JSE’s Valdene Reddy unpacks key takeaways from the South Africa Tomorrow Investor Conference

The Johannesburg Stock Exchange was one of the sponsors that hosted the inaugural two-day South Africa Tomorrow Investor Conference - that is ending today. We do know the economic disruption that Covid-19 has caused. And investment is needed to accelerate South Africa’s economic recovery. Joining CNBC Africa to unpack what came out of the conference is Valdene Reddy, the Director of Capital Markets at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Thank you so much for joining us, Valdeen. Just to walk me through the purpose of this conference and which investors from which countries were you targeting. Good evening and thanks for having me on your show. So this was our first essay tomorrow in New Regions. We've actually been running essay tomorrow for eight years now where we covered the U.S. market. But this was the first time we covered the UK, the Middle East, and some of the Asian markets by Hong Kong and Singapore. So we were really excited to extend the universe to a broader audience and a more diverse client base for interest into South Africa. And we had a pretty impressive turnout for this being our first conference and being virtual. We had almost 250 participants across the board of which 187 of those were investors. And it's been various regions. We had about 30% of those from the UK and European markets as well as a couple of extra from the Asian markets. And we had also included some of the South African investors to join. So quite a broad mix of investors that that came to the pool. Absolutely. Sounds incredible. 250 participants. Just from what you saw, I mean, from what sectors are investors seeing the most enthusiasm in South Africa and maybe what are the sectors that are lagons at the moment? Yeah, one of the key differentiating factors of this conference and maybe one of the peel factors of the conference was that we covered the investment thesis for South Africa from a macro as well as a private and public sector viewpoint. So that was quite nice in the collaboration. So we had the conference opened up by our president and it actually came quite well on the back of last week's moves and announcements that government had made in some of the major moves in terms of policy reform and opening up our markets, specifically in the energy space as well as you know, honing in on some of the corruption aspects. And then also some of the very brave and bold moves in terms of the SOE and especially in specific South SAA spin-off. So it really came at a good time. So we had the president open up the conference and he laid out all of these progressive changes. So that was quite important to deal from a themes perspective as you mentioned, especially to international investors. And it was really promising to see some of these long standing headwinds now really coming to the pool where government has moved on these. Following the president we had an address by the finance minister Tito and Moenny as well as the reserve bank governor Lecesters Canyako and that really set the tone for us to go into fiscal policy discussion. The various panels over the two days covered a number of themes and I think across every segment and market there's opportunities, concerns and possibilities and potential for investment. So we had a panel on the consumer recovery. We had a panel on an ESG focused topic. We had some of our top CEOs on the panels discussing the investment case for their sectors as well as for their industries. We had a really interesting conversation on the hydrogen economy. So the mining sector in particular has been a massive focus for the South African market and we're in a mining or commodity super cycle. And we really felt that as a positive sentiment to our market for the past 24 months. So it was really good to have the hydrogen aspect because that also tied into the potential for South Africa as a differentiator for aspirations in our long term sustainability goals and really what the investment case and opportunities were. So it's hard to pick out one sector or industry that was a preferred segment or a laggard but we had a really diverse and balanced conversation across really interesting topics. And what was quite nice is I've spoken to some of the turnout of the numbers but in terms of the engagement and the participation throughout the two days, you know, we had really good sign up for these different panels and fireside conversations. And so that in itself shows interest from international investors to get to know our markets a bit better, to revisit the markets and to really now get stuck into the investment opportunities for South Africa. And of course energy is a big thing right now and we do know that the move to cleaner energy will really ramp up investment into the country. And just, you know, one of the people that were there with our public enterprises, Minister of course, was there anything noteworthy that he said, especially considering the announcement that the president did make about the increasing the threshold of self-generation for electricity for companies to 100 megawatts? Yeah, that's absolutely right. It worked out so well that, you know, almost last week and some of the announcements that came in that came in as a real good precursor to laying the foundation for a real tangible and practical elements was the South African political reform and economic reform and transformation. And like you said, the moves in the energy space and lifting some of these thresholds and restrictions has been long awaited and is a huge progressive move forward in terms of saying South Africa is now deliberate. So we you were absolutely right. We had a state on the Minister of Public Enterprises, Praveen Gordon on a panel and we also had a thigh-side chat with Andre Derator who is the CEO of ISCAM. And both these conversations, you know, dubbed held quite well in terms of what's practically being done to opening up the energy market of South Africa. And again, just building on the potential that South Africa has to unlock growth and recovery prospects.