| Pepkor's shares rose over 5% yesterday after it prepared shareholders for a strong rise in first-half earnings. Apart from growing market share as more customers shopped at stores that including Pep and Ackermans, it also benefitted from South Africans kitting out their homes with electronics as they set up home offices and studies. Trading updates from Life Healthcare and Astral Foods were less well received. While Life Healthcare's international business has done very well, its Southern African hospitals were impacted by the second wave of Covid-19, with the result that first-half earnings are likely to be down on last year. Astral has also been negatively affected by the impact of the pandemic on the economy and consumer spending, which meant it couldn't recover a big increase in feed costs through selling prices. Meanwhile, Altron will report a big rise in full-year earnings but a decline in headline earnings following last year's demerger of its Bytes UK business on the London Stock Exchange. Still, shareholders have done pretty well out of it. Apart from a big rise in Bytes' share price since listing, Altron also announced a special dividend last week. Also in your newsletter today, South32 has reported a strong third-quarter performance and AfroCentric has grown its pharmaceuticals portfolio due to an acquisition by subsidiary Activo Health. I hope you have a good day. Stephen Gunnion Managing Editor, InceConnect
The latest from Ingham Analytics Following on from "Shapely gold" the note entitled "Wild ride" looks at Barrick Gold shares, listed both in Toronto and New York, as both a mechanism to gain exposure to gold price movements but also to contrast the relative advantages and drawbacks of share ownership versus gold futures contracts in comparison. Also check out their view on US corporate earnings in "There's a coach comin' in, hear those wheel spin". | 