By Gugu Lourie
Jasco, a JSE-listed electronics group, announced on Thursday that it has revived talks to sell its shareholding in Malesela Taihan Electric Cable (M-Tec). The process to sell the stake in underperforming M-Tec hit a snag in December 2014 due to an unexpected executive management changes at Taihan.
Korean Taihan is another shareholder in M-Tec. At the time Jasco was in talks with Taihan to offload the shareholding to them.
On Thursday Jasco said “Shareholders are hereby advised that the company is currently in the advanced stages of negotiations with a related party regarding the disinvestment by Jasco of its interest in Malesela Taihan Electric Cable. If these negotiations are successfully concluded, it may have a material effect on the price of the Company’s securities”.
Taihan is a shareholder in M-TEC, a manufacturer of non-ferrous products in South Africa such as fiber optic, copper, power cables, aluminium and general purpose wire.
In 2013, Jasco said the disposal of M-TEC’s shareholding wass par of its three-year repositioning programme.
Jasco was restructured into the three verticals of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Solutions, Industry Solutions and Energy Solutions in 2011.
ICT Solutions contains the telecommunications and information technology businesses of Jasco, Spescom, ARC Telecoms, as well as the telecommunications arm of associate, M-TEC. Industry Solutions contains the Security business and FerroTech, with Energy Solutions containing Electrical Manufacturers and Lighting Structures, as well as the energy arm of M-TEC.
“In terms of our investment in M-TEC, we indicated to the market that we will take decisive action. We strongly believe that a non-controlling stake in any business is not ideal,” Jasco’s CEO Pete da Silva, stated in the group’s annual report in 2012.
