Altron walked away from multiple M&A deals - Werner Kapp — Altron Group CEO Werner Kapp

Technology group Altron walked away from multiple acquisitions in the past financial year, rejecting deals on grounds ranging from price to corporate structure, CEO Werner Kapp said in an interview with TechCentral on Monday.

Altron shares jumped 13.2% in late-morning trade on the JSE to R26.72, with the market responding favourably to its 2026 annual results published earlier in the day and the declaration of a special dividend of nearly R500-million.

The cash return was a residual after a year of unsuccessful M&A pursuit, not a deliberate signal that Altron lacks appetite for deals.

“We looked at quite a few acquisitions and we did walk away from them. Not for one singular reason,” Kapp said. “The price wasn’t right on one and on another one the corporate structure didn’t quite make sense to us.”

Kapp said the group had the balance sheet to return as much as R2-billion to shareholders but wanted to retain strategic flexibility, leaving the special dividend at R500-million.

Any future acquisitions, he said, would be focused on the platforms businesses – Netstar, Altron FinTech and Altron HealthTech – which now contribute 95% of group operating profit. The strategy is not about market consolidation but about acquiring specific technology capability that complements or accelerates Altron’s competitive position in those businesses.

Expansion

“It’s really buying tech capability in the platform businesses that we think is either complementary or helps us to defend or grow our competitive moat quicker than we think we can deploy that technology ourselves,” he said. A target that came with an existing distribution network would be more attractive still, he added.

International expansion appetite is largely confined to Netstar, Kapp said. Altron FinTech and Altron HealthTech are both heavily constrained by country-specific regulation, making cross-border deals impractical.

Read: Altron surprises with special dividend

Netstar, by contrast, has been in Southeast Asia for about 10 years and the region remains an attractive market for the vehicle tracking business.

“In particular [for Netstar], because we think we can export that IP, we still think Southeast Asia is an attractive market. If there’s something there that makes sense for us, that’s still an opportunity we would pursue,” he said.

Asked whether the increasingly lopsided portfolio – with IT services revenue down 5% and segment Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) down 17% in FY2026 – made the case for divesting parts of that business, Kapp pointed to Altron’s track record of fixing struggling assets rather than selling them.

Altron Document Solutions, the group’s Xerox distribution business, turned from a R97-million operating loss in FY2024 to a R98-million operating profit in FY2026, and Kapp cited it as an example of value management in action.

“We have a proven track record of optimising our portfolio in line with strategy. That process is not always linear,” he said, adding that Altron Digital Business had “turned the corner” in the second half of FY2026.

“For now, they’re part of the fit,” he said of the IT services businesses specifically, while flagging that Altron reviews its strategy annually.

Kapp ruled out a separate listing or spin-out of its platform businesses in the near term. Altron FinTech, a standout performer in FY2026 with operating profit up 33% to R561-million on 37% margins, has the scale and earnings quality for a standalone listing – but Kapp said the group did not need a capital raise to fund continued growth.