CIARAN RYAN: Over the last few months South Africans have been digesting the impact of state-owned companies on the economy. It is estimated that problems at Transnet and Eskom alone have slashed GDP by 10% in 2022, and 2023 will perhaps be marginally better.
But we think that if there ever was one topic that occupies the minds of all people and dominates the conversations around the braai, it is that of load shedding. And so, whether you’re a business, a household, a politician or the average on the street, nobody can escape the effects of load shedding.
But the other big elephant in the room is Transnet, which has seriously gone off the rails – excuse the pun – in terms of its inability to function properly, which is costing the economy dearly, basically R1 billion a day to be more precise. CIARAN RYAN: Yes, and it’s become evident that Transnet is shipping volumes now that we last shipped at the end of the second World War – about 52 million tonnes a year.
Because of load shedding, there were inefficiencies of labour and in rescheduling their shifts to work around load shedding, which increased the labour cost. So overall it was just devastating. AJ SNYMAN: We at Peregrine Capital have had this view for the past year, almost, specifically around load shedding – and I’ll talk about Transnet in a moment.
On the other hand, the private sectors also have come to the realisation that nobody is going to come to their rescue and they have to take matters in their own hands, and therefore we’ve seen the private sector step up and invest. We heard that the unit at Medupi that has been out of service will return back to service a few months ahead of schedule, most likely towards the middle or end of the second quarter next year, which is very welcome news.
First of all, there needs to be a serious change in senior management. Fortunately we have started to see the wheels turn in this regard with Transnet’s CEO and CFO both resigning – for lack of a better word – and Transnet’s CEO of rail also resigning. There was a senior individual on the Transnet coal rail line who also resigned – I think last week. So there’s decisive action being taken in that regard.
CIARAN RYAN: Peregrine is a hedge fund, so you’re prepared to take positions, whether they’re long or short. Even bad news can be good for investing in the style of investing that you do. Where do you see opportunities in all of this? As you put it, you can make money even when the market goes down, or regardless of the market going up or down.
That’s just an interesting case study and scenario of where you can use the hedge-fund toolkit to take advantage of the relative difference in performance that emerged in this environment where we have load shedding and high input cost, and the impact that has had on retailers. CIARAN RYAN: All right. Let’s just talk now about how investors can benefit from this, given this very difficult economic environment that we’ve been talking about. How do they position themselves? What should they consider when investing?
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