The man who’s a hair away from becoming South Africa’s next dollar billionaire

South African billionaire Zak Calisto is on the cusp of joining the country’s dollar-billionaire club, with his current effective shareholding of his company—Karooooo Ltd—now worth over $952 million.

Karooooo, formerly known as Cartrack, is a global provider of fleet management, stolen vehicle recovery and insurance telematics services. The company was founded in 2001 and listed on the JSE in 2014.

The group has experienced exponential growth over the years, growing from vehicle tracking to fleet management and various mobility software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms for connected vehicles.

Its global expansion has also been extensive. Starting in South Africa, it quickly moved into the rest of Africa, then Europe, Asia and the Americas.

The company is now headquartered in Singapore, operating in 24 countries, has over 2.2 million subscribers, servicing over 121,000 businesses.

The group is listed on the JSE and Nasdaq, and has a total market value of $1.27 billion (R23 billion) – easily making it one South Africa’s biggest global success stories.

Calisto controls 20,028,811 of the company’s shares, giving him a direct 64.81% stake in the company valued at about R15 billion.

However, he also controls an additional 3,140,000 shares through a group called One Spire (Pty) Ltd.

Karooooo noted that there is a standing agreement that if Calisto’s beneficial ownership falls to below 51% of the issued and outstanding shares of the company, then One Spire will cast all votes it controls as directed by Calisto.

This means that Calisto has an effective 74.97% beneficial ownership of the company, valued at R17.2 billion (~$952 million) – approaching the R18 billion mark needed to be considered a dollar billionaire.

The group has a very real prospect in getting Calisto there.

In its latest results for the half-year (1H25), the group saw its operating profit climb 22% and its earnings jump 31%.

Cartrack delivered record operating profit of R293 million, up 16% (Q2 2024: R252 million), and the gross
profit margin expanded to 74% (Q2 2024: 71%).

Calisto noted that the prospects for growth of the company are strong, as it operates in a largely unperpetrated market with strong demand from customers needing to digitalise their operations.

“We expect our continuous investment in our AI products, platform and customer experience to generate robust results in the future. Our mission is to be a leading Operations Cloud service provider,” he said.

Given the optimistic outlook—and risk factors aside—the group revised all its targets upwards, looking at hitting 2.3 million to 2.4 million customers for the full year, subscription revenue to be as high as R4.15 billion, and the operating profit margin to be up to 27%-31%.

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