After gaining millions of dollars from his stake in Karooooo Limited between July and August, South African tech tycoon Zak Calisto has seen the market value of his equity interest in the Singapore-based global mobility SaaS platform plummet by millions of dollars in recent weeks.
According to data tracked by Billionaires.Africa, the market value of Calisto’s stake in Karooooo has dropped by $106.8 million in the past seven weeks, as investors rotated their portfolios after digesting the firm’s earnings figures for the first quarter of its 2023 fiscal year.
Calisto founded Karooooo, a global mobility software as a service (SaaS) platform, in 2001, with the primary goal of providing stolen car recovery services in South Africa.
Karooooo has grown into an international provider of smart transportation management solutions under his leadership, with the market value of his 74.73-percent stake in Karooooo exceeding half a billion dollars, making him one of South Africa’s wealthiest men and one of Africa’s richest tech entrepreneurs.
Shares in the Singapore-based technology firm have fallen by more than 15 percent in the past seven weeks, from $29.68 on Aug. 3 to $25.06 on Sept. 21, owing to profit-taking activities as market participants sold off their stakes in the company to capture profits in their portfolio.
As a result of the recent drop in the shares of Karooooo on the NASDAQ stock exchange, the market value of Calisto’s 15.57-percent stake has dropped by $106.8 million, from $686.4 million on Aug. 2 to $579.6 million at the time of writing this report.
The recent drop in the market value of his stake brings the year-to-date decline in his equity interest in the company to $269.9 million, as the market value of his stake has dropped from $850 million at the start of the year to nearly $580 million at the time of writing this report.
