24 October 2017

Datatec Limited                                                                

Cancellation of AIM listing

Datatec Limited (JSE/AIM: DTC, "Datatec" or "the Group"  or "the Company"), the international Information and Communications Technology (ICT) company, announces that the secondary listing of its shares on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange ("AIM")  will cease and cancellation will be effective at 7:00am GMT on 8 December 2017. 

The primary listing of Datatec shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange ("JSE") will continue and is not affected by the cancellation of the AIM listing.

Background

Datatec initiated a secondary listing of its shares on AIM in October 2006 with the intention of providing the Group with greater access to capital with which to support the continued growth of its international businesses and to attract a broader range of institutional investors.

However, the AIM listing has not had the desired effect of diversifying Datatec's investor base.  The liquidity of the shares on AIM has been very poor and no significant investors from the UK market have invested in Datatec shares via AIM.  24% of Datatec's shareholders are non-South African and invest via the JSE because of the good liquidity in the market.

Datatec has one class of shares (ordinary shares of 0.01 ZAR) of which 211,967,622 are in issue.  These shares are all listed on the JSE and on AIM.  The shares are held in two registers administered by Computershare, the Company's Share Registrar and Transfer Secretary.  As at 31 August 2017, the Company's issued share capital was split between the two registers as follows:

Shares on the Main Register are primarily held in dematerialised form in the Strate system.  A small minority of shares are held in certificated form.

Of the 0.48% of Datatec's shares held on the Jersey sub-register the majority are held by Computershare in a custodian account and a Depositary Interest ("DI") is in issue, one for each Datatec share.  The DIs are the instruments which are held in the UK central securities depository, CREST. A small minority of the Jersey Register shares are held in certificated form.

The cancellation of the AIM listing will only affect those shareholders whose shares are currently held on the Jersey Register.  Shareholders whose shares are held on the main South African register (i.e. 99.52% of the issued share capital) including all shareholders holding shares via a CSDP on the Strate depositary, will be unaffected.

Procedure for cancellation of AIM listing

AIM Regulation has confirmed that shareholder approval for the cancellation of the AIM listing is not required because Datatec shares will continue to be listed on the JSE which is an AIM Designated Market.

The Jersey Branch Register and the DIs will be unwound at the same time as the cancellation of the AIM listing.

DI holders will be sent a letter from the Transfer Secretary giving notice that their DIs will be removed from CREST and placed on a Jersey share certificate as ordinary shares on 8 December 2017.  The letter will explain the procedures available for their underlying shareholding in Datatec.

Procedures are already in place to transfer shares between the Jersey and Main Register in a process called "removal".  DI holders may initiate this process at any time until Tuesday 5 December 2017.

The shares on the Jersey Register on 8 December 2017, including those of shareholders who were previously DI holders in CREST, will be transferred from the Computershare UK nominee account on the Jersey register to a Computershare SA custodian account on the Main (South Africa) Register, held in the shareholder's name. 

This transfer of shares from the Jersey branch register will be undertaken over the weekend 9/10 December 2017 so that on Monday 11 December 2017 all shares from the Jersey Register will have been transferred to the Main Register and the Jersey Register will close. 

Shareholders whose shares have moved to the Main Register from the Jersey Register will then have the option of having their shareholding dematerialised into a Computershare SA CSDP account on the Strate depositary in South Africa or to any other financial institution via a CSDP to enable their shares to be traded on the JSE.

Computershare will contact all DI holders and Jersey certificate holders to advise them of the details of these procedures and obtain their instructions.  The cost of the removal process will be borne by the Company.

Cancellation of the listing of Datatec DIs on AIM will be effective at 0700h on Friday, 8 December 2017 and the last day to trade before the transfer of shareholdings from Jersey to South Africa registers described above is Tuesday, 5 December 2017.

 Enquiries:

Sponsor

RAND MERCHANT BANK (A division of FirstRand Bank Limited)