MARC HASENFUSS: Value lies in the eye of the beholder
Entities with long profit histories and superb cash flow credentials are so much more appealing than blue-sky bluster
The saga of "African unicorn" Sagarmatha Technologies has been an instructive reminder that value lies firmly in the eye of the beholder. Certainly I don’t believe there’s anything to support Sagarmatha’s inferred valuation of R47bn — not even the vaunted "multisided platform" that financial hacks are supposedly unable to comprehend. As has been pointed out, the inferred market capitalisation of Sagarmatha’s assemblage of fledgling operations would have been equivalent to profitable JSE giants such as Clicks Group and Imperial Holdings. I don’t think so. In any event, the heady valuation was placed on a combination of media and e-commerce operations that are loss making and lack critical mass. This made me scan the JSE for similar companies tagged with humbler valuations, but with the potential to broaden operations across a variety of platforms. Outside of Naspers, the media sector has a number of seemingly underappreciated counters. These include eMedia Holdings, controlled by Hos...
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