Industrial holding and management company Invicta has benefited from its recent strategy of expanding into other regions outside SA to generate its income as local issues such as load-shedding, a struggling economy and, most recently, problems at ports are hampering SA businesses.
CEO Steven Joffe said in an interview with Business Day on Monday that the group was currently facing delays of about two weeks on average, including in Durban, which is the chief port that the company uses.
Business Day reported last week that it will now take four-and-a-half months to clear the backlog at the Durban harbour, where more than 60 vessels are anchored and waiting to be processed, with Transnet Port Terminals (TPT) saying it has already lost R160m in revenue since September.
While some retailers have opted to fly in stock, because its weight is much lighter, Invicta cannot do that because it brings in heavy equipment, such as excavators and trucks.
“In one case, we nearly lost a very big order, but luckily we were able to get the inventory just in time,” Joffe said.
But some setbacks many suffered during the Covid-19 pandemic, such as supply chain issues, have turned into something of a blessing in disguise as Invicta had higher inventory levels.
“Our inventory level has probably still been elevated from that whole process, and that sort of buffered us,” Joffe said.
Invicta group, chaired by business mogul Christo Wiese, was listed on the JSE in 1989, and provides industrial consumables, equipment and spare parts worldwide.
The company, valued at about R2.7bn on the JSE, said on Monday in its results for the six months to end-September that revenue increased 12% to R4.3bn and operating profit 8% R359.4m.
Profit improved 7.9% and headline earnings per share (HEPS), a common profit measure in SA that excludes certain items, by 1c to 269c. No interim dividend was declared.
This comes as the group now generates more than 50% of its earnings outside SA.
Its replacement parts services and solutions for the industrial segment, which imports and manufactures industrial consumable products and provides services and solutions in southern Africa, is the largest by revenue, bringing in more than half of the revenue.
In June, UK-based truck parts specialist Imexpart was acquired for about R113m and integrated into Invicta’s replacement parts services and solutions unit, auto agri (RPA) segment, which operates in SA and some European countries.
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