Research archive for DSY

Discovery have released a trading statement yesterday, the market was pleased I think with the overall performance. How can I say that when the trading statement came out at five minutes past the "closing bell"? It is not a trading statement that is ordinary, the release points out that as a result of acquiring all of Prudential's shares in the JV, the undiluted and basic earnings per share are expected to be 85 percent higher than the 301.4 (undiluted EPS) and 307.7 cents (basic EPS). That 85 percent is around 260 cents, just for the half year that is. Wow, that sounds huge! Wait, there is more: "The accounting effects of the release of the put option liability will not have any impact on normalised earnings or normalised headline earnings per share." More complicated actuary speak, I must ask friends of mine who are in that field. Yes, I have friends. So, given all this difficulty, a more detailed trading statement for this half will be released mid February next year. We shall see where the market settles this morning.

Discovery hit the market with a huge announcement, firstly teeing us up around 7:30 in the morning with news of a conference call at 11:30, to share important developments surrounding its international business strategy. The announcement came at 11 on the dot, the release via the Stock exchange News Service that Discovery had agreed to purchase the final 25 percent of the holding company of PruHealth and PruProject from Prudential for the princely sum of 155 million Pound Sterling. This was a year ahead of an option to acquire the final amount from Prudential.

Yesterday Discovery released a solid set of results for the full year ending June 30th. Starting off with the key figures, Normalised headline earnings are up 23%, new business is up 15% and embedded value is up 21%. The reason for using the new business number instead of revenue is because the revenue number is largely irrelevant to insurance based businesses.

Yesterday we received interim results from Discovery for the 6 months ending December 2013. Here are the financial highlights.

Trading statements time, of course these are always in the mix. But December year ends will dominate, in this case it is the half year. This morning we have seen a trading update from Discovery. Normalised headline earnings per share are expected to be be between 15 to 25 percent better than the corresponding period (and in the period prior it had grown 20 percent), but earnings per share and headline earnings per share are set to register between 30 to 40 percent growth when measured against the corresponding period. So on a "normalised" basis, expect around 290 cents per share for the half, whilst HEPS is expected to be around 300 cents per share. Results are expected next Thursday and we will cover them with a whole lot more detail. The stock is enjoying a fabulous day, up nearly four percent after a recent rout, which was across all emerging markets. Good. Happy with this and confirmation that the business continues to grow.

Discovery news yesterday, someone, somewhere is buying shares from a strategic shareholder that is selling down their stake. At a discount to the prevailing market price. Standard Bank of course wouldn't say who, other than it was not Adrian Gore. It turns out that it was the refinancing of a BEE transaction, the strategic investor being the WDB. The WDB of course is the allocation of funds to women in rural areas of South Africa. As much as we like to think that we are all equal, it is true that rural woman in South Africa are amongst the most vulnerable in our society.

Discovery released results for their full year to end June 2013 yesterday, the stock rallied 3.2 percent to close at 8700 off the day highs of 8830, but pleasing after the drubbing that the stock took post the trading statement. You will remember that we covered the poorly worded trading update last week: Discovery trading update spooks market. A little birdie told me that CEO Adrian Gore was out of the country on business, and he was less than pleased. Yesterday however he put his best foot forward, the guy really looks good for someone who turns fifty next year, even though there is a little greying at the edges, that is a sign of age, which means more experience. Right? Right!

Discovery. Price discovery in the case of Discovery Limited. A strange one, full of moving parts and perhaps prepared by smarter people than ourselves. The first part of yesterday's trading statement was all fine: "Shareholders are advised that normalised headline earnings per share are expected to be between 15% and 25% higher than that of the corresponding period." OK, that part looks pretty encouraging, seeing as this is for the full year to end June 2013. The results themselves are expected on the 3rd of September.

Discovery Limited, what happened there, the stock was up 6.63 percent to close out at an all time high of 92 ZAR a share? It is now the 25th biggest company by market capitalisation listed on our exchange. Bigger than AngloGold Ashanti. Yes, really! Interesting coincidence, Life Healthcare is nearly bigger than Gold Fields. New economy globally is trending towards healthcare, as people want to maintain a healthy lifestyle and of course in Discovery's Vitality program incentivising them to do so. For instance in my personal case, I am both a member of their medical scheme as well as having life insurance with Discovery. If you quite simply do a whole lot of tests (easy ones), you can get paybacks for the "health integrator" systems. Significantly more if you lead a healthier lifestyle, as you can see this is great for the company that you are sharing your personal medical details with them. If they can tell that you are healthy, they don't mind incentivising you and giving you rebates on all sorts of things.

Yesterday Discovery released interim results for the six months ended 31 December. Usually we do not go to results presentations because they can be a waste of time. The whole presentation will be downloaded on the internet and most of the bigger companies are televised. Just to get a feel for management and give Adrian Gore some of my precious time I decided to go through to the presentation.

Discovery had a trading update yesterday, let us do the Jackie Selebi, I mean a copy and paste job. I should stop that. After being sentenced to 15 years in jail, he was released on medical parole. I have no idea of his medical condition even if the whole process seems like a farce. So, here goes the meaty part of the Discovery trading update: "Shareholders are advised that headline earnings per share will be between 15% and 25% higher than that of the corresponding reporting period of the previous year ("corresponding period"), while earnings per share will be between 10% and 20% higher than the corresponding period."

Yesterday we had another good set of full year numbers from Discovery Holdings Limited. "The year under review to 30 June 2012 was a pleasing one for Discovery, with solid performance across all businesses. The period saw growth in: new business API up 24% to R9.3 billion; normalised operating profit up 21% to R3.4 billion; normalised headline earnings up 14%; and embedded value growth up 12% to R30.2 billion."

On Thursday we had interim results for the 6 months ended 31 December 2011 from Discovery who have managed to yet again produce fantastic results. Highlights include a 20% increase in headline earnings to R1.1bn whilst embedded value per share which is how the in house actuaries value the company has increased 18% to R51.20. An interim dividend of 50c was announced. Since listing in 2000 this company has managed around 35% compound return. So how is this business made up? Let's look at the divisions separately.

Discovery released a trading statement yesterday, ahead of results that will be published a week today. The group suggested that normalised earnings are expected to be between 15 and 25 percent higher than they were in the last six month comparable period to end December. There are once off accounting entries that confuse matters. Discovery are happy with the normalised earnings measure.

Possibly one of the best brands amongst middle class South Africans, Discovery, reported full year numbers to the end of June 2011, and the results were well received by the markets. The stock gained 2.6 percent on the day, versus a market that was up one quarter of a percent. They really have done well. I mumbled something on the box yesterday morning about the clouds of NHI hanging over their future, the funding thereof, perhaps some marginal folks on the screens would have to stop contributing to private healthcare. Perhaps, we are not 100 percent sure yet.