Billionaire brothers lose R1.58 billion in ten months
Blu Label Unlimited founders Mark and Brett Levy have lost over 50% of their wealth in less than a year due to a decline in their company’s share price.
This decline was partly driven by a disappointing initial public offering (IPO) of Cell C, in which it held a majority stake.
To understand Blu Label Unlimited’s share price rise and decline, it is important to go back three decades, when the Levy brothers started the company.
Mark and Brett Levy were entrepreneurial from a young age, buying and selling televisions, hi-fi sets, and car radios while still in high school.
They expanded into insurance replacements and consumer electronics distribution, setting the stage for what would later become Blue Label Telecoms.
They used their distribution network and industry connections to position themselves as big players in the prepaid mobile services industry.
In 2001, Telkom awarded Blue Label Telecoms a national contract to distribute prepaid airtime for fixed-line services.
It allowed them to build a vast distribution network that attracted other major players, including Vodacom, MTN, and Cell C.
The Levy brothers launched The Prepaid Company (TPC), which would become Blue Label Telecoms, in June 2001.
Through TPC, they replaced physical scratch cards with an electronic distribution system, reducing logistics costs and simplifying merchant inventory management.
It was a tremendous success, and the business expanded into electricity and water vouchers, starter packs, prepaid data, and ticketing.
In 2007, six years after its official launch, Blue Label Telecoms was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
Last year, Blue Label Telecoms officially changed its name to Blu Label Unlimited (BLU) Group Limited to reflect a major restructuring.
Big swings in the Blu Label Unlimited share price
Since Blu Label Unlimited was listed on the JSE in 2007, its share price has been volatile, with big swings.
Between 2007 and 2016, the share price increased by 145% to over R21.00. The company was on a winning run, and the Levy brothers wanted to expand.
They launched business ventures in India and Mexico through partnerships and acquired a large stake in Cell C. This did not work as planned.
They were crushed by competitors in India, and wrote that investment off. They also faced challenges in Mexico and sold their stake in 2020.
Cell C was their biggest problem. The mobile operator performed so poorly that Blu Label wrote down the investment to nil in 2019.
These challenges, especially the Cell C debacle, saw the share price decline from over R21.00 per share to under R2.00 during the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, the Levy brothers were determined to save Cell C. They appointed a new CEO, Jorge Mendes, and recapitalised the operator.
As part of the 2022 recapitalisation, they acquired additional shares in Cell C, giving them a controlling stake.
Last year, Cell C was spun out of Blu Label Unlimited and listed as an independent public entity on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).
The rise and fall of Blu Label Unlimited’s share price over the last year
Optimism around the Cell C initial public offering (IPO) saw Blu Label Unlimited’s share price increase to over R17 per share in August 2025.
However, the IPO disappointed, highlighting investor scepticism about Cell C’s business model and future prospects.
The Blu Label Unlimited share price plummeted by over 50% between August 2025 and June 2026 on the back of this disappointment.
The big share price decline has a significant impact on Mark and Brett Levy’s net wealth, which is closely tied to the company’s share price.
Brett Levy has 71,251,324 direct beneficial shares and 17,772,777 indirect beneficial shares in the company.
This combined holding of 89,024,101 shares equates to a 9.74% ownership stake in the Blu Label Unlimited Group.
Mark Levy has 63,843,916 direct beneficial shares and 19,120,980 indirect beneficial shares in the company.
His combined holding of 82,964,896 shares represents a 9.08% ownership stake in Blu Label Unlimited Group.
On 21 August 2025, Blu Label’s market cap was R15.56 billion. It declined to R7.14 billion over the last ten months, a R8.41 billion loss.
This means that Brett Levy lost R819 million, and Mark Levy lost R764 million over the last seven months due to the share price decline.
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No, they didn’t.
Did they take money out of there bank account and hand it over to someone? Did someone take money out of their bank account?
“Since Blu Label Unlimited was listed on the JSE in 2007, its share price has been volatile, with big swings.”
That is what happens with shares – they can go up, they can go down.
You buy an asset, such as an expensive vehicle for example – it loses value … but does anyone say ” he has lost ‘x percent’ of his wealth”?
Their NAV may have decreased … it may well go up by a lot again.
Are you going to write “big stories” about every businessman and investor in the world every time the price of the shares they hold fluctuates?
I can guarantee you that should the value of their shareholdings drop further (no matter how much) they will personally still be in a better position financially than they were before they started their business.