Macro Perspective 49 | Navigating South Africa's economic landscape from boardrooms to balance sheetsIn this week’s podcast, Peter Brooke provides a unique bottom-up perspective on the challenges facing the South African economy. Drawing from his experience, Peter illustrates the real-world impact of issues like load-shedding, highlighting the ripple effect on costs, supply chain disruptions, and even quality control.DATE: 6 December 2023 | LISTEN TIME: 3 MIN

      Hello, good day. I'm Peter Brooke, portfolio manager at the old mutual investment group. I've recently been speaking about the top-down constraints on the South African economy. But for macro perspective, 49 of 2023, I'm going to give a much more bottom-up perspective. I'm a nonexecutive director of a very small manufacturing business and we recently had our board meeting. This allows me to translate load shedding into to an extra half a million rand of diesel costs borne by a small company. It also means we have to invest in a spare generator and spend an extra 100,000 on alternators that are burnt out. Some of our suppliers have also been battling, so we've had quality problems with some packaging and because we maintain very high standards, this has meant higher waste as we've had to throw away some product. When the ports don't work, this means a critical part of our product is stuck on a ship off the coast and you can watch it tracking up and down for a couple of weeks. But while that happens, it means we can't manufacture, we can't supply our customer and those sales are permanently lost. Thankfully, we have a fantastic customer, and we haven't lost the account. But not all businesses have been so lucky. 

      Interestingly, the one part of the economy not losing out has been labour. All the problems have meant overtime so we can catch up, which is good for Tokam wages but bad for profits. The combination of all of this is a very tough year, which in turn means less tax for governments and no dividends for shareholders. If you take that a step further, that means less revenue for the bike shops. The good news is we have an excellent management team and a strong balance sheet, which means we'll get through this. And if I extrapolate this experience with South African market, we get a situation of low profits and high stay in business capex. And if we take that forward into next year, this creates a low base. Companies who've invested in renewables will have better security of supply going forward and lower costs. This is also true of all those households who've installed rooftop solar. So if you think about it, a one-off payment means that money is available next year and you get the benefit of lower costs coming through. What we've also seen in a lot of the results that are coming through, is that generally South African companies have been repairing balance sheets and paying down debt, driven by the high interest rates that we're battling under. But if we look forward, we're going to get rate cuts, which means that interest bills will peak and then fall. Better electricity supply also means less trading days lost, which will boost sales and wastage will decrease. All of this creates an environment where through self-help, profits can improve even without a recovery in the economy. As they say in farming, next year will be better. I hope you enjoyed this perspective. There's one more for the year, although, like most of you, I'm excited to be in December and heading down the home straight.