The Rand staged a mini fight-back at the end of the week but markets remained directionless on the whole.

These are some of the key small and mid-cap stories spotted from Friday 22 June 2018 on the JSE:

Wescoal earnings to jump:
Coal mining group Wescoal has indicated that it expects earnings to rise materially for the year ended March 2018. The company says it expects earnings per share and headline earnings per share to rise by over 300%. Wescoal is up 7% year to date.

Marshall Monteagle reports interims
The investment holding group, which holds investments in the US, UK, Europe and Far East reported interim results for the 6 months ended March 2018. Revenue was up 21% and headline earnings were up 2%. The company reported a net asset value per share of $2.17 and pays a dividend of US1.9c/share. This puts the company on a price to earnings multiple of 8.9 times earnings and offers a 3% dividend yield. The share is thinly traded but down 17% year to date.

Exemplar profile article
Jason McCormick – CEO of recently listed REIT Exemplar – was recently featured in a Financial Mail profile where he talks about the group strategy and some of his background. According to the article, Exemplar operates 20 shopping centres in potentially high-growth regions.

Kibo keeps busy
Kibo Mining PLC has continued to keep up a steady stream of investor updates. On Friday the company made two announcements. In the first announcement, it indicated it would be exiting its investment in the Haneti Nickel Project to allow it to focus on its energy projects in Africa. In the second, it said that Kibo CEO Louis Coetzee would appear on the Vox Markets Podcast (www.voxmarkets.co.uk/company/KIBO) – this is a UK based podcast focused on providing market insights to professional and retail investors.

HPR shares bounce
Recently spun-off Hoskens Passenger Logistics and Rail saw its shares rise 20% in Friday trade. CEO Francois Meyer announced that he had bought R99500 worth of shares on the open market at between R4.95 and R5/share. HPR trades on an historic multiple of 6.

CMH slides
Shares in Combined Motor Holdings (CMH) were down 8% on 3744 shares changing hands at around R27/share. The company announced that Executive Director Bruce Barritt had acquired around R95 000 worth of shares on the open market at R29.40/share. CMH trades on a price to earnings multiple of 8.6 and offers a 5.9% dividend yield.

Finbond goes under cautionary
Financial services group Finbond has announced it has entered into discussions which may impact the share price. The share is up 35% year to date.

Torre gets a new CEO
Johan Botes has resigned as Chief Executive Officer at Torre Industries with Jon Hillary taking charge (previously Executive Deputy Chairman). Torre is down 40% year to date

Busy day for Zeder
Agriculture group Zeder Investments had a busy day with the group AGM seeing a group of shareholders pushing back against the appointment of Chris Otto to the board. The company has also rolled out an online tool to allow shareholders to view its “Sum Of The Parts” calculation for its underlying assets – currently R7.10/share.