Capitec is R15bn shy of breaching the R500bn market valuation mark, cementing its status as one of South Africa’s biggest corporate success stories over the past quarter of a century, with the group looking to grow in business banking and international franchises as new growth vectors.
The group’s stock has surged more than 200% over the past five years, valuing the Stellenbosch-based lender at R485bn on the JSE on Tuesday— second only to FirstRand, which breached the milestone in December.
Standard Bank is valued at R474bn, poised to also breach R500bn this year — with the country’s three largest lenders by market value streets ahead of their rivals.
Absa is valued at R213bn after registering a strong rally since the appointment of Kenny Fihla as group CEO last year, up nearly 40% since he took over the country’s third-largest bank.
Nedbank, valued at R130bn, will hope for a better 2026 after enduring a subdued 2025 with its stock underperforming.
For Nedbank, South Africa and Southern Africa remain the anchor, with corporate and investment expansion in the fast-growing East Africa region an alluring growth vector.
Investec’s South Africa business, valued at R37bn on the JSE, will also hope for a better year after reporting single-digit share price growth over the past year.
Investec’s top brass have set ambitious targets to disrupt the corporate midmarket segment. The bank is targeting businesses with annual revenues of R30m-R1.5bn, with a bias toward businesses with a turnover of at least R100m, and would be selective in onboarding those businesses with a turnover of less than R100m.
Investec plans to grow the corporate midsize by 7,000 businesses by 2030 to complement its base of 3,000. The target is to grow revenue in this segment in South Africa to R3.8bn by 2030 from R1.7bn.
Investec aims to build a bespoke proposition for its clients and win market share in the lucrative corporate midmarket in which players are reporting a return on equity of about 30%.
For its part, Capitec is sticking to a strategy that has worked wonders for the group in retail banking, having amassed 25-million clients since bursting onto the scene in the early 2000s as a fledgling start-up.
Capitec aims to disrupt the business banking space by replacing its retail successes, in which it continues to innovate and take new products to the market, with value-added services as a key earnings driver.
The bank aims to dominate the informal economy by bringing businesses in this space into its fold. It has recorded notable successes in this endeavour having racked up 182,000 businesses as clients by end-August, an explosive growth of 57%.
Despite growing its market share by almost five times, Capitec remains the smallest bank in the country by market share of retail and business banking revenue, demonstrating the vast opportunity for the bank to continue growing its revenue base.
The group’s headline earnings surged from R2.4bn in 2015 to R13.7bn in 2025.
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