JSE falls in line with world stocks

The JSE fell on Thursday amid a spate of corporate results and in line with generally lower world markets.

General retailers led the losses, with Massmart particularly hard hit after it warned headline earnings per share could be as much as 68% lower to end-March.

Gold miners firmed in safe-haven trade after US President Donald Trump cancelled a planned summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

The all share closed 0.6% lower at 56,699.20 points and the top 40 shed 0.5%. General retailers fell 3.81%, food and drug retailers 1.49%, resources 0.92% and financials 0.76%, while banks were down 0.49%.

Sasol jumped 2.41% to R472.95.

Barclays Africa slipped 1.16% to end at R158.66.

Life insurer and asset manager MMI fell 3.57% to R19.18. The group said earlier diluted core headline earnings for the nine months ended-March were down 5% on the prior period.

Massmart ended 17.96% lower at R115. On Thursday morning it reported sales growth of 0.8% for the first 19 weeks of the 2018 financial year.

TFG shed 7.37% to R180 after it said net profit grew a muted 3.6% to R2.4bn in the 2018 financial year.

Property group Capital & Counties rose 4.14% to R50.30 in choppy trade. It earlier announced a demerger by splitting the company into two separately listed businesses based around its prime central London estates.

Tiger Brands dropped 4.58% to R333.29. The group said on Thursday that pretax profit from continuing operations fell 18% to R1.9bn in the six months to ended March.

Mediclinic plummeted 8.82% to R103.59 after reporting that annual revenue rose 4% to £2.8bn.

Famous Brands rose 0.78% to R103.60 after reporting headline earnings per share were down 8% in the year ended February.

At 5.40pm, the Dow was off 0.78% to 24,694.52 points. In Europe, the DAX 30 was down 0.93%, the FTSE 100 shed 0.72%, and the CAC 40 retreated 0.25%.

At the same time, gold had firmed 0.82% to $1,305.30/oz and platinum 0.82% to $911.73. Brent crude was down 0.72% to $79.15 a barrel.

The top 40 Alsi futures fell 0.51% to 50,621 points, with 21,635 contracts traded, from Wednesday’s 23,304.