B.Sc. Engineering (Electrical) - Cum Laude
Managing Director
Irnest Kaplan is experienced in equity valuation, financial forecasting and business modelling.
He has twenty years of experience as an equity analyst. Since 2002, he has offered clients independent research, valuations and industry insight in the technology and telecommunication sectors in his own consultancy.
He is the founder and managing director of Kaplan Equity Analysts, an independent equity research house. The operation currently specialises in the technology and telecommunications sectors. It offers its clients independent research, valuations and industry insight.
Irnest is a CFA charterholder and was rated in the Technology sector of the Financial Mail Analyst Rankings surveys in South Africa for sixfteen consecutive years from 2006 to 2021.
Irnest has a background in sell-side research, where he gained experience in analysing telecom operators, both mobile and fixed, in South Africa and the rest of Africa. Working for global investment bank, Societe Generale , Irnest had overall responsibility for coverage of the telecommunications sector in Africa.
Irnest has marketed his research in person to institutional fund managers in South Africa, the UK, France, Belgium and Italy. He has forecasted, modelled, and valued telecommunication operators in 9 African countries , including South Africa, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Cameroon, Rwanda, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. He has travelled to several of these countries to carry out primary research for the purposes of valuation and investment.
Irnest has researched, modelled and valued the operations of:
- JSE listed Telecom operators - MTN, Vodacom and Telkom
- JSE listed IT hardware companies - Alviva and Mustek
- JSE listed Software and Computer Services companies - Adapt IT, Business Connexion, Bytes Technology Group (now part of Altron), Datatec, Datacentrix, Dimension Data (now part of NTT), EOH, Faritec, FrontRange, Gijima, Prism and SecureData
- JSE listed Electronics and Electrical comanies - Altech, Digicore and Jasco
- JSE listed Alt-X technology companies - Alaris, ISA, SilverBridge, Morvest and Vox Telecom
Irnest has also consulted to large South African and multi-national organisations in various strategic advisory capacities.
Irnest has hosted, chaired and spoken at South African telecom debates, arranged for institutional investors in South Africa. Panel members include top-level management of each major stakeholder in the South African telecommunications sector.He has also organised and chaired IT conferences for investors. For example, one on the networking value chain, which included speakers from Cisco and SA’s leading networking players.
Born in South Africa in 1974, Irnest graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering (Cum Laude and top student). He worked as a strategy consultant for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). He also has experience in the Internet industry, where he worked for a subsidiary of Dimension Data plc in solution sales and product management. He then worked for Societe Generale in South Africa as a sell-side equity analyst, heading up coverage for the telecommunications sector.
Contact Irnest on Irnest at KaplanEquity dot com should you wish to discuss any project or assignment.