The Sunday Times newspaper has published its list of the Top 100 Companies in South Africa, showing which JSE-listed tech companies have delivered the highest share value over a five year period.
The list is compiled by looking at all the companies listed on the JSE, and ranking them by the total money one would have earned if they had invested R10,000 in their shares in 2012.
Companies that do not meet the minimum threshold of R20 million in value traded in a year are excluded.
In previous years, ICT firm EOH emerged as the leading tech company in the country by this metric; however, for the first time another group – Adapt IT – has shot past EOH, delivering a compound annual growth rate of over 51%, taking a R10,000 investment in 2012 to R78,654 in 2017.
EOH has slipped to 17th on the list, delivering a CAGR of just under 27%, to transform R10,000 into R32,902.
Internet and media giant, Naspers, is the second-highest ranked South African tech company, with its N shares rocketing from R489 per share in 2012, to over R2,940 in 2017. The companies stake in Hong Kong internet group, Tencent, drove the growth, which delivered a CAGR of 43.6%, taking a R10,000 investment in 2012 to R69,879 in 2017.
Only three other tech and telecoms companies were ranked within the top 25 – with Naspers followed by Telkom (14th), EOH (17th) and Blue Label Telecoms (23rd).
Vodacom was ranked 51st, followed by Remgro (which has a stake in Dark Fibre Africa and Seacom) at 89th, and Net1 UEPS at 98th.
The table below is the full list of tech and telecom companies that made an appearance in the top 100 ranking.
With the exception of Remgro and Net1, all the tech companies featured would have more than doubled the initial R10,000 investment over the 5 years.
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