Reunert is betting its growth on business outside South Africa as a way to offset a lacklustre economic reality that has caused declines in its operations at home.
The ICT company highlighted “muted economic and market growth” as a material matter in its annual report for the 2025 financial year.
Persistent low GDP and gross domestic fixed investment (GDFI) growth, “high unemployment, and declining business and investor confidence in South Africa continue to reflect economic pressures, evident in extended customer order cycles, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises”.
“The 2025 financial year was characterised by a challenging South African market, partially offset by positive growth in the group’s non-South African markets,” said group chair Mohamed Husain.
He noted that the defence sector remained strong and both the African and international markets in the electrical engineering segment “retained their solid growth trajectories”.
The group, established more than 130 years ago, has three segments: electrical engineering, which includes power and telecom cables; ICT; and applied electronics, which includes renewable energy solutions and radars.
South Africa’s economic growth trended upward through 2025, with three consecutive quarters of economic growth. In early December, Stats SA reported that GDP rose 0.5% in the third quarter after a 0.9% rise in the second.
While there are green shoots and general positivity, Reunert said much of this promise is yet to be realised by the ICT sector.
“In South Africa, despite there being solid progress made towards improving several of the key structural impediments to accelerated economic growth, the real positive impact on the ground has yet to be felt,” said Husain.
He said the key drivers of Reunert’s growth, which are reflected in the macroeconomic indicators of GDP and business confidence for the ICT segment and GDFI for electrical engineering, “all tracked negatively throughout the year”.
“South Africa’s infrastructure investment, specifically, decreased year on year and fell well below both government commitments and the group’s expectations. This decrease in infrastructure investment levels is expected to be temporary but, in this financial year, negatively impacted the [electrical engineering] segment and the group.”
As such, the group has been working to bolster its international operations, helping to spread its risk.
Husain said the current global geopolitical uncertainty strengthened long-term investment into defence.
“The group’s product and intellectual property offerings are in high demand in all three of the group’s key defence export markets of Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia.
“These market drivers have strengthened this year and reinforce the group’s assertion that the current defence market growth is long term in nature. The group’s key non-defence markets in Africa and internationally all remained robust, typically with growth rates higher than those in South Africa.”
Even then, the outlook for 2026 remains positive.
“Fixed investment should gain traction as the private electricity build-out scales, rail and port reforms move from plans to execution, and early logistics partnerships ease bottlenecks. Households are likely to provide a steadier spending floor as inflation settles, real wages turn positive and interest rate relief filters through,” said Momentum Investments chief economist Sanisha Packirisamy.
“While unlikely to be a boom, it will mark a clear shift from the stagnation South Africa has endured.”
Other listed tech firms, including Naspers, Altron, iOCO, Karooooo and Datatec, have also found success in international markets.
Reunert has its primary listing on the JSE, where it is valued at just more than R11.32bn, and is also traded on the A2X. Its operations include the design and manufacturing of electrical conductors, cables and accessories, as well as ICT-related services for businesses. It has niche businesses that cover communications and radar systems.
The group reported a 2% drop in revenue to R13.881bn for the year ended September. Group operating profit decreased 8% to R1.515bn, a fall that was mitigated by a strong performance in the defence cluster, solid ICT segment financial performances and tight control of costs.
Group profit decreased 9% to R1.05bn, while cash generated from operations stood at R1.62bn, down from R1.86bn.
The company has made a number of leadership changes, most recently announcing that Alan Dickson will step down as CEO after three decades with Reunert, handing over the reins to Anthonie de Beer in March 2026. Mark Kathan took over as CFO in March 2025 from Nick Thomson, who had been in the role for a decade.
In the year to date, Reunert’s shares are down 17.36%.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.