Business

JSE hikes dividend amid double-digit profit growth

Luke Fraser

 ·18 Mar 2024

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has seen a growth in its earnings and profits, allowing it to increase its dividends for shareholders.

In its financial results for the financial year ended 31 December 2023, the group saw its headline earnings increase by 12.2% to 1029.8 cents per share (2022: 917.7 cents), while its net profit after tax grew by 11% to R831 million (2022: R749 million).

Operating income grew by 6.9% to R2.9 billion, supported by a 15.6% increase in revenue from Information Services and a 20.2% increase in revenue from JSE Investor Services.

In line with its strategy, the group also increased its proportion of revenue derived from non-trading activity, totalling R954 million.

“Higher interest rates supported growth in net finance income, which increased 66.4% YoY to R169 million (2022: R101 million),” the group said.

Furthermore, the cash generated from operations grew by 13.6% to R1.1 billion, which enabled the board to declare an ordinary dividend of 784 cents per share for 2023 (2022: 769 cents) and a pay-out ratio of 82.4%.

“We continue to invest in defending our core trading activity while building new services across asset classes and in private capital raising, Information Services and JSE Investor Services, which enabled non-trading income to increase to 36.8% (2022: 34.6%) of operating income in line with our long-term strategy,” said JSE CEO Leila Fourie.

“We delivered an excellent operating performance with system uptime of 99.89%.”

“We launched new partnerships to enable us to rapidly innovate in data services, private markets, carbon trading and a modernisation of our broker-dealer accounting (BDA) system, which will ensure the JSE maintains its leading position among emerging market exchange operators.”

The group’s key financials can be found below:

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