The Daily Update: 11 May

The latest updates from the JSE and NYSE over the past 24 hours.

South Africa

Sappi Limited- Second quarter results for the period ended March 2023

• The company reported a 22% decrease in sales and a 50% decrease in EBITDA, excluding special items, compared to the same quarter last year.
• Sappi's profitability was negatively impacted by reduced sales volumes, cost inflation, and operational inefficiencies.
• The company's graphic paper markets were weaker, and sales volumes for graphic papers and packaging and specialty papers were 42% and 29% below the prior year, respectively.
• Dissolving pulp market conditions improved, but sales volumes for the pulp segment were 7% below the prior year.
• Earnings per share excluding special items for the quarter was 11 US cents, a decrease from the 35 US cents in the prior year.

MTN Group Limited- Quarterly update for the period ended 31 March 2023

• Group service revenue grew by 15.6%, supported by voice revenue growth of 6.6%, data revenue up by 26.9%, and acceleration in fintech revenue of 11.5%.
• Total subscribers increased by 5.2% to 290.6 million, active data subscribers up by 11.9% to 140.4 million, and active Mobile Money (MoMo) users up by 5.2% to 61.7 million.
• Data traffic increased by 19.3% to 3,221.26 PB, and fintech transaction volumes increased by 38.8% to 4.1 billion.
• Group EBITDA margin was 43.7%, and capex (ex-leases) was R6.375 billion.
• MTN SA's network availability remained under pressure due to ongoing power outages across the country.
• The company invested R6.4 billion in networks and platforms to support the structurally higher demand for data and fintech.
• The teams upgraded additional sites with batteries and started piloting solar solutions on a limited number of sites.
• MTN SA's Q1 performance was resilient despite a challenging trading environment.
• MTN SA achieved relatively resilient service revenue growth of 1.3%, with voice being the key drag on overall performance.
• Data continued to be a key growth driver for the business, contributing 47.9% to MTN SAs total service revenue in Q1.
• The number of subscribers increased by 4.1% YoY to 35.9 million.
• MTN SA reduced the overall cost to communicate for its customers, helping to drive improvements in access, affordability, and engagement.
• The enterprise business unit delivered robust double-digit service revenue growth of 11.4% underpinned by growth in data and new contracts acquired in ICT.
• The fintech business continued to progress, with approximately 1.1 million monthly active MoMo users as at 31 March 2023, representing growth of 31.8% YoY.
• The impacts of loadshedding were a key contributor to MTN SAs softer EBITDA in Q1 (6.5% lower).
• MTN SA commenced the rollout of its comprehensive network resilience plan in H2 2022, and the work to upgrade key sites continued in Q1 2023.

RFG Holdings Limited- Trading statement

• EPS is expected to be between 82.1 cents and 85.1 cents, representing an increase of between 35% and 40%.

The U.S.

Palantir

• Cathie Wood and Ark Invest bought 4.4 million shares of Palantir yesterday.

Disney Earnings

• EPS of $0.93 missing expectations of $0.94.
• Revenue of $21.82B beating expectations of $21.80B.
• Disney+ paid subscribers: 157.8M below expectations of 163.1M.