Lewis
Lewis (LEW) is a retailer of furniture and electrical appliances operating through 779 stores under the Lewis (494 stores), Beares (119 stores), Best Home (133 stores), and most recently, United Furniture Outlets (33 stores) brands. Of these stores, 116 are in neighbouring countries. The company does 65,7% of its business on credit and offers customers credit insurance and other financial products. In the middle of 2015,
Wall Street in Context
On our website (www.pdsnet.co.za) there is a section which deals with how we see the stock markets of the world in the context of their history. We call it “Our Background Approach”. It sets out the context of the current situation on Wall Street as we see it. To this background approach we have added an excellent
Telkom
Telkom was originally a state-owned enterprise similar to SAA or Eskom. The company went through some difficult times, retrenching 4500 employees in an effort to right-size and remain profitable. Today Telkom is owned about 40% by the government and 12,5% by the Public Investment Corporation – which means that it is still government controlled – but it has a very substantial private sector ownership and is essentially independent. The
Showdown at Sibanye
It is no secret that, for this country’s economy to really begin to make progress, the populist power of the union movement is going to have to be curtailed at some point. The unions embody the so-called “structural problems” in our economy which economists constantly and euphemistically refer to for three reasons:
- The high unemployment level is a direct result of employers being reluctant to take on new employees
The Year Ahead
2019 is going to be an interesting year both locally and internationally. In our view, the American economy is almost certain to continue growing rapidly – and that growth must, sooner or later, be reflected in share prices. In our last article we suggested that the collapse in the S&P500 index over December was unprecedented and suggested that