BUSINESS NEWS - Capitec Bank Holdings passed Nedbank Group as South Africa’s fourth-largest lender by value to extend a market-beating rally that has made it the country’s best performing stock.
The shares of Stellenbosch, South Africa-based Capitec rose 2% in Johannesburg on Thursday to close at R891.03, giving it a market capitalization of R103 billion ($8 billion) and extending gains this year to 28%. Nedbank climbed 0.9% to R205 for a market value of R102.1 billion, paring its decline in 2016 to 14%.
Capitec’s assets don’t amount to even a 10th of those of Johannesburg-based Nedbank, which owns a retail and investment bank, wealth-management businesses and a stake in Africa’s most geographically diverse lender.
Capitec’s stock has gained in all but one of the years since it began trading in February 2002 at about R2.60. That’s the most among banks across emerging markets during the period and the best performer in South Africa’s benchmark Top40 Index.
“Capitec is gaining retail clients at a rate that makes it bigger than Nedbank,” said Patrice Rassou, head of equities at Sanlam Investment Management in Cape Town. The lender also grabbed market share when it launched its card business, which is “a huge growth vector,” he said.
Originally a purveyor of unsecured lending, Capitec broadened its product range into savings and credit cards to defy an economy ravaged by political turmoil and growth that the central bank estimates will reach 0.5% this year. It has expanded faster than the nation’s four biggest banks, adding 1.3 million customers in the last fiscal year alone to 8.6 million.
