The Finance Ghost: It’s market trade party time

If you don’t believe this thesis, you can just refer to Distell’s results. There’s a lot of noise in the numbers from alcohol bans and civil unrest, of course, but the underlying theme is clear: South Africans love drinking.

Distell doesn’t disclose exact revenue growth numbers. South African growth is “in the thirties” in the latest quarter and group revenue growth is “in the twenties” – both of which are worthy of a toast for investors.

Fascinatingly, the group highlights demand for Savanna Premium Cider as a major driver of growth. It’s dry and a lot of people seem to drink it.

South Africa lags in online shopping

When retailers like Truworths and The Foschini Group (TFG) release results, it presents a great opportunity to compare online shopping adoption in Africa with regions like the UK and Australia. Retailers talk about “sales participation”, which means the percentage of total sales attributable to a specific product (e.g. shoes) or channel (e.g. online).

We can’t isolate SA, unfortunately, as the retailers generally give commentary for Africa as a whole. SA is typically the bulk of these segments, though, so we can still draw meaningful conclusions from the numbers.

In Truworths, online retail contributed 3% of sales in Africa. Interestingly, TFG reports the same online participation in Africa of 3%. In the UK, Truworths reports online participation of 45.5%, while TFG reports 43%. TFG gives us an additional data point in Australia, with participation of 17.8%.

The high online adoption in the UK is part of why that market is so tough for clothing retailers. Last-mile delivery costs are expensive and customers love ordering clothes online and then returning them. Online sales can be margin-dilutive unless there are incredible systems in place.

South Africa is a long way off these numbers, especially in clothing. Ironically, that’s probably good news for local retailers.

MTN – to the moon?

MTN has been one of the market darlings this year. If you had foretold this prophecy to people a few years ago, they would have laughed at you.

The horrors of Nigerian fines and major cash-flow pressures are all but forgotten. MTN has its first investment-grade debt rating from S&P since 2016. If the balance sheet has strengthened that much, you can imagine how happy the equity investors feel.

In the wake of the pandemic, higher commodity prices have been a major boost for important African economies. This has created wealth in those regions and improved the fiscal balance sheets. This has helped MTN repatriate funds from countries like Nigeria. In the latest quarter alone, MTN upstreamed R4.6-billion from its operating companies, of which R2.3-billion was from Nigeria.

The growth in data and fintech is helping to drive strong revenue and margin performances. Much like we are seeing in tech companies overseas, MTN is improving its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) margin while posting impressive revenue growth. The ebitda margin is now 45%, a blend of regions such as South Africa at 41.6% and Nigeria at 52.6%.

The big question is: Can it keep going? MTN has guided that capex investment in 2021 will be R31.1-billion, a direct response to the opportunities presented by growth in demand for data. With a focus on products like merchant payments and insurance, and a population that is increasingly doing everything on smartphones, the sky may well be the limit for MTN.

The share price is up more than 125% in 2021 alone.

All the buzz words

Net1 is buying Connect Group for R3.7-billion. The announcement used every buzz word except “metaverse” in trying to convince investors that a forward enterprise value/ebitda multiple of 12.8x is reasonable.

Connect Group offers fintech (I warned you) services to micro, small and medium enterprises. The total addressable market (there we go again) in SA is 700,000 formal businesses of this size and a further 1.4 million informal businesses.

Buzz words aside, the business is growing quickly. The three-year revenue compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is 30% and the operating profit CAGR is 40%. It’s always good to see a faster growth rate in operating profit than in revenue, as this means expenses are growing at a slower rate than revenue.

The funding of the deal is complicated, with a combination of debt, existing cash reserves and a deferred issue of shares. There’s a significant retention mechanism planned for key Connect Group employees, which makes the deal even more expensive for Net1.

Net1 shareholders seemed to like it, though, sending the share price 13.5% higher on the day. At such a lofty multiple, the business will need to perform. DM168

After years in investment banking, his mother’s dire predictions came true: he became a ghost.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper which is available for R25 at Pick n Pay, Exclusive Books and airport bookstores. For your nearest stockist, please click here.