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Mobility: Super Group starts revving
CEO Mountford made quick work of the needed asset clean-up as soon as he was appointed, writes Stafford Thomas
With annual revenue of R30bn, a net profit of more than R1.3bn and a market cap of R14.6bn, Super Group ranks as one of SA’s most successful, internationally diversified multifaceted transport groups. It is a far cry from the Super Group that Peter Mountford encountered when he stepped in as CEO in July 2009. Mountford, the former CEO of Imperial Group’s consumer logistics division, had assumed the daunting role of rescuing Super Group from what seemed like almost certain bankruptcy. "Super Group was in very bad shape," says Mountford. "It made a loss of R1.35bn in its year to June 2009." The company was being buried by debt — about R4bn of it in June 2009. What further reflected Super Group’s dire situation was that its net tangible asset value had sunk to a negative 58.6c/share, down from 260c just four years earlier, while its market cap had collapsed from R6.2bn in June 2007 to R349m in June 2009. Super Group, founded by the flamboyant Larry Lipschitz in 1986, was at the time of...
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