EFTA01451014.pdf
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II December 2013
GEM Equity Strategy Outlook 2014
CEEMEA
South Africa - cheap currency but expensive equities
The South African equity market is comfortably up in local currency terms over
the year-to-date, but has fallen sharply in US dollars. The poor performance of
the rand is mainly due to the twin fiscal and current account deficits and has
taken the currency into deeply undervalued territory on any sort of PPP
analysis; the problem though is that in contrast to some other weak currency
countries, most notably India, the performance of exports has been deeply
unimpressive. Next year could be somewhat problematic for the economy,
especially if the independent central bank, the SARB, decides it has to raise
interest rates to head off inflationary pressures. The best hope is probably that
the external environment becomes more supportive with stronger growth,
including China supporting metals prices, but with weaker oil. We believe that
the oil price will weaken along with metals prices as growth in China slows,
which would still be mildly supportive for South Africa. The election may
generate some noise, but given that the outcome is as close to a foregone
conclusion as it is possible to get in a democracy, the real interest will be in the
composition of the post-election ANC cabinet, possibly with Cyril Ramaphosa
as Deputy President, in which case the government may begin to implement
the more market-friendly parts of the National Development Plan.
We still do not have an especially strong view about the equity market going
into 2014. The good news is that in contrast to this time last year, relative
sector valuations appear to have become somewhat more rational following
the underperformance of the Consumer Staples sector (Figure 64). The market
though, despite this year's underperformance, still trades at a fairly hefty
premium against its history relative to GEM on a price-to-book versus ROE
basis. This premium rating reflects the superior governance and capital
allocation for South African companies over the GEM average as well as the
presence of a sizeable and sophisticated domestic money management
industry. We are however somewhat concerned that the improvement in
underlying returns as measured by CROCI relative to the rest of GEM has now
clearly started to level out (Figure 65), which may reflect the cumulative rise in
he costs of doing business in South Africa.
Figure 64: South African equities - PJBV (x) versus ROE Figure 85: Relative EWNCI and CROCI of South Africa
%) versus GEM (calculated as SA value/GEM value)
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Page 42 Deutsche Bank AG/London
CONFIDENTIAL - PURSUANT TO FED. R. CRIM. P. 6(e) DB-SDNY-0107118
CONFIDENTIAL SDNY_GM_00253302
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