The R1,000 South African investment that would have made you a multimillionaire

If you had invested R1,000 in Capitec Bank Holdings when it was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), that investment would now be worth around R5.6 million, a MyBroadband analysis has shown.

Michiel le Roux founded Capitec in 1997 using a model that was largely uncontested until recently. It has been the country’s best-performing share since 1994.

As of 2024, the bank had over 22 million clients. Between February 2002 and February 2025, Capitec’s share price grew from around R0.75 to more than R3,000 per share.

It currently has a market capitalisation of R350.24 billion, making it more valuable than Absa and Nedbank combined.

It is quickly catching up with Standard Bank’s market capitalisation of R374.52 billion and isn’t too far off the country’s most valuable banking firm — FirstRand — with a market capitalisation of R415 billion.

The bank launched a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), Capitec Connect, in September 2022 to offer its customers an alternative to the country’s major mobile network operators.

Author TJ Strydom recently wrote in his book Capitec: Stalking Giants that the real reason behind launching Capitec Connect was to provide the bank with a wealth of consumed data.

Capitec Connect would also help the bank compete against technology companies that are entering financial services.

At launch, the MVNO offered never-expiring data at a flat rate of R0.045 per megabyte. It has since introduced 24-hour, 7-day, and 30-day data bundles.

MyBroadband spoke to Capitec Connect head, Dr Dalene Steyn, in December 2024. Steyn revealed that the MVNO exceeded 1.4 million active SIMs on its network in November of that year.

She said the MVNO has ambitious growth plans for 2025.

“We’re now about 1.4 million active SIMs, so we’re heading to the 1.5 million active SIMs mark, and we’ve got plans to literally double that next year,” Steyn stated.

The plans to double its active SIMs in 2025 will likely benefit from another enhancement Capitec Connect plans to offer: eSIM support.

“In my phone, I have a Capitec Connect eSIM, which I’ve been using for a number of months already. It is something that we will be rolling out to our clients in 2025,” said Steyn.

“As the adoption of eSIM is increasing in South Africa, we feel that the time is right now to also offer this to our clients.”

She added that the launch of Capitec Connect’s cheaper bundles with expiring data had resulted in a surge in data and voice usage on its network.

“The split is currently that about 65% are expiry bundles and 35% are non-expiry bundles. We’ve seen the no-expiry usage coming down slowly but surely every month.”

MyBroadband calculated how much a R1,000 investment in Capitec made in February 2002 would be worth in February 2025.

Capitec’s share price grew by a whopping 558,024% between 15 February 2002 and 1 February 2025.

A R1,000 investment in the company in mid-February 2002 would have secured 1,818 shares, now worth nearly R5.6 million.

The table below shows how much a R1,000 investment in Capitec made on 1 February 2002 would have been worth in February 2025.