The man who built Datatec and made R325 million in two years

Jens Montanana founded Datatec in 1986 as a distributor of networking access and communications solutions and served as its first CEO when it listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) in 1994.

He still holds the position today, which has earned him some massive paydays in recent years.

The CEO took home more than R325 million in remuneration over the past two financial years, earning R110 million in 2023/24 and nearly R216 million in 2022/23.

However, it should be noted that a large portion of these remuneration figures came from Montanana’s long-term incentives.

As of 29 February 2024, Montanana held just over 37 million Datatec shares, or 16.12% of its total shares in issue. His shares were valued at approximately $76 million (then R1.3 billion) as of 30 June 2024.

After founding Datatec in 1986, Montanana served as managing director and vice-president of US Robotics (UK) Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of US Robotics Inc.

Montanana also co-founded US start-up the Xedia Corporation, which was sold to Lucent Corporation in 1999.

However, he has always been involved at Datatec, which initially comprised two separate business divisions — Datatec Networking and Communications, and POStec.

Datatec launched a joint venture with UUNET to form UUNET Africa, an Internet service provider, in 1996.

It kicked off its international expansion in 1997, beginning with the acquisition of UK IT firm Logical Networks, which later rebranded to Logicalist.

Moving forward another year, Datatec acquired a 92.5% stake in Westcon, a US-based distributor, for $160 million and consolidated its distribution business operating across five continents under the Westcon brand.

He became chairman and CEO of Datatec following its listing on the JSE in 1994. Montanana served as chair until 2001, when the company established an independent non-executive chair role.

Montana currently chairs the boards of Datatec’s divisional parent companies: Logicalis International Limited, Logicalist Latin America, and Westcon International Limited.

Montanana holds a degree in electronic engineering which he acquired from the University of Reading.

The company has grown immensely since its founding and acquired multiple companies, including buying US distributor Westcon, UK-based Analysys, and Germany-based Siticom.

Today, it is an international ICT group with operations in more than 50 countries spread across North America, Latin America, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

It offers a broad range of ICT services in these markets, including networking, cloud, information security, unified collaboration, and data centre technologies.

Its latest annual results, which cover the period for the year ended 29 February 2024, revealed that Datatec’s profits declined while its revenue grew.

The company’s revenue grew 6.1% from $5.14 billion (R94.88 billion) to $5.46 billion (R101.43 billion). However, its net profit declined by approximately 41%.

It had reported a net profit of $70.62 million (then R1.3 billion) for the 2022/23 financial year, which dropped to $41.53 million (R766 million) in 2023/24.

However, Montanana noted that Datatec’s operational performance was strong, with operating profit growing 15.8% to $862.2 million (R15.9 billion).

“The Group maintained a strong operational performance in the second half of the year to deliver a solid full-year result as global demand continues for our technology solutions and services,” said Montanana.

“We have managed to successfully capture growth opportunities across many markets to deliver improved quality of earnings.”

He attributed the strong operational performance to consistent strong performance from Westcon International and Logicalis International, and from improved cash generation from operations, among other things.