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May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 11:49
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May 27 2012 11:05
As far as repayments on home loans are concerned, South Africans are in a much more favourable position than their foreign peers.
Cape Town - Sasol plans to generate about 50% of the power it requires itself, by 2012.
It is currently generating about a third of its own electricity, but it wants to build on this to be less exposed to Eskom's sharp electricity price increases.
Chief executive Pat Davies says it will cost about R2.5bn to increase Sasol's own generating capacity by about 280MW to about 600MW.
The petrochemicals giant will use natural gas to produce the additional electricity.
It expects lower earnings in the current financial year owing to the uncertain market conditions.
Sasol's earnings in the year to end-June were more than 30% down as a result of low demand for its chemical products and a hefty fine, but this was partly compensated for by a weaker rand, as well as the hedging profit of R5bn.
Chief financial officer Christine Ramon says it is still uncertain whether Sasol will again hedge its petroleum product prices.
Its chemical division was impacted the most by the recessionary conditions. Operating profit shrank by 74% to R1.6bn in the 12 months to end-June. This includes the R3.9bn fine that Sasol had to pay the European Commission in January.
Without this fine and other one-off items, such as a R1.2bn provision relating to its 10% stake in the Escravos gas-to-fuel project in Nigeria, and a R3.2bn expense for the Sasol Inzalo empowerment scheme, the company's operating profit would have been much the same as last year's, Ramon declared.
Davies says the volumes of synthetic fuel produced were below expectation. Certain components at the Secunda plants has started to break down sooner than anticipated.
The plant has 80 steel casings in the division where coal is converted into gas. A single casing weighs four tons and it takes 40 days to replace. By October Davies expects 58 of the 80 casings to have been replaced. Management and training at the plant have been strengthened.
Sasol is considering a new chemical plant that will use unique technology to convert ethylene into octane for application in the plastics industry.
Davies says the plant could possibly be established at Lake Charles in the US, where Sasol has an existing plant.
Sasol Mining's empowerment strategy suffered a setback after mining group Exxaro withdrew from a joint undertaking with Sasol Mining, but Davies is fully confident that the division can still comply with the mining charter by 2014.
Of the 12 analysts listing Sasol recommendations on Bloomberg, eight currently have a "buy" recommendation, two a "hold" and two say "sell".
On Monday afternoon the share price fell 2.6% or R8 to R300.
- Sake24.com
For more business news in Afrikaans, go to Sake24.com.