COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Newmont snaps up Australian rival

Australian mining company Newcrest said it had agreed to a takeover by US rival Newmont, creating a world-leading gold producer in a deal worth Aus$28.8 billion (R362 billion).

By swallowing up Newcrest, the US mining giant will cement its position as the world's biggest gold producer, with operations extending across North and South America, Africa, Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Melbourne-based Newcrest's shareholders will receive 0.4 of the US firm's shares for each Newcrest share, giving them 31 percent of the combined group, the Australian firm said.

The takeover, expected to be completed by the end of 2023, has an implied value of Aus$28.8 billion, it said.

"The combined group will set a new benchmark in gold production while benefitting from a material and growing exposure to copper and a market-leading position in safety and sustainability," Newcrest chairman Peter Tomsett said in a statement.

Newcrest had "unanimously" recommended the takeover offer to shareholders, he said, three months after its board rejected an earlier US$17 billion approach as too cheap.-Fin24

MTN to block texts from Nigerian banks

Mobile-phone operators in Nigeria including MTN and Airtel Africa will stop providing dedicated text message services to banks until the lenders pay 120 billion naira (R4.9 billion) in arrears.

The operators will disconnect the so-called Unstructured Supplementary Service Data based on their contracts with the lenders, Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria said in a telephone interview on Monday. Some banks will be disconnected as early as today, he said.

The service is crucial for the poor in Africa’s most-populous nation, where as many as 40% don’t have bank accounts. USSD is used for financial transactions such as transfers, bill payments and airtime recharges.

For two years, Nigeria’s mobile network operators and banks haven’t been able to agree on the appropriate USSD pricing model, the mode of collection and liability for unremitted fees from the lenders.

The telecom operators say arrears have risen from 42 billion naira in 2021. The industry regulator and the Central Bank of Nigeria intervened in the dispute that year leading to an agreement for a flat fee of 6.98 naira per transaction.

“We have engaged them severally but they refuse to do anything,” Adebayo said. “If we withdraw the service and they feel the impact, maybe they will come to find a way to resolve it.”-Fin24

Altron pushes ahead with growth strategy

ICT group Altron, the owner of vehicle tracker Netstar, has reported double-digit revenue growth for its 2023 year, saying it will press ahead with spending hundreds of millions of rands on its growth strategy, confident in demand for its services.

Group revenue rose 14% to R10.9 billion in the year to end February, though core profit fell 4% to about R1 billion, with the company hit by a need to provide for possible nonpayment on a previous controversial contract with the City of Tshwane.

Speaking at an investor presentation on Monday, CEO Werner Kapp said the company would pushing "customer obsession at every level of the organisation", with SA companies still scrambling to ditigalise in a world with billions of smart phones.

Valued at more than R3 billion on the JSE, Altron sells hardware and electronic products, but has been looking to shift to professional services, for example, by helping organisations plan for and implement their technology needs.

Kapp said on Monday that Altron had spent 88% of its R472 million on growth initiatives in its 2023 year, and was planning a similar ratio in 2024. The company was focusing on its top 40 customers for cross selling opportunities, had improved sales incentives for staff, and had put in place metrics to continuously measure customer satisfaction, part of the new growth focus.-Fin24