Tentatively resilient, for now

The embattled mall owner, whose share price took a 60% pounding last year, is starting to reappear on investor radars

While the market awaits the conclusion of the Financial Sector Conduct Authority’s (FSCA) prolonged probe into allegations of share price manipulation and insider-related trading against Resilient Reit and its associate companies, it appears that investor sentiment is on the mend.

The stock rallied about 6% last week following the release of its interim results.

This week the share price touched R64.50, which brings Resilient’s share price recovery close to 14% year to date.

While the stock is still nowhere near its early 2018 highs of about R150 — and is highly unlikely to get back to those levels any time soon — analysts say increased appetite for Resilient shares has been driven by encouraging results, including a solid performance of the company's underlying property portfolio.

Resilient’s retail portfolio has recorded 4.7% comparable sales growth for the six months to December, comfortably ahead of the 1.4% recorded for SA shopping centres as a whole in the fourth quarter (MSCI figures). Resilient owns stakes in 28 malls across SA worth R23.4bn.

It is a dominant retail player in secondary cities, townships and rural areas such as Mbombela, Polokwane, Mahikeng, Tzaneen, Secunda, Kimberley, emalahleni, Brits, Soweto, Mamelodi, Soshanguve and Thohoyandou.

Some of its shopping centres — most notably i’langa Mall (18.8%) in Mbombela, Mahikeng Mall (19.7%) and Arbour Crossing (10.2%) on the Kwazulu-natal south coast — are still achieving double-digit sales growth, which analysts say is impressive given depressed consumer spending.

Resilient’s vacancies, another key retail performance metric, are at a lowly 1.6% compared to the SA average of 4.4% (MSCI figures).

Keillen Ndlovu, head of listed property funds