Altron's vehicle tracking business, Netstar, plans to turn movement data from the cars it tracks into a product it can sell, and one analyst says that could lift the group's earnings soon.

"Sometime in June, Netstar set out plans to sell anonymised vehicle movement data. This optionality brings potential near-term earnings," Ingot Africa analyst Timothy Kiarie told Business Day TV. Altron says the product will not be individual vehicle locations, but aggregated audience profiles built from vehicle location and driving data, combined with other anonymised data.

Netstar first set out the plan at Altron's capital markets day on 9 June. Managing director Warren Mande said it wanted to monetise data from more than 2.2 million vehicles, aimed at insurers, banks, advertisers, retailers, property developers and government.

At the time, Netstar described every connected vehicle as producing location, driving behaviour and diagnostic data, showing where it goes, how often, when and for how long, and said that combined with other Altron data, this could become a profile of how and where people move, usable as a "purchase intent signal".

It stressed that no new devices or spending were needed, because the data already exists. Altron's interim results last week show the business it sits in. For the 6 months to 31 August 2026, group revenue from continuing operations rose 5% to R5.1 billion, net profit after tax rose 17% to R385 million, and the interim dividend rose 15% to 55 cents a share.

Netstar's recurring revenue grew 11% to R1.2 billion, and its subscribers grew 8% to 2.3 million, with South African subscribers up 11%. Kiarie named Altron's fintech division as its strongest growth engine, with the data plan as a further opportunity.

MyBroadband's Jan Vermeulen reported Kiarie's comments and Altron's clarification about aggregated profiles. TechCentral covered the original June presentation, in which Netstar repeatedly described the data as anonymised and governed. Mande has also said in interviews that Netstar never sells people's data, only insights from anonymised data. In the US, the risks of this kind of business are now playing out in court: carmaker GM agreed on 29 October to pay $ 220 million, about R3.6 billion, to 36 states over claims it sold drivers' location and driving data to data brokers without proper consent, as TechCrunch reported.

Netstar's pitch makes business sense. It already collects the data to find stolen cars and run fleets, so selling insights from it is close to pure profit, which is why analysts like it. But location data is unusually personal. Where a car parks every night and every weekday usually points to where someone lives and works, which is why researchers have long warned that it is hard to make location data truly anonymous. Netstar says it only uses anonymised, aggregated data, and the difference between that and what GM was accused of matters.

The questions customers will want answered are simple: do subscribers know their car's data is used this way, can they opt out, and who checks how it is anonymised? Under POPIA, the Information Regulator has shown this month, with its fine against FNB, that it will look closely at how companies collect and reuse personal information. For anyone with a tracker in their car, it is worth reading the terms you signed.

And for South African businesses sitting on customer data, this is the opportunity and the test in one: insights can be valuable, but only if customers trust how they were made. It joins a run of questions about vehicle data this month, from border number plate cameras to the BYD Shark 6 hack.

You might also like our piece on the Ampath data breach, Omnisient's grocery data for credit, and the connected car abuse case.

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