Cell C boss buys into his own turnaround

Cell C CEO Jorge Mendes has bought R20.8-million of shares in the company he runs, in two on-market purchases four days apart.

According to a Sens announcement on Tuesday, Mendes bought 52 187 ordinary shares at R23 each on 17 September, a R1.2-million transaction, and a further 740 000 shares at R26.50 each on 21 September, worth R19.6-million. Both were direct beneficial purchases and clearance was obtained. Together they come to 792 187 shares, or roughly 0.23% of the company.

Mendes paid 15% more for the second and much larger tranche than he had four days earlier. A director buying into a rising price, rather than waiting for a dip, is a stronger signal than the rand value alone.

The R26.50 he paid on Monday is also the exact price at which Cell C listed on the JSE on 27 November last year. The shares were priced at R26.50 in an offer that raised R2.7-billion through the sale of 102 million shares by The Prepaid Company, part of the Blu Label Unlimited Group, implying a market capitalisation of about R9-billion on 340 million shares in issue. The listing was a full secondary sale; no new capital was raised by Cell C itself.

Mendes joined Cell C as CEO in 2023 from Vodacom, where he had run the consumer business, taking over an operator that had been kept alive by successive recapitalisations – a restructuring in 2017 and a more comprehensive one in 2022 backed by Blue Label Telecoms, now Blu Label.

What followed was a rebuild rather than a rescue. Cell C moved to an asset-light model, effectively outsourcing management of its radio access network to roaming partners MTN and Vodacom, which cut capital spending while giving its customers access to the strongest available signal in a given location. It grew its wholesale and mobile virtual network operator business, where its relationship with Capitec is the most significant, and returned to profitability . It also relaunched the brand in August 2024 with a new logo, design and payoff line.

The market took notice through Blue Label. Icasa cleared the way for Blue Label to take control of Cell C in January last year, and in August 2025 Blue Label reversed a multibillion-rand impairment it had previously recognised against its stake – an unusually direct statement of confidence in the operator’s recovery. Blue Label’s own share price rose 172% in the first eight months of that year as investors warmed to the turnaround.

Cell C is South Africa’s fourth-largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers, behind Vodacom, MTN and Telkom. At listing it guided that it intends to return 30-50% of free cash flow to shareholders as dividends once conditions allow. — (c) 2026 NewsCentral Media