The way investors see us

Here are further comments about South African stocks:

UBS (Soledad Lopez): “We are underweight MSCI South Africa in our emerging market intra-equity strategy. We also have a cautious view on South African sovereign debt and the rand.

MSCI South Africa is trading above 20 times 12-month-trailing P/E, well above its 10-year average. In our view, the market is trading at expensive valuations amid low earnings growth.

“We continue monitoring the political dynamics ahead of the ANC conference in December, the rating announcements and also the fundamentals such as fiscal policy and growth-inflation dynamics.”

CITIGROUP (Alec Schoeman, head of equities for South Africa):

“There is no doubt that investors are underweight South African equities overall, it’s partly the consequence of the turmoil that we’ve got in terms of the lack of transparency on a policy level when it comes to the economy.

“Emerging-market funds and analysts are doing a tremendous amount of work on South African stocks and updating their models, re-looking at their valuations and even second-guessing themselves about their lack of position on South Africa.

“South Africa is underowned, it has underperformed and it’s viewed as being underwhelming in terms of future prospects, which is unfortunate.

“Our clients are saying that Russia is a safer place to put your money than South Africa.”

AEON ASSET MANAGEMENT (Asief Mohamed, chief investment officer):

“Markets are currently pricing in an environment of a benign uncertain political outlook for South African equities.” – Bloomberg