South African billionaire Johann Rupert's Remgro expects earnings to rise as much as 47%

Remgro, the Stellenbosch investment company chaired by South African billionaire Johann Rupert, told shareholders on Friday, Sept. 11 that it expects headline earnings per share to rise between 37 and 47 percent for the financial year ended June 2026.

The company put headline earnings per share in a range of R19.30 to R20.71, against R14.09 in the previous year. Headline earnings is the standard South African profit measure, which excludes one-off items such as asset sales to show how the underlying business performed.

Remgro said the increase came mainly from stronger operational performance at its investee companies, the businesses in which it holds stakes. It also said material one-off items at some of those companies contributed. Stripping those out, headline earnings would still rise by 24 to 34 percent.

Full results are due on Sept. 21.

Forbes valued Rupert, 76, at $16.4 billion on Sept. 9, ranking him 178th in the world, and puts his personal holding in Remgro at 7 percent. The Rupert family holds all of the company's unlisted B shares, which gives it more than 40 percent of the votes.

Two decisions that shaped the year

Remgro made two significant moves during the financial year, and both look better now than they did when they were made.

The company took full control of Mediclinic Holdings' Southern African business, giving it outright ownership of around 50 private hospitals across South Africa and Namibia. Mediclinic was taken private in 2023 by a consortium of Remgro and MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, and consolidating the Southern African operation gives Remgro direct exposure to a healthcare business it previously held through a joint structure.

It also completed its exit from FirstRand, having decided the stake was no longer core. Remgro acquired its direct holding when it unbundled its interest in RMB Holdings in June 2020, and at one point held shares worth 3.92 percent of FirstRand's market value. It sold 52 million shares for R4.88 billion at an average of R93.87 in March, and completed the disposal in April.

The timing matters. FirstRand reported on Sept. 9 that normalised earnings fell 5 percent to R39.69 billion for the year to June 2026, its first decline in six years, after classifying its United Kingdom business as held for sale and booking a charge of £547.8 million for motor finance redress. Remgro was out of the stock roughly five months before that announcement.

The company Anton Rupert built

Remgro traces to the Rembrandt Group, which Anton Rupert founded in the 1940s from a tobacco business in Stellenbosch. The group split its assets in 1988, spinning the international holdings into Richemont, which became the family's principal source of wealth, and keeping the South African assets in what became Remgro. Johann Rupert succeeded his father and chairs both.

Remgro's portfolio runs across healthcare, financial services, infrastructure and consumer goods. Its holdings include Mediclinic, the insurer OUTsurance, the fibre network operator Seacom, a stake in Heineken's South African business, the poultry producer Rainbow Chicken and the Blue Bulls rugby franchise. Jannie Durand is chief executive. The company reported revenue of R51.5 billion and total assets of R142.17 billion for 2025, and employs 162 people directly at the holding company level.

Remgro's market capitalisation stood at roughly R96 billion in March and passed R100 billion by June, about $6.3 billion at approximately R16 to the dollar. That makes it the smallest of the three vehicles through which the Rupert fortune is held. Richemont's Johannesburg listing is valued near R1.9 trillion, and Reinet Investments, the Luxembourg-listed vehicle in which Rupert holds 26 percent, reported a net asset value of R127 billion in March.

A busy week for the family

The trading statement lands two days after Richemont named Rupert's 39-year-old son Anton as non-executive co-deputy chairman, the clearest signal so far of how the family intends to pass on control of the Swiss group behind Cartier and Van Cleef and Arpels. Anton Rupert has sat on the Richemont board since 2017 and on Remgro's since 2018.

Rupert's fortune has moved sharply this year. Bloomberg's index tracked him at roughly $16.1 billion at the start of 2026 and $19.9 billion by mid-June, the highest figure it has recorded for him, driven almost entirely by a rally in Richemont shares.

Remgro did not say which investee companies produced the one-off gains, or how much of the increase they account for beyond the 13 percentage point difference between the reported and adjusted ranges. That detail should come with the results on Sept. 21.