{"id":40539,"date":"2013-06-26T07:02:11","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T05:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=40539"},"modified":"2013-06-26T08:58:17","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T06:58:17","slug":"tech-stocks-6-months-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/it-services\/40539\/tech-stocks-6-months-in\/","title":{"rendered":"SA tech stocks: 6 months in"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past six months we’ve seen the rand weaken to 4 year lows against the dollar, political scandals erupt around the department of communications, all while telecoms and technology continue to spread across the country.<\/p>\n

How have South Africa’s tech companies weathered these turbulent times?<\/p>\n

Below, BusinessTech takes a look at the best and worst performing tech shares trading above double-digits (above R10) on the JSE over the past six months.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Company<\/strong><\/td>\nShare price at 3 January 2013<\/strong><\/td>\nShare Price at 25 June 2013
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		%<\/strong> Change
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
EOH<\/td>\n37.00<\/td>\n53.48<\/td>\n44.54<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Naspers<\/td>\n556.23<\/td>\n681.00<\/td>\n22.43<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Pinnacle<\/td>\n18.96<\/td>\n22.65<\/td>\n19.46<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Altech<\/td>\n38.57<\/td>\n45.25<\/td>\n17.32<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Datatec<\/td>\n50.27<\/td>\n55.17<\/td>\n9.75<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Telkom<\/td>\n17.14<\/td>\n16.55<\/td>\n-3.44<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
MTN<\/td>\n176.75<\/td>\n168.54<\/td>\n-4.64<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Altron<\/td>\n21.01<\/td>\n19.50<\/td>\n-7.19<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Reunert<\/td>\n76.00<\/td>\n65.00<\/td>\n-14.47<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Vodacom<\/td>\n129.20<\/td>\n103.14<\/td>\n-20.17<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

Share prices taken at close of the JSE on Tuesday 25 June 2013<\/small><\/p>\n

All featured telecoms shares (Vodacom<\/a>, MTN<\/a>, Telkom<\/a>) on the JSE experienced a drop in share price – though Telkom’s shares have recovered from dangerous lows (R11.93) seen earlier in the year, as new CEO Sipho Maseko<\/a> takes the reins.<\/p>\n

Altech<\/a>, after facing a turbulent period where it was struggling to offload its East and West Africa operations, saw its shares improve when parent, Altron<\/a>, put in a bid to buy 100% of the company.<\/p>\n

Altron, which already owns a 61% stake in Altech, made an offer to pay R47.50 in cash for every Altech Share. Altech shares are currently priced at [] on the JSE, and the company is expected to delist at the end of July 2013.<\/p>\n

The top – EOH<\/h3>\n

IT services company EOH<\/a> has continued its winning streak on the JSE, having boosted its share value over 44% since the start of the year.<\/p>\n

EOH is a provider of enterprise applications, technology, outsourcing, cloud and
\nmanaged service solutions.<\/p>\n

In March, EOH reported a lift in revenue for the six months ended January 2013, to\u00a0R2.39 billion, from\u00a0R1.64 billion before, while profits were also up for the period to R163.53 million, up 53.5% from R106.52 million in 2011.<\/p>\n

In its reporting, EOH showed growth across the board, further attributing its strong performance to its acquisition strategy – which included Siemens IT Solutions and Services South Africa – as it expanded further into the public sector.<\/p>\n

EOH’s shares were trading at R53.48 at the close of play on the JSE on Tuesday (25 June 2013), giving it a market cap of R5.674 billion and a P\/E ratio of 17.97.<\/p>\n

The bottom – Vodacom<\/h3>\n

South Africa’s largest mobile operator, Vodacom Group, has seen its share value drop by 20.17% over the past 6 months.<\/p>\n

The most recent drop in share price is as a result of profit-taking after the company paid out a R4.20 dividend following its annual results.<\/p>\n

In May the group reported a marginal increase in service revenue for the year ended March 2013 to R59.33 billion, from R58.245 billion in the prior period. In South Africa, service revenue declined by 0.4% to R48.23 million.<\/p>\n

Analysts and investors have voiced concern over Vodacom\u2019s ability to continue to grow as strongly as it has in the past in SA, amid increased competition and increasing saturation.<\/p>\n

Analysts have also been critical over Vodacom\u2019s limited footprint, especially when compared to rival MTN.<\/p>\n

Aside from its headquarters in South Africa, Vodacom has additional networks in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Lesotho – but it is dwarfed by rival\u00a0MTN Group, which has operations in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East.<\/p>\n

However, Vodacom CEO, Shameel Joosub<\/a> said that, while the company isn’t desperate for acquisitions, the group was eyeing a few prospects in Africa with a population exceeding 10 million, with no major operators present, a high GDP, and a low mobile penetration rate.<\/p>\n

By the close of play on the JSE, Vodacom shares were trading at R103.14, giving the operator a market cap of R152.08 billion and a P\/E ratio of 11.71.<\/p>\n

More SA tech companies<\/h3>\n

Vodacom hunts 30,000 SME clients<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

EOH interim earnings boosted by aquistions<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Pinnacle in R237m Datacentrix acquisition<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nashua weighs on Reunert interims<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BusinessTech takes a look at the best and worst performing tech shares trading above double-digits on the JSE over the past six months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":28252,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[311,309,6140,1957,26,28,107,4060,555,65,27],"class_list":["post-40539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-services","tag-altech","tag-altron","tag-datatech","tag-eoh","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-naspers","tag-pinnacle","tag-reunert","tag-telkom","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40539","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\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40539"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40672,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40539\/revisions\/40672"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}