THURSDAY, 6.00PM:
The worse-than-expected consumer inflation figures released on Tuesday saw all indices on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange fall on Thursday.
At the close, the all gold index had slipped 5,8 points to 1 024,9, the industrial index had shed 28,7 points to 9 076,5, and the all share index ended 10,8 points down at 7 380,4.
Overall trade for the day was sparse as foreign and local institutional investors pulled their buy orders and waited to see if there was a definite down trend emerging.
Furthermore, the dollar’s volatility adversely affected the rand for most the day and the local unit lost more than two cents against the US unit at its worst level. The rand was last seen at R4,6985 from a Wednesday close of R4,6950, but off a low of R4,7240.
Capital markets lost due to the release of the poorer-than- expected July CPI. The government R150 long bond weakened 10 basis points to a yield of 14,330% and this added pressure to equities.
A lack of interest and general scepticism caused gold shares to slip despite an uptick in the bullion price. Gold was last quoted at $326,65 from a London afternoon fix of $325,85/oz.
BUSINESS BRIEFS
UMGENI WATER BOND KWAZULU-Natal water utility Umgeni Water on Thursday launched a R500-million 13% coupon bond, the UG65, redeemable on June 1 2010. Issue manager Rand Merchant Bank said bids will be accepted from start of business on September 3 until noon, with allotments announced by 6pm and trade in the bonds starting the next day. Umgeni Water has been making a market in its registered loan stocks since launching its UG50 bond five years ago. UG50 is up for redemption, and UG65 was launched as part of the roll-over and to finance new infrastructure.
SANTAM ENTERS ZIM SANTAM insurance group has bought 25% of Zimbabwe’s Diamond Insurance. Financial director Koos van Tonder said the move is based on the realisation that Southern Africa will soon become an open market.
M&R SEES RED Construction and manufacturing group Murray & Roberts has reported a net attributable loss of R272-million for the year to June 30 from a profit of R375-million the previous year. Contributors to the loss include a R130-million provision for future losses on property leases, poor margins in the engineering divisions, including a R70-million write-off at Standard Engineering, and R340-million additional losses on disputed contracts with Siemens for the provision of train sets to Taiwan. A 44c headline loss per share was recorded and an unchanged final dividend of 34c was announced, leaving total dividend for the year at 48,5c.
PEPKOR FLUSH AFTER SELL-OFFS RETAIL group Pepkor’s sale of its share in stationery group Walhold and subsidiary Waltons raised R432-million, which the group is happy to hold on to despite the fact that a redeployment of the funds accrued could increase earnings for the current year, MD Jan le Roux said on Thursday. The company reported a 34% increase in earnings before exceptional items to 126,7c a share over the previous year’s unaudited 94,9c. Earnings after exceptional items were up 100% at 182,7c a share. Dividends rose 10% to 44c.
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