Viljoen’s deep-value gems
How Piet Viljoen is sticking to his guns
Investors should pay close attention: RECM & Calibre’s portfolio may be heavily undervalued
RECM & Calibre (RACP), the investment company spearheaded by fund management personalities Piet Viljoen and Jan van Niekerk, is building a compelling proposition of unlisted assets. Clearly, some people get it — which is why its preference shares listed on the JSE have soared 57% over the past three years.
Still, formulating an accurate valuation remains tricky. Most of the JSE’s large investment counters base their underlying value on listed investments. Think of Remgro (which includes Mediclinic, RCL Foods, FirstRand, RMI, Distell and Grindrod); Brimstone (Oceana, Life Health and Sea Harvest), PSG Group (Capitec, Curro, Zeder and PSG Konsult) and Hosken Consolidated Investments (Tsogo Sun, Niveus and Deneb Investments).
Investors can easily gauge the value in these counters, as they can track the fortunes of the underlying listed companies or, in the case of PSG, it makes an extra effort to communicate by sending out daily updates on its sum-of-the-parts value. On the other hand, there are a few investment companies which focus instead on unlisted companies. Brait (with unlisted holdings in Virgin Active, Premier Foods, Iceland and New Look) is the best known — but there are others, like Sabvest (which has a large stake in unlisted specialised textile manufacturer SA Bias Industries as its anchor holding) as well as RACP.RACP is probably the most interesting of those with an unlisted bent. Viljoen’s dogged "deep-value" investment philosophy was scoffed at three years ago, but it’s back in vogue.
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