DELVE INTO AFRICAN WEALTH
DON'T MISS A BEAT
Subscribe now
Skip to content

South African billionaire Zak Calisto to pocket $22 million in Karooooo dividends

Karooooo’s latest dividend will hand its billionaire founder a pre-tax windfall of more than $22-million.

South African billionaire Zak Calisto to pocket $22 million in Karooooo dividends
Zak Calisto

Table of Contents

South African billionaire Zak Calisto is set to collect a hefty $22.4 million in dividends after his telematics company, Karooooo Ltd., declared an interim payout to shareholders.

Calisto, who founded Karooooo and remains its largest shareholder, holds nearly 58% of the Singapore-headquartered firm’s issued stock. That stake—more than 17.9 million ordinary shares—translates to a pre-tax payday of roughly 401 million rand from the latest dividend.

Karooooo, which trades on both the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE: KRO) and the Nasdaq (NASDAQ: KARO), announced a gross interim dividend of $1.25 per share. Based on the current exchange rate of 17.91 rand to the dollar, shareholders will receive 22.3839 rand per share.

Calisto won’t pocket the full amount, though. With South Africa’s 20% dividend withholding tax applied to local residents, his take-home from the dividend drops to about 320.9 million rand—or just under $18-million.

The dividend, drawn from Karooooo’s profit reserves, will be paid out on Monday, Aug. 18, to shareholders on record as of Aug. 15. The stock will begin trading ex-dividend on Aug. 13 in Johannesburg and Aug. 15 in New York.

Karooooo is best known for its Cartrack platform, which provides cloud-based fleet management and logistics tools to businesses.

The intelligence satisfies curiosity. The paid briefings satisfy strategy.

Every Monday, Elite subscribers receive an Investor Memo breaking down the deal, the structure and the positioning behind the week's most consequential African wealth story - the kind of analysis that doesn't appear anywhere else.

Twice a month, a Wealth Intelligence brief profiles a single billionaire's holdings, cash flows and expansion pipeline in detail no public source matches.

Executive ($25/mo): Daily newsletter + Deep-Dive Reports

Elite ($75/mo): Everything above + Investor Memos + Wealth Intelligence + Quarterly Analyst Briefings

Subscribe now

Latest