CEO Jacques Conradie on navigating macro cycles, selective stock picking, and why liquidity constraints still limit pan-African expansion.
As the oldest hedge fund operating in Africa, Jacques Conradie, CEO of Peregrine Capital, has a strong understanding of where to find winners across the market. “We are fundamentally bottom-up stock pickers; we have been investing in South Africa for almost 28 years, so we know the companies very well and how they will perform in different market cycles.”
Having this strong market knowledge, Conradie felt would set the firm up well to perform going into 2026, which was aided by the favourable economic conditions in South Africa. “Before the disruption, we were quite optimistic on South Africa. We had a large trade surplus driven by high commodity prices. Oil prices were relatively low and, as South Africa is a major importer of oil and exporter of commodities, created a strong trade balance,” Conradie explains. This was supported by a favourable political backdrop, “which gave a strong stable sense, and led to renewed interest from offshore and international investors.”
For Peregrine, a central pillar of their success has been to understand companies on a multi-faceted level and determine long-term structural winners. Conradie cites numerous recent examples: “Capitec, which we invested in early, grew from a small bank into one of the largest banks by market capitalisation. We also invest in mining, including gold and platinum, which have strong fundamentals and can perform regardless of macro conditions.” Conradie is also a firm believer that investing is a “behavioural game. Where you must understand emotions during periods of gains and losses, which can inform the next steps you take.”
Despite the fund’s strong roots across South Africa, it has rarely expanded capital to other areas of Africa. Conradie notes Peregrine has tried to find appealing investments across equity markets but “liquidity is just too low for meaningful capital deployment. Most countries are oil importers, which creates pressure when prices rise. It is a difficult region for large-scale institutional investment.”
A large part of the firm’s equity book is now made up of AI investments. Conradie explains how his team stopped worrying about capex concerns of the biggest hyperscalers and became fully invested in the notion that demand is set to grow exponentially. “Our internal AI team observed a huge change in the model performance of Claude Code and Codex. As a result, we significantly increased our exposure to areas benefiting from the whole AI ecosystem.”
Watch the full Alternative Views interview below.
