COMPANY COMMENT
Sephaku profits from second-half recovery
Higher demand and a 5% price increase across the board for the 12 months help profits
Sephaku Holdings, a JSE-listed cement maker that holds a 36% stake in Dangote Cement and 100% of Métier Mixed Concrete, has reported a second-half profit of R74m after a first-half loss of R16m. This has given it an annual profit of R58m for the 12 months ended December 2017. The empowerment group, backed by Nigerian interests, has become a cat among the pigeons in South African cement industry circles after investing in a big clinker plant in the North West and a cement-milling plant in Mpumalanga, as well as facilities for fly ash, an ingredient of cement that uses Eskom waste. But a clear understanding of the level of competition that this has brought to SA’s cement markets has been undermined by the country’s competition authorities. They long ago banned the production of real-time cement industry data and won’t allow this to be disaggregated. This is because they fear market knowledge around cement output will allow competitors to collude. But aside from this censorious closing...
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