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
HIGHER LEARNING
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.
BAD RECEPTION
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.
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
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
WEATHER
BAGEL GAMES
Have you got what it takes to win today's Wordle? Play here →
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.
