Billionaire Christo Wiese’s firm making moves

Invicta Holdings, chaired by businessman Christo Wiese, experienced a bumper 2025 financial year, as the company made some big moves to secure its position as a global distributor of industrial consumables.

Invicta’s primary business is managing and optimising the performance of its investments, which span key industries such as industrial consumable components, auto-agricultural parts, earthmoving equipment parts, and capital equipment.

Its divisions are involved in supplying and distributing replacement parts, services, and solutions for the industrial and auto-agri industries, as well as capital equipment, earth-moving equipment parts, and related services.

Invicta released its results for the year through March 2025 on Monday, 30 June 2025, which revealed a strong performance for the group.

Invicta’s 2025 financial year was marked by significant changes and restructurings for the business.

In this period, the company redeemed all 6.9 million outstanding preference shares and repurchased and cancelled 4.9 million ordinary shares.

It also acquired 100% of Nationwide Bearing Company in the United Kingdom and disposed of its 100% shareholding in KMP Holdings to its 48.8% joint venture, Kian Ann Engineering.

The company also disposed of the property owned by its Kian Ann joint venture in Singapore and relocated the distribution facility to China.

This resulted in a once-off profit attributable to Invicta of R222 million, which accounted for a substantial portion of the company’s 57% increase in basic earnings per share.

Overall, Invicta’s revenue grew by 6% to R8.11 billion, while operating profit before foreign exchange movements was 21% higher than the prior year at R765.43 million.

The company’s net asset value per share increased by 13% to 5,931 cents per share. Basic earnings per share grew to 773 cents per share, up 57% from the previous year’s 492 cents.

“Importantly, the sale of the Singapore property resulted in the group receiving a dividend from Kian Ann of SGD$20 million, being our share of the proceeds,” Invicta CEO Steven Joffe said. 

“And on 8 July 2024, we redeemed all of the outstanding preference shares for R703 million. Through this rationalisation of our capital structure, we have unlocked additional value for ordinary shareholders.” 

“As this redemption took place partway through the year, shareholders will see the full benefit coming through in the future.”

Looking forward, Joffe said the global economic outlook remains uncertain, particularly considering ongoing tariff wars and regional tensions.

“With so much uncertainty in the world, we will continue working hard to generate cash,” he said. 

“Having a relatively debt-free business gives us the necessary time to respond to difficult situations while providing the capacity for us to implement our acquisition strategy.”

He said the company is evaluating several opportunities on the acquisitions front, and should these global headwinds subside, Invicta can identify suitable targets that align with its strategy.

“As a result of our relative financial strength, we will endeavour to return to shareholders approximately a third of our earnings annually, be it either through share buybacks in the market or dividends,” he said.

For the 2025 financial year, Invicta declared a dividend of 115 cents per share, up 10% from the previous year’s dividend.