If repetition is conviction, A² Investment Partners is trying hard to make its point on packaging giant Nampak. The investment vehicle associated with chair André van der Veen bought another R9.4m of shares this fortnight, taking its buying since early August comfortably past R100m.
Previous purchases in August added up to almost R59m. This column flagged the buying just a fortnight ago and investors may want to keep their heads on a swivel: A² doesn’t seem to be finished.
Libstar’s executives chose an interesting moment to buy. Days after the food producer admitted its interim earnings had fallen short of expectations, newly appointed COO Cornél Lodewyks spent R487,500 on shares and CFO Terri Ladbrooke another R194,300. Revenue edged up just 0.7%, while normalised operating profit fell 10.9%.
Management has completed the consolidation of its wet-condiments operations and expects the efficiencies to become increasingly visible in the second half. The pair may be signalling that at these prices the market is giving too much weight to a difficult first half.
Neill Abrams keeps coming back to Mr Price at lower prices. The nonexecutive director bought another R324,000. Mr Price itself isn’t exactly distressed: financial 2026 revenue rose 4.2% to R42.7bn and normalised diluted headline earnings grew 8%. But the group is digesting its offshore NKD acquisition and the share has weakened. Abrams appears quite happy to keep buying through that uncertainty.
Resultant Finance, an associate of long-serving Calgro M3 nonexecutive director Mdu Gama, acquired 1.59-million shares off-market for R6.34m. Gama is CEO of Resultant and has sat on Calgro’s board since 2012.
Calgro’s R31.8bn development pipeline includes the 20,000-unit Bankenveld District City project, while its memorial parks business grew revenue 26% last year. Headline earnings fell, however, and debt is expected to rise as development spending picks up.
While directors were nibbling and trimming, the fund managers were moving larger pieces around the board. Ninety One crossed 5% in Sibanye-Stillwater just days after the miner reported record half-year revenue of R90bn and adjusted ebitda of R31.8bn, helped by stronger commodity prices. Old Mutual also reached 5% in Dipula shortly after the real estate investment trust raised R1.1bn of equity to help fund a R2bn shopping centre portfolio acquisition.
Coronation, meanwhile, headed the other way at KAP, cutting its clients’ holding to 3.95% after the industrial group reported an 88% jump in headline earnings and a 28% rise in operating profit. The share had rallied sharply on the numbers, so the fund manager may simply have used the strength to take some money off the table.
At Mondi, Coronation’s voting interest fell from just over 9% to 4.78% after Mondi’s first-half underlying ebitda dropped to €379m from €564m and the interim dividend was cut sharply. Earlier this year, Coronation was still building its Mondi position, so it hardly takes a rocket scientist to see what may have prompted the change of heart.
