Cape Town Stock Exchange off to a slow start

Daily Investor • 22 September 2022

The Cape Town Stock Exchange (CTSE) announced the closing of its R85 million funding round last month, promising to rapidly grow its listings and trading.

CTSE launched a year ago following a rebranding and overhaul of 4 Africa Exchange to make it a fully-fledged stock exchange.

The exchange aims to attract companies by reducing the cost, risk, time, and complexity for them to list.

It targets small and medium firms with a market cap between R25 million and R2 billion.

To accelerate its growth, it embarked on the R85 million funding round led by Imvelo Ventures, a venture capital company founded by Capitec Bank and Empowerment Capital Investment Partners.

Additional participants in the round include Lebashe Investment Group, Pallidus Alternative Investments, Shaolin Investments, and Gary Stroebel.

CTSE CEO Eugene Booysen said they were planning to quadruple growth by February 2023 and that he anticipates R20 billion in listings by the end of the financial year.

He told Business Day the exchange’s outlook was positive, and he expects “growth and investment of a combined R40 billion to come into the bourse by year-end”.

These are ambitious targets considering CTSE’s current listings and trading volumes.

CTSE only has ten shares listed on the exchange with a combined market cap of around R7 billion.

NWK with a market cap of R560 million.

Heartwood Properties with a market cap of R129 million.

Assupol with a market cap of R3.49 billion.

iHealthcare with a market cap of R67 million.

TWK Agri with a market cap of R1.96 billion.

GAIA Renewables with a market cap of R3 million.

GAIA Fibonacci with a market cap of R1,000.

TipOne with a market cap of R24 million.

BKB with a market cap of R796 million.

Altvest with a market cap of R62 million.

Trading is very thin, and there is virtually no liquidity in the equities listed on the Cape Town Stock Exchange.

Daily Investor asked the CTSE for more information about its trading volumes and listings, but the company did not respond.

It also did not say what its strategy is to increase listing and encourage trading on the exchange.

The charts below show the trading activity in different industries on the Cape Town Stock Exchange over the last month, where a flat line indicates no trades.