South Africans are currently experiencing the longest stretch of uninterrupted electricity supply in two years.
While the lack of loadshedding is encouraging, Eskom still faces challenges within its legacy coal fleet and higher demand over the coming winter months, which means that loadshedding may not be behind us entirely.
Another major utility impacting the economy is Transnet. In a recent Mergence “Market Snippet,” we discussed how Transnet performance has impacted the economy, with the recent Transnet Recovery Plan showing just how severe the decline in rail volumes has been over the past five years, with freight rail volumes having dropped by 34% since 2018.
Either way, the performance of both Eskom and Transnet remains critical to South Africa’s economy, its listed companies, and the bond market.
Given this importance, we have put together a dashboard of eight high-frequency metrics to objectively track operational performance at the two utilities and attempt to project what this means for the country and its growth.
Below is the dashboard of eight high-frequency metrics, followed further down by graphs plotting various of the metrics, with historical performance dating from 2019.
It is clear that performance across almost all metrics remains below 2019 levels; both Eskom and Transnet have shown improvements from their worst performance of last year and a good trajectory over the past month.
While these improvements are encouraging, there is still a way to go for both utilities. But if this improvement can be sustained, we could see some positive impact on national GDP.
Performance dashboard:
Source: Bloomberg, Mergence
Charts of each dashboard component:
Source: Eskom, Transnet, Bloomberg
**The metrics used above, their frequency and source are:
Transnet:
- SA Iron Ore Exports, Weekly, IMF Portwatch, Bloomberg
- SA Coal Exports, Weekly, IMF Portwatch, Bloomberg
- Transnet Ports Total Cargo Handled (mt), Monthly, Transnet National Ports Authority
- Transnet Ports Total Containers Handled, Monthly, Transnet National Ports Authority
- Transnet Ports Total Vessel Arrivals, Monthly, Transnet National Ports Authority
Eskom:
- Eskom Energy Availability Factor, Weekly, Eskom
- Eskom Unplanned Outages (MW), Weekly, Eskom
- Average Load Shedding Level, Daily, Eskom
For the weekly and monthly data series we have taken a monthly or quarterly moving average to smooth short-term noise.
Our Market Snippets aim to provide concise insight into our investment research process. Each week, we highlight one chart that showcases our research, motivates our current positioning, or simply presents something interesting we’ve discovered in global financial markets.
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