Five shares to watch this week

Cape Town - Brett Birkenstock of Overberg Asset Management highlights 5 shares with interesting actions for the week ahead:

Naspers [JSE:NPN]: The share price has weakened around 10% since hitting R2 000 per share, but it has a large stake in Chinese internet giant Tencent, which should be a major beneficiary of the current boom in China’s equity market. The holding in Tencent makes up almost the entire market capitalisation of Naspers.

Sasol [JSE:SOL]: Pulling back from short-term overbought levels in spite of a better than expected production update. The share price may fall back further in the likely event that the oil price reverses some of its strong gains since the start of the year.

Aspen [JSE:APN]: The share price is bouncing back after falling around 20% from its highs. There is anxiety that GlaxoSmithKline may sell its remaining stake in Aspen, although this eventuality seems to have already been discounted in the share price.

SABMiller [SJE:SAB]: The share benefited on Thursday from a positive update by its US subsidiary MillerCoors. However, added excitement is coming from speculation of a potential buy by a consortium including Anheuser-Busch Inbev, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway and Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital.

MTN [JSE:MTN]: The group’s first quarter subscriber numbers were in line with expectations and investors were pleased with the data revenue growth which now makes up over 20% of total revenue. However, Nigeria remains by far the largest contributor to group revenue and earnings. Nigeria has significant exposure to the oil price as evidenced in the extreme weakness of the Nigerian naira, which is causing some weakness in the MTN share price.

* Brett Birkenstock is a director at Overberg Asset Management (OAM), an Authorised Financial Services Provider (No. 783) which specialises in the private management of local and global discretionary portfolios as well as pension products.

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