Ann CrottyOnce you head into December it’s difficult to take things too seriously. The focus is on finishing old things off, not looking for new stuff. And so, from the first week of the month, when most people start heading to the beach, few people track Sens with much enthusiasm.
Of course, every year it turns out that it’s always worth keeping an eye on Sens in December. And December 2024 was no exception.
In case you missed it, Currency will bring you up to date with some of the more interesting developments, which included some very well-timed share trades by Prosus and Naspers directors.
But first up was the scattering of director departures. KAL non-executive director Isaac Chalumbira quit the farm machinery and equipment group with immediate effect. No explanation was given, just the obligatory thanks for “his valuable contribution”.
Slightly more disconcerting, given she was the CFO, was the abrupt departure of AECI’s Rochelle Gabriels “on mutually agreed terms”. No explanation was forthcoming, but shareholders were told Gabriels would help ensure a seamless transition. Gabriels’ departure was announced just one week after AECI announced that July Ndlovu was joining the board. Ndlovu is CEO of coal group Thungela.
At least Astral shareholders weren’t kept in the dark about the departure of one of its non-executive directors. Anita Cupido resigned with effect from end-January “due to work commitments”, the company told shareholders.
The dribble of companies onto the newly established general segment of the JSE continued with the announcement that Ayo Technology Solutions’ transfer application had been approved by the JSE. The general segment is expected to entice scores of companies, listed on the main board, hoping to benefit from easier listing requirements. But for Ayo they may not be easy enough. Ten days after the announcement it issued a statement informing shareholders that its audited financial statements for the year ended August 2024 would only be released “on or about Thursday January 16 2025”. That’s almost five months after year-end, which exceeds the four months allowed in its new “general segment” home.
Caxton shareholders are either remarkably resilient or utterly indifferent. The company’s AGM was held on December 3 and all the resolutions were passed comfortably – except placing the unissued shares under the control of directors, which was passed, though opposed by 31% of shareholders.
But here’s the thing, shareholders were not able to access the company’s annual report until December 23, almost three weeks after the AGM. According to a Sens statement issued on December 23, “an error occurred on the JSE Limited’s embedded URL link and stakeholders are unable to access the annual report for the company for 2024”. Had any shareholders even noticed? The annual report has always been deemed essential for preparation for the AGM.
In the spotlight
Perhaps inevitably, Naspers/Prosus were the main attraction over the holiday season. The big news of course was that the US defence department had added Tencent to its annual updated list of firms it says work with China’s military. Tencent is adamant it’s a mistake. Maybe. But as AG Capital’s Henry Biddlecombe told Moneyweb’s Jimmy Moyaha, the lines between military and civil environments in China are blurred. “The Chinese Communist Party actually requires – legally requires – all of their companies to support the People’s Liberation Army. So, any resources or data that a Chinese company has are required to be made available to the Chinese army.”
Tencent has huge amounts of data and technological capabilities that would be useful to any army.
The question is, why add it to the list now?
Anyway, the news hit the Tencent share price and dragged Naspers and Prosus with it. Having reached a 12-month high of R4,515.70 in mid-December Naspers dropped back to R3,652.92 by January 10.
Prosus had reached a 12-month high of R801.45 in early October. By January 10 it was back to R664.
So the December trades by two top directors turned out to be extremely well timed. Mark Sorour, a former finance director of the group, now a non-executive director, sold 42,483 Naspers shares on December 9 at R4,426.71 apiece, close to the 12-month high. The total value of the transaction, which involved the exercise of share options previously awarded to Sorour, was R187m. After paying for the options, Sorour made a profit of R95.1m.
If he’d traded the shares a month later, after the Tencent announcement, the profit would have been cut by R30m.
Chair Koos Bekker was even luckier in his timing of the sale of 3.9-million Prosus shares between December 16 and 18. He made €156.7m (the trade was on Amsterdam’s Euronext), equivalent to about R3bn, which he said was to fund building operations at hotels in South Africa, the UK and Italy. If he’d left it to a few weeks later he’d have been €23m, or R454m, poorer on the sale.
This is only the second time Bekker’s trust has sold Prosus shares, which he received when Prosus was listed in 2019. In late March 2023 he sold 2.5-million shares for about R3bn, again to “fund building operations at hotels in various countries in which the family trust has an interest”.
Bekker has not sold Naspers shares since the sale of 11.7-million in 2014, shortly after he stepped down as CEO of the company. The transaction is estimated to have generated a profit of about R20bn for Bekker, who was left with 4.7-million Naspers shares.
But the most stunning figure out of Naspers over the holiday season was that it had spent R22bn buying back shares between August 22 2024 and January 9 2025. Over the same period 30.7-million Prosus shares were sold on Euronext, netting R22.4bn. That’s about two-thirds of what it spent on its biggest deal in years – the R31bn acquisition of Despegar, Latin America’s biggest online travel agency.
Finally, there was Barloworld, whose executives must be thrilled about what the R22.8bn offer from Saudi group Zahid (not to mention the Barloworld CEO) has done to the value of the shares they were recently awarded – and reported on Sens in mid-December. The share price shot up to R110 on the back of news of the R120 offer, which has already been dismissed by one major shareholder as insufficient.
As the Gordon Gekko movie claimed, “money never sleeps”; it certainly doesn’t take a holiday.
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