Business

Jorge Mendes, Cell C

A standalone Cell C, which listed on the JSE at the end of November 2025, is now under real pressure to perform. The mobile operator – the third to be licensed in South Africa – has underperformed for most of its twoplus decades since launching in 2001. Much of this was due to the enormous, unsustainable debt pile it was saddled with since its founding.

Blu Label Unlimited, also known as Blu (previously called Blue Label Telecoms), acquired a 45% stake in Cell C in 2017 for R5.5bn, with Lesaka Technologies (formerly Net1) buying a further 15%. This recapitalisation came after founding major shareholder Oger Telecom, a Saudi group, began looking to divest this stake in 2015. Despite this recapitalisation, debt levels remained too high and the operator limped along much as it had been since the original deal. A further recapitalisation in 2022, which began with a 20c-in-the-rand offer to legacy secured lenders and ended in a complex web of transactions between various Blu entities and Cell C, saw it increase its voting interest in the operator to 49.53%, with its economic interest reaching upwards of 70% thereafter.