COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

King Price has big plans

When it opened its doors ten years ago, the new kid in the short-term insurance block, King Price, caught a lot of attention despite not having nearly enough money to market itself. With the novel promise of decreasing its potential clients' premiums every month, it got the attention it had hoped for.

"Fortunate enough, the phones rang. Today we have 1 200 staff across South Africa and Namibia. And we are looking at a lot of new horizons," said King Price CEO, Gideon Galloway, during the group's celebrations on Thursday.

Galloway was the youngest director on the Telesure board when he decided he could start something better in King Price.

But it wasn't all smooth sailing when he started with the 20 people who were brave enough to join him in his startup. Not a lot of folks wanted to get involved. And not everyone bought into the concept of decreasing premiums.

The company didn't have a big financial firm to back it at the time as some major insurers are wont to do with startups nowadays. It was difficult merely finding a car dealer that was willing to advertise King Price's offering to its customers before it had enough of a budget to get on to TV and radio. -Fin24

Anglo American secures R1.5bn loan

Anglo American has signed a US$100 million 10-year loan agreement with the World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) which is linked to the delivery of sustainability goals.

This sustainability-linked loan is IFC's first in the mining sector and is understood to be the first in the mining sector globally that focuses exclusively on social development indicators, Anglo said.

The specific goals tied to the loan agreement are aimed at supporting community development in rural communities close to Anglo American's mining operations across South Africa, including by promoting the creation of jobs as well as improving the quality of education for more than 73 000 students.

This links with the group's Sustainable Mining Plan, which includes targets to support schools in Anglo's host communities to perform within the top 30% of state schools nationally and to create or support three offsite jobs for every onsite job at its operations by 2025.

Kevin Njiraini, the IFC's director for Southern Africa and Nigeria, said sustainability-linked financing is a powerful tool for mobilising capital and to incentivise companies that seek to contribute to a more sustainable future. -Fin24

Mr Price cashed in on debt options

Value retailer Mr Price says while it has always been predominantly cash-based, offering customers credit options proved a sound move in the past year.

The retailer's recently introduced One Store Card Facility - which allows divisionally branded cards to be used across the group - accounted for R280 million in sales over the financial year, and CFO Mark Stirton says Mr Price is still well above the market average for good credit to bad credit ratios.

"We are not reliant on credit. Our good credit to bad credit ratio is 10:1 compared to the market average of 4:1," he said.

However, while the group believes credit options have supported spending, Stirton says the time isn't right to "aggressively" pursue too much growth in this area.

"We believe there is room for growth in credit, but we won't aggressively move into it, especially not in this current environment," he said during the group's results presentation for the year to end-April on Thursday. -Fin24

Ryanair to keep Afrikaans test

Low-cost carrier Ryanair will continue requiring South African passengers to take an Afrikaans test to enter the UK, despite receiving criticism of "backward profiling", the company has said in a statement to the BBC.

Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers does not operate flights to and from South Africa. So, it requires any South African passport holder flying to Britain from elsewhere in Europe on the carrier, to prove their nationality.

However, its "simple questionnaire" is in Afrikaans, one of 11 official South African languages. Afrikaans is spoken by only 12% of the country’s estimated 60 million people, and was used in the oppression of black citizens during apartheid.

The airline cited a high prevalence of fraudulent South African passports behind the requirement to fill out the test.

"This is why Ryanair must ensure that all passengers [especially South African citizens] travel on a valid South African passport as required by UK Immigration," the BBC reported the airline as saying.-Fin24