Motus 2026 results show the benefit of Chinese imports

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SIMON BROWN: I’m chatting with Ockert Janse van Rensburg, CEO at Motus. Results out for year-end June 2026. Revenue up 1%, Heps up 15%, dividend up 29%.

Ockert, appreciate the time. Let’s start with Chinese imports. That is the story of vehicle sales locally – perhaps globally. You’ve been doing a lot more and it certainly has been helping the business. You’ve seen the traction and the benefit of Chinese imports within your own stable.

OCKERT JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes, as most other dealerships, I think we felt the need to also pivot towards it. You can see that’s where the action is.

We’ve always maintained that we would grow as the market grows into that space – and that’s exactly what has happened. So you would have seen a massive volume growth. Coming off a low base that obviously is flattering. But at the same time, I think we were quite deliberate in all the brands that we wanted to cover, and we feel very satisfied that we’ve got all the big ones, all the ones in the top 20.

I think growing with the market and with the volume growth that was already taking place, we just received our fair share of that.

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SIMON BROWN: Are you a seeing similar sort of appeal for these Chinese vehicles in your UK and Australian operations?

OCKERT JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes, it’s interesting how around the globe it happens at different times. So it’s sometimes also good for us to be involved in other markets.

The first wave was clearly South America and after that Australia. So we do have the footprint in Australia to already see to what extent it did disrupt the market there.

So, when it then finally landed in South Africa, and after that in the UK, we have been able to also pivot to those brands that we see will make a difference – and who has those volume aspirations.

Of course, there’s a multitude of them all arriving, so you need to be quite circumspect in who you back and who not, because you do have a footprint limitation. But I think up to now we’ve been able to accommodate them within our multi-franchise sort of arrangements where you put them with another brand.

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SIMON BROWN: I’ve been seeing that, and you mentioned it in the results – the multi-franchising within an offering. Is that a short-term sort of solution at the moment, or is that actually something that is a case of this can perhaps work longer term?

OCKERT JANSE VAN RENSBURG: It is something that we already introduced some time ago within Motus. We got the learnings from Australia, funnily enough. That’s where it started because they had the limitations, and properties were so expensive that they’ve had multi-franchising for more than a decade already.

We introduced it in South Africa through some of our importers initially. But with the launch of so many new brands it’s been an eloquent solution for us as well to make sure that we can accommodate it without disrupting your traditional brands.

Now, the reason why you want to do that is the more traditional brands normally still have a lot of workshop activity. You get quite a bit of used-car activity still through there, while the new entrant doesn’t have any of those on day one, and you’re only really selling the new vehicle itself. So it only makes economic sense if you can really do that, and it would have been difficult for us to do it any other way in a big footprint like ours.

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SIMON BROWN: Gotcha. We’re talking Chinese brands, but of course it’s not just Chinese. You’ve also got Tata, which I think you’ve brought back into the country, and which is also is doing fairly well. I see them on the roads, and when I check the numbers of sales every month, they’re picking up sales as well.

OCKERT JANSE VAN RENSBURG: Yes, we’ve been in discussions with them for some time. We all like to talk Chinese, but the reality is, of course, if you look at the calendar year last year, 57% of vehicles imported actually came from India, which included a lot of the more traditional brands as well.

So, the likes of Suzuki, Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, Renault all come from India. We did look at Tata in that particular market with Mahindra. They’ve been growing quite aggressively there. No one was representing them on this side, so we did do a relaunch of Tata.

I think the quality is a lot better than the previous versions we had in South Africa five or 10 years ago.

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We’ve had it now in the country for exactly one year, and it’s been quite successful, selling more on the entry-level side of things. But still, I think if you asked me a year ago whether we would be pleased to sell – well, you see yesterday’s number was 850 vehicles a month, and that’s a big number. They certainly have already established themselves initially in the top 15, but yesterday it was the top 12 passenger brand in the country.

So, we are really pleased with what we’ve seen with Tata. They do have a good lineup, and because of the price points they’re able to compete quite aggressively as well.

SIMON BROWN: Yes, and 850 is a chunky number, absolutely.

I want to touch on this. We saw the rate increase, a quarter percent, and I don’t think that is significant, but we saw the fuel price increase. I’ve got to say, I’ve got my first diesel vehicle and that was a sticker shock with some of the fuel price. Is there much activity in EV, in hybrid – or are we still very much an ICE-dominated market?

OCKERT JANSE VAN RENSBURG: I think South Africa probably lags it slightly. I think hybrids would be more palatable than full electric in South Africa purely because of the concerns you always have around continuous power at home when you are charging, et cetera.

But the reality is we have seen in other markets, specifically in Australia, where they’ve had similar concerns around range anxiety and long distances and no real infrastructure. They’ve been able to pivot fairly aggressively in the last quarter as fuel pricing was hitting there as well.

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So, it is not something that we believe is never going to come our way, but there’s probably a limit to the extent it can. I think the big one around affordability still remains a concern.

Your latest EVs are probably still sitting at a price point of R350 000, while an ICE engine, sort of entry-level, you can still get at least half of that price.

So there is still that concern, but it’s certainly something to look out for in the future.

**SIMON BROWN: **A last question: the aftermarket. You’ve obviously got an aging fleet in South Africa, the car park, and that is a big market, but it’s an incredibly competitive market. How is your aftermarket doing?

OCKERT JANSE VAN RENSBURG: The aftermarket is doing very well in South Africa. Our operating profit for our aftermarket actually grew by 20%. So, it has been a really strong market for us.

What we do see is, yes, you do have an aging car park. We’ve been able to also get volumes from other areas which were previously underserved. So we’ve been able to expand our offering to greater areas we were not at before.

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And then we’ve also been able to introduce our own private label – the one that we are importing directly. We introduced that into the UK, now we’ve introduced it in South Africa. That’s actually been able to give us a great margin upliftment there with FII Pro being a good brand in there as well, and giving us a greater margin because we control the whole supply chain. So it’s been a good market for us this year.

SIMON BROWN: We’ll leave it there. Motus CEO Ockert Janse van Rensburg, appreciate the time.