Income from the businesses that keep South Africa running
Meet the founders behind the income. The founders who carry the same risk as their investors.
Stephan Bredell walked into a meeting with Willie Mouton carrying an info sheet. Not a business plan. Not two years of financial statements. A single page describing an idea for a specialty coffee shop inside a converted shipping container.
He had been through previous business failures. He was carrying debt. His family had already put capital into ventures that hadn’t worked out. Every conventional source of funding was exhausted. There was nowhere left to turn.
Willie read the info sheet and evaluated the entrepreneurs. He assessed both Stephan and Petrus’s personal finances to confirm that they could service the facility independently of the business’s performance. The answer was yes.
That decision, to structure a 36-month rent-to-own arrangement covering the container and the equipment required to run the store, on nothing more than a concept and a conversation, is where Plato Coffee began. Platō now has over 140 shops and is expanding internationally. The coffee shop that no bank would finance is today a global franchise.
This is where the CCS Investment Platform Income Notes start. Not with a yield comparison. Not with a product disclosure document. With a business, an entrepreneur, and a funding gap, and what happens when that gap is closed.
What we are launching
The CCS 5Y Prime+3% Note is now live on Mesh.trade. A public offer of secured, floating-rate notes underpinned by an asset-backed SME credit portfolio, with eleven years of operating history and a historical default rate of approximately 0.25%.
The investment returns Prime +3% per annum, paid monthly over a five-year term. Capital is repaid in full at maturity. A minimum investment of R5,000, and the note programme is administered by Mesh.trade.
But before you get to the registered prospectus, there are two things worth knowing.
Where the income actually comes from
CCS funds productive equipment for South African SMEs: coffee machines, grooming vans, ride-hailing vehicles, and co-working infrastructure.
The businesses using that equipment make monthly rental payments. Those rental payments are the income source that funds investors’ monthly coupon payments.
Not a trading position. Not a valuation movement. Not a financial engineering exercise. Operational cash flow from productive businesses doing productive things.
The CCS model does more than fund assets. For the businesses it backs, it releases working capital, separating the cost of acquiring productive assets from the capital the business needs to operate and grow.
South African SMEs do not fail because their ideas are bad. They fail because every rand of working capital is committed to owning the assets these businesses depend on.
CCS’s rent-to-own structure breaks that trap, which is why the businesses we will be covering in this series grew the way they did.
The income source is not abstract. Over the next four weeks, we are publishing short films from four businesses that CCS has funded. You will see them. You will hear from their founders. You will understand exactly how this model works in practice.
The model holds up under adversity, not just under ideal conditions. Hannes Roodt built Ultimate Pet Care on a single mobile grooming trailer, a business no bank would finance, CCS provided the asset-backed finance that made his fleet of trailers today possible. When the business hit difficulty and repayments needed restructuring, CCS engaged directly, reworked the terms, and stayed close to the account until it stabilised.
“ There was a time when I had to go see Willie and say, listen, it's not going as planned. And then CCS looked at how they could restructure my payment terms. It was very personal. They don't interfere in your operations. They just want to know that you're doing well. ”
Hannes Roodt • Founder • Ultimate Pet Care
Ultimate Pet Care now oversees thirty five franchise businesses nationally, employs over 180 people, and grooms more than 9,000 dogs a month.
The CCS liquidity reserve, the restructuring capability, the active account management, these are not structural protections that exist only on paper. They have been used. CCS investors’ income continued to flow. The businesses came through.
The CCS founders carry the same risk as you
This matters. CCS Investment Platform co-invests on every single transaction, alongside the investors who buy their Notes. The people running this platform have their own capital in every deal your investment backs.
“ We use 50% of required capital from our own funds and 50% from the CCS platform. So on every deal, we carry the same risk as our investors. If I want you to carry risk, I’m also carrying the risk. ”
Hannes Mels • CFO • CCS Investment Platform
That alignment is structural, not rhetorical. It is built into the mechanics of every transaction CCS originates.
Who the Notes are designed for
- Investors who want predictable monthly income from a source not correlated to listed markets and not dependent on interest rate direction.
- Investors who want to know where their income comes from before they commit to it.
- And investors who value the discipline that comes when the manager’s capital sits in every deal alongside theirs.
If you run a business and recognise the funding gap those stories describe, CCS funds businesses directly. The operating platform has capacity and is actively looking for the right transactions.
The investor overview is available here.
The first client story publishes next week.
This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
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For more press information, please contact:
Connie Bloem, Product owner of Mesh:
hello@meshtrade.co / +1 604 671 4515