South Africa's Transnet Posts First Annual Profit in Four Years

A R12.5bn gain from selling a stake in its container terminal business to a Philippine port operator helped turn a R1.9bn loss into a R4.6bn profit.

Transnet, South Africa's state-owned freight and logistics utility, reported a R4.6 billion profit for the year ended March 31, 2026, its first annual profit in four years and a sharp reversal from the R1.9 billion net loss recorded the previous year. Revenue rose 7.1% to R88.6 billion, driven by higher rail and pipeline volumes and tariff increases, while EBITDA grew a more modest 0.7% to R30.9 billion as the EBITDA margin actually narrowed by 2.2 percentage points to 34.8%, a sign the profit turnaround leaned heavily on one-off factors rather than pure operational improvement. The single biggest contributor was the sale of a 49.999% stake in DGT, a container terminal, to International Container Terminal Services Inc. of the Philippines for R10.5 billion, which generated a R12.5 billion profit on disposal once a related fair-value adjustment was included. Capital investment actually fell to R23.3 billion even as the company frames spending as supporting infrastructure renewal and operational recovery. The result is a genuine milestone after years of well-documented operational and financial trouble at Transnet, but the reliance on an asset sale rather than core freight and rail performance for the swing to profit means the underlying recovery still has real work left to prove itself.