S.Africa's 1time airline to list on local bourse

(Reuters) - South Africa's second largest low-cost airline, 1time, is set to list on Johannesburg's smaller bourse AltX and capitalise on strong growth in air travel, it said on Monday.

1time said it would list on AltX, operated by the Johannesburg Securities Exchange, on Aug 14 and would offer 30 million ordinary shares at an issue price of 100 cents per ordinary share, raising 30 million rand.


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Should investors take profits?

With the preliminary report available only in the notoriously user-unfriendly Sens format on the company's own web site and hard copies of the presentation not available at yesterday's briefing, JSE Ltd is hardly a model of the kind of investor relations it encourages from listed companies.

Nor did CEO Russell Loubser win many friends when he snapped at a questioner, who wanted to know what the typical operating margin of international bourses is, that the JSE is aiming for, that she was (a) asking him to do her job for her and (b) trying to incite him to make an improper earnings forecast.

He was more responsive to a questioner on an international conference call, who suggested this margin could be around 50%, against the JSE's 20% last year, and wanted to know whether this would be achieved by cost cutting or higher turnover.

The JSE's costs are largely fixed, Loubser said, so it's trading volume that'll be the main driver.
He added that while liquidity (defined as share trades as a percentage of total market cap), 5%-7% before the introduction of electronic trading, is now up in the 40%s, on the international markets with which the JSE likes to compare itself, it can be 100%, 200% or even more.

Read more at FIN24.co.za