Share sale nets Nedbank R793m

By Iain Scott for Nedbank

Johannesburg, 12 Aug 2005

Nedbank made a pre-tax capital profit of about R793 million on the sale of most of its shareholding in Net1 UEPS Technologies, previously Aplitec.

The bank announced yesterday that it had sold about 6.55 million shares as part of Net1`s public offering and Nasdaq listing.

The announcement came on the same day that Dimension Data disclosed that it had acquired Nedbank`s 20% stake in Internet service provider Internet Solutions, increasing its own stake to 80%.

The value of the Internet Solutions deal has not been disclosed.

Nedbank says the sale of the Net1 shares, as with the sale of the Internet Solutions stake, is in line with its strategy of focusing on its core banking business and disposing of non-core assets.

However, it has retained 1.5 million Net1 shares.

Nedbank says it received confirmation that, in terms of the public offering, all the shares tendered were sold and it received about $136.1 million in net proceedings from the offering, after deduction of costs.

"As the Net1 shares were accounted for as an 'available for sale asset` and valued at $16.40 per share at 30 June 2005, the net asset value of Nedbank Group has increased by R177 million (before any tax) since the end of the half year based on the net sale price achieved," the group says.

Aplitec (Net 1 Applied Technology Holdings) was delisted from the JSE last year and the business was sold to Net1 UEPS Technologies, which is incorporated in the US and which is the entity now listed on Nasdaq.