Oasis Crescent is a quality problem: a property fund with no debt, a low-risk tenant base (86% multinational, national or government-related) and growing NAV, but a distribution that is going backwards. The interim payout fell 6.7% to 58.5 cents per unit, and distributable income dropped 4.7% to R38.9 million. The single biggest reason is Sacks Circle — the fund's second-largest income generator — sitting dark while it's redeveloped into a world-class warehousing and logistics facility, due to be handed over around December. Losing income from your second-largest property will do that to a distribution.
Here's the thing though: this is a temporary, self-inflicted wound with a recovery date attached. The fund has zero leverage, NAV per unit rose 2.3% to R28.84, and vacancies are falling with little new supply in the market. At R29.40 the units trade at essentially book value with a fully-covered yield — that's the defensive profile this fund sells. But the distribution is the product, and a 6.7% cut stings income investors who bought the yield story. Hold for the Sacks Circle completion; the recovery is visible on the calendar. NEUTRAL.
This is what the end of a JSE listing looks like. The Gauteng High Court has granted an order placing Labat Africa under provisional winding-up, dismissed its application for postponement, and dismissed its application to intervene. The trigger is a R20 million judgment in favour of Hollard Insurance dating back to January 2024, with costs on the attorney-and-client scale — the most punishing cost order available. The company's separate rescission proceedings remain technically alive, but the tone of this announcement suggests a board that has run out of road.
The timetable is grim for shareholders: the matter returns to court on 8 March 2027 to decide whether the winding-up becomes final, and virtually everyone — creditors, SARS, employees — has been ordered to be notified or served. The share price of R0.03 says the market has already written this one off. Labat was once a cannabis-and-healthcare story trading on dreams of what the plant could do; now it's a cautionary tale about what happens when the dream hits a R20 million judgment. There's no polite way to say it: this stock is a distressed asset, not an investment. BEARISH.
Karooooo just served up another quarter of the kind of numbers that make other JSE tech stocks weep. Cartrack subscribers hit 2.9 million, up 18%, and the 94,516 net additions were a record for a second quarter. Subscription revenue rose 20% to R1.42 billion, ARR is up 19% to R5.71 billion, and operating profit grew 19% to R422 million with EPS up 18% to R9.28. That's a subscription business doing what subscription businesses are supposed to do: adding customers, holding margins at 28%, and converting growth into profit. The rand's strength against the dollar actually flattered nothing here — the growth is real in both currencies.
The interesting part is Karooooo Logistics, where B2B delivery-as-a-service revenue jumped 36% to R189 million. It's still small — operating profit of R11 million at a 6% margin — and driver costs are eating into profitability. But the trajectory is the story: H1 net subscriber additions accelerated 53% to a record 236,988. The stock trades at R1,020, roughly 29x trailing earnings, which is expensive by JSE standards but the growth is compounding at near-20%. This remains one of the best quality growth stories on the JSE. BULLISH.
Kumba's third quarter is a deliberate production sacrifice with full-year guidance intact — and the market has to decide which half of that sentence matters more. Production fell 19% to 7.5 million tonnes because the R11.2 billion UHDMS project at Sishen required the dense-media-separation plant to be shut down for the main tie-in. Sales, though, rose 3% to 10.0 million tonnes, funded by drawing down the 4.8 million tonnes of finished stock the company had deliberately banked. The full-year guidance of 31-33Mt production and 35-37Mt sales stands, and CEO Mpumi Zikalala is saying the right things about the premium the product still commands.
That premium deserves attention: Kumba realised US$86 per wet metric tonne year-to-date, a 9% premium over the benchmark, and Kolomela production was up 47% year-on-year. But the market backdrop is soft — weaker Chinese steel production, compressed mill margins and strong seaborne supply all weighed on prices through the quarter. The UHDMS project is the right long-term call: more premium-grade lump, less waste mining, extended mine life. But the 19% production drop is real, the stock at R224.31 is pricing in a lot of discipline, and iron ore's fortunes remain hostage to Beijing's building sites. On the numbers, this is a well-executed transition quarter with watchful eyes on the downside. NEUTRAL.
Read the first line of Datatec's trading statement and you'd think it's a blowout: underlying EPS up 52.9% to 60.6% to between 29.5 and 31.0 US cents, with both Westcon International and Logicalis International delivering record first halves at the EBITDA level. Logicalis's US business, in particular, sharply improved its gross profit to EBITDA conversion — that's the story of a turnaround that's finally paying. The market has rewarded Datatec this year, and this statement backs up the recovery narrative.
But look closer and the warts are visible. Headline EPS is only 0.5% to 7.3% higher, because Logicalis Latin America had another weak operating performance and the group is still chewing through restructuring costs. And remember the R7 billion special dividend machinery Ghost Mail flagged: with top executives holding big stakes, R4.8 billion is being retained as capitalisation shares rather than paid out — alignment, yes, but also a statement that the balance sheet is doing heavy lifting. At R59.89 the stock trades on just 9.5x trailing earnings. The restructuring story is working; just don't expect the headline number to scream it. BULLISH.
DRDGOLD is the gold-price trade in its purest JSE form, and the September quarter shows why. Gold produced rose 10% to 42,021 ounces, gold sold was up 14%, and revenue jumped 31% to R2.95 billion while operating profit surged 42% to R1.63 billion. The engine is the average gold price received: up 24% in dollars to US$4,247 an ounce. When the yellow metal runs, DRDGOLD's urban mining model — processing old mine dumps through Ergo and Far West Gold Recoveries — converts it straight into profit, with no exploration risk attached.
The caution flag is cost inflation. All-in sustaining costs rose 15% to US$2,169 per ounce, driven by higher diesel, reagents and electricity, plus the commissioning of the new elution plant and smelthouse at FWGR. Revenue growth still swamps cost growth — the margin between the gold price and AISC widened to over US$2,000 an ounce — but if gold retreats to US$3,800 while these costs stick, the leverage cuts the other way. At R42.48 the market is paying 8.7x earnings for one of the sector's highest-margin producers. In a bull market for gold, that's cheap. BULLISH.
In a consumer environment that has crushed everything from furniture to fast food, the car dealers keep motoring. CMH expects earnings per share for the six months to August to come in 20% to 25% higher at between 264 and 275 cents, versus 220 cents last year. That's a proper trading statement — the kind that says the market's fears about stretched consumers haven't shown up in the showroom. CMH's spread across new and used vehicles, parts and car rental gives it more gears than most, and it has been the steady compounder of the motor retail trio.
The numbers also keep the dividend machine well-oiled — CMH is one of the highest-yielding stocks on the JSE, and growing earnings feed straight into that payout. At R37.25 the stock trades on barely 7 times earnings, which smells like the market still doesn't believe the resilience is real. Full results land on 21 October; if the trading statement is anything to go by, expect another year of boring, profitable consistency. BULLISH.