Purple Group growth slows, but Savage optimistic on future prospects

Résumé détaillé

CEO Charles Savage discusses growth strategies amid challenging market conditions. ‘I think active ETFs will displace unit trusts over the next decade or so.'

SIMON BROWN: I’m chatting with Charles Savage, CEO of Purple Group. They’re of course best known for EasyEquities. Disclaimer upfront – I hold shares in Purple Group. Results for year ending August: Revenue up 9.8%, Heps up 27.3%, and active accounts up 14.8%.

Charles, in your results clients earned 11.4% after fees over the period. That’s not a bad number. It’s well down on the 20.5%, but what really struck me is they are still depositing numbers.

I know I sound like a stuck record – probably so do you, but your clients turn up. Perhaps not in the records that they have in the past, but not much scares them, it seems.

CHARLES SAVAGE: Correction, Simon, they pitched up in record numbers despite all of that. I also think you have to look at the lens of that 11% return. They added 36% in their assets – and not all the assets benefitted from a full year of being on the platform.

Read/Listen: Purple Group posts record R150.2m profit EasyEquities delivers despite tough market

If there’s any standout story on there, there are a few that I’m really proud of.

In the results it’s what customers did in what was a tough year. All things considered, the macroeconomic environment was tough.

CHARLES SAVAGE: Trump made it tougher, markets made it even tougher, and yet they pitched up in absolute record numbers – both in terms of the quantity of capital they brought, R16.8 billion, but also the number of depositors was the highest ever recorded month on month.

SIMON BROWN: And it was tough. It’s easy to say it was tough, but when we reflect back on it, we’ve got repo rate increases up half a percent, fuel at R10 a litre more, GDP shrinking; everything is more expensive. It’s been an absolute horror since the fuel prices came in in April.

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