You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams. The JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the five o'clock shadow. And as always on a Wednesday, I speak to Skulk Glow, Portfolio Manager at PSG Wealth, Old Oak in Cape Town. Last week, we spoke a lot about gold, Skulk, and I gave you free reign to talk for what seemed an age about the yellow metal, and it was incredibly informative and I had a good reaction to it.
Today, I'm going to mention gold once, and that's it. Okay. I was deeply, deeply disturbed and offended earlier on when Donald Trump released on his social media platform an AI-generated video of his vision of Gaza. He didn't make any comment about it, but you got the inference. You saw that, obviously. You've seen that, obviously. And I don't know if it's a joke, but I don't think he jokes about this sort of thing. I think it's serious.
And the people of Gaza, if you've seen it, then I understand if you're deeply... as deeply offended as I am. Should we leave it there? Gold statues of Trump? Yeah. Yeah, I think we leave it there, don't you? Let's not mention the word gold, because, yeah, hello, Lindsay, and hello to all the Strictly Business listeners. Thank you. As I start this podcast, I just want to tell you guys that I got a bit reprimanded. By whom? By yourself. Don't switch, don't cut this out, please.
No, no, don't say it. I was, I was, I was, you are going to, because I was, I was told strictly that, that today we need to keep it around 15 minutes. And then Lindsay starts off by saying, let's talk about gold. And that's what I am. It's the gold statue. I'm just trying to keep it to 15 minutes because I've got another podcast afterwards, but that's okay. Let's get straight into other things because of the things that have come out since we last spoke. The first is results from Sassl.
And I know you're involved in Sassl and you don't mind me saying that. The other. is the process NASPS just eat story. Where do you want to start? Well, I think they're both old news. Yes, I know, but I need your old news analysis, please. So let's start with the process, just eats. I think, firstly, I was actually quite surprised.
When I saw the reaction in the market yesterday, when it opened up, and I think NASPS was down close to 7% process as well, and Yes, I know investors might feel that they could be overpaying slightly. But, I mean, my first reaction was, this is nothing new. They've been guided pretty well that this is the plan. They are going to buy the company. I think the price may be on the higher side, which the investors expected.
But where they started buying to just end where they're now buying the company, they're getting it. cheaper than originally. So I thought yesterday was a harsh reaction price-wise. And today's sort of reversion, we're seeing process NASPAS, both of them up over 2% again today, is telling us that maybe a slight overreaction. I don't think it's a... I like the fact that they're proactively doing something else because I think the one thing about NASPAS and now in the latter years process, is...
It's always been the 10 cent show. It's cheap, I know, but it's always been sort of just a 10 cent show. And now looking at some other companies, some other acquisitions, really committing to those acquisitions, I thought it's a good one. And I think over the longer haul, I'm still optimistic on both prices. You don't think that €20.30 is too much for Just Eat? It's a scooter delivery service. It is. It is. But, I mean, they are committed. They started.
It's like the channel blue, you know, nibbling, nibbling in multi-choice. And I told you back in the day, you're not going to nibble, you know, so constantly. Somewhere along the line, you can't be halfway pregnant. Somewhere along the line, you need to just go out and just say, we are committed. And they've shown their hand now and done that. So I think I read quite a few, a few.
institutional reports yesterday on the company and and i i still need to find one that that that's not bullish on the company so okay we we know that they still ever uh you know a buyer of their own own shares and um i i still think you know it'll be most probably my my preferred entry but anyway bennett's made short i think positive okay cecil yeah so cecil again well guided we know the woes that they had we know that
they they they they they struggling But I think that the results that came out yesterday showed us. Not too bad story. I thought they're looking to show some of those improvements. And if they could start spinning off these chemical business, like the rumors went, I think, about four weeks, six weeks ago, I still think that Cecil at these current levels, it's an extremely cheap company, trading at a three times forward PE multiple. That is really, really cheap.
It's not the typical company that will go to a 15, 16, or 20 times p. It hasn't traded there, well, pretty much ever. But it is a company that's quite stable around 8, 9 times p. So if that is anything to go by, I still believe this is a company that could literally double up. I mean, if they can just do the basics, do the basics right, I still think it's a good and solid company. This is a 180 rand a share company. Is that what you're saying? Something like that? I believe that. I believe that.
But then they really need to look at their debt levels. They really need to do these basics right, which I got the feeling when I saw the actual results came out yesterday. I did feel that they're looking good. I'll be retired by then, by the way, Skunk, when Cecil doubles his current price. But anyway, very good luck with that. We're going to have this conversation. We're going to have this conversation. Just make a note, mental note, Cecil 180, retirement. Okay. I think.
I think to all the listeners out there, we might see Lindsay retire a little bit earlier than originally anticipated. Moving right on to Anheuser-Busch, which is up 7.5% at the moment. Big company, big move. There's AECI up 7.2% on my delayed screen at the moment. And Momentum up 10%. Please tell me about these companies. I would love to. So firstly, disclaimers first. I do own Naspers process. I do own Cecil and oh boy, oh boy, I own both AUCI and ANASA.
So most of the time, you know, we often have conversation and I tell you about FOMO and I missed out on this one or that one. Now, AUCI, bang, bangs, we've often had this conversation and we're just going to refer again, you know, on the JSE floor pre-1996. If you shouted on the floor, bang, bangs, everybody knew what you were calling. Because it's an explosives company. I mean, that's part of its business. Yeah, anyway. There we go. So ASCI, again, well-guided.
And today, the actual full-year results came out very muted. I mean, revenue up 3.8%, EBITDA, you know, they were down, headline earnings down 37. But again, in most of the cases, well-guided. But then... Yeah. And just headline ending, especially eventually came out at 7,16, down from last year's 11,37. But remember, consensus had them at 5,21. So this was firstly a nice solid beat on what was expected. But again, it opened up, very muted price movement.
And then they had the shareholders communication where the CEO gave feedback to all the analysts, those analyst meetings. And literally, as he spoke, you just saw the share price exploded. Because he mentioned, they're going to be looking at some serious cost cuttings. They've already started to implement some of these cost cuttings. And they're going to continue doing this. They're going to be focusing on these departments in the company that's not looking healthy.
And going to try and just streamline that. And, I mean, it's still a beautiful company. It's really a well-managed company. They've got the explosives, like you mentioned, they've got the chemical side, they've got the fertilizers. So, a great, great company. And something that I think about a company that's trading at really, really decent, decent multiples. They also managed to increase their dividend.
Yes, I know last year they cut their dividend quite extensively, but they've managed to increase their dividend by 84% to 2.19. so that's that's a that's it that's a positive sign as i mentioned the share price just exploded afterwards and eventually end of the day very very very healthy um as mentioned you know seven seven points okay so you own that one do you own anhauser-busch a b in biff i own them i support them i do do what do you mean support them you know in other words you've got
a couple of their products tucked away in in the low fridge Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, definitely. But, I mean, all jokes aside, this is a company that's struggled. I mean, when you look at their debt levels, and I would say their debt levels from the period where they actually acquired SA Breweries, you can see they really went into serious debt. And if you look at their debt levels or debt-to-equity levels since their acquisition, they've managed to be decreasing that every single year.
so they can clearly have different some emerging which have been successful um revenue yes it increased 2.7 percent um quite a quite a quite a nice beat on on the consensus um and then headline and special earnings per share increased 15.7 percent i mean i kept three plus 53.
uh expected three dollars 33 so so again a very very good beat um company that's been trading under pressure and the share price been remaining at these let's call it eight nine hundred grand levels for for many many moons every time it it sort of breach the thousand rand levels it just stays there for a short period of time then dips down to 900 levels but i mean today was just a massive massive massive beat not over over a thousand rand placo starting to float with the 1000.
It's got 1,100 levels up in a 7.9%. Yeah, solid set of results. Momentum metropolitan. 10.25% higher. That's extraordinary, isn't it? That is massive. It really is. It's a really good move. But anyway, that's the one that stands out for me. I'm sorry I keep saying it, but it really does. Other bits of news, Skulk. What have we got here? South African inflation edges up in the first release since the basket update. They've reshuffled their shopping basket.
And the inflation came in at 3.2% from 3%. And the other one that caught my eye, not so much a surprise, Golden Boy Trump ends US initiative to boost electricity access in Africa. And that's according to Bloomberg. So he's cutting out anything he doesn't like or doesn't understand. Righto, any other companies that caught your eye today before we go to the prevailing prices? By the way, I've thrown my 15-minute thing out the window. Not my fault this time around.
but anyway yeah i think the only other other company worth mentioning is a bitcorp um we're not going to go into it because i think we're going to be time constrained um i didn't think the results looked too bad i think the results were quite stable they they're showing that they they're gaining some some market share beautifully managed company so in general it looked good but i mean that's the that's the problem if i can say that as a negative
But that's the problem with these companies trading at higher P multiples. They sort of price for perfection, and investors started to they want to see double-figure growth in their down earnings per share and those type of things. They didn't do that. I still think that well, they still managed to beat, but not a big beat, and share price retraced a little bit. We're talking about 1.2% down for today.
So one thing about BidCorp and BidVest is that the succession planning at board level has always been superb i mean obviously brian joffey but he was a forward thinker in that regard some companies don't have it and some political parties don't have it as well i won't mention any names but they've always done that don't you find skulk yeah yeah it's a stunning stunningly managed company and that's that's the thing i mean
i mean you can look at these companies we're talking about bitco bit fest you can talk about new clicks the likes of capitex I mean, I can mention a few of these companies that are trading at, let's call it expensive, in inverted commas, multiples. But then you can just say equal, just look at their management. And in all these cases, they're sitting with a very, very strong management team and a great history in terms of profit history. So Bitcorp, it's one of these companies, I don't own that.
That's the one that I don't own. I would love to own it. I would definitely put this on my radar. any retracement i mean we're talking about the share price that is that is that is currently trading at this called 460 uh 465 round levels i would like to see it closer to that let's call it 400 and and 10 band levels they almost probably look to to nibble but would it get there i most probably won't Okay, you never know. Okay, let's have a look at some prices now. The dollar rand is 1841.
The British pound against the rand is 2331. The euro rand is 1930. Euro dollar, 104.85. British pound against the US dollar is 126.65. Okay, gold price, it's off a bit today. In fact, it's off quite a bit today. It's $26 on my screen lower, down 0.9%. What else have we got? Platinum. mired below $1,000 at $9.78, but it's still up $9 on the day. And palladium mired below $1,000 at $9.34, which is up $8 on the day as well. Let's go to other commodities now.
I was talking to a chap in London today about commodities in general with a particular focus on that four-letter word meaning the yellow metal, which I won't mention, but you must have listened to that one on Strictly Business Podcast later. I'll send you the link actually, Skulk. But what I've got here is the oil price and the other energy parts of the complex not doing so much. So we've got Brent crude oil at $73.08 per barrel, which has barely changed.
And West Texas crude, $69.04 per barrel, which is up around about 0.2%. Natural gas prices below $4 now at 3.5% weaker. Okay, S&P 500. The U.S. markets are waiting for NVIDIA, aren't they, Scott? Oh, yes. This is going to be a big day. That's a monster. We can talk S&P movement up to this point, NASDAQ movement up to this point, but I reckon later today we're going to have a totally different market. Is it after the market closes? I'm not 100% sure. I think most probably.
It's usually after the market closes. Like I said, we haven't seen it yet. I think it's anticipated. Currently, as we're sitting here in the video, it's telling us because we remember there's been a pressure. And as we said, it's currently up over 3%. So market is expecting good news. And should we get it? I think this could be fun. But should they see any sort of miss? Anything that doesn't meet the expectations of a greedy market, this thing will fall in a heap.
And so will the market, just as Tesla has. And if you look back at the Tesla chart. Because I'm going to do a bit of Musk bashing today. It was December of last year, almost to the day when he was appointed a special government employee by Golden Boy. The share price came down, and it's been going down. And I think, technically, it's in a bear market at the moment, because it went to something like $296 a share yesterday, having been, goodness knows what, I think $388 at its peak last year.
But anyway, you're the charts man. But it doesn't look good, Tesla, I have to tell you. And registrations in Europe for Tesla new cars have plunged because people don't like him here. No, I mean, it's also it's well divided. I mean, it's a kind of it's a fact that, I mean, Elon is pretty much Tesla and Tesla is Elon. And if you take him in and say, well, he's going to be pretty much spending most of his attention on Dodge. So then. You need to ask you what's management going to look at.
You asked on the, let's call it, bear market. If you look at the chart, yes, definitely on an RSI basis, way, way, way oversold. Trading now below that, let's call it 30 RSI. But for those charters out there, I'm not one. I mean, it's still very much the 50 days trading well above the 200 days.
So it's still very much in a, let's call it a... bull face and now literally trading on on that 200 day so 200 day is pretty much where we're trading are we going to see it it actually get some support around the 200 day or if it breaks these levels i agree with you i think we could see bear market territory very very soon i don't want to see it because i don't want people to lose money but it would be it would just give me a
quiet sense of satisfaction to see the musk after all his antics for the last couple of months it's just come a little bit of a cropper S&P 500 futures are 6,008 on their highs. It's up around about two-thirds of a percent. The U.S. 10-year Treasury bond is 4.44 percent. The South African 10-year, this has updated 10.78 percent. And what else have we got here? Bitcoin, which had a bit of a wobble after that crypto hacking story from a North Korean hacker who stole one and a half.
billion from one of the crypto trading platforms and ever since then bitcoin has been under pressure recovering a bit today up 0.8 to 87 950 but don't forget it was close to 110 000 per coin not that long ago as skunk apart from the companies we've spoken about what moved on the jsc today Well, I think JSC itself, positive territory. So JSC today closed 88,322 points. So that was up 65 basis points. The JSC top 40, 80,855 points, also trading 71 basis points higher.
Resources, as you mentioned earlier, with all the drops in the gold price, the platinum price, so resources taking a bit of pressure today, 96 basis points in the red. Well, the industrials. up 1.1%, financials up 1.2%, and the property today, 1.6% down for today. Hammerson being the main leader of that, I think. Correct, correct. Only not looking too bad. We're talking about just over 21 billion, so very much in line with the past four or five days.
Just to end this, individual stocks, Momentum Metropolitan up nearly 10%, AB InBev up nearly 8%, Old Mutual a near 5% winner.
alpha min up 4.4 and richmond 2.7 higher african rainbow minerals nearly seven percent weaker hamerson just over six percent down nippy rock castle 4.7 in the red tungela 4.2 and aspen 3.8 percent down skulk interesting to see what nvidia does tonight it's not make or break stuff but it's certainly market moving stuff it's definitely going to be going to be uh worth worth staying up and just having a look because I think it's going to be a nice one.
So yeah, like you mentioned, not going to be make or break, but definitely a market mover. Skunk Low is a portfolio manager at PSG Wealth, Old Oak in Cape Town, and that was the 5 o'clock shadow. The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of Lindsay Williams and various contributors and do not reflect the policy, position, or opinion of any other agency, organization, employer, or company associated with StrictlyBusinessPodcast.com.