Sasol and AngloGold kick off a busy week for JSE watchers

A busy week on the results front kicks off on Monday with Sasol, AngloGold, Workforce and Erin Energy all due to report.

Sasol expects to report on Monday its headline earnings per share (HEPS) for the year to end-June fell by up to 26%, it warned in a trading statement on July 20.

Basic earnings — which will include a R3.7bn partial impairment of Sasol’s Chlor Vinyls business, a R3bn expense for its Khanyisa empowerment scheme, a R2.8bn further impairment of its Canadian shale gas investment, and a R1.2bn partial impairment of its Mozambican gas joint-venture — will fall by up to 62%.

The coal-to-oil producer said a 28% increase in the average Brent crude price to $75 a barrel during its 2018 financial year was reduced in rand terms to a 20% increase to R818 a barrel.

“The spot rand per barrel oil price is now ranging between R950 and R1,050 per barrel,” Sasol said in July.

The benefit of higher oil prices was mitigated by lower sales volumes due to production glitches and weak demand.

“Our financial results were, however, negatively impacted by several unplanned Eskom electricity supply interruptions and two internal outages at our Secunda synfuels operations that resulted in lower production volumes,” the trading statement said.

AngloGold Ashanti said on August 2 it expected to report on Monday that it had turned to an interim profit from a loss in the matching period.

The gold miner said it expected to swing to interim HEPS of up to $0.26 from a headline loss of $0.22 in the first half of its 2017 financial year.

Basic earnings would be lower due to a $67m impairment of a uranium plant and $86m impairment of “certain South African assets”.

Shoprite, which reports on Tuesday, said in an operations update on July 18 that it grew its overall turnover by 3.3% to about R145.6bn during the 12 months to end-June.

The grocery chain did not give a forecast, as would have been required if results differed by more than 20% from the prior year.

Shoprite listed Angolan hyperinflation as one of the challenges during the reporting period.

“Excluding the Angolan operation, the Shoprite group managed to increase turnover by 5.5% for the period. The group’s internal inflation decreased from 7.3% in the previous year to only 0.5% for the current year,” the operating update said.

Statistics SA is scheduled to release June’s tourism and migration report at 9am, tourist accommodation at 10am, land transport at 11.30am, and food and beverage sales at 1pm.

Stats SA is also scheduled to release its annual public sector capital expenditure report for 2017 at 10am.

The Hang Seng index was up 0.9%, helped by Naspers’s 31%-owned Tencent rising 2.73% to HK$346.20, a good augur for the JSE.

The rand was trading at R14.65 to the dollar, R16.75 to the euro and R18.68 to the pound at 6.40am.

Update: August 20 2018

An earlier version of this article said Shoprite is expected to report results on Monday. Shoprite’s website says it is reporting on Tuesday.