JSE likely to start the week with a ‘Trump slump’

Chinese markets are closed on Monday for the Dragon Boat Festival — luckily, considering how Asian markets were trading, suffering a severe “Trump slump” following weekend news of the US president pressing ahead with his threatened trade war.

Tokyo’s Topix index was down 1.15% and the Nikkei 225 index was down 0.92% despite Japan’s May export growth coming in at 8.1%, ahead of economists’ consensus of 7.5%.

The rand was trading at R13.44 to the dollar, R15.58 to the euro and R17.84 to the pound at 6.50am, relatively unchanged from Friday’s levels.

The only JSE-listed company scheduled to release results on Monday is cement maker PPC, whose share price fell 8.6% to R7.34 on Friday after it issued a trading statement.

The cement maker’s shareholders appear to have expected a better than 110%-120% rise in headline earnings per share (HEPS) for the year to end-March more than doubled.

Net profit attributable to PPC shareholders is expected to increase by 55%-65% from R93m in its 2017 financial year.

Bad news in the trading update was that the group intends to impair its Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) plant by R166m.

“In the results to March 2018, the DRC market continued to face uncertainty driven by political instability, lower cement demand and subdued selling prices,” PPC said.

“Furthermore, the competitive landscape remains challenging due to production capacity that is higher than market demand.

“The delayed elections have created uncertainty in the economy and most of the infrastructural projects have been put on hold or they are slow to come to market.

“As a result of these factors, management undertook an impairment assessment.”