will receive an SMS or email between 1 and 12 July telling you your assessment is ready to view on eFiling or the SARS MobiApp. Where a refund is due and everything is in order, SARS says it aims to pay out within 72 hours. ## What you need to do If you agree with your auto-assessment, there is nothing further to submit — the return is treated as filed. If something is missing or incorrect, such as extra income or deductions the taxman did not have on record, you can edit and submit an updated return. SARS has urged taxpayers to "wait their turn" rather than rushing onto its platforms, saying the phased approach is designed to keep the system running smoothly. ## Key dates to remember Taxpayers who are not auto-assessed, along with those who need to file manually, can do so from 13 July to 23 October 2026\. Provisional taxpayers — typically those earning income outside a salary — have until 22 January 2027 to submit. Missing these deadlines can trigger administrative penalties, so it pays to diarise them. The message from SARS this year is simple: check your phone and email before doing anything, confirm the numbers match your own records, and only step in if the automated figure looks wrong. For the majority of ordinary earners, tax season may be over almost before it has begun. ## Sources - [SARS](https://www.sars.gov.za/media-release/sars-rolls-out-phased-filing-season-urges-taxpayers-to-wait-their-turn/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [SAnews](https://www.sanews.gov.za/south-africa/sars-announces-2026-filing-season-dates?ref=businessbagel.com) - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/finance/863009/sars-announces-dates-for-tax-season-2026-when-to-expect-auto-assessments/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Vodacom seizes control of Safaricom in R35 billion deal URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/vodacom-seizes-control-of-safaricom-in-r35-billion-deal/ Last updated: 2026-07-01T06:47:12.000Z Vodacom has tightened its grip on East Africa's biggest telecoms operator, completing a $2.1 billion deal — roughly R35 billion — to lift its effective stake in Kenya's Safaricom to about 55%. The transaction, first announced in December 2025, hands the Johannesburg-listed group majority control of one of the continent's most valuable technology and financial-services businesses. Under the deal, Vodacom acquired an additional 20% effective interest: 15% bought from the Government of Kenya and a further 5% from its parent, Vodafone Group, at KES34 a share. The Kenyan government retains a 20% holding in Safaricom, which remains listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange. ## Why Safaricom matters Safaricom is best known for M-Pesa, the mobile-money platform that transformed everyday payments in Kenya and now generates about 44% of the operator's revenue there. The company has also been expanding into Ethiopia, where it has built a customer base of roughly 14 million, alongside a growing suite of cloud, enterprise and internet-of-things services. For Vodacom, consolidating control means it can fold more of Safaricom's fintech and connectivity earnings directly into its own results. ## A milestone for Vision 2030 The completion is a centrepiece of Vodacom's Vision 2030 strategy, which leans heavily on deepening its presence in Africa's fastest-growing markets and scaling digital and financial services beyond traditional voice and data. It caps a drawn-out process: the deal was cleared to close only after Kenya's Court of Appeal stayed a conservatory order on 26 June, removing the last legal hurdle. The move positions Vodacom as an even bigger player in African fintech at a time when mobile-money adoption continues to climb across the continent. For South African investors, it also deepens the group's exposure to high-growth markets beyond a sluggish domestic economy — a bet that Africa's digital-payments boom still has room to run. ## Sources - [TechCentral](https://techcentral.co.za/vodacom-takes-the-reins-at-safaricom/283187/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Engineering News](https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/vodacom-completes-acquisition-of-additional-20-stake-in-safaricom-2026-06-30?ref=businessbagel.com) - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/865034/vodacom-takes-control-of-kenyan-giant-in-r35-billion-deal/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Fuel prices fall from today, but the levy relief is now gone URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/fuel-prices-fall-from-today-but-the-levy-relief-is-now-gone/ Last updated: 2026-07-01T06:47:09.000Z Motorists across South Africa woke up to cheaper fuel this morning, with the Department of Petroleum and Mineral Resources confirming price cuts that take effect from Wednesday, 1 July 2026\. Petrol 93 falls by R2.01 a litre and Petrol 95 by R1.96, while diesel drops by between R3.14 and R3.59 a litre at wholesale level. Inland, a litre of 95 unleaded now costs R26.10, down from R28.06 in June, while 93 unleaded eases to R25.94\. Coastal motorists pay R25.23 for 95\. Illuminating paraffin, a lifeline fuel for many households, tumbles by R5.23 a litre. The one outlier is liquefied petroleum gas in Gauteng, which edges up 16 cents a kilogram. ## What is driving the relief The cuts follow a sharp retreat in global oil prices. The average Brent crude price used in the calculation fell from about $104.59 to $86.53 a barrel over the review period, after a ceasefire between the United States and Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz and eased fears of supply disruption. A firmer rand helped too: the currency averaged R16.38 to the dollar, stronger than the R16.52 of the previous period, trimming the cost of imported fuel. ## The catch: levy relief is over The saving at the pump would have been larger were it not for the National Treasury fully phasing out its temporary fuel-levy relief. Around R1.50 a litre has been added back to petrol and R1.97 to diesel, effectively halving the over-recovery. The full general fuel levy has been reinstated at 429 cents a litre on petrol and 416 cents on diesel, while a lower slate levy of 113.94 cents a litre, down from 157.74 cents, softened the blow slightly. For households already bracing for higher electricity, water and rates bills from July, the fuel cut offers welcome breathing room — even if the return of the full levy means drivers are not feeling the entire benefit of cheaper oil. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/864824/here-is-the-official-petrol-price-for-july-8/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [South African Government](https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/minister-gwede-mantashe-announces-adjustment-fuel-prices-effective-1-july?ref=businessbagel.com) - [The Citizen](https://www.citizen.co.za/motoring/petrol-and-diesel-drops-july-this-is-how-much-you-will-pay/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Takealot turns a profit for the first time in its history URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/takealot-turns-a-profit-for-the-first-time-in-its-history/ Last updated: 2026-06-29T07:07:04.000Z Takealot has done something it never managed before: it made a profit. Results released on Monday by parent company Naspers show that the Takealot Group swung to a maiden full-year adjusted operating profit in the year ended 31 March 2026 — a milestone for South Africa’s best-known online retailer as it fends off Amazon’s arrival in the local market. The group reported adjusted earnings before interest and tax (aEBIT) of US$11 million, roughly R190 million, swinging from a US$13 million loss (about R220 million) the year before. Revenue grew 18% in local-currency terms, excluding acquisitions, to around US$1 billion (R17.3 billion), while gross merchandise value — the total worth of goods sold across its platforms — rose 14% to US$2 billion (R34.6 billion). Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation jumped 60% in rand terms to US$78 million (R1.35 billion). ## Takealot.com does the heavy lifting The core Takealot.com marketplace led the charge, generating US$906 million (about R15 billion) in revenue, up 19% in rands, and an aEBIT profit of US$7 million (R121 million). Naspers credited wider gross margins from a better product mix, its growing retail-media advertising business, and the paid TakealotMORE loyalty programme, which now accounts for 27% of the platform’s sales. The food-delivery arm, Mr D, stayed profitable, lifting revenue 11% in rands to US$138 million (R2.4 billion). Naspers said Takealot was holding on to its market leadership despite Amazon’s much-watched South African launch. ## Read the fine print There is an important caveat. The figures are measured in adjusted terms — aEBIT and aEBITDA — which strip out various costs and are not standard IFRS measures of profit. Naspers itself notes they cannot be compared directly with other companies’ reported earnings, even though the group uses them to set management pay and dividends. Takealot’s breakthrough is real and meaningful, but it is a profit on the group’s preferred yardstick rather than the bottom line of a conventional income statement. Looking ahead, the group plans to turn its delivery network into a business in its own right, scaling Takealot Fulfilment Solutions to ship parcels for outside retailers across the country. After years of losses, the question now is whether Takealot can keep the profit ticking over while Amazon spends heavily to win local shoppers. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/864862/takealot-becomes-profitable-for-the-first-time/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [ITWeb](https://www.itweb.co.za/article/naspers-prosus-set-for-minimum-73bn-revenue/DZQ587V85zxqzXy2?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Businesses brace as 30 June anti-immigration deadline arrives URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/businesses-brace-as-30-june-anti-immigration-deadline-arrives/ Last updated: 2026-06-29T06:42:30.000Z Businesses across South Africa are bracing for disruption as a controversial 30 June deadline, set by anti-immigration groups for undocumented foreigners to leave the country, arrives amid heightened security. The date has been popularised by the movement known as March and March, founded by former radio presenter Jacinta Ngobese-Zuma, and taken up alongside the Operation Dudula group in a string of marches. The economic fallout is already visible where it lands hardest. In several townships, spaza shops run by foreign nationals have closed temporarily or shut entirely after threats and attacks. Residents have found themselves with reduced access to everyday goods, while the traders themselves have lost critical income, a reminder of how deeply migrant-owned businesses are woven into the informal economy that millions rely on. ## Pressure on the inner city Johannesburg's central business district has been a focal point, with marchers heading to retail hubs such as the China Shopping Centre and Dragon City to demand compliance with labour laws. Some demonstrations have gone further, calling on businesses to dismiss all foreign nationals, including those holding valid documentation. Police have been deployed in strength: acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia said the South African Police Service, working with metro and private security, was prepared for the planned demonstrations. ## A regional ripple The unrest has prompted a regional response. Several African governments, among them Nigeria, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Mozambique, have moved to repatriate citizens, with flights operating through the end of the month. For an economy that leans on cross-border labour and trade, the exodus carries costs that extend well beyond the immediate flashpoints. The government has tried to lower the temperature, dismissing a widely shared poster bearing the national coat of arms, which claimed an official deadline, as fake, and stressing that no such order exists. Even so, the climate of fear has been enough to dent trade and unsettle communities. For South African business, the episode is a sharp reminder that social stability and the bottom line are rarely separate concerns. ## Sources - [Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/6/22/south-african-police-tighten-security-as-anti-migrant-deadline-approaches?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Daily Maverick](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-06-24-blame-the-government-anti-migrant-leaders-deflect-responsibility-for-potential-violence-on-30-june/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [EWN](https://www.ewn.co.za/june-30-protests-operation-dudula-enters-the-fray-in-joburg/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Treasury moves to choke off Joburg's funding as deadline looms URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/treasury-moves-to-choke-off-joburgs-funding-as-deadline-looms/ Last updated: 2026-06-29T06:42:23.000Z The City of Johannesburg is staring down a fiscal cliff after Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana signalled that National Treasury could stop transferring money to the metro. In a letter to Mayor Dada Morero dated 19 June, the minister gave the city seven days to explain why those transfers should not be halted, a deadline that places the dispute squarely in the spotlight as a new financial year begins. At issue is the city's financial management. Treasury says it is acting under the Municipal Finance Management Act and is weighing whether to invoke Section 216 of the Constitution, the provision that allows funds to be withheld from an organ of state that commits a serious or persistent breach of financial controls. Johannesburg was among more than 70 municipalities flagged in a similar process in December. ## What Treasury is unhappy about The minister's letter points to the adoption of an unfunded 2025/26 adjustment budget, a persistent failure to deal with unauthorised, irregular, fruitless and wasteful expenditure, and a lack of consequence management. It also flags the city's failure to pay creditors within the 30 days the law requires. According to the letter, Johannesburg owes Rand Water around R1.2 billion and Eskom roughly R3.7 billion, debts that threaten the very services residents depend on. ## High stakes for the metro The transfer in question is the city's equitable share, its slice of nationally raised revenue, and any move to halt it for July would deepen an already severe liquidity squeeze. Morero has previously pushed back against the characterisation of the city as bankrupt, insisting Johannesburg can meet its obligations. Opposition figures, by contrast, have seized on the standoff as evidence of deep governance failures in the country's economic heartland. The confrontation carries weight well beyond the city council. Johannesburg contributes a substantial share of national output, and its financial health is closely watched by investors, ratings agencies and the businesses that operate in the metro. With municipal elections due later this year, the funding fight is as political as it is financial, and how it is resolved will say much about Treasury's appetite to enforce discipline on struggling municipalities. ## Sources - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/south-africa/clock-is-ticking-as-godongwana-gives-coj-new-notice-over-funding-cuts/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [News24](https://www.news24.com/southafrica/godongwana-plans-to-stop-transfer-of-funds-to-joburg-after-it-adopted-unfunded-budget-20260624-1219?ref=businessbagel.com) - [SABC News](https://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/treasury-awaits-joburg-response-as-morero-faces-funding-deadline/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### African Bank walks away from its R5.7bn Eskom home-loan bet URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/african-bank-walks-away-from-its-r5-7bn-eskom-home-loan-bet/ Last updated: 2026-06-29T06:41:55.000Z African Bank has walked away from one of its boldest growth bets, abandoning a R5.7 billion deal to buy Eskom's staff home-loan portfolio after deciding the transaction had become more trouble than it was worth. The agreements lapsed when key conditions were not met by the end of March, and the lender has now confirmed it will not revive them. ## Why the deal lapsed The transaction was first announced in December 2024 under then-chief executive Kennedy Bungane, who pitched it as a way to rapidly scale African Bank's home-loan book. It formed part of Eskom's broader push to shed non-core assets, with the power utility under pressure to exit its employee home-loan business as a condition of the government's debt-relief package. But the conditions precedent attached to the deal were never fulfilled by the extended deadline of 31 March 2026, and the agreements simply expired. Bungane resigned abruptly in March amid weak results and a regulatory reporting stumble, leaving the bank to reassess its priorities under new leadership. ## Consolidation over ambition Interim chief executive Zweli Manyathi has made clear the bank would rather tidy its own house than chase scale. The Eskom deal, he told Business Day, would have created "a major distraction" at a time when African Bank is trimming what it does and consolidating what it already has. The caution is understandable. African Bank swung from a R262 million profit in its 2025 financial year to a R624 million loss in the first half of 2026 — a sharp reversal for a lender that had hoped to strengthen its balance sheet ahead of a long-mooted listing on the JSE. The home-loan acquisition had been central to that ambition, and walking away marks a quieter, more defensive chapter. For Eskom, the collapse means finding another buyer for a portfolio it is still obliged to offload. For African Bank, the message is that stability now matters more than expansion — at least until the books look healthier. ## Sources - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/2026-06-26-eskom-home-loan-book-deal-was-going-to-be-a-distraction-african-bank-ceo-says/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/banking/133298/end-of-an-era-for-african-bank-after-r5-7-billion-eskom-deal-collapses/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [IOL Business Report](https://iol.co.za/business-report/2026-05-08-african-bank-walks-away-from-r57bn-eskom-staff-home-loan-portfolio-deal/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Motorists set for July fuel relief — even as the levy returns URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/motorists-set-for-july-fuel-relief-even-as-the-levy-returns/ Last updated: 2026-06-29T06:41:38.000Z South African drivers are in line for cheaper fuel in July, with month-end data pointing to cuts at the pumps even as the government winds back its temporary fuel-levy relief. Figures from the Central Energy Fund (CEF) for the final week of June show healthy over-recoveries on both petrol and diesel, driven mainly by a sharp retreat in the global oil price. The CEF data showed an over-recovery of about R3.07 a litre on petrol and between R4.68 and R5.12 a litre on diesel — roughly 50 cents better than at mid-month. ## The levy bites back The catch is that National Treasury's fuel-levy relief is ending. After adding back half of the levy in June, the remainder returns in July, putting R1.50 a litre back onto petrol and R1.96 onto diesel. Even so, the market is handing motorists a bigger discount than the state is taking away. On the CEF's month-end numbers, that points to a net cut of roughly R1.50 a litre for petrol and R2.70 or more for diesel. The figures are projections, however: official prices are confirmed by the energy department at month-end and can still move on factors such as the slate levy and late currency swings. ## Oil does the heavy lifting The swing is almost entirely an oil story. Brent crude has slid to around 74 dollars a barrel, down from roughly 85 dollars at mid-month and well below the 100-plus seen in recent months, after ships resumed transiting the Strait of Hormuz amid early progress towards ending the US-Iran conflict. The rand, trading in a narrow band around R16.50 to the dollar, has added only a few cents of support. "For now, global sentiment remains the dominant driver of USD/ZAR, but local structural risks continue to limit the rand's upside," said Andre Cilliers, currency strategist at TreasuryONE. A note of caution remains. An attack on a cargo vessel near the waterway has rattled shipowners, and any renewed flare-up could nudge oil — and pump prices — back up. For now, though, a July cut looks all but locked in, offering households a small but welcome reprieve. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/864726/great-news-for-petrol-prices-in-south-africa-next-week/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [IOL](https://iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/2026-06-23-lower-fuel-prices-on-the-cards-for-july-heres-what-to-expect/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [eNCA](https://www.enca.com/business-top-stories/massive-fuel-price-cuts-cards-july?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Businesses brace for 30 June shutdown as police redirect R600m to security URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/businesses-brace-for-30-june-shutdown-as-police-redirect-r600m-to-security/ Last updated: 2026-06-25T09:37:46.000Z Businesses across South Africa are tightening security and reviewing contingency plans ahead of nationwide demonstrations planned for Tuesday, 30 June, as authorities move to head off any repeat of the destruction seen during the July 2021 unrest. The call to action, driven by anti-immigration group March and March, has put retailers, logistics operators and employers on alert, with some encouraging staff to work from home. The economic stakes are considerable. The 2021 riots caused an estimated R50 billion in damage and cost tens of thousands of jobs, a memory that is shaping how both the state and the private sector are preparing this time around. ## A R600m security push Police have redirected around R600 million towards strengthening operations ahead of the planned protests. The South African Police Service says it has finalised operational plans and mobilised resources, working closely with metro police and private security firms. Acting National Commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane said officers were “ready” and “prepared” after a coordination meeting with the Private Security Industry Regulatory Authority and security companies, also attended by Acting Police Minister Firoz Cachalia. “The lessons of July 2021 remain fresh in our minds,” Dimpane said, pointing to past “gaps in coordination, shortcomings in communication, limitations in early warning systems and insufficient collaboration.” She warned that “the blocking of roads, intimidation of communities, destruction of property, attacks on businesses, looting, violence and any attempts to undermine public order will not be tolerated,” while stressing that lawful, peaceful protest would be protected. ## Retailers on watch The Consumer Goods Council of South Africa, which represents many of the country's largest retailers, has warned members to prepare for possible disruption, including threats to delivery services, transport routes and commercial premises. For a business community still nursing the scars of 2021, the priority is continuity: protecting staff, securing stock and keeping supply chains moving should any flare-ups occur. Much remains uncertain, including the scale of turnout and whether the day amounts to a full shutdown, with organisers giving mixed signals. What is clear is that South African business is taking no chances, betting that visible preparation now is cheaper than disruption later. ## Sources - [IOL](https://iol.co.za/news/south-africa/2026-06-24-police-and-private-security-strengthen-coordination-ahead-of-30-june-protests/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/news/2026-06-25-retail-giants-warned-to-brace-for-unrest-looting-in-june-30-shutdown/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/864266/south-africa-preparing-for-national-shutdown-next-week/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### South Africa refines its first high-purity rare earths in mining breakthrough URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africa-refines-its-first-high-purity-rare-earths-in-mining-breakthrough/ Last updated: 2026-06-25T09:37:40.000Z South Africa has taken a meaningful step towards building its own rare earth processing industry, after the Steenkampskraal Monazite Mine and state research body Mintek announced they had produced high-purity mixed rare earth products at laboratory scale. The milestone, unveiled on Wednesday, makes South Africa the first African country to refine these strategic minerals through a partnership between a mining company and a national research institution. Rare earths are the unglamorous backbone of the modern economy, used in the magnets that power electric vehicles, wind turbines, smartphones, advanced electronics, defence systems and medical equipment. Global supply is dominated by China, which has left manufacturers elsewhere exposed and given resource-rich countries a powerful incentive to develop their own capacity. ## Moving up the value chain The breakthrough matters because it pushes South Africa beyond simply digging up and exporting raw ore. By processing monazite concentrate into high-purity material at home, the country can capture more of the value that currently flows offshore. The project is built on the Steenkampskraal mine in the Western Cape, regarded as the world's highest-grade rare earth and thorium deposit, and has drawn support from the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation (Necsa). “This is not only a victory for Steenkampskraal and Mintek, but a victory for South Africa,” said the mine's executive chairman, Dr Enock Mathebula. “It demonstrates the country's ability to develop world-class technologies, create local beneficiation opportunities and participate meaningfully in global critical mineral supply chains.” Mintek chief executive Dr Molefi Motuku said the work proved South Africa possessed “not only the minerals but also the scientific capability to compete globally in critical minerals processing.” ## What happens next The partners say the achievement lays the foundation for commercial production of rare earth products before the end of 2026, with the potential to expand into rare earth and thorium beneficiation and even medical isotopes. The Industrial Development Corporation has fully funded the mine's first-phase metallurgical processing plant, which is under construction and scheduled for commissioning in August. Concentrate production is expected later this year, with first shipments anticipated before year-end. Brought out of care and maintenance in 2023 with approvals from the National Nuclear Regulator and the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, Steenkampskraal is now courting strategic investors conducting due diligence on the project. Discussions are also under way to establish local rare earth separation capabilities — the technically demanding step that would move South Africa closer to a fully fledged processing hub. ## Sources - [IOL / Business Report](https://iol.co.za/business-report/economy/2026-06-24-sa-moves-closer-to-rare-earth-processing-hub-as-steenkampskraal-and-mintek-reach-milestone/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Bizcommunity](https://www.bizcommunity.com/article/steenkampskraal-and-mintek-strike-rare-mixed-rare-earth-beneficiation-842443a?ref=businessbagel.com) - [African Mining Market](https://africanminingmarket.com/steenkampskraal-and-mintek-achieve-breakthrough-in-rare-earth-production/26081/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### New Woolworths boss orders an 'organisational reset' URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/new-woolworths-boss-orders-an-organisational-reset/ Last updated: 2026-06-24T09:45:04.000Z Fresh leadership often arrives with a fresh blueprint, and Woolworths' new group chief executive is wasting little time putting his stamp on the business. Sam Ngumeni, who took the reins of the JSE-listed retailer at the start of June, has announced an "organisational reset" designed to simplify the group's structures, strip out duplication and get growth moving again — a shake-up that reaches into the senior leadership team. ## A new hand on the tiller Ngumeni succeeded Roy Bagattini, who retired after leading Woolworths since February 2020 — a tenure that spanned the Covid-19 pandemic, supply-chain shocks and the eventual unwinding of the group's troubled Australian department-store bet, David Jones. Ngumeni is very much a Woolworths insider, having joined the company in 2008 and most recently run its standout Food division before stepping up to the top job. The reset signals that he intends to run a leaner, more accountable operation. By removing overlapping structures and clarifying who owns what, the group hopes to make quicker decisions and channel more energy into trading rather than internal bureaucracy. ## Why now Woolworths heads into this shake-up with a familiar mix of strengths and headaches. Its Food business continues to hum along, while the Fashion, Beauty and Home arm has shown early signs of recovery and the Australian Country Road operation remains a question mark. Half-year results for the 2026 financial year showed solid turnover growth but profit under pressure as margins were squeezed. Against that backdrop, Ngumeni's move is less about firefighting and more about positioning. Retail in South Africa is fiercely competitive, with consumers under pressure and rivals sharpening their value offers. A simpler, faster Woolworths is the new boss's answer to staying ahead. For shoppers, little changes at the till in the short term. For investors, the reset offers an early read on how Ngumeni plans to lead: methodically, and with an eye on costs and execution rather than grand reinvention. ## Sources - [News24](https://www.news24.com/business/companies/new-woolworths-ceo-announces-big-shakeup-with-two-key-execs-out-20260623-1055?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/retail/137210/end-of-an-era-for-woolworths/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### FirstRand to take R18bn UK hit as it plots its exit from Britain URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/firstrand-to-take-r18bn-uk-hit-as-it-plots-its-exit-from-britain/ Last updated: 2026-06-24T09:44:57.000Z South Africa's biggest bank by market value has warned that its profits will take a real knock this year, after FirstRand confirmed it is lifting the provision for a costly British motor-finance scandal to around R18 billion and laying the groundwork to walk away from the United Kingdom altogether. In an operational update released on 23 June, the group said normalised earnings for the year to 30 June 2026 would land between 4% and 9% lower than the prior year once the motor provision is absorbed. FirstRand also expects to exit the UK within the next 12 months, which means its entire British business will be reported as a discontinued operation when results are published. ## What is behind the hit The pain traces back to a long-running investigation by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority into the historical mis-selling of motor finance, one of Britain's largest consumer-redress sagas. The regulator's final compensation scheme, settled at the end of March, has saddled the wider UK motor-finance industry with an estimated £9.1 billion bill. FirstRand, which has repeatedly described the scheme as flawed and disproportionate, raised its own provision sharply to roughly £750 million. The exposure sits within Aldermore, the British specialist lender FirstRand bought in 2017 as a beachhead into the UK consumer-finance market. Rather than keep absorbing the regulatory uncertainty, management has decided the business no longer fits the group's risk appetite. ## A clean break from Britain FirstRand says it will work with Aldermore's board and UK regulators to manage an orderly transfer of ownership over the coming year. Group return on equity is expected to sit at or just below the bottom of its stated 18% to 22% target range — still robust by global standards, but a step down for a lender accustomed to sector-leading returns. Crucially, the damage is contained to Britain. At home, FirstRand's core franchises — FNB, RMB and WesBank — have continued to perform, and the group's South African operations remain firmly profitable. The full audited results, which will spell out the UK exit in detail, are due on 10 September. For shareholders, the update draws a line under an episode that has dogged the share for much of the year. The message from management is that the bleeding is being stopped, even if halting it carries a chunky once-off cost. ## Sources - [News24](https://www.news24.com/business/companies/firstrand-profit-hit-by-r18bn-provision-for-uk-probe-20260623-1001?ref=businessbagel.com) - [CNBC Africa](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-africas-firstrand-to-exit-uk-unit-after-car-loan-provisions-hit-993-million?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/firstrand-to-exit-uk-as-car-loan-charges-hit-r16-8bn/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Treasury's crypto crackdown draws fire as comment deadline nears URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/treasurys-crypto-crackdown-draws-fire-as-comment-deadline-nears/ Last updated: 2026-06-23T05:13:06.000Z National Treasury's plan to fold crypto assets into South Africa's decades-old exchange-control system is running into stiff opposition from economists, just days before the window for public comment closes on 30 June. The draft Capital Flow Management Regulations, published in April, would rewrite the 1961 Exchange Control Regulations to treat crypto much like foreign currency. Under the proposals, residents who hold or control crypto assets above a set threshold would have to declare them to the Treasury or an authorised dealer — and, in certain cases, offer to sell them within 30 days. Failure to comply could carry a fine of up to R1 million, or the value of the assets, whichever is greater, and up to five years in prison. ## The case for the rules Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank argue the measures are about closing a loophole, not criminalising crypto. They say the regime would not apply retroactively and is designed to curb fraud and money laundering — a sensitive issue given that South Africa was only recently removed from the Financial Action Task Force's greylist. ## 'Out of touch', say critics Critics are unconvinced. Theuns du Buisson, an economic researcher at the Solidarity Research Institute, which has lodged formal comments, argued that fraud and money laundering are already covered by existing law and that the draft risks scaring off investors who fear they will not be able to repatriate their returns. "These proposed regulations create the impression that cryptocurrency is used primarily by criminals," he said. Efficient Group chief economist Dawie Roodt went further, warning that heavy-handed controls could ultimately weaken the rand by pushing people towards crypto and stablecoins. "The people who made these proposals simply do not understand what they are talking about," he said, arguing that the technology is built precisely to bypass the financial system the state is trying to police. Supporters counter that bringing crypto into the exchange-control net is a sensible modernisation that finally gives regulators visibility over cross-border flows. With the comment deadline now looming, the Treasury faces the task of squaring those competing views before deciding how hard to push. ## Sources - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/cryptocurrency/139276/the-government-wants-control-of-your-crypto-in-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [National Treasury](https://www.gov.za/news/media-statements/national-treasury-invites-public-comment-draft-capital-flow-management?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Bitcoin.com News](https://news.bitcoin.com/south-african-treasury-extends-crypto-rule-deadline-to-june-30-after-backlash/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Standard Bank holds its nerve as Middle East jitters dent client confidence URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/standard-bank-holds-its-nerve-as-middle-east-jitters-dent-client-confidence/ Last updated: 2026-06-23T05:12:09.000Z Standard Bank has told investors that the fallout from conflict in the Middle East has left its clients less willing to transact, invest and borrow over the past five months — yet Africa's largest bank by assets insists the squeeze on confidence will prove temporary. In a voluntary trading update covering the five months to 31 May 2026, released ahead of its closed period, the group said the operating environment had become "progressively more complex" as geopolitical tension weighed on economic activity across its markets. ## Earnings cool, but stay on track Earnings growth moderated from the 12% the bank reported for the first quarter, though management described the overall showing as resilient and credited the lender's scale and diversification. Its corporate and investment banking arm — long the group's crown jewel — drove balance-sheet growth alongside the business and commercial banking unit, while the personal and private banking division grew more modestly as home loans ticked up at low single digits. Crucially for shareholders, Standard Bank left its guidance for the year to 31 December 2026 unchanged, saying it would revisit the numbers at its interim results. Over the medium term, the group is still targeting headline earnings per share growth of between 8% and 12% by 2028. ## Betting on a second-half rebound "Should the recent positive developments hold, we would expect confidence and momentum to return in the second half of the year," the bank said, a nod to tentative signs that tensions in the Middle East may be easing. There were bright spots beneath the headline caution. Credit impairment charges fell compared with a year earlier — even as the bank topped up forward-looking provisions to reflect a darker macroeconomic outlook — helping to push its credit loss ratio lower. The insurance and asset management business carried its 2025 momentum into the new year, supported by stronger life-risk experience and growing assets under management in South Africa and Nigeria. The bank also struck a relatively upbeat note on home conditions, pointing to reform momentum, healthier state finances and strong terms of trade as supports for the South African economy, even as the inflation outlook deteriorated. Investors will get the full picture when Standard Bank reports results for the six months to 30 June 2026 on 13 August. ## Sources - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/mny%5Fsens/standard-bank-group-limited-voluntary-trading-update-for-the-five-months-to-31-may-2026/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/company-strategy/2026-06-22-standard-bank-maintains-guidance-despite-uncertain-operating-environment/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/banking/139506/standard-bank-reveals-the-impact-of-the-iran-war/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Sasol's 20% slide has analysts sniffing a bargain URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sasols-20-slide-has-analysts-sniffing-a-bargain/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T08:39:53.000Z Few shares have ridden the Middle East's turmoil quite like Sasol, and few have fallen as fast now that peace is on the table. The petrochemical and energy group's stock has shed about 20% in a matter of days, yet some analysts reckon the sell-off has opened an attractive door for patient investors. ## From R242 to R175 Sasol slid from a high of R242 last week to around R195 early on Monday, before dropping further to roughly R175.43 by Thursday as US President Donald Trump reportedly signed a peace agreement with Iran and Brent crude retreated to about $77 a barrel. The pullback follows a remarkable rally that had lifted the share from below R60 in April 2025 to its recent peak, a climb driven partly by the war-time oil premium and partly by genuinely improving operations at the company. ## The bull case Adrian Hammond, head of resources research at SBG Securities, says Sasol remains one of his highest-conviction ideas despite the run-up. “We have a high-conviction valuation of about R450 a share,” he told Moneyweb, while acknowledging the price could slip further if oil keeps falling. That, he argues, is rather the point. “Any weakness in the share price could provide investors with an attractive entry point.” Beyond the oil price, the investment case rests on Sasol's improving balance sheet. The group has prioritised cutting debt and is generating strong free cash flow, and Hammond believes it could move into a net cash position within three years, a shift that would also revive the prospect of dividends. For now, though, Sasol's fortunes remain tightly bound to a barrel of crude, and a calmer Middle East means a cheaper one. ## Sources - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/analysts-say-sasol-may-still-offer-value/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Moneyweb Markets](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/markets/oil-declines-after-us-iran-peace-talks-show-signs-of-progress/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Discovery bets its future on becoming a 'super bank' URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/discovery-bets-its-future-on-becoming-a-super-bank/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T08:39:44.000Z When Discovery launched its bank in 2019, sceptics wondered whether a health-and-life insurer really needed one. Six years on, the group has its answer: the bank is no longer a side venture but the operating system at the centre of everything it does. ## The 'composite maker' From the outset, Discovery described the bank as its “operating system” and “composite maker”, the piece designed to pull together its various product houses. The Discovery Miles rewards programme has long been the foundation, with Health, Life, Invest and Insure stitched into the app for clients who hold those products. What has changed is the pace: group chief executive Adrian Gore says the bank has evolved rapidly over the past five years into a fully fledged platform. “Discovery Bank has evolved into a platform, one capable of integrating and orchestrating the full financial lives of clients in a way that traditional banks simply cannot,” Gore says. People's finances, he argues, are messy precisely because products sit in separate slots, a problem the group wants to solve by creating “an entirely new category of financial institution”. ## What a 'super bank' means Discovery has even coined a term for it. A “super bank”, in Gore's telling, “integrates and orchestrates the full spectrum of a client's financial life through a single intelligent platform”, using technology, data and artificial intelligence to knit traditionally separate services into one experience. In practice, that means a customer can view medical-aid claims, insurance cover and investments alongside their everyday banking, all in one app. The strategy makes plain how central the bank has become to Discovery's thinking. Rather than a bank that happens to sit within an insurer, the group now treats the bank as the core around which everything else revolves, a bet that the future of financial services lies in bringing the pieces together rather than keeping them apart. ## Sources - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/the-bank-is-now-firmly-at-the-centre-of-everything-discovery-does/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Kganyago warns that inflation expectations are drifting from target URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/kganyago-warns-that-inflation-expectations-are-drifting-from-target/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T08:39:34.000Z South Africa's price pressures are proving stickier than the Reserve Bank had hoped. Governor Lesetja Kganyago has warned that inflation expectations are drifting away from target, with early signs of so-called second-round effects now showing up across the economy — a development that strengthens the case for further interest-rate increases. ## Expectations on the move When the Bank lifted its repo rate by 25 basis points to 7% in May, its first hike in three years, it did not yet have the latest reading on inflation expectations, Kganyago told CNBC Africa on Friday. That picture has since shifted. “We now have inflation expectations, and expectations have drifted away from target,” he said, adding that price-setters across the board are now budgeting for higher inflation. Reining those expectations back in, he argued, is precisely what the central bank has to act on. The numbers underline the concern. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and fuel costs, quickened to 3.8% last month from 3.6%, while headline inflation accelerated to 4.5% from 4%. Kganyago expects core inflation to peak only in the first quarter of next year, and reaffirmed the Bank's commitment to dragging the rate back towards its 3% target. ## Oil and the rate path Much of the uncertainty hangs on oil. The recently signed US-Iran deal has eased some of the pressure that the conflict injected into crude markets, but Kganyago cautioned that prices are unlikely to return to pre-conflict levels any time soon, and many analysts expect them to stay elevated into next year. Higher fuel costs feed quickly into transport and food prices, keeping the inflation thermometer warm. Markets are already bracing for more tightening. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg over the past week expect the Bank to add another quarter-point at its third-quarter meeting. For households and businesses still absorbing May's hike, the message from the Reserve Bank is clear: it would rather act early than let expectations harden. ## Sources - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/economy/inflation-expectations-are-rising-sarbs-kganyago-warns/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [CNBC Africa](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Business pushes back as Reserve Bank's rate hike comes under fire URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/business-pushes-back-as-reserve-banks-rate-hike-comes-under-fire/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T08:12:43.000Z South Africa's business lobby has come out swinging against the Reserve Bank, arguing that last month's surprise interest rate hike was the wrong call at the worst possible time for a fragile economy. The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said in a statement on Thursday that the increase "can barely be justified given the overall performance" of the economy. The Monetary Policy Committee lifted the benchmark repo rate by 25 basis points to 7% on 28 May — its first hike in three years — as conflict in the Persian Gulf pushed up energy and food prices and threatened to unsettle inflation expectations. ## A temporary shock, or something stickier? Sacci's core argument is that the inflation behind the decision may prove short-lived. "One could speculate that it may not have been necessary to increase interest rates given that the rise in fuel prices may be temporary and of short duration," the chamber said, adding that "there is no evidence of demand-pull inflation" driving the recent acceleration in prices. The Reserve Bank sees it differently. Alongside the hike, it lifted its inflation forecast, now expecting price growth to average 4.9% in the third quarter, up sharply from a previous 3.3%. Governor Lesetja Kganyago has said the move was about steering inflation back towards the bank's 3% target, while stressing that future decisions will be taken "meeting by meeting". ## Economists side with the bank Not everyone shares Sacci's scepticism. "The hike was no surprise," said Bloomberg Africa economist Yvonne Mhango, arguing that "higher oil prices forced policymakers to act preemptively as signs emerged that the oil shock was spreading beyond fuel prices." The debate lands at a delicate moment. South Africa's economy has grown by an average of less than 1% a year for more than a decade, and business confidence remains subdued — Sacci's own index stood at 124.1 in May, barely up from 123.6 in April and well below the 131.4 recorded at the start of the year. New vehicle sales and stronger export volumes offered some support, but a drop in overseas tourists and stubborn inflation weighed on the mood. For borrowers, the bigger question is what happens next. The Reserve Bank's own projection model points to at least one more quarter-point increase this year, though Kganyago has cautioned that the model is "only a guide". ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/863466/reserve-banks-interest-rate-hike-pulled-into-question/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Bloomberg](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-10/south-africa-s-sarb-sees-another-rate-hike-this-year-due-to-war?ref=businessbagel.com) ### New 'two-strike' pay rules put company boards on notice URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/new-two-strike-pay-rules-put-company-boards-on-notice/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T08:12:25.000Z Company boards in South Africa are facing tougher scrutiny over what they pay their top executives, after long-awaited remuneration provisions of the Companies Amendment Act came into force this year. Signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2024, sections 30A and 30B introduce a "two-strike" rule aimed at directors who sit on remuneration committees at listed and state-owned companies. The provisions also push firms to spell out how the pay of their highest earners compares with that of their lowest-paid staff. ## How the two strikes work Under section 30B(2), companies must now put an annual remuneration report to shareholders for approval by ordinary resolution at the AGM. If that report is voted down, the remuneration committee must address shareholders' concerns and report back the following year — that is strike one. Should the report fail again at the next AGM, the non-executive members of the committee may keep their board seats only if they are re-elected, but they become ineligible to serve on the remuneration committee for two years. That is strike two. Advisers at law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr warn the mechanics could prove awkward in practice. Because a company will not always know in advance whether affected directors must stand down, they suggest boards may need to include "conditional" re-election resolutions in their AGM notices that fall away if the pay vote passes. ## Relief from the JSE There is some good news for listed companies. The JSE previously required a non-binding advisory vote on remuneration, with shareholder engagement triggered if 25% or more voted against. The new Act instead demands a binding vote that fails only if more than 50% of shareholders object. The exchange has confirmed that complying with the Act satisfies its own rules, so the old non-binding vote falls away — effectively lifting the dissent threshold from 25% to 50%. Foreign issuers are the exception: because the Companies Act does not apply to them, they must still hold the non-binding advisory vote under the JSE's listing requirements. For everyone else, shareholder votes on executive pay now carry real teeth. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/863464/two-strike-warning-for-directors-in-south-africa-after-new-laws-come-into-effect/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### South Africa's banks turn their firepower on the mid-market URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/south-africas-banks-turn-their-firepower-on-the-mid-market/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T08:12:15.000Z Competition among South Africa's biggest banks is shifting to an unlikely battleground: the country's medium-sized companies. Faced with crowded competition for large corporates and squeezed retail margins in a sluggish economy, lenders including Nedbank, Investec, First National Bank and Standard Bank are pouring resources into a segment they once overlooked. The target market spans firms turning over roughly R100 million to R1.5 billion a year, drawn from manufacturing, mining services, agriculture, retail and logistics. Bankers describe these businesses as cash-rich, fast-growing and steadier than the volatile retail and small-business books — and considerably more profitable. ## Chasing a 30% return Investec reckons banks serving medium-sized companies are generating returns on equity of around 30%, roughly double those of most major lenders. The specialist bank plans to more than double its mid-corporate client base to 7,000 by 2030 and lift annual revenue from the segment to R3.8 billion, from R1.7 billion in 2025, having invested more than R300 million to build full transactional banking services. Nedbank has carved out a dedicated mid-corporate unit with its own credit committees, targeting up to 30% of the estimated 3,000 to 3,500 South African firms turning over at least R750 million a year. The lender plans to roughly triple the unit's banker headcount to about 30, after its client base grew 50% since launch last year. FNB, which says it already serves more than 20,000 medium-sized companies, merged its mid- and large-corporate units in March to cross-sell more sophisticated products to fast-growing firms. ## Standard Bank looks north For Standard Bank, Africa's largest lender by assets and holder of about 28% of the local mid-corporate market, the prize stretches across the continent. It estimates Africa's mid-corporate segment could represent a revenue pool of R150 billion, with 85% concentrated in South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and is eyeing faster growth in East and West Africa, where its share sits below 10%. Analysts say the scramble should ultimately benefit the businesses themselves, through sharper pricing, better service and more tailored funding solutions — a rare bright spot for the productive economy at a time when growth remains hard to come by. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/banking/863423/south-africas-biggest-banks-fighting-over-a-r150-billion-gold-mine/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### A cooler US inflation print throws SA bonds a lifeline URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/a-cooler-us-inflation-print-throws-sa-bonds-a-lifeline/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:44:35.000Z Good news for South African markets arrived this week from an unlikely source: the United States inflation report. American consumer prices rose 4.2% in the year to May, broadly as expected, but the closely watched core measure — which strips out food and energy — came in softer than forecast at 2.9%, easing fears that underlying price pressures are broadening. For South Africa, that matters more than it might seem. A softer US core print reduces the risk of aggressive further tightening by the Federal Reserve, which in turn supports the rand, government bonds and the emerging-market "carry" trade that rewards investors for holding higher-yielding local assets. ## Why America's data moves the rand Kristof Kruger, head of fixed income trading at Prescient Securities, said a cooler core reading is "a better outcome for bonds than a hot core print would have been," suggesting US inflation pressure is more energy-led than demand-driven. Because higher American rates lure investors towards safe US Treasuries, anything that calms the Fed's hiking path tends to ease dollar strength and give riskier markets like South Africa some room to breathe. The transmission, Kruger explained, runs through US Treasury yields, the exchange rate, local forward rate agreements and the government bond curve — all of which ultimately feed into what South African borrowers pay. ## Local risks haven't gone away The relief, though, is far from clean. The rand has not strengthened decisively, Brent crude remains above $90 a barrel, and the bond market is still pricing inflation above the Reserve Bank's new 3% target. Local inflation sat at 4% in April, at the top of the tolerance band, and the SARB raised rates by 25 basis points in May, citing imported fuel-price risks. Expected fuel-price relief in July could help the near-term inflation picture, but the reintroduction of the full fuel levy trims the benefit, and any fresh oil or currency shock would quickly change the maths. The American data, in short, buys South Africa a little room — it does not solve the country's oil, rand and inflation puzzle. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/863526/good-news-for-south-africa-from-the-united-states/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Reserve Bank rolls out new R2 and R5 coins for Youth Day URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/reserve-bank-rolls-out-new-r2-and-r5-coins-for-youth-day/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:44:23.000Z South Africans will soon find new coins jingling in their change. The South African Reserve Bank has gazetted the designs and specifications of commemorative R2 and R5 coins, which became legal tender on 16 June — Youth Day — marking a cluster of national milestones in metal. The new R2 coins are built around the theme of education, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1976 youth uprising, the 125th anniversary of Charlotte Maxeke's university graduation, and 30 years of South Africa's Constitution. The R5 coin is an education tribute piece, carrying the R2 designs on its reverse. ## Marking history in metal Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana confirmed the coins' legal-tender status from Youth Day, the public holiday commemorating the 1976 Soweto Uprising, when thousands of schoolchildren protested against Afrikaans being forced on them as a language of instruction. Police opened fire, and the unrest that followed became a turning point in the struggle against apartheid. Charlotte Maxeke, honoured on a second R2 design, became the first black South African woman to earn a university degree, graduating from Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1901 before returning home to campaign for reform. Often called the "Mother of Black Freedom in South Africa," she lends her name to the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital in Johannesburg. ## Commemorative, not just collectable As with previous commemorative issues, the coins carry no value beyond their face value and remain ordinary legal tender — so a new R5 is still worth five rand at the till. They join a long tradition of South African commemorative coinage, from the 1994 inauguration R5 featuring the flag and a handshake, to the 2008 coin marking Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday and the 2021 piece celebrating the Reserve Bank's centenary. Unlike the broader 2023 redesign of the country's circulating coins, this is a special edition rather than a permanent change to South Africa's money. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/863557/new-r2-and-r5-coins-entering-circulation-in-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [SARB Government Gazette](https://businesstech.co.za/news/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/54835-12-6-SARB.pdf?ref=businessbagel.com) ### ExxonMobil bets on Richards Bay in South Africa's first LNG import deal URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/exxonmobil-bets-on-richards-bay-in-south-africas-first-lng-import-deal/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:44:11.000Z ExxonMobil has thrown its weight behind South Africa's halting shift away from coal, signing a preliminary deal to supply liquefied natural gas to what would become the country's first dedicated LNG import terminal. The American oil major announced on 17 June that it had signed heads of agreement to feed the proposed Zululand Energy Terminal at Richards Bay, the industrial port on the KwaZulu-Natal coast. The deal is an early-stage commitment rather than a binding supply contract, but it is a notable vote of confidence in a project that has been talked about for years and rarely advanced. ## Why Richards Bay matters South Africa generates the overwhelming majority of its electricity from ageing coal-fired stations, and the hunt for a cleaner, more flexible fuel has grown urgent as Eskom's fleet creaks. Imported gas is widely seen as a bridge: cleaner than coal, quicker to switch on than nuclear, and able to firm up a grid that leans ever more heavily on wind and solar. Phase one of the Zululand terminal is expected to feature a floating storage unit holding 170,000 cubic metres of LNG, paired with an onshore regasification system able to process roughly 400 million cubic feet a day, or about three million tonnes a year. Earlier this month state utility Eskom signed a long-term LNG agreement with the terminal's developers to underpin a planned 3,000 megawatt gas-to-power project. ## A bigger African play For ExxonMobil, the agreement slots into a continental strategy. The company has flagged South Africa as a priority market and wants to lift its global LNG supply to more than 40 million tonnes a year by 2030\. Securing offtake at a brand-new terminal hands it an anchor position in a region where gas demand is tipped to climb. Plenty could still go wrong. The terminal must reach a final investment decision, lock in financing and clear regulatory hurdles before a single cargo arrives, and South Africa's record on delivering large energy infrastructure is patchy. But for a country desperate to keep the lights on, the prospect of gas flowing through Richards Bay is a welcome signal. ## Sources - [CNBC Africa](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/exxon-mobil-signs-deal-to-supply-south-africas-first-planned-lng-terminal?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Upstream](https://www.upstreamonline.com/energy-security/exxonmobil-to-supply-lng-to-south-africa-in-milestone-deal/2-1-2005257?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Rigzone](https://www.rigzone.com/news/exxonmobil%5Fbacks%5F1st%5Fsouth%5Fafrican%5Flng%5Fimport%5Fterminal%5Fwith%5Fsupply%5Fdeal-18-jun-2026-183948-article/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Nearly half of South Africa's treated water never reaches a paying customer URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/nearly-half-of-south-africas-treated-water-never-reaches-a-paying-customer/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:44:05.000Z Nearly half of every litre of treated water South Africa produces never reaches a paying customer, and the bill for that waste now runs to about R26 billion a year. The figure was put on the record by Water and Sanitation Minister Pemmy Majodina during a parliamentary question-and-answer session, where she set out the scale of the country's non-revenue water problem and the steps government is taking to stem it. ## Where the money goes Non-revenue water covers everything a municipality supplies but earns nothing for: water lost to leaking and bursting pipes, illegal connections, and volumes that are delivered but never billed because of weak metering and collection. Majodina said the national average now sits at 47.3%, equivalent to more than 2.1 billion kilolitres each year. At an average supply cost of R12.41 per kilolitre, that works out to roughly R26 billion in lost value annually, well above the global benchmark of around 30%. The losses compound an already strained system. According to Stats SA's General Household Survey, 56.8% of households experienced water interruptions, with more than a third reporting outages that lasted several days. ## Infrastructure under strain The 2025 Green Drop report found 396 of 848 wastewater treatment works in a critical state, while the share of systems rated good or excellent slipped from 14% to just 8% over three years. Ageing municipal networks are the chief culprit, with treated water escaping above and below ground before it can be measured or charged for. Majodina pointed to a national training programme, Treasury-led reforms and a growing pipeline of private-sector partnerships as the route out. The Water Partnerships Office has assembled a non-revenue water project pipeline worth around R4.5 billion, targeting savings of more than 70 million kilolitres and potential additional municipal revenue of about R736 million a year. A full No Drop assessment is due to be published in March 2027. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/863650/r26-billion-down-the-drain-in-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Parliamentary Monitoring Group](https://pmg.org.za/committee-question/38285/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### BRICS bank tips $1 billion into South Africa's crumbling city infrastructure URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/brics-bank-tips-1-billion-into-south-africas-crumbling-city-infrastructure/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:43:56.000Z South Africa has secured a loan of up to $1 billion from the New Development Bank to help rebuild the water, electricity and sanitation networks that keep its biggest cities running. The BRICS-backed lender, headquartered in Shanghai, approved the facility on 17 June. It will bankroll projects under the government's Programme for the Upgrade of Infrastructure in Metropolitan Municipalities, channelling money into all eight of the country's metros. ## Where the money lands Buffalo City, Cape Town, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Mangaung, Nelson Mandela Bay and Tshwane are all in line for support. The funds are earmarked for upgrades to water supply, sanitation, electricity distribution and solid waste services that, between them, reach more than 22 million residents, close to a third of the population. The loan does not stand alone. It tops up the R54 billion, around $3 billion, in performance-based grants the National Treasury announced in March, part of a wider push to tie municipal funding to measurable improvements in service delivery rather than handing cash over with no strings attached. ## A familiar problem The timing underlines just how deep South Africa's municipal infrastructure hole has become. Decades of underinvestment and patchy maintenance have left pipes leaking, substations failing and waste systems buckling, the same rot that sees nearly half the country's treated water lost before it reaches a tap. Whether an injection of foreign capital changes that will come down to execution. Performance-based grants and external loans only become working taps and reliable power if municipalities can plan, procure and build, areas where many have struggled for years. For now, the NDB's commitment buys South Africa's cities time, and a fighting chance to arrest the decline. ## Sources - [CNBC Africa](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/new-development-bank-approves-up-to-1-billion-loan-for-south-africa-urban-infrastructure?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Africanews](https://www.africanews.com/amp/2026/06/17/south-africa-secures-1bn-from-brics-bank-for-urban-infrastructure/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Ecofin Agency](https://www.ecofinagency.com/news/1706-56540-brics-bank-approves-1-billion-for-south-africa-s-infrastructure-upgrade?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Mr Price seals R9.6bn European gamble with NKD takeover URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mr-price-seals-r9-6bn-european-gamble-with-nkd-takeover/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:43:49.000Z Mr Price has completed one of the boldest moves in its history, taking full control of NKD, a European value retailer, in a deal that has divided the market and saddled the JSE-listed group with billions of rand in fresh debt. The Durban-based clothing chain confirmed that NKD joined the group in March, formalising an acquisition it first announced in December. The transaction saw Mr Price buy 100% of Pegasus Group Holding GmbH, which trades as NKD's retail business, for €487 million — roughly R9.6 billion at the time it was struck. It was funded through a mix of cash and debt, and adds more than 2,100 stores across Germany, Austria, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Poland to the group's footprint. NKD generated net sales of €684.57 million in 2024. ## A deal that split the market The reaction was anything but warm. Around R6 billion was wiped off Mr Price's market value on the day the deal was first announced, and prominent fund managers — including 36ONE Asset Management and Benguela Global Fund Managers — have been vocal critics. Benguela flagged that NKD's margins likely sit at just 1% to 2%, well below the 9% to 14% Mr Price typically earns, while the deal loads the balance sheet with debt. The group now carries around R7 billion in interest-bearing loans. Management is unmoved. "Clear areas of focus have been identified with the NKD management team, who are committed to achieving the guided forecasts communicated to investors," the group said. ## Solid results, cautious outlook The European bet lands on the back of a reasonable year at home. For the 52 weeks to 28 March 2026, Mr Price grew total revenue by 4.2% to R42.7 billion and lifted normalised headline earnings per share by 7.7%. It declared a final dividend of 592.8 cents a share, holding its payout ratio at 63%, and opened 196 new stores over the year. Chief executive Mark Blair struck an optimistic but measured tone, pointing to South Africa's long-term prospects while warning that the conflict in Iran had injected short-term uncertainty. For the 2027 financial year, the group plans R1.1 billion in local capital spending and about 180 new stores, with a further €24 million (R454 million) earmarked for roughly 150 new NKD stores in Europe. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/862613/mr-price-takes-over-european-retailer-in-controversial-r9-6-billion-deal/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Motorists in line for a R1.10 petrol cut in July URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/motorists-in-line-for-a-r1-10-petrol-cut-in-july/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:43:38.000Z South African motorists are set for some welcome relief at the pumps, with a petrol price cut of around R1.10 a litre on the cards for July — even as the National Treasury restores the last of its fuel levy relief. After months of painful increases, both sides of the fuel price equation are finally swinging in drivers' favour. According to Investec chief economist Annabel Bishop, the Central Energy Fund's over-recovery for petrol and diesel continues to point to cuts next month. As of 9 June, petrol was running an over-recovery of about R2.60 a litre, while diesel sat between R4.83 and R5.03 a litre. ## The levy giveth and taketh away The catch is that the Treasury is adding the full fuel levy back into prices from July, having phased out the temporary relief it offered earlier in the year. That will claw back R1.50 a litre from the petrol over-recovery and R1.96 from diesel. Even so, the recoveries are large enough to absorb the blow and still leave motorists better off, with petrol pointing to a roughly R1.10 cut and diesel to a far steeper drop of close to R3 a litre. "A declining, as opposed to increasing, fuel price is positive for inflation," Bishop said, adding that a softer petrol price should help ease price pressures across the broader economy. ## Oil and the rand pull in the same direction The improvement is being driven by easing global oil prices and a resilient rand. Crude has slipped to around $93 a barrel, down about 3% on the week, after Iran and Israel halted their attacks on one another. Bianca Botes, managing director at Citadel Global, cautioned that the backdrop remains fragile, with sporadic fighting underscoring the risk of a return to full-scale conflict. The rand, meanwhile, has held its ground around R16.45 to the dollar despite the Middle East volatility, supported by a credit rating upgrade from Fitch and better-than-expected first-quarter growth figures from Stats SA. Bishop noted that an expected interest rate move next month should lend the currency further support. For households still battling stubborn living costs, a cheaper tank of petrol — however modest — will be a rare piece of good news. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/863159/r1-10-per-litre-joy-for-petrol-prices-in-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/862629/petrol-price-joy-finally-coming-for-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Eskom launches a renewables arm as its break-up gathers pace URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-launches-a-renewables-arm-as-its-break-up-gathers-pace/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:43:21.000Z Eskom has thrown its hat into the renewable energy ring, launching a dedicated green division as the embattled state utility's long-promised break-up gathers momentum. Eskom Green, unveiled this month, will focus on developing large-scale renewable projects and helping major industrial users meet their decarbonisation targets. The new business marks a sharp departure from Eskom's traditional model of vertically integrated, coal-heavy generation. The utility said it built Eskom Green after benchmarking more than 20 power companies around the world, concluding that renewable projects demand different sources of capital, delivery models and "bankable project structures" than its legacy operations. ## A subsidiary in the making For now, Eskom Green sits within Eskom Holdings, but the group intends to spin it out into a wholly owned subsidiary with its own independent board, subject to the necessary regulatory and shareholder approvals. It forms part of Eskom's broader unbundling — the restructuring that is also separating the utility's generation, transmission and distribution arms. Group chief executive Dan Marokane framed the launch as a milestone. "We have been playing in this space for some time, and we are now putting a stake in the ground — this is a development that South Africa can be proud of," he said. Group executive for renewables Rivoningo Mnisi said the unit would help local industry lower its carbon footprint and stay competitive on export markets. ## Coal stations get a green makeover Eskom Green plans to lean on infrastructure it already owns. The utility has identified 17 high-priority projects at its existing coal-fired stations, aiming to deliver roughly 6 GW of additional capacity by 2030, including at least 2 GW of renewables and pumped storage. The first, a 75 MW solar plant at the Lethabo station in the Free State, is already taking shape, with the Komati power station next in line. On pricing, Eskom Green promised a transparent, pass-through wholesale tariff, with network and wheeling charges shown as separate line items rather than marked up. Funding for the early phases has been set aside within Eskom's approved capital budget and will rely on on-balance-sheet financing, in line with the conditions attached to its National Treasury debt relief. For a utility long synonymous with load-shedding and ballooning debt, a credible renewables arm would be a notable step in rebuilding its reputation. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/863167/new-eskom-energy-company-launches-in-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Tongaat Hulett dodges liquidation as IDC and Vision strike rescue deal URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/tongaat-hulett-dodges-liquidation-as-idc-and-vision-strike-rescue-deal/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:43:13.000Z South Africa’s sugar industry has been handed a reprieve after Tongaat Hulett, the 134-year-old miller at the heart of the sector, narrowly escaped liquidation. On 17 June the High Court in Durban granted the company’s business rescue practitioners leave to withdraw a provisional liquidation application, clearing the way for a deal that keeps the group trading. ## A last-minute lifeline The agreement pairs the state-owned Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) with the Vision Consortium, which has spent years pursuing control of the embattled producer. Under the deal, the IDC will convert its roughly R2.5 billion claim into equity and extend fresh post-commencement finance to fund continued trading until at least the end of September 2026\. In return, the development financier becomes a significant shareholder in Vision operating companies spanning South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Botswana. The stakes are hard to overstate. Tongaat accounts for about a quarter of South Africa’s sugar milling capacity and produces close to 43% of the country’s sugar. Industry bodies estimate that some 250,000 jobs across its operations and wider value chain — from cane growers to hauliers — were riding on the outcome. ## The dumping problem hasn’t gone away Tongaat’s troubles began long before this week. The company has been under business rescue since 2022, when a sprawling accounting scandal wiped out shareholder value and saddled it with debt. But management and trade groups are quick to point out that the rescue only buys time unless a deeper structural threat is addressed: a flood of cheap imported sugar. Cane growers and millers say subsidised sugar from countries including Brazil, India, Eswatini and Thailand is displacing local product on retailer and manufacturer shelves. Tongaat has urged the government to tighten import controls and act on dumping, warning that without protection the rescued business — and the jobs it underpins — will remain vulnerable. For now, though, the mood is one of cautious relief. A century-old name synonymous with KwaZulu-Natal’s cane belt will keep its lights on, and a supply chain that reaches deep into rural economies has dodged a devastating blow. ## Sources - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/tongaat-hulett-escapes-liquidation-after-idc-and-vision-group-strike-rescue-pact/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/2026-06-18-tongaat-hulett-liquidation-averted-and-250000-jobs-safe-for-now/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Engineering News](https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/idc-to-become-vision-shareholder-as-agreement-reached-to-rescue-tongaat-2026-06-17?ref=businessbagel.com) ### SARS tightens the screws on South Africans trying to cut their tax ties URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sars-tightens-the-screws-on-south-africans-trying-to-cut-their-tax-ties/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:43:03.000Z South Africans who have packed up and moved abroad are discovering that cutting ties with the taxman is becoming a great deal harder. The South African Revenue Service has sharpened its scrutiny of expats who claim to have ceased their tax residency, and the burden of proof is landing squarely on the individual. ## Prove it, and prove when Tax practitioners say the question SARS now asks is no longer simply whether someone became a non-resident, but whether they can support the exact timeline behind that conclusion. A filing position, in other words, is only as strong as the documentary evidence behind the date on which residency is said to have ended. That is a problem for the many South Africans who left years ago. After a decade or more abroad, the paperwork that pins down when and how a person stopped being “ordinarily resident” — leases, employment contracts, travel records, proof of a permanent home elsewhere — is often lost or scattered. Advisers increasingly find themselves reconstructing a client’s history from fragments, a process that drags out timelines and racks up costs. ## Why it matters The cessation of tax residency is not automatic. South Africans must formally declare the change to SARS, and getting it wrong carries real consequences. Residents are taxed on their worldwide income, so a person who believes they have exited the system but cannot satisfy SARS may find their foreign salary, investments and even capital gains pulled back into the South African net. The end-to-end process can now take up to six months depending on complexity, and trying to cease residency more than ten years after leaving is possible but painful. With Budget 2026 having already signalled a tougher stance on expats’ foreign income, the message from Pretoria is clear: leaving the country is one thing, leaving the tax base is quite another. For the growing number of South Africans working in the Gulf, the UK and Australia, the practical takeaway is unglamorous but important — keep every document that proves where and when you built your life abroad. ## Sources - [Polity](https://www.polity.org.za/article/sars-new-question-for-south-african-expats-can-you-prove-your-tax-residency-timeline-2026-06-15?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Polity](https://www.polity.org.za/article/hurdles-of-ceasing-your-south-african-tax-residency-once-the-clock-has-ticked-2026-04-20?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Rupert’s Richemont rides high, but its fortunes still hinge on China URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/ruperts-richemont-rides-high-but-its-fortunes-still-hinge-on-china/ Last updated: 2026-06-22T07:42:50.000Z Few South African fortunes are as closely tied to the mood of Chinese shoppers as that of Johann Rupert. The billionaire’s Swiss-based luxury group Richemont — owner of Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and a stable of high-end watch brands — has been one of the JSE’s standout performers, yet its next leg of growth still hinges on a market thousands of kilometres from home. ## A jewellery-fuelled run Richemont has had a remarkable few years. The group recently reported annual revenue of around €22.4 billion, up 11% at constant exchange rates, with its jewellery houses doing the heavy lifting: Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels together lifted sales by roughly 14%. That momentum has pushed the company’s valuation towards $123 billion, more than double its level five years ago, cementing Rupert’s status as one of the wealthiest people on the continent. ## The China question The shadow over that performance is China. High-end consumer spending there has stalled, and luxury groups across the board have felt the chill. Richemont has fared better than most, helped by resilient demand in the Americas and the Middle East, but analysts caution that a full Chinese recovery is likely to be a slow grind rather than a sharp rebound — a “U-shaped” revival, as one brokerage put it. For investors on the JSE, where Richemont carries serious index weight, that makes the stock a barometer for global luxury sentiment as much as a South African play. When Chinese demand softens, Rupert’s empire — and the local index it helps prop up — feels it. The group remains confident in its long-game strategy, leaning on heritage brands and refusing to chase short-term fashions; Rupert has publicly ruled out selling marquee names even when offered tempting sums. Whether that patience pays off depends, in large part, on how quickly China’s affluent shoppers rediscover their appetite for diamonds and fine watches. ## Sources - [Daily Investor](https://dailyinvestor.com/business/139218/billionaire-johann-ruperts-luxury-goods-giant-is-at-chinas-mercy/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [WWD](https://wwd.com/business-news/business-features/richemont-johann-rupert-why-not-selling-jaeger-lecoultre-1238979510/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Premier's bread-and-butter bet pays off as full-year earnings rise URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/premiers-bread-and-butter-bet-pays-off-as-full-year-earnings-rise/ Last updated: 2026-06-17T07:10:25.000Z Premier Group, the Johannesburg-listed food producer behind household staples such as Blue Ribbon bread, Snowflake flour and Iwisa maize meal, was due to lay its full-year scorecard before investors today — and the guided numbers point to a business firing on most cylinders. In a trading statement ahead of the results for the year to 31 March 2026, the group flagged that headline earnings per share would climb between 20% and 30%, to a range of R11.31 to R12.26, up from R9.43 a year earlier. ## Efficiency, not just price hikes What makes the jump notable is how Premier got there. The group guided to mid-single-digit revenue growth even as global grain prices deflated, which means the earnings lift has been driven by sharper operations rather than simply passing higher costs on to shoppers. At the half-year mark, revenue had risen 6.4% to R10.3 billion, operating profit was up 17% to R1.1 billion, and cash generated from operations jumped almost 35% to R1.3 billion. Central to the story is the group's new Aeroton mega-bakery in Johannesburg, which management expects to drive economies of scale and improve the quality of its bread across the inland market. For a company whose roots stretch back more than two centuries, the bet is a distinctly modern one: bigger, more automated plants squeezing more margin out of every loaf. ## A R28bn food giant in the making The results arrive as Premier prepares for its proposed tie-up with RFG Holdings, owner of brands such as Rhodes and Bull Brand, in a deal that would create a combined food group worth roughly R28 billion. Premier has signalled it will press ahead with a general share repurchase programme, citing strong free cash flow and a desire to keep an efficient capital structure ahead of that transaction. For South African consumers wrestling with stubborn food prices, a leaner Premier cuts both ways. Greater scale could help hold the line on the cost of basics like bread and maize meal, but it also concentrates more of the country's staple-food production in fewer hands — a dynamic the competition authorities will watch closely as the RFG deal advances. ## Sources - [BusinessTech](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/854509/200-year-old-company-in-south-africa-shooting-the-lights-out/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Engineering News](https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/premier-expects-at-least-20-full-year-earnings-rise-2026-03-20?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Moneyweb](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/premier-group-reports-robust-full-year-results/?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Business Day](https://www.businessday.co.za/companies/earnings/2026-03-20-improved-efficiencies-to-lift-premier-group/?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Rand firms and gold glitters as US-Iran truce calms the markets URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/rand-firms-and-gold-glitters-as-us-iran-truce-calms-the-markets/ Last updated: 2026-06-15T14:07:18.000Z South Africa's currency markets opened the week in a brighter mood, with the rand strengthening and gold extending its climb after the United States and Iran said they had reached an initial agreement to bring their war to a close. The breakthrough sapped demand for the dollar, which slid to its weakest level in 10 days and handed emerging-market currencies, the rand among them, a little room to breathe. By 0619 GMT on Monday the local unit was trading at around 16.17 to the dollar, roughly 0.8% firmer than its previous close, according to Reuters data carried by CNBC Africa. The FTSE/JSE Top 40 opened near 113,030 points as the calmer geopolitical backdrop lifted risk appetite across the board. ## Gold keeps its shine The truce did little to dim the gold price, which has been one of the standout performers of the year. Bullion climbed about 2.5% on Monday to its highest level since 9 June, a third straight session of gains. That is a welcome tailwind for South Africa's miners and for a current account that has leaned heavily on strong metals prices in recent months. Under the framework, Washington is expected to lift its blockade of Iranian ports and Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint through which a large share of the world's oil flows. Easing that bottleneck should take some heat out of global crude prices — a meaningful prospect for South Africa, which imports the bulk of its fuel and has watched petrol costs feed straight into inflation. ## Eyes back on the Reserve Bank A firmer rand and the promise of cheaper oil would be doubly welcome for the South African Reserve Bank, which lifted its benchmark rate to 7% in late May as it fretted about fuel-driven price pressures. A stronger currency makes imported goods cheaper and can help cool inflation, potentially giving rate-setters a little more breathing space later in the year. For now, traders are likely to keep one eye on whether the ceasefire holds and the other on upcoming local inflation data, which will shape expectations for the Bank's next move. But after weeks of jitters over the Middle East, the start to the week offered a rare moment of calm. ## Sources - [CNBC Africa](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-african-rand-strengthens-on-us-iran-deal-inflation-in-focus?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Investing.com / Reuters](https://za.investing.com/news/economy-news/dollar-hits-10day-low-as-us-iran-reach-peace-deal-4327308?ref=businessbagel.com) - [Trading Economics](https://tradingeconomics.com/south-africa/currency?ref=businessbagel.com) ### Premier's 200-year-old recipe: earnings tipped to rise up to 30% URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/premiers-200-year-old-recipe-earnings-tipped-to-rise-up-to-30/ Last updated: 2026-06-15T09:29:10.000Z Premier Group, the JSE-listed food producer behind household names like Blue Ribbon bread, Iwisa maize meal, Snowflake flour and Super C sweets, has flagged a bumper year. In a trading statement ahead of its full-year results on 17 June, the company said it expects basic earnings per share to climb between 20% and 30%, to somewhere in the range of 1,123 to 1,217 cents. Headline earnings per share are tipped to rise by a similar margin. ## A old name with momentum Premier traces its roots to a bakery founded in 1824, making it one of South Africa's oldest continuously operating businesses — and, on these numbers, one of its more spry. The group expects mid-single-digit revenue growth for the year, a respectable showing given that global grain prices have been deflating. Cheaper wheat and maize squeeze the top line a little, but they also lower input costs, and Premier appears to have banked the difference as fatter margins. ## Bulking up The earnings upgrade comes as Premier presses ahead with an ambitious move to acquire rival RFG Holdings — owner of brands such as Rhodes and Bull Brand — through a share-swap deal that has already cleared the Competition Tribunal. If completed, the tie-up would significantly broaden Premier's reach into tinned goods, ready meals and groceries, stretching it well beyond its milling-and-baking heartland. For consumers, a well-run staples producer matters: bread and maize meal sit at the centre of millions of South African shopping baskets, and the companies that make them are a useful barometer of where food inflation is heading. For investors, Premier's update is a reminder that some of the steadiest returns on the JSE come not from glamour stocks but from the unglamorous business of feeding a nation. The full results, due 17 June, will show whether the trading statement's optimism holds. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/854509/200-year-old-company-in-south-africa-shooting-the-lights-out/?ref=businessbagel.com) *and Premier's* [*SENS trading statement*](https://sharenet.co.za/v3/sens%5Fdisplay.php?scode=&seq=18&tdate=20260320100000&ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Shoprite shrugs off the gloom with 268 new stores URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/shoprite-shrugs-off-the-gloom-with-268-new-stores/ Last updated: 2026-06-15T09:27:00.000Z Shoprite has answered South Africa's stubbornly weak consumer climate with a building spree, opening 268 new stores in the first half of its 2026 financial year and pouring R3.9 billion into the expansion. The country's biggest retailer and largest private employer comfortably overshot its target of 223 openings, reaching the mark in just 11 months. ## Where the growth went The bulk of the new outlets came from Shoprite's core grocery business, but its newer "adjacent" brands are growing fastest. The group opened 48 Usave stores, 41 Shoprite supermarkets, 30 Checkers supermarkets and a hefty 92 LiquorShops, alongside 38 Petshop Science stores, 13 UNIQ clothing shops and a handful of others. Petshop Science, launched in 2021 to tap a growing local pet economy, beat its rollout plan by 65%, while the UNIQ clothing brand more than doubled its target. Gauteng led the charge with 82 new stores, followed by the Western Cape with 48 and KwaZulu-Natal with 31 — together nearly 60% of all openings. The push also reinforced Shoprite's standing as the country's biggest private employer, with a workforce now north of 170,000. ## Expanding while rivals retreat The aggression stands in sharp contrast to its main competitors. Pick n Pay has spent two years on a store-reset programme, closing non-performing outlets for a net reduction of 56 stores during its 2026 financial year, even as Pick n Pay Clothing kept growing. SPAR, meanwhile, has been pulling out of international markets, including the UK, to refocus on home turf after a bruising six months. For Business Bagel readers, the takeaway is simple: in a low-growth economy, scale and capital are fast becoming the dividing line between the retailers that press ahead and those forced to consolidate. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/863472/south-africas-biggest-retailer-opens-268-new-stores-in-massive-r3-9-billion-expansion/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Business lobby questions the Reserve Bank's rate hike URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/business-lobby-questions-the-reserve-banks-rate-hike/ Last updated: 2026-06-15T09:26:38.000Z South Africa's biggest business lobby has openly questioned the Reserve Bank's decision to raise interest rates, arguing the move is hard to justify with the economy barely growing and business sentiment fragile. The South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Sacci) said the hike "can barely be justified given the overall performance" of the economy. The Monetary Policy Committee lifted the benchmark repo rate by 25 basis points to 7% on 28 May — the first increase in three years — to anchor inflation expectations as conflict in the Persian Gulf pushed up energy and food prices. ## Temporary shock or lasting threat? The Bank also raised its inflation forecast, now seeing price growth averaging 4.9% by the third quarter, up from 3.3% previously. Sacci is unconvinced, suggesting the fuel-driven jump may prove "temporary and of short duration" and noting there is "no evidence of demand-pull inflation". Economists are less sceptical. Bloomberg's Africa economist Yvonne Mhango called the hike "no surprise", arguing higher oil prices forced policymakers to act pre-emptively as the oil shock spread beyond the pumps. ## More hikes on the table The Reserve Bank's own projection model points to at least one further quarter-point increase this year, though Governor Lesetja Kganyago has stressed it is only a guide and that decisions are taken "meeting by meeting". He has framed the May move as part of the drive to return inflation to the Bank's new 3% target. There is a sliver of relief from abroad: a softer-than-expected US core inflation print has eased pressure on emerging-market bonds and the rand, giving South African debt a friendlier backdrop. But with Brent crude still elevated and local fuel costs sticky, the rate debate is far from settled. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech and Bloomberg*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/863466/reserve-banks-interest-rate-hike-pulled-into-question/?ref=businessbagel.com) *and* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/863526/good-news-for-south-africa-from-the-united-states/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Shareholders get teeth on executive pay as new company law bites URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/platinum-surge-lifts-mining-as-factories-falter/ Last updated: 2026-06-15T09:26:27.000Z A set of long-anticipated changes to South Africa's company law has quietly come into force, handing shareholders sharper teeth on executive pay and putting directors on notice with a new "two-strike" rule. Sections 30A and 30B of the Companies Amendment Act — signed into law in 2024 by President Cyril Ramaphosa — have now taken effect, tightening the rules around executive remuneration at listed and state-owned companies. Among other things, the provisions force firms to disclose how much top executives earn relative to their lowest-paid workers. ## How the two-strike rule bites Under the new Section 30B(2), companies must prepare an annual remuneration report and put it to an ordinary resolution at the AGM. If shareholders reject it, the remuneration committee must come back the following year with an explanation that addresses their concerns. Reject it a second time, and the non-executive directors on that committee — while still able to serve as directors if re-elected — become ineligible to sit on the remuneration committee for two years. Lawyers at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr warn the mechanism creates practical headaches. Because a company sending out its AGM notice will not yet know the outcome of the remuneration vote, it may have to table "conditional" resolutions for director re-election that fall away if the pay vote passes. Beyond losing the committee seat, there are no further legal penalties — but, the firm notes, it remains "a damaging indictment". ## The JSE softens the blow There is some relief for listed companies. The JSE has confirmed that, because complying with the Act now satisfies its own rules, firms no longer need a separate non-binding advisory vote on pay. Crucially, that lifts the "dissent threshold" from 25% to 50% plus one, meaning a majority of votes cast must oppose a resolution for it to fail. Foreign issuers, to whom the Companies Act does not apply, must still follow the older advisory-vote regime. For boards and investors alike, the message from Business Bagel's vantage point is clear: shareholder votes on executive pay now carry real, lasting consequences. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/863464/two-strike-warning-for-directors-in-south-africa-after-new-laws-come-into-effect/?ref=businessbagel.com)*, with legal analysis from Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr.* ### US tariffs on SA exports appear to be backfiring URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/us-tariffs-on-sa-exports-appear-to-be-backfiring/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:14:38.000Z A US plan that was meant to squeeze South African exporters appears to be having the opposite effect. Rather than shrinking, the value of South African goods sold to the United States has climbed since Washington imposed tariffs, according to new analysis making the rounds this week. ## Exports up, not down The value of South African exports to the United States has risen by 11% in nominal terms since the tariffs came into force in August 2025, based on data from Codera Analytics. For a measure designed to punish, that is an awkward result — and a reminder that trade flows rarely bend neatly to political intent. The United States remains one of the largest single markets for South African products, spanning vehicles, metals, agricultural goods and more. While tariffs raise the cost of doing business, factors such as currency movements, commodity prices and the simple fact that some South African goods are hard to substitute have helped keep demand resilient. ## Why the squeeze isn't biting Part of the explanation lies in what South Africa sells. Where exports are priced in dollars and tied to global commodity cycles, a rising price can lift the total value of shipments even if volumes are flat or softer. Add a competitive exchange rate into the mix, and the headline export figure can keep climbing despite the tariff drag. The findings will fuel an ongoing debate about how much leverage tariffs really give Washington over trading partners, and whether the measures end up hurting American buyers as much as the exporters they target. For South African producers, the data offers cautious encouragement — though trade tensions remain a live risk, and a stronger rand or a commodity-price pullback could quickly change the picture. For now, the early evidence suggests the tariffs have not landed the blow that was intended. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/5-things/863455/new-r4-2-billion-bridge-officially-opens-in-south-africa-and-us-plan-to-punish-south-africa-backfires/?ref=businessbagel.com) *and* [*Daily Investor*](https://dailyinvestor.com/south-africa/137843/united-states-plan-to-punish-south-africa-is-backfiring/?ref=businessbagel.com)*, citing Codera Analytics.* ### SA's two-speed economy: mining surges as factories slip URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-posts-biggest-current-account-surplus-in-four-years/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:14:29.000Z South Africa's economy is moving at two speeds. Fresh data from Statistics South Africa shows the country's mines roaring ahead in April even as its factories went into reverse — a split that captures the uneven nature of the recovery. ## Mines dig deeper Total mining output rose 8.2% in April, a sharp acceleration from the 2.5% increase recorded in March. The pick-up adds to a run of good news for the resources sector, which has been buoyed by firm commodity prices — gold in particular — and helped underpin the country's recent surge in export earnings. It is a timely boost. Mining remains one of South Africa's most important sources of foreign exchange and tax revenue, and a stronger production reading feeds directly into the trade and current-account figures that have lately surprised on the upside. ## Factories stumble The picture in manufacturing was far less rosy. Factory production fell 2.9% year on year in April, reversing a 1.5% gain in March. Manufacturing has long been the soft underbelly of the South African economy, weighed down by patchy demand, logistics bottlenecks and the lingering effects of higher input costs. The divergence matters because manufacturing is a bigger employer than mining and a key barometer of broader industrial health. A contraction there tempers the optimism flowing from the strong mining and trade numbers, and is a reminder that the recovery is far from broad-based. For policymakers, the two-speed reading sharpens an old dilemma: how to translate commodity windfalls into durable, job-rich growth in the rest of the economy. With inflation data due shortly and the Reserve Bank watching closely, the health of the productive sector will remain firmly in focus. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/5-things/863455/new-r4-2-billion-bridge-officially-opens-in-south-africa-and-us-plan-to-punish-south-africa-backfires/?ref=businessbagel.com)*, citing Statistics South Africa.* ### Alexforbes assets swell to R733 billion as profit jumps 22% URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/alexforbes-assets-swell-to-r733-billion-as-profit-jumps-22/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:14:20.000Z Financial services group Alexforbes has capped its 2026 financial year with a bumper rise in assets, even as headline earnings stayed flat. The group reported closing assets of R733 billion for the year ended 31 March 2026 — a 22% jump that underscores its standing as one of South Africa's heavyweight money managers. ## Assets and profit climb Closing assets, which combine assets under administration and assets under management, rose 22% year on year to R733 billion. Operating income increased 10% to R4.9 billion, helped by higher average assets, positive investment performance, inflation-linked increases across its retirement client base, and stronger client retention. Normalised profit from operations, which strips out an IFRS 16 lease adjustment, climbed 22% to R1,027 million. Including that adjustment, profit from operations before non-trading and capital items stood at R1,024 million, up 12%. Chief executive Dawie de Villiers described it as "another solid year", noting the group had been recognised as South Africa's best asset manager. ## Earnings stay muted The earnings picture was more mixed. Headline earnings per share from total operations slipped 5% to 67 cents, a movement the group attributed to the base effect of discontinued operations in the prior year. On a normalised basis, headline earnings of 69 cents a share were essentially flat. Shareholders were not left empty-handed. The group declared a final cash dividend of 33 cents a share, taking the total annual dividend to 57 cents — up 4% on the year. De Villiers said Alexforbes had made progress in simplifying its business, strengthening accountability and improving how it serves clients, all of which fed into its high retention levels. The result paints a picture of a group growing its scale steadily while the bottom line waits to catch up — a balance sheet getting bigger, with profitability the next box to tick. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/863331/alexforbes-sitting-on-r733-billion/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Rand holds its nerve as Middle East tensions keep markets on edge URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/rand-holds-its-nerve-as-middle-east-tensions-keep-markets-on-edge/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:14:12.000Z The rand is proving surprisingly steady in a jittery world. The local currency firmed 0.3% to trade at R16.52 against the US dollar on Thursday, even as renewed air strikes between the United States and Iran kept global risk appetite firmly in check. The greenback eased against a basket of currencies while oil prices jumped after Tehran declared the Strait of Hormuz — the world's most important oil chokepoint — closed following US strikes on Iran. The two countries traded attacks for a second successive day, with President Donald Trump vowing further strikes if Tehran does not agree to a peace deal. ## Local markets shrug it off South African assets took the geopolitical drama in their stride. On the JSE, the Top-40 index closed up 0.5%, while the benchmark 2035 government bond firmed, its yield dipping 3.5 basis points to 8.6%. The rand, like other risk-sensitive emerging market currencies, has largely been at the mercy of global sentiment since the start of the conflict. But a flow of supportive local data is helping it hold its ground — including Thursday's news that South Africa recorded its largest current account surplus in more than four years, powered by gold exports. ## Mining surges, factories stumble Statistics South Africa added more grist to the mill, reporting that total mining output rose 8.2% year-on-year in April, accelerating sharply from 2.5% in March. Manufacturing was the fly in the ointment: production fell 2.9% year-on-year in April, reversing March's 1.5% gain, as factory sentiment continues to wobble in the face of elevated oil prices and global uncertainty. For now, the rand's resilience reflects a rare alignment: strong commodity exports, firmer bonds and a softer dollar. Whether that holds depends largely on events thousands of kilometres away — and on how long the world's oil arteries stay blocked. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*CNBC Africa (Reuters)*](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-african-rand-gains-as-dollar-wavers-amid-middle-east-tensions-2/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### The big banks' new battleground: SA's mid-sized businesses URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-big-banks-new-battleground-sas-mid-sized-businesses/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:14:04.000Z South Africa's biggest banks have found a new prize, and it isn't the blue chips at the top of the JSE. Lenders including Nedbank, Investec, FNB and Standard Bank are scrambling to win over medium-sized companies — businesses with annual revenue of roughly R100 million to R1.5 billion — a segment they largely ignored for years. The logic is simple. Competition for large corporates is fierce, retail margins are being squeezed in a sluggish economy, and mid-sized firms — spanning manufacturing, mining services, agriculture, retail and logistics — tend to be cash-rich, fast-growing and steadier than small business or retail portfolios. ## Dedicated teams, serious money Nedbank has built a mid-corporate unit with its own credit committees and plans to triple its banker headcount from 10 to about 30\. It is targeting up to 30% of the estimated 3,000 to 3,500 South African companies generating annual revenue of at least R750 million, and says its client base has already grown 50% since the unit launched last year. Investec is going further. The specialist bank says lenders serving mid-sized companies are earning returns on equity of around 30% — roughly double those of most major banks. It has invested more than R300 million to build full transactional banking services, due to roll out before March 2027, and wants to more than double its mid-corporate client base to 7,000 by 2030, lifting annual segment revenue from R1.7 billion to R3.8 billion. FNB, which already serves more than 20,000 medium-sized companies, merged its mid- and large-corporate units into a single division in March. Standard Bank, with about 28% of the local mid-corporate market, is looking beyond South Africa entirely: it estimates Africa's mid-corporate segment is a R150 billion revenue pool and is targeting deposits above R725 billion in its business banking division by 2028. ## Good news for the businesses For the companies being courted, the bidding war should pay off. Analysts expect more options to translate into better service, more tailored funding and, in some cases, sharper pricing. After years of fighting for attention behind the corporate giants, South Africa's mid-sized businesses are suddenly the belle of the banking ball. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*CNBC Africa (Reuters)*](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-africa-banks-chase-underserved-mid-sized-businesses-to-drive-growth/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Gold rush: SA posts its biggest current account surplus in over four years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/gold-rush-sa-posts-its-biggest-current-account-surplus-in-over-four-years/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:13:55.000Z South Africa's trade books are looking healthier than they have in years. The country recorded a current account surplus of 2.4% of GDP in the first quarter of 2026 — the largest in more than four years — according to data released by the South African Reserve Bank on Thursday. In rand terms, the surplus ballooned to R190.7 billion (about $11.5 billion) for January to March, a dramatic jump from the R50.2 billion recorded in the final quarter of 2025, when the surplus sat at just 0.6% of GDP. ## Gold does the heavy lifting The star of the show was gold. With bullion prices elevated and volumes up, increased net gold exports drove much of the improvement. The trade surplus widened to R437.9 billion in the first quarter, up from R282.2 billion in the previous three months. The numbers moved in South Africa's favour on both sides of the ledger. The value of exports of goods and services rose by R78.3 billion on higher prices and volumes, while the import bill shrank by R96.8 billion as both prices and volumes declined, the Reserve Bank said. ## Can it last? The current account measures the country's transactions with the rest of the world — trade in goods and services, plus income flows — and a surplus this size gives the rand and the broader economy welcome support at a time when global conditions are anything but calm. Economists are already cautioning that the second quarter may not look as rosy. Investec economist Lara Hodes expects the trade surplus to narrow in Q2, with the war in the Middle East pushing oil prices higher in April and May and weighing on the value of imports. Still, for an economy that has spent much of the past few years on the back foot, a four-year-best external position — powered by the very mining sector so often written off — is a result worth savouring. It follows hot on the heels of first-quarter GDP growth that beat forecasts, adding to a small but growing pile of better-than-expected economic news for 2026. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*CNBC Africa (Reuters)*](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-africa-records-largest-current-account-surplus-in-over-four-years-in-q1/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Petrol price relief of over R1 per litre on the cards for July URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/petrol-price-relief-of-over-r1-per-litre-on-the-cards-for-july/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:13:47.000Z South African motorists are in line for meaningful relief at the pumps in July, with current data pointing to a petrol price cut of around R1.10 per litre — and diesel users could see reductions of close to R3 per litre. The good news comes despite National Treasury adding the full fuel levy back into prices from July, which will claw back R1.50 per litre on petrol and R1.96 on diesel. Even after that offset, the Central Energy Fund's over-recoveries remain firmly positive. ## The numbers behind the cut As at 9 June, the CEF's daily snapshot showed over-recoveries of R2.60 per litre for both grades of petrol, R4.83 for 0.05% wholesale diesel, R5.03 for 0.005% diesel and R5.61 for illuminating paraffin. Netting off the returning levy still leaves projected cuts of R1.10 for petrol and between R2.87 and R3.07 for diesel. Investec chief economist Annabel Bishop said the continued over-recovery "will aid lower inflation", noting that a falling fuel price is a welcome counterweight after the sharp increases earlier this year pushed consumer inflation to the upper end of the Reserve Bank's tolerance band. ## Oil and the rand both helping Both sides of the fuel price equation are currently working in consumers' favour. Global oil prices have eased to around $93 a barrel after Iran and Israel halted strikes on each other, although Citadel Global managing director Bianca Botes cautioned that the situation remains fragile and markets are still on edge. The rand, meanwhile, has been resilient at around R16.45 to the dollar, supported by Fitch's recent credit rating upgrade and better-than-expected first-quarter GDP figures. Bishop noted that a 25 basis point repo rate hike is expected in July, which should lend the currency further support. The usual caveats apply: the final adjustment will only be confirmed at month-end, and changes to the slate levy could still shift the numbers. But for households squeezed by months of rising transport costs, July is shaping up to deliver a rare bit of breathing room — and a helpful nudge in the fight to bring inflation back towards the SARB's 3% target. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/863159/r1-10-per-litre-joy-for-petrol-prices-in-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Eskom puts a stake in the ground with new renewables company Eskom Green URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/eskom-puts-a-stake-in-the-ground-with-new-renewables-company-eskom-green/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:13:38.000Z Eskom has officially launched Eskom Green, a new utility-scale renewable energy business designed to fast-track large renewable projects and help South Africa's biggest power users hit their decarbonisation targets. The division was unveiled on 9 June and marks one of the most significant structural shifts at the utility since unbundling began. The move follows global benchmarking research across more than 20 utilities, which convinced Eskom that building renewables at scale requires different capital sources, delivery models and project structures from its traditional vertically integrated generation business. ## From division to stand-alone subsidiary Eskom Green sits within Eskom Holdings for now, but the group plans to separate it into a wholly owned subsidiary with its own independent board, subject to governance, regulatory and shareholder approvals. Group chief executive Dan Marokane said the new entity is built on decades of power generation expertise, adding that Eskom is "now putting a stake in the ground" with a development South Africa can be proud of. Group executive for renewables Rivoningo Mnisi described the business as one that "rapidly accelerates the options available to South Africa's industries to decarbonise" while protecting export competitiveness — a nod to the carbon border taxes looming over SA's industrial exporters. On pricing, Eskom says the wholesale tariff will be passed through to customers at cost, with network, wheeling and other regulated charges shown as separate line items rather than marked up. When customers contract with Eskom Green, the company takes responsibility for delivering that energy through its own renewable generation, backed by storage and firming arrangements. ## 6 GW pipeline anchored on coal sites Eskom has identified 17 high-priority projects to be built at its existing coal-fired power stations, using established grid infrastructure to deliver roughly 6 GW of additional capacity by 2030\. That includes at least 2 GW of renewable energy and pumped storage projects expected to start progressing this year. The first flagship is the 75 MW Lethabo solar PV project in the Free State, which pairs new generation with existing assets, with Komati Power Station next in line. Funding for the initial phases has been allocated within Eskom's approved capital expenditure programme and will be carried on the balance sheet, in line with National Treasury's debt relief conditions — meaning no additional project finance borrowing is required to get started. For energy-hungry miners and manufacturers under pressure to green their supply chains, a single utility-scale green energy counterparty could be a meaningful new option — provided Eskom can deliver at the pace the market now demands. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/energy/863167/new-eskom-energy-company-launches-in-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Mining cadastre finally gets a deadline — but the clock is tight URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/mining-cadastre-finally-gets-a-deadline-but-the-clock-is-tight/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:13:29.000Z After years of false starts, South Africa's long-promised mining cadastre has at last been handed a deadline. The government now expects to fully launch the digital database of mineral and prospecting rights within roughly ten months, targeting the end of March 2027 to migrate all nine provinces onto the new platform. ## A registry years in the making A modern cadastre is meant to do something deceptively simple: show, transparently and in one place, who holds the rights to explore and mine which patch of ground. It would replace the notoriously dysfunctional South African Mineral Resources Administration (SAMRAD) system, whose failings have long frustrated prospectors and investors alike. The new platform is being built by a Canadian-led consortium, but progress has been glacial — as of mid-2026, only the Western Cape has actually been incorporated. ## Why it matters For the mining industry, the stakes are hard to overstate. A functioning, credible registry is widely seen as one of the surest ways to revive exploration and draw fresh investment into a sector that remains a cornerstone of the economy. Without certainty over who owns what, capital tends to look elsewhere. That is why patience has worn thin. Mineral Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe assured a mining conference back in October 2024 that the cadastre would go live by June 2025, only for the timeline to slip amid "data issues". Cleaning up years of poor record-keeping — mountains of paper scattered across regional offices, and historical tangles such as "double pegging", where the same ground was granted to more than one party — has proved a monumental task. ## Frustration on the ground The mood in the sector is, to put it plainly, gatvol. Industry bodies have grown increasingly vocal about the endless delays, warning that every postponement carries a real cost in lost investment and stalled projects. The end-March 2027 target gives the market something concrete to hold the department to. Whether it is met — after so many missed dates — is the question the industry will be watching most closely. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*Moneyweb*](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/mineweb/south-africa-targets-key-mining-registry-by-end-of-march/?ref=businessbagel.com) *and* [*Daily Maverick*](https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2026-05-27-sa-mining-sector-gatvol-with-dmpr-over-endless-cadastre-delay/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### SA economy springs a surprise as GDP beats the forecasts URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-economy-springs-a-surprise-as-gdp-beats-the-forecasts/ Last updated: 2026-06-13T07:13:17.000Z South Africa's economy did something it rarely does these days: it beat expectations. Gross domestic product grew 0.5% in the first quarter of 2026 from the previous three months, Statistics South Africa reported on Tuesday — comfortably ahead of the 0.3% that economists polled by Reuters had pencilled in, and up from 0.4% in the final quarter of 2025. Markets liked what they saw. The rand firmed about 0.6% to trade at 16.43 against the US dollar, the JSE's Top-40 index nudged 0.4% higher, and the yield on the benchmark 2035 government bond fell 13.5 basis points to 8.605% as investors bought in. ## A welcome upside surprise For an economy that has spent much of the past decade stuck in low gear, a quarter that outpaces the consensus is no small thing. The numbers suggest activity held up better than feared at the start of the year, before the worst of the global turbulence arrived. It is the kind of print that hands the Reserve Bank and the Treasury a rare bit of good news to point to. ## But mind the timing Here is the catch: the data largely predates the energy price shock that followed the outbreak of conflict in the Middle East late in February. In other words, the quarter captures the calm before the storm rather than the storm itself. "Looking ahead, the combination of higher interest rates and elevated fuel costs is likely to continue eroding household purchasing power, placing downward pressure on consumption and, therefore, limiting near-term economic growth," cautioned Lerato Ntuli, an economist at Anchor Capital, who noted the figures did not yet reflect the energy shock or related supply-side disruptions. That tension — a solid backward-looking number against a cloudier outlook — will frame the data still to come. Current account, mining and manufacturing figures are all due this week, and they will offer a clearer read on how the economy has weathered the oil spike and the Reserve Bank's tighter stance. For now, though, South Africa can enjoy a quarter that, for once, surprised on the upside. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*CNBC Africa / Reuters*](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/south-african-rand-strengthens-after-surprise-gdp-growth-data?ref=businessbagel.com) *and* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business-opinion/858430/one-step-forward-one-step-back-for-south-africa/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### EV Startup Zimi Charges Up With $2.6m to Grow Battery-Swap Network URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/ev-startup-zimi-charges-up-with-2-6m-to-grow-battery-swap-network/ Last updated: 2026-06-09T05:43:06.000Z A South African startup betting on a different model for electric mobility has just topped up its tank. **Zimi**, an EV-infrastructure company, has raised **$2.6 million** to expand its battery-swapping and charging network for commercial fleets, a deal that underscores the quiet momentum building in Africa's green-mobility sector. ## Swap, don't wait Zimi's pitch leans on a simple insight: for delivery riders and fleet operators, time spent waiting at a charger is time not earning. Rather than parking a vehicle for hours, battery swapping lets a driver exchange a depleted pack for a charged one in minutes and get back on the road. It is an asset-light approach that sidesteps the heavy upfront cost of blanketing cities in fast chargers, and it is gaining traction over traditional charging models across emerging markets. The fresh capital will fund deployment in key urban corridors and deepen partnerships with logistics and mobility operators, the customers most likely to feel the economics of cheaper, faster energy turnaround. ## A bigger shift For South African investors, the round is a small but telling signal. Local climate-tech and mobility ventures are increasingly attracting cheques from a mix of development-finance institutions and private capital, drawn by practical solutions tailored to African conditions rather than imported templates. Challenges remain, from the reliability of grid supply to the standardisation of battery packs across vehicle types. But Zimi's raise lands amid a broader wave of funding flowing into the continent's startup ecosystem, and it suggests that investors see real commercial logic, not just feel-good branding, in electrifying the vehicles that keep South Africa's economy moving. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*Business Tech Africa*](https://www.businesstechafrica.co.za/news/2026/06/08/breaking-news-today-monday-8-june-2026/?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Absa Shareholders Stage Historic Revolt Over R148m CEO Pay URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/absa-shareholders-stage-historic-revolt-over-r148m-ceo-pay/ Last updated: 2026-06-09T05:42:58.000Z Absa's shareholders have delivered one of the most stinging pay rebukes in South African banking history. At the group's annual general meeting, a remarkable **43.37%** of voting shareholders rejected the bank's executive remuneration implementation report for 2025, a revolt triggered by the R148 million package handed to new chief executive Kenny Fihla. ## The R148m question Fihla took the reins at Absa in June 2025, arriving from rival Standard Bank. The bulk of his pay, around R98.5 million, was a one-off buyout award compensating him for unvested shares he forfeited by leaving Standard Bank. The rest comprised a fixed salary of R6.285 million, a short-term cash award of R12.15 million and a share award of R11.15 million. Buyout awards of this kind are common when banks poach senior talent, but the eye-watering headline figure landed badly with investors already sensitive to executive excess at a time when many South Africans are feeling the squeeze. ## Why it carries weight Under South African governance rules, a vote of 25% or more against a remuneration resolution obliges the company to engage with dissenting shareholders and address their concerns. Absa has blown past that threshold by a wide margin, so meaningful engagement is now unavoidable rather than optional. More pointed still, shareholders outright rejected the separate resolution on proposed non-executive director fees for the year ahead, a binding outcome with sharper legal consequences than the advisory vote on executive pay. The message from the room was unmistakable. Absa's board will need to show it is listening, and that the days of nodding pay packages through on autopilot are over. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*Moneyweb*](https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/companies-and-deals/investors-thump-absa-with-astounding-43-vote-against-exec-pay/?ref=businessbagel.com) *and* [*News24*](https://www.news24.com/business/companies/investor-revolt-over-absa-pay-plan-as-ceo-gets-r148m-20260604-0969?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Fitch Hands South Africa Its First Credit Upgrade in 21 Years URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/fitch-hands-south-africa-its-first-credit-upgrade-in-21-years/ Last updated: 2026-06-09T05:42:35.000Z For the first time in nearly a generation, a major ratings agency has said something good about South Africa's books. Fitch Ratings has upgraded the country's long-term foreign-currency rating to **'BB' from 'BB-'**, the first Fitch upgrade in almost 21 years and a milestone moment for a nation long accustomed to the language of downgrades. ## Why the upgrade matters The last time Fitch moved South Africa's rating in this direction was around 2005\. The years since have been bruising: a steady slide that eventually pushed the country into sub-investment grade, or "junk", territory as deficits widened and debt ballooned. This reversal, then, is more than a technical tweak. It is a vote of confidence in the direction of travel. Fitch credited the country's shift from persistent primary deficits to consistent and widening primary surpluses, averaging around 1% of GDP over the past four years. The agency pointed to improved revenue collection, more disciplined expenditure management, and signs that government debt is finally stabilising. It also recognised a more credible policy framework under the Government of National Unity. ## What it means for your wallet A higher rating is not an abstraction. It typically lowers the government's cost of borrowing, supports the rand, and improves sentiment among the foreign investors South Africa needs to fund its ambitions. Bond yields tightened immediately after the announcement, and the National Treasury was quick to welcome the news. A reality check is in order, though. A 'BB' rating is still two notches below investment grade, and the debt-to-GDP ratio remains elevated near 80%, above the median for similarly rated peers. South Africa becomes only the second G20 country Fitch has upgraded this year, but the agency will want to see the fiscal consolidation sustained, not celebrated and then abandoned. For now, after more than a decade of bad news, the country can savour a rare moment of progress. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*Business Report*](https://businessreport.co.za/2026-06-06-fitch-upgrades-south-africas-credit-rating-in-first-sovereign-boost-in-nearly-21-years/?ref=businessbagel.com) *and* [*CNBC Africa*](https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/fitch-upgrades-south-africas-credit-rating-on-prudent-fiscal-management?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Pick n Pay Hits Pause on 22,000-Job Retrenchment After Government Steps In URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/pick-n-pay-hits-pause-on-22-000-job-retrenchment-after-government-steps-in/ Last updated: 2026-06-08T09:37:01.000Z One of South Africa’s biggest retail employers has slammed the brakes on a restructuring that put more than 22,000 jobs in the firing line — at least for now. Pick n Pay has paused its retrenchment process following a marathon engagement with Employment and Labour Minister Nomakhosazana Meth, organised labour, and the company’s top brass. The roots of the standoff go back to 4 May 2026, when the retailer issued a Section 189 notice, kicking off a 60-day consultation period. The proposed shake-up included changes to Sunday pay, more weekend shifts, and greater scheduling flexibility — measures Pick n Pay argued were necessary to restore profitability after a punishing few years, but which unions warned would gut job security and erode hard-won labour protections. ## The state steps in Acting under an expanded mandate to preserve jobs, Minister Meth pulled the major players around one table: Pick n Pay executives, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), and the South African Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers Union (SACCAWU). After an intensive six-hour session, the parties agreed to return to the bargaining table with firm timelines. The ANC publicly threw its weight behind the intervention. ## Not out of the woods Here’s the catch: the retrenchments aren’t off the table — they’re on hold. Negotiations are ongoing, and Pick n Pay has been clear that “our engagements continue.” For 22,000 workers and their families, it’s a reprieve rather than a resolution. The outcome will be a litmus test for how far government’s newly muscular jobs mandate can actually bend a listed company’s restructuring plans. *Compiled by Business Bagel from reporting by* [*BusinessTech*](https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/862571/pick-n-pay-pauses-retrenchment-process-affecting-22000-workers/?ref=businessbagel.com)*,* [*IOL*](https://iol.co.za/business/2026-06-05-minister-intervenes-to-halt-job-losses-at-pick-n-pay/?ref=businessbagel.com) *and* [*EWN*](https://www.ewn.co.za/2026/06/04/pick-n-pay-pauses-retrenchment-of-1000s-of-workers-after-labour-minister-intervenes?ref=businessbagel.com)*.* ### Unemployment Epidemic URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/unemployment-epidemic/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:48.000Z South Africa’s unemployment crisis has deteriorated again after the economy shed 345,000 jobs in the first three months of 2026\. Statistics South Africa says the official unemployment rate has now climbed to 32.7%, leaving more than 8.1 million South Africans without work. When discouraged job seekers are included, the broader unemployment rate rises to 43.7% — a reminder that the country’s labour market pressures stretch well beyond the official headline figure. The losses were concentrated in sectors like community services, construction and transport, while manufacturing, mining and agriculture managed to add some jobs during the quarter. Employment also weakened across almost every province, with KwaZulu-Natal standing out as the only province to record net job growth between January and March. But the biggest pressure point remains young people. Nearly half of South Africans between 15 and 34 who are actively looking for work are unemployed, while unemployment among 15-to-24-year-olds has climbed above 60%. Economists warn that prolonged youth unemployment creates long-term risks far beyond income itself — including weaker economic growth, rising social pressure and a generation struggling to gain work experience early in life. There is also a broader structural issue underneath the numbers. South Africa’s unemployment rate has now remained above 30% for more than five years, despite repeated promises around economic reform, infrastructure investment and job creation. The economy is still growing too slowly to absorb the number of new entrants joining the labour market each year — which means even modest economic shocks can quickly translate into hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. ### SA Becomes World's Largest Citrus Exporter URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-ecomes-worlds-largest-citrus-exporter/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:49.000Z South Africa’s citrus industry has just hit a major milestone. The country exported 2.9 million tonnes of citrus in 2025, overtaking Spain as the world’s largest citrus exporter by volume. That includes oranges, lemons, mandarins and grapefruit shipped to markets across Europe, Asia, the Middle East and beyond — highlighting how important agriculture has quietly become to South Africa’s export economy. The industry says the strong performance was driven by favourable growing conditions, years of investment into new orchards and gradual improvements at South African ports after prolonged logistics frustrations. Citrus has increasingly become one of the country’s most globally competitive agricultural industries, with demand for South African fruit continuing to grow during the Northern Hemisphere’s off-season. But despite the record exports, growers say the current season is becoming far more complicated. Severe flooding in parts of the Eastern and Western Cape has already damaged crops, roads and packing infrastructure in some soft citrus regions, while conflict-linked disruptions in the Middle East are pushing up both fuel and global shipping costs. That matters because citrus exports depend heavily on cold-chain logistics and tightly timed international deliveries. At the same time, producers are still dealing with tariff disputes and export-access challenges in key markets like the EU and US, where stricter import rules and trade barriers continue squeezing margins. So while South Africa may now be the world’s top citrus exporter by volume, many growers say the milestone masks a far tougher reality underneath — one where logistics, geopolitics and export access are becoming just as important as the fruit itself. ### Capitec goes Mobile URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/capitec-goes-mobile/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:49.000Z Capitec Connect — the bank’s mobile network launched in 2022 — has announced that all calls between Connect users are now completely free, in what the company describes as an industry-first for South Africa’s mobile market. The service runs on Cell C’s infrastructure and forms part of Capitec’s broader push beyond traditional banking into digital services and connectivity. The move comes as Capitec Connect continues growing at a rapid pace. The mobile business now has 1.5 million active users, subscriber numbers jumped 67% over the past year, and its net income contribution more than doubled to R442 million. Data traffic on the network also tripled to 40.5 petabytes, suggesting customers are increasingly relying on Connect as a primary mobile service rather than just a secondary SIM card. What makes the strategy interesting is that Capitec is no longer operating purely as a bank. It is steadily building a broader ecosystem around banking, mobile connectivity, device financing and digital services — effectively trying to position itself closer to a daily utility than just a financial institution. That matters in a country where access to affordable data, smartphones and digital payments increasingly determines how people work, communicate and manage money. And there’s a longer-term competitive angle here too. South Africa’s major banks are increasingly pushing into adjacent industries like insurance, telecoms and e-commerce in an effort to keep customers inside their ecosystems for as much of daily life as possible. Free in-network calling may sound simple on the surface, but it also creates another reason for users to stay within the Capitec ecosystem — especially as mobile connectivity becomes more intertwined with banking itself. ### SA Artists Bank Over R500m on Spotify URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sa-artists-bank-over-r500m-on-spotify/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:50.000Z South African artists banked more than R504 million in Spotify royalties last year, according to the streaming service’s annual “Loud & Clear” report. That’s up 28% on a year earlier and nearly double what local musicians generated on the platform in 2023\. The figures were unveiled this week at Spotify’s new Rosebank office in Johannesburg, as the company highlighted South Africa’s growing role in global music streaming. The standout in the numbers is how much of that money came from outside South Africa. Almost three-quarters of the R504 million flowed in from international listeners — driven by demand for genres like Amapiano, Afro-pop and hip hop. Zulu-language royalties are up more than 120% over the past two years, while royalties tied to female South African artists grew 22% locally and 20% internationally. SA artists were also discovered by first-time listeners on Spotify more than 1.6 billion times last year — a 40% jump year-on-year. The report also paints a picture of how streaming is reshaping the local music industry itself. More than half of the royalties linked to South African artists went to independent musicians and labels rather than major record companies — one of Spotify’s strongest arguments for how streaming platforms can help artists bypass traditional gatekeepers. At the same time, more than 3,500 South African artists were added to Spotify editorial playlists during the year, while local artists accounted for roughly 67% of tracks on Spotify South Africa’s Daily Top 50 chart. There is an important catch in the numbers, though. The R504 million reflects royalties generated by South African artists at rights-holder level — meaning the actual amount individual musicians receive still depends heavily on contracts with labels, publishers and distributors. But the broader trajectory matters more than the exact payout split: South Africa’s Spotify royalty growth is now outpacing the country’s wider streaming market growth, suggesting local music is increasingly becoming an export industry rather than just a domestic one. ### The case for paying South African founders less. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-case-for-paying-south-african-founders-less/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:50.000Z For roughly a decade, the implicit benchmark for SA founder salary at a Series-A-funded startup has been R1.8m–R2.4m a year. The number traveled here from the Bay Area via Twitter, was rounded for the rand, and quietly became consensus. Investors did not push back, because the absolute numbers — by US standards — looked modest. Founders did not push back, because nobody pushes back on a salary handed to them by a term sheet. The case for the number was never very strong. The case against it has gotten stronger. **The original argument** Founders need to focus on the business, not on their personal finances. A salary high enough to remove household stress lets them think clearly about the company. There is genuine merit in this argument. **Where it breaks** It breaks in two places. First, the original number was calibrated for a US single-income household supporting a partner and children on Bay Area cost of living. The equivalent calibration for a Johannesburg single-income household supporting the same family is closer to R900k–R1.2m. Importing the absolute dollar figure and converting at spot is poor modeling. Second, and more importantly: the equity story changes when founder cash compensation crosses 1.5% of round size. At a $5m round (\~R90m), a R2.1m salary is 2.3% of the raise. Over a four-year vesting period for the post-Series-A grant, it represents R8.4m — meaningful relative to the founder's likely outcome distribution. It is also meaningful to the board, which is doing the cap-table math. **What the data says** Across 47 SA-domiciled Series A rounds in 2024–2025 that we could find compensation data for (drawn from CIPC filings, due-diligence material that became public via M&A processes, and the more transparent founders' own admissions), the median founder cash compensation was R1.95m. The median round size was R72m. Median cash comp as percent of round: 2.7%. The same cohort, weighted by company performance two years later: founders below the median salary outperformed those above it by approximately 1.8× on ARR growth. The causation runs both ways and the sample is too small for confident inference. But the correlation is not in the direction founders would like it to be. **The recommendation** For SA founders raising a Series A in the next twelve months: 1. Anchor your salary to your actual household burn, not to the market. 2. If your household burn is R900k a year, take R900k. Don't take R1.8m. 3. Use the difference to fund additional ESOP for the team. 4. Tell your investors why. They will remember. For SA boards approving founder compensation packages: 1. Stop benchmarking to global comp surveys. The market clears differently here. 2. Make the compensation conversation explicit at every round, not implicit. 3. Approve below-market salaries as a feature, not a concession. *The full data tables are in the members' edition. Login at businessbagel.co.za/members.* ### POPIA's first big fine: R8m and a precedent. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/popias-first-big-fine-r8m-and-a-precedent/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:51.000Z The Information Regulator on Thursday issued an R8m administrative fine against a mid-sized financial-services firm — the name remains under non-disclosure pending appeal — for a failure to notify affected data subjects within the 72-hour window stipulated by the Protection of Personal Information Act. The size of the fine is unremarkable. The fact that it was issued at all is the news. **Why it matters** POPIA came into force in 2021\. For three years it has been a regulation that companies wrote policies about but did not, in practice, fear. The Regulator's enforcement actions before this week were limited to warnings, "engagements," and one symbolic fine of R5m against the Department of Justice (which has not paid). A R8m fine against a private-sector firm changes the calculus. It establishes (a) that the Regulator will pursue large administrative fines, (b) that the 72-hour notification window will be enforced literally, and (c) that "we patched it within 24 hours" is not a defence if you did not also notify. **Who should be paying attention** Every CIO and every audit-committee chair at any company holding personal data on more than 50,000 South Africans. The Regulator's stated focus areas for the next twelve months are financial services, healthcare, education, and the mobile-network operators. **What to do this week** 1. Re-read your incident-response playbook. Find the line that says "we will notify affected data subjects within X hours." If X is not 72 or smaller, update it. 2. Confirm who at your firm has the authority to send that notification at 02:00 on a Saturday. 3. Confirm the Regulator's contact email is in the playbook. It is [enquiries@inforegulator.org.za](mailto:enquiries@inforegulator.org.za). *The Regulator publishes its enforcement orders on inforegulator.org.za under "Decisions."* ### Capitec opened 60 sites in a quarter. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/capitec-opened-60-sites-in-a-quarter/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:52.000Z Capitec opened 60 new branches in the three months to March — a record quarterly pace — bringing the network past 940 nationally. The expansion is concentrated in lower-LSM township and peri-urban areas where the bank already has heavy mobile-app penetration but limited physical footprint. The strategy contradicts almost every commentary thread on banking written in the past decade. **The thesis** CEO Gerrie Fourie has been clear about it for three years: digital wins the transaction, but the branch wins the relationship. Cash deposits, home-loan onboarding, funeral-cover queries, the kind of conversation a township customer wants face-to-face — these do not migrate to the app. The branches are also recruitment funnels for credit products that are too high-stakes to sell purely digitally. **By the numbers** - New branches Q1: 60 - Total network: 940+ - Active clients: 22.4m - Active app users: 14.1m - Cost-to-income: 39.8% (sector average: 54%) **What it means** The South African retail banking thesis is that incumbents (Standard, FNB, Absa) defend the affluent customer with full-service relationship banking, while digital-native challengers (TymeBank, Discovery Bank) take the low-cost transactional layer. Capitec is doing both, in the same brand, and the cost-to-income ratio says it is working. It also means anyone modelling SA banking with a 2027 branch-closure assumption needs to revisit their spreadsheet. *The full operational update lands with the interim results on 1 October.* ### Sasol guides earnings down 18%. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/sasol-guides-earnings-down-18/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:52.000Z Sasol issued a trading statement on Wednesday afternoon warning that headline earnings per share for the year to June will fall between 15% and 21% from prior comparable. The midpoint — down 18% — is roughly in line with where consensus had drifted in the past month, but well below the level the share was priced at in February. The stock closed 6.2% lower on the day. The bond — the 2027s — barely moved. **What's driving it** 1. **Chemical prices.** US ethylene and Asian polypropylene both averaged 12–14% below last year's prints. 2. **Rand strength.** The currency averaged R18.40 to the dollar over the period, against R18.95 in the comparable. Sasol earns most of its revenue in dollars. 3. **Secunda still Secunda.** Production at the synfuels operation came in at the bottom of guidance. **What's not driving it** Crude prices held up; Brent averaged $81.30 versus a year-ago $79.40\. The fuels business is fine. **What it means** The interim is on 25 August. The market is now braced for it; the surprise risk is to the upside if there's a one-line update on the Secunda turnaround. Don't bet on it. *The trading statement number is the floor, not the forecast. Treat it that way.* ### Naspers sells R12bn of Tencent to fund a buyback. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/naspers-sells-r12bn-of-tencent-to-fund-a-buyback/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:53.000Z Naspers will sell approximately R12bn of Tencent shares this quarter to fund a R10bn share buy-back, the group confirmed in a Sens announcement on Monday morning. It is the eighth such operation in two years. Each one has the same logic: trade a slice of Tencent (which trades at full value) for Naspers stock (which trades at a 40% discount to its underlying assets). Each rand of buy-back theoretically retires R1.40 of value. The math is unkind to anyone who has tried to short the discount. **The mechanics** - Tencent sold: \~R12bn (≈0.4% of the holding) - Buy-back size: R10bn - Implied discount captured: \~17% - Discount to NAV before announcement: 40.2% - Discount after one day's trading: 38.6% **What it means** The discount narrowed but did not collapse. That is the pattern. The market has decided — perhaps correctly — that the buy-back is durable but not dramatic; it will close some of the gap but not all of it, because the structural reasons for the discount (cross-holdings, governance, taxation) have not changed. Bob van Dijk's successor inherited the strategy and has not deviated. There is no reason to expect they will. *The full announcement is on the JSE Sens — search "NPN" and filter to today.* ### Reserve Bank holds at 7.25%. URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/reserve-bank-holds-at-7-25/ Last updated: 2026-08-10T07:52:53.000Z The Monetary Policy Committee voted 3–2 to keep the repo rate at 7.25% — the third consecutive hold and a result the curve had fully priced in by Tuesday. Governor Kganyago's statement leaned hawkish in language and neutral in substance. Inflation is "stickier than we would like," services prices "remain a concern," and the committee "stands ready" — the boilerplate of a central bank that does not intend to cut soon. **By the numbers** - Repo rate: 7.25% (unchanged) - Prime: 10.75% - Headline CPI: 4.8% (April) - Core CPI: 4.4% - Vote split: 3 hold, 2 cut **What it means** For business: bond yields drifted three basis points lower on the day, but anyone betting on a near-term cut is now looking at September at the earliest. For households: prime stays where it is, which means the mortgage you already have does not get cheaper this quarter. The rand traded in a ten-cent band against the dollar and closed where it started. The JSE All Share added 0.4%, led by banks. *The next MPC meeting is 23 July. Watch the May CPI print on the 22nd.*