{"id":246095,"date":"2018-05-22T08:17:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-22T06:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=246095"},"modified":"2018-05-22T08:17:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T06:17:00","slug":"capitec-shrugs-off-latest-viceroy-attack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/246095\/capitec-shrugs-off-latest-viceroy-attack\/","title":{"rendered":"Capitec shrugs off latest Viceroy attack"},"content":{"rendered":"

Banking group Capitec saw a brief dip in its share price following the release of the latest jab from short-seller, Viceroy, which is continuing its campaign to get investors to buy into its view that the bank is hiding a declining business.<\/p>\n

In its latest release, Viceroy has addressed an open letter to Capitec’s audit committee<\/a><\/strong>, saying that the bank is misleading its investors, and trying to hide what it calls “deteriorating business conditions” in its latest year-end results.<\/p>\n

“(Capitec’s) end-of-financial-year announcements in 2018 are reflective deteriorating business conditions and corroborate the continuity of several intentionally misleading accounting practices we have reported in the past,” Viceroy said.<\/p>\n

“Our continued review of Capitec\u2019s practices and financial results leads us to believe management\u2019s delivery of analysis to stakeholders is extremely misleading, and not at all reflective of declining business fundamentals.”<\/p>\n

Following the release of the report, Capitec saw a 2.1% drop in its share price, but quickly recovered an hour later, indicating the letter had no real impact.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Viceroy – which makes money by shorting a company\u2019s stock and then releasing damning reports on those groups \u2013 has targeted Capitec since the start of the year, with its first report published in late January claiming that Capitec was a loan shark.<\/p>\n

The group accused Capitec of fluffing its financial reports to make its loan books look healthier than they are in reality, while effectively \u2018hiding\u2019 the risks of default from its client base. It also later accused the bank of manipulating debit orders so that Capitec loans were paid off first, exacerbating strained financial positions of customers.<\/p>\n

Viceroy describes Capitec as “fundamentally uninvestable”, and has called for it to be placed under curatorship.<\/p>\n

The initial reports had a much bigger impact on the bank, sending its share price crashing by 25% – however, Capitec received a vote of confidence from economists, National Treasury, and the Reserve Bank.<\/p>\n

Capitec’s share price, however, has still not recovered to pre-Viceroy levels.<\/p>\n

The bank has consistently denied the information in, and manner of Viceroy’s reporting, calling it flawed, inaccurate and ignorant to how the bank conducts its business. It previously invited Viceroy to meet with it, so it could explain its processes.<\/p>\n

Viceroy declined to meet, instead sending questions to Capitec – the answers to which, it described as insufficient.<\/p>\n

Capitec previously warned shareholders that Viceroy (and others) would likely push the same agenda over the long-term, and warned them to exercise caution when trading in the group’s shares.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0Viceroy launches fresh attack on Capitec<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Banking group Capitec saw a brief dip in its share price following the release of the latest jab from short-seller, Viceroy, which is continuing its campaign to get investors to buy into its view that the bank is hiding a declining business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":122607,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-246095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246117,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246095\/revisions\/246117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}