ADvTECH Limited ($ADH)

Well, good morning to everyone in the room and on the call. As per this chart today's slides will be uploaded to our website this afternoon with the webcast and transcript to follow. We'll also take questions in the usual way after the presentation. And please join us for snacks and drinks once the formalities have been completed. And we also have gift packs for the people in the room and prepared by Capsicum chefs, so please grab one of those before you leave. So into the results. These are the high-level numbers, which I'll unpack as we go through the presentation. Revenue was up 10% year-on-year to ZAR 9.3 billion, whilst operating profit grew by 14%, breaking through ZAR 2 billion for the first time. Operating margin improved from 21% to 21.8% year-on-year, while headline and normalized earnings per share both grew by 17%. And we're also pleased to announce that we've increased our full year dividend also by 17% to ZAR 1.18. And then this slide captures our 2025 brand portfolio looking back in time before a significant amount of restructuring. And looking at the Tertiary section in the middle of the chart, managing multiple brands under the IIE was both complex and inefficient. Some of our brand names were also pretty weak with Oxbridge, HSM and Varsity College being prime examples. So we needed to address all these issues and also to settle a 20-year legal battle with the Department of Higher Education. And staying in the middle of this chart, this is our new tertiary structure. It's a lot simpler, more focused combining 6 brands into 2 effectively. And maybe more importantly, it's acceptable to government. So we've settled that case. We've migrated the IIE brand to Emeris and created a second degree awarding entity in Rosebank International, which in the time that we had to do. It was no small task. You'll also note significantly improved new logos for Vega, Rosebank and Oxbridge which we've renamed the Waterfall School of Business. And then finally, on the left of this slide from the slide here, you can also see the alignment of our Makini and Gaborone schools under the new International Schools Group brand, which I'll come back to a little later. And then I quickly wanted to cover a couple of other recent changes, reflecting our forward focus on education. We recently announced a change to our logo. As you can see here, we've created a friendlier, more modern look and through replacing the v in ADvTECH with a book device, we've created a clear link to teaching a man. You saw it nicely animated on the video that we opened with. We also recently announced a change in our Internet domain name, moving from .co.za to .com. And that, again, is to reflect the international nature of our business. So when you are looking for this presentation, you'll find it on our new website, groupadvtech.com. And we've also created a number of new senior positions to strengthen the organization, starting last year with Victor Chidongo being one of the most critical. He's been appointed to the role of Group PMO and is already bringing his broad experience to bear on our most complex projects. And Victor is with us today, welcome to him. And then taking a look at the current shape of the business. As you can see from the chart, 84% of our revenue and 95% of our operating profit now come from our education business. And within education, we're also pivoting over time towards our Tertiary division, which now contributes 51% of operating profits versus 44% from schools. And in terms of scale, it's also worth noting that our Rest of Africa Schools business now contributes nearly double the profit generated by resourcing. And then running through performance at divisional level. Schools South Africa's revenue was up 10% for the period, with operating profit up by 13%, while Rest of Africa Schools grew revenue by 28% and operating profit by 33%. Tertiary revenue and operating profit were up by 13% and 14%, respectively. And I think it's also worth noting that we broke through the ZAR 1 billion operating profit mark in tertiary for the first time last year. And finally, for the reasons shared at our half year results, we had a marginal decline in resourcing revenue and operating profit down 6% and 9% for the full year, respectively. And then moving on to 2026 student numbers, the latest cycle just completed. For the total group, enrollments are up by an all-time record 13,487 students or 13%. And this breaks down into increases of 5% in schools and 19% in tertiary where we are seeing exceptionally strong growth. And if you look at the compound annual growth rates, they are also looking very strong. And then looking at a further breakdown of the 5% schools growth. And South Africa, enrollments are up by 1%. It was just short of 1.5%, but 1% there. And then the Rest of Africa, we are up by 14%. Our international performance remained strong, but the SA growth was slightly muted, driven to a degree by tighter financial controls. We're also experiencing capacity constraints in some of our South African sites and addressing an emerging trend where financially stretched parents appear to be prioritizing private education at high school over the earlier grades, but we are addressing that as a matter of urgency. And looking at -- let me try that again. And looking at the compound annual growth rates, we're also seeing consistently strong growth over a 5-year period. And then breaking down the 19% tertiary enrollment growth. Our contact student numbers were up 17% year-on-year, whilst in distance, we were up 34%. And then looking at the 5-year trends, you'll note the significant acceleration here in total and on both the contact and distance splits. And though we are pleased to report such strong numbers, the outperformance of Rosebank and distance at lower price points continues to have a mix impact on revenue of around 3.5%. And just a reminder, Rosebank and distance fees are roughly 1/3 of what we charge for contact in Emeris and Vega. And then getting back to 2025 financials at group level. This slide gives the 5-year context for the 10% revenue and 14% operating profit increases I shared upfront. And looking at the compound annual growth rates, I just point out the consistency in the numbers with revenue and operating profit compounding over 5 years at 12% and 16%, respectively. And then looking at group operating margin. We've moved up to 21.8% from 21% last year, driven by operating leverage efficiencies and a mix shift towards our higher-margin education businesses, which Hannes will expand on later. And I'd also mention that our margin improvement is net of significant investments into people, systems and facilities as well as setup costs for our new university in Ghana. And then looking at the high-level margin breakdown between education and resourcing. Education is showing a significant positive shift from 24.2% to 24.7%, whilst we saw a small decline in resourcing driven by the USAID impact that I covered again at our half year results. And then breaking down the 24.7% education margin. Schools improved from 22% to 22.8%, whilst the Tertiary division increased from 26.6% to 26.8%. And it's worth noting that the tertiary number was tempered by around 0.5% due to those start-up costs in Ghana. And then further breaking down the schools numbers, South Africa posted an improvement from 20.5% to 20.9%, while Rest of Africa jumped from 32.4% to 33.7%. And then contextualizing the normalized earnings per share growth of 17% I shared upfront, this chart shows the growth trend over the last 5 years. And as you can see, NEPS is compounding at 18% and has nearly doubled since 2021. And then looking at NEPS in U.S. dollars, we delivered an increase of 33% year-on-year. And whilst rand strengthening, which was good while it lasted, undoubtedly bolstered our 2025 number. It's worth noting that we're compounding dollar earnings over the longer term at a very healthy 17%. And then moving on to the Schools division. This slide summarizes our major brands. We're currently in 4 countries with 122 schools and just short of 48,000 students. It's also worth noting that 20 of these schools operate outside of South Africa. And then returning to how we're strengthening the organization. Effective 1st January, we appointed Merice Roopram to the new position of Managing Director, House Schools. This was an internal promotion and followed the splitting of a larger grouping into 2 divisions to enable greater focus on both operations and growth. And we also appointed Tasnim Abed in January as the Academic Head for Crawford International. After an impressive 28-year career in education, Tasnim has been brought in to take Crawford's already strong academic performance to even greater heights. And then going back to the numbers. This chart covers the Schools division in total. And revenue was up 13% versus last year, breaking through ZAR 4 billion for the first time, whilst operating profit grew by 16% to ZAR 914 million. Looking at the CAGRs, over 5 years, we're compounding at 13% on revenue and 19% on operating profit. And then moving to School South Africa. Revenue was up 10% with operating profit up 13%. And looking at the CAGRs, again, we're seeing consistently strong numbers growing by 12% and 15%, respectively, over 5 years. And moving on to Rest of Africa Schools, as covered earlier, revenue and operating profit were up 28% and 33%, respectively. And looking at the picture over 5 years, our international division continues on its very strong growth path. And then taking a quick look at our academic performance last year. We improved our metric pass rate to 99.7% as the national IEB number actually went backwards slightly. And 94% of our students achieved Bachelors pass along with 3,371 distinctions at an average of 2.1 per student, which is again significantly ahead of what the IEB achieved in total. Three of our Co-Ed schools were also ranked in the top 10 in the country, which is an outcome we're very happy with, and 30 of our students were recognized for outstanding or commendable achievement. And I think it's fair to say that these strong results reflect our ongoing investment into the best teachers, facilities and systems available. And then returning to the theme of simplification. This slide shows how we're aligning our mid-fee African schools under one brand. Makini and the Gaborone International School have already transitioned, with the Flipper due to follow by the end of this year. And this slide shows how the change has been celebrated in Kenya and Botswana for the new branding has been very well received. And then moving on to real estate. Our newest Pinnacle College, Ridge View, which opened at the beginning of 2025, continues to perform very well. Our next building phase will start in July this year, taking our capacity up to just short of 600 students. And then a quick reminder of the geography of our operation in Nairobi, Kenya, marked with a star in the middle of this chart between our existing Makini and Crawford Schools is our latest acquisition, Regis Runda. So how is the Runda school performing? Well, the short answer is very strongly. Post acquisition and rebranding under Makini last September, enrollments have grown by 17% to nearly 1,400, which is well ahead of business case. And we also plan to introduce the Cambridge International curriculum later this year, which should give the school an additional boost. And then a quick update on Crawford International, Nairobi, where building work has now been completed on the new classroom blocks, I mentioned at interims. So the picture on the one side here shows the plan whilst the other shows the completed buildings as well as some recent renovations to our sports facilities. And the new block takes our capacity up to 1,300 students, which gives us much needed space for further growth. And then a quick word on Makini Statehouse. This is a school in a very prime location in Nairobi, but it was scheduled to close at the end of 2026, losing us nearly 300 enrollments. But after some excellent negotiation from our Makini team, we've managed to secure a new long-term lease on the site that will allow us to completely rebuild the school and increase capacity from around 280 to just short of 600 students. And then moving on to Flipper. Here, we continue to run at full capacity with a sizable waiting list. We're investing significantly in IT, teaching and learning support systems and academic training for staff in the schools, whilst our business development team is very focused on creating additional capacity to capitalize on strong market demand. And then moving on to build and ultimate capacity. This slide shows how the numbers have moved across all schools, so South African International from February '23 to February '26, then gives our 2026 SA International split in the last 2 columns. And overall, looking across the third row down we're maintaining a healthy 84% utilization of build capacity. But if you look at the splits, we have reasonable headroom in South Africa but a lot less internationally where utilization stands at 93%. This makes our international schools very efficient to operate. You saw those margin increases, but limits further enrollment growth. So we're working hard to expand our existing facilities and to add new sites. And then moving to Tertiary. This is how the division looks under our new brand structure. We currently run 32 campuses down from 34 last year, having absorbed the hospitality school into Emeris. And as we grow enrollments and simplify our operation, we're also driving greater scale in fewer locations with 2,230 students per campus this year versus 1,766 in 2025. So that's moving in the right direction. Student numbers now stand at nearly 71,500, up 11,400 year-on-year, as you saw on the enrollment charts earlier. And then returning to my people theme. We're also strengthening our Tertiary organization. We created the new position of Vice President of our Ghanaian University last year, appointing Dr. George Asamoah to the role. George has a wealth of educational and commercial experience and is doing an excellent job for us in Accra. We also appointed Tumi Nkosi to the new position of Marketing & Business Development Executive at Rosebank. Tumi's broad skills position us well to gain further market share in a highly competitive environment. And further strengthening the Rosebank organization, we also recently appointed Dashnee Singh to the new position of People and Culture Executive. Dashnee has been brought in to manage the rapid pace of growth at Rosebank, whilst also strengthening our employee value proposition. And then hopping brands to Emeris. We also appointed Dr. Andre Abrahams recently to the new position of Executive Academic Dean. Andre's role is critical to our successful transition to full university status and ideally suited to his experience. And staying with Emeris, Thabang Butelezi has been appointed to the new position of Marketing Executive. Thabang has been central to the launch of Emeris, and will have a key role to play going forward. And last but not least, in this section, we have the very experienced Andre Lubbe. Andre's appointment as Senior Campus Head has reduced the Emeris Managing Director reporting lines from 18 to 8, which allows significantly greater operational and strategic focus. And then going back to the numbers. Tertiary revenue is up 13%, affected to a degree by the mix shift I mentioned earlier and despite significant investments to prepare for university status and to strengthen our brands. Operating profit is up 14%. And looking at the compound annual growth rates, revenue and operating profit are compounding at 12% and 14%, respectively, over 5 years. And this chart shows the academic performance of our Tertiary division, where we are delivering sector-leading module success rates. And as you can see, our numbers also improved significantly from 2024 to 2025. And this chart maps the qualifications offered under our simplified brand structure, which span from skills development to PhDs in a range of delivery modes. And we're still covering every important commercial base, but in a much cleaner and more efficient way. And then covering the where are we with university status question, that I'm sure is coming. This chart shows our best guess, the forward milestones and timing in the absence of final information from government. As touched on earlier, the restructure of our Tertiary division is now complete, rebranding the IIE to Emeris and creating a second degree awarding entity in Rosebank, as you can see at the bottom of the slide there. We expect government to publish the final criteria and the application process later this year. And when this happens, we understand both brands will immediately be recognized as higher education coverages, but we'll ignore that from a branding perspective. We'll then apply for the interim step of University College status for Rosebank and University status directly for Emeris, given that we're further down the track there in terms of research output and post-graduate qualifications. And then moving on to Tertiary real estate. Our existing Emeris and Vega sites in Sandton have both been relocated to a new 4,700-meter squared mega campus on Grayston Drive, doubling student capacity to 9,000 in the process. First year enrollments are up 20% year-on-year. So we've started very strongly and ultimate capacity in this site is north of 11,000 students. And then as per our recent press release, we've also acquired 10 hectares of land Southwest of the Cornubia Mall near Umhlanga to build a mega university campus in KZN with capacity for 10,500 students. This will consolidate our existing sites for Emeris and Vega in the region and also includes significant residential accommodation. Phase 1, we hope to open in 2029 with full build-out due to be completed in 2035. And we also relocated Emeris Nelson Mandela Bay to new purpose-built premises in Walmart Park as pictured here. This facility increases capacity from 3,000 to 4,500 students and opened in January. In many ways, we mirrored what's been built in Sandton, including the world-class indoor sports center that you can see on the bottom right of this slide. And then staying with Nelson Mandela Bay, but hopping brands, we've moved our local Rosebank College site into the old Emeris campus in time for the 2026 academic year. This move represents a significant upgrade in facilities from the previous CBD location and increases student capacity from 1,400 to 2,400. And 2026 enrollment growth here has been very strong, up year-on-year by 54%. And we also acquired the recently vacated USA building in Parktown, Johannesburg for ZAR 55 million in June last year. This was our one useful gift from Donald Trump in 2025. We used the new building to relocate the Rosebank central support office and call centers from Braamfontein to free up teaching space, and that transition is now complete. And then moving back to the Rosebank Braamfontein campus itself, Phase 3 of our redevelopment project, increasing capacity to around 15,000 students will be completed in Q1 of 2027. Significant new recreational spaces and a distance contact center have been added, some of which you could see on this slide. And enrollments in Braamfontein are up 25% year-on-year. And then moving to Polokwane. A third building has been acquired for Rosebank that will increase capacity from 3,700 to 4,600 students. And again, enrollments are growing strongly on this campus. And then moving to the south of the country. The relocation of our Rosebank Cape Town campus to a Prime Central site was completed in August last year, doubling capacity from 3,000 to 6,000 students. In the new building, we've added a distance, contact center and again, significant recreational facilities and growth of this site is up over 30% year-on-year. And then moving to our first international tertiary venture, Rosebank International University College in Ghana. Our first enrollment season has gone well, running slightly ahead of target. We also expect to be awarded full university status in 2027. So things are progressing positively in Accra. Then a quick word on resourcing. As I touched on earlier, the overnight closure of USAID meant that our African payroll management business lost around 10% of its contracts in February last year. I credit our management team, were pivoting quickly to minimize the impact on full year performance, but we did end 2025 marginally down. On the plus side, however, through a big focus on efficiencies, we did return the SA business to profitability. And these are the numbers stand 6% on revenue and 9% on operating profit for the year. The underlying comp and annual growth rates are more positive, but we have some work to do to fully recover from the USAID shock. And then I'd like to invite Hannes to the podium to cover some group level financial analysis.

Good morning, everyone, to everybody in the here and also all our stakeholders online. I'm planning to cover and take you through a tour of a lot of the capital and balance sheet trends and then end off with a bit of an investor dashboard and everything that we've done in the past 14 months. But let's maybe get started with the enrollment growth that we've seen in the past enrollment cycle. Graph always put up. As you can see, the 5% growth from year-on-year on our total schools business. And then a comparison of all the reasons that we have for each of them at the top compared to '24, '25. As you can see, the metric levers are increasing, and that is just, again, testimony to the amount of high school students that we have and a greater focus that we must play on our academic outcomes for metric levers and especially those high school numbers. The whole trend around immigration and relocation, that's trending down by nearly 200 students. But we are seeing a bigger trend coming through on the financial side. And this is partially also driven with the choiceful decisions that parents are making, but also our enhanced credit control processes that we implemented during the year, and I'll give you some feedback on the impact of that on our balance sheet and income statement a bit later. I think the controllable aspects is definitely within our other levers, and this talks to our service and product components. That number is quite stable year-on-year and a testimony to the teams and what they've done and all the brands working on exactly the servicing that is required. When we then move over to the growth elements. Our acquisition numbers this year, just over 1,100, less, of course, than the Ethiopian acquisition we made in 2024 of 3,000 and then you get to the final amount of new enrollments that we've got in the group base still healthy at over 10,000 students. And I think that, again, there's choiceful decisions that we've made on the academics, especially in the higher high school grades that we've had. As we have focused significantly on our trade receivables, I'm pleased to present the progress that we've made in this environment with a few key metrics and trends. Before we get there, I think it's important to say what does a good recovery process look like? When do we say we've got good debtors health? And it starts with that first contracting that we have with the student and being able to build them accurately before you actually start getting into even a debtors management process. The quality of that debtors management determining our loss allowance percentage, even our credit losses and then a healthy student and a happy student is always prepared to pay already for services in advance. But these would not be possible without all the investment we've made in our systems during the year. The policies that is driving a lot of this consistently across all brands and the processes we're giving our staff to adhere to, to still implement credit control with due care and with a customer focus in mind. Just looking at the debtors breakdown. At the top, we've got the total group revenue increasing by 10%. I've then put the chart down for the education revenue, because that's where most of the debtors are actually sitting. You've seen that increasing by 13%. And then our group debtors increasing by 5% and a good nice difference between the revenue growth and the debtors growth. On the right-hand side on the bubbles is what I'm looking at a lot is the long-term trends on the CAGRs. Education revenue growing at 12.6%, but then debtors increasing only by 10.6%. And that 2% variance is definitely trending in the right direction from what we're seeing with regards to recoverability of the fees. I think this great trend, we still applied a fairly prudent approach to our loss allowance provisioning and kept that at the 49% level. But as you can see, the result of all of that is now a 10% debtors balance compared to revenue. But let's maybe go to have a look and see what is the impact of all of this debtors control eventually at the bottom line. So some of the same numbers that you've got in terms of the debtors balance, the loss allowance, but now I've added in what is the income statement impact of provisioning, bad debts write-offs, bad debts recovered. And as you can see, we've made a ZAR 37 million pivot from the prior 2024 number to the current ZAR 158 million number in 2025. Just to put that in context, due to debtors control, that's contributed about 5% of our headline earnings per share. Where we're standing now with regards to credit losses in terms of our revenue? We are now at a 2% level probably for the first time, and that represents that for every ZAR 100 that we are billing, ZAR 2 eventually becomes unrecoverable, which I think is a very commendable number considering the service industry that we're in. My favorite number to look at, especially at year-end is definitely our fees in advance, because this gives us an indication of how our parents and students experiencing the product and the service they've got and they're willing to already pay in advance for the next year. Most of our fees in advance is schools. You don't get too much on the tertiary side, maybe second, third years that are paying towards that level. So an impressive 7% increase on our fees in advance. And again, the follow-on impact now into the 2026 year making our cash flow, debtors management and capital management, so much easier starting with this balance that we already have banked for the full year. Just on the capital structure. We'll be looking at a few cash flow items and in group borrowings. As you can see, the cash flow from operations increasing very much in line with our profitability. So for every ZAR 1 that we put down to operating profit, we're actually putting that down to the cash flow levels at 13%, and that's ZAR 2.5 billion. On the long term, the CAGR is also trending in that exact line of about 15%. This is cash flow from operations. If we had to bring in the working capital impact, because we've been looking a lot into the trade payables and that whole cycle, the operating activities cash flow is actually 20% up year-on-year. When we now start looking at cash generated versus net borrowings, we can see that the ZAR 2.5 billion has resulted in our debt actually reducing from year-to-year. And this includes even an acquisition. So group borrowings at this stage is 50% less than what our cash -- net borrowings to cash generation was in 2021, when it was 1.1, it's now 0.5. And again, I think a good estimate to the operating leverage that we are able to manage and experience of the businesses that we're growing. And I think this is demonstrated a bit later with the diversification we have in terms of our higher-margin businesses contributing towards this cash flow generation, and that will be at the end of my presentation. Aspect, we all, kind of, get a lot of questions on is, of course, the debt to equity, which we have a challenge because the debt to equity is just starting -- is keeping on reducing, because we're generating some good cash. And with that reduction in debt is trending 3% to 4% per annum less even if we are leasing a lot of our other properties, which we include in our total debt. For context, I've also added some of the big projects that we invested in the past year and say, would that have made a significant impact or not, whether you spend ZAR 300 million or ZAR 400 million in some of these? And I must say we must start spending more. And I think that's been indicated on some of the investment projects that we are tracking, which you've seen that there's a lot of sites that will be coming on board from the 2028 financial year. We've been quite busy in the past year with our investment committee and improving quite a lot of projects. Maybe just a few slides on capital structure. This is one that I've always shown just the categories of what we spend money on. I'm not going to dwell on it for too long. But you can see the 3 major graph bars are indicating a lot of expenditure on increased capacity, whether that's on site, whether that's acquisition, whether it's the new tertiary sites. But to maybe give you a bit more of a strategic allocation, I've split up in a bit of a different way. And that is to just take it down to capacity increasing, maintenance and product enhancements. So when I refer to capacity increase, that's actual classrooms, bums on seats that gets created at our schools and tertiary sites, which we can build additional revenue for. That's what I referred to as capacity increase. Maintenance is maintaining our ZAR 7 billion worth of fixed facilities and replenishing those assets. And that's not just the hard, can I say, property, plant and equipment. This is also replenishing of IT equipment, vehicles, et cetera. And then as a third category that I call is product enhancement. And these are improving our current facilities for better extracurricular experience, better academic experience. And you don't always get additional income for that, and that is to sustain your brand and your product. Examples of these could include [ astroturf ] fields under roofswing, pools, et cetera. The bottom line I'm trying to make is that in the past 2 years, we are spending 60% of our total CapEx on increasing capacity for the enrollments that you've seen is growing through. So it's important that we spend that money well in advance of being able to absorb the capacity. Last year, shareholders asked us to start evaluating ourselves on the return that we get from all capital providers through the ROIC principle, return on invested capital. And I'm pleased to announce that we've got a 16.4% measurement on that, which is an approximate 4.5%, 5% premium on our weighted average cost of capital. But I think my biggest achievement, I think, for the full year is definitely the return on equity, now getting above the 20% level, and I think really on par with some of the higher-performing listed companies that we have in South Africa. Dividend. Yes, I mean, our dividend policy has always been to pay 50% of our normalized earnings per share based on a 40-60 split at interims. We've exactly aligned to that dividend policy, with a full year growth of our dividend of 17%, which is very well in line with our interim increase of 16% that we published in August. However, when we maybe just look at a 5-year trend, important to note the change that we had in the dividend policy going from 2022 to 2023. And you see that big jump there from a full year dividend of ZAR 0.60 to ZAR 0.87. And that's mainly driving your CAGR at this stage of 24%. So our current increase of 17% less than the CAGR, but there was a big change in the dividend policy 2.5 years ago. So yes, maybe just on the investor dashboard. Some questions we're getting, I thought maybe just put a slide together and look at a few aspects that's coming through. I think my first prominent aspect has been diversification. What is that going to yield for our group margins. And I thought of setting down the operating profit for the last 5 years, as you can see, per division. And let's see if we can get a view on a trend of where that's going. The SA Schools business, of course, very stable at a 35% level, again, a foundation because these students we have in our family for a lot longer period. And then you see the emergence of the Schools Rest of Africa doubling in the last 3 to 4 years. And of course, Tertiary, again, on the up in the last 2 years. So we've got a stable contribution from SA Schools, increasing contribution from Rest of Africa and Tertiary. But let's maybe just map that to the operating margins that we have in these divisions. The increasing contributing divisions have got the higher margins of nearly 34% in the Africa schools and 27% in the Tertiary side. Just based on this trend, I do see that we are going to be increasing our group operating margin because of that's the growing businesses that we have. And then linking it back to our capital structure, there's currently no limitations that we have on investing in any of the industries as long as it meets our internal benchmarks and hurdle rates. Getting to the investor metrics, how we've been able to make ADvTECH attractive for our prospective investors? I quickly went back and looked at our total shareholders' return as at 28th February, probably 27 February, a lot has changed from the 28th of February, 24% on a full year -- 1-year basis, and then you look back 3 years, 140%. Who would remember that 36 months ago, our share price was still ZAR 18. Market cap at this stage is ZAR 22 billion and depending on where the pound exchanges, we're already on ZAR 1 billion market cap. One thing that makes me proud is definitely our liquidity. Again, looking at the volumes of trade on our share quarter 4 '24 versus quarter 4 2025. And even as of yesterday, we're now at close to 500,000 shares per day trading, which is a 36% improvement on liquidity and representing nearly ZAR 19 million worth of shares traded daily. I've covered return on equity at 20.6% and then also cash flow at 0.5 on the cash generation to borrowings as well as the debt to equity currently sitting at 39%. Thanks, and back to Geoff.

Okay. Thank you, Hannes. I'd just like to close with a couple of slides before we move to the Q&A. As shared previously, we have 2 ambitions to lead in every market segment in which we choose to operate and to become the employer of choice in the Education and Resourcing sectors. And today's slides have hopefully demonstrated that we're making good progress on both fronts. And regarding our second ambition, I'm delighted to report that our Emeris division has just picked a national -- picked up a national Top Employer Award, and we intend to make this the first of many. And then a quick reminder of our strategic imperatives. I won't run through them all, but again, I think we're making solid progress on all fronts. And finally, from a prospect point of view, this slide remains as relevant as ever to our market position and priorities. So let me end the presentation here and invite Hannes back up so we can take some questions.

Is there a question in the room? I just need to get a microphone across.

Sorry for sitting on the other side of the room. Keith McLachlan from Element Investment Managers. Two questions. The first one is perhaps a little bit softer, but I just want to understand the Emeris brand. Why Emeris? What does it mean? That's a big rebranding or consolidation of brands and understanding the thinking behind the brand would help. And then second of all, if you have a look at and first of all, congratulations on the good debtors management, I mean, that's been a challenge going back about since the start of COVID. But if you have a look at your enrollments, the number of enrollments leaving for financial reasons has also gone up. And there's an interaction between those 2 things. How much are you chasing away potential enrollments in order to manage these debtors? And where is the optimal balance between the 2.

Okay. I think the combination of 6 brands and that complexity with the IIE that I mentioned earlier, we needed to address. So I think we have taken those 6 brands down to effectively 2. And Emeris, I think, is a much better name than Varsity College, which I guess was the lead. And it is a word play, but suggestive of academics and aspiration. There is a longer story behind it, but that's the essence. And I guess from the other point of view in terms of chasing enrollments, I think we've done a lot of work to try and balance effective collections and maximizing enrollments. We think that's in the right space. There's no point having enrollments if parents are unable under any circumstance to pay. And I think Hannes has done some really good work, particularly over the last year or so in that area. I don't know if you want to comment on that, Hannes?

I know, Keith, yes, the difference is about 300 members -- students and representing about 1% of the base. We looked at a trend and saying what is the carryover balances that parents do have from the end of the year into -- and what is their ability to pay that high fee then in the next year. And we did have to have a cutoff point. So I think it is a big step change that we have now for 2026. I think the parameters are now set, and I think parents will now be able to be guided by that in the year coming. So I'm not too concerned about it. I think we're more than able to now manage our total group of debtors much better by giving some good guidance on what our carryover balance is.

Next. Will we take an online question, Yousuf.

Thank you, Geoff. So the first question, and a few of them have had similar questions. Can you elaborate on how ADvTECH intends to counter the 1% growth in SA Schools and 2% organic growth in Rest of Africa?

Okay. Yes. I mean, I touched on this in the presentation. I think we are being tighter on debtors, but I think that's the right decision. That's not going to change. I think the issue, and this is a market-wide issue, of parents who are under financial stress, prioritizing private high schools over the pre and the preps is something that we're looking at. Hannes is actually leading a team across the business to look into understanding that better and addressing it, and that's something that we will do. The other problem is, and you look at aggregates and we have an 84% utilization of built capacity, but that's obviously a mix of some schools where we are out of capacity and some where we have more. And there are a small number of schools where we have excess demand that we can't accommodate. So we are looking to build where we can to address that problem. In Africa, and again, I mentioned it in the presentation, we are running almost full in our schools. And that 93% utilization includes the headroom that we've got in Runda, which we just acquired. So we are very tight. So the challenge there is to acquire more schools and more space, which, on the one hand, is a good problem to have, but something that we're very focused on. So capacity increases, addressing this trend in South Africa towards prioritizing high school education, and I think continuing on the track that we've established in terms of debt management.

Question on the capital commitments. There's a big increase in capital commitments from ZAR 1.29 billion to ZAR 2.78 billion. Could you give us an understanding of some of the larger projects? And then following on from that, is there any need for refinancing of the debt facilities?

Do you want to take that one?

I'll take that one. Yes, as mentioned, 2025 was quite a busy year in terms of our investment pipeline. We approved in excess of 5 new school builds. We approved the Emeris KZN, some of the bigger projects. And a lot of that capital expenditure -- okay, a lot of that capital expenditure for the schools builds and as well as the Emeris KZN is I think coming through in 2027. So you're going to start seeing quite a lot of CapEx being spent in 2027 and 2028. We're not always able to approve a project and immediately start investing on it. You build the land, you build phase 1, and you only spend 2/3 of your total investment on a school in your first 3 or 4 years. So that's just the pipeline that we're building up, but yes, that's definitely the demand that we see in a lot of our brands. And at the same time, with regards to financing, I think everybody agrees that our debt-to-equity ratio can definitely be more geared and we do have adequate facilities for that over the period. It's not that the debt is incurred all at once, it has actually incurred over a period. And at the same time, we're probably generating at this stage in excess of our current capital expenditure of ZAR 500 million to ZAR 600 million anyway.

Yes, I think, we'll go for Yousuf.

This is also quite a follow-up question, but is the group still having appetite for additional acquisitions? And what markets or assets are likely to be of interest?

Yes, we are definitely in the market for acquisitions, obviously, subject to a pretty lengthy list of criteria. That applies to South Africa, but also to our African markets. And our strategy in Africa is to build out our mid-fee brands, so the International Schools Group that I mentioned with the new branding, Crawford is the premium schools brand and Rosebank is a university brand. And we would like to expand those 3 in Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya and Botswana.

Khumo from FNB Wealth and Investments. Firstly, congratulations on another set of strong results. Just 2 questions from my side. What's been the biggest drag on the resourcing business in, well specifically in, South Africa over the last few years? And what has changed? What have you guys done? And then the second one is just your building of your residential offerings in the tertiary space. Is that only -- well, in the foreseeable future that -- do you guys have that offering across other campuses? Or currently, is it just in KZN?

Yes, I think the biggest challenge in the resourcing SA business, which is admittedly a very small part of the total company, has really been the economy. I think last year, we had the overhang of the election the year before. So we've had 2 very tough years. GDP growth has been under pressure. Interest rates have been increasing and businesses have been reluctant to hire. So it's been a tough set of market conditions to navigate. I think they are possibly improving slightly, but the team have done a great job of driving efficiencies and cutting costs, and that's helped us to bring that business back to profitability. In terms of residential offerings, I mean, what that does for us in the tertiary space is it effectively extends the catchment area for university campus. So it's attractive from that point of view. We want to focus on education, not running residences, but I think partnerships, especially where we own suitable land are of interest, because it should allow us to expand student numbers. So that's the focus going forward. It hasn't been historically. We're very light on residences generally, but we do see opportunity in the right circumstances going forward.

Maybe a follow-up on the resourcing division. It's looking increasingly strategically misaligned. What are the future plans on that division?

We've never had that question before. Listen, our forward focus is most definitely on education. It's 95% of our operating profits and where we expand most management time. That said, I think we've had a very well-run resourcing business, particularly the Africa Resourcing payroll management business, and it continues to make a significant contribution to operating profit. So I think -- let me leave it that our strategic focus is education, and we'll look at all options going forward regarding resourcing.

A question on the ROIC. The past 2 years, we've had about 60% of CapEx focused on capacity increases. And therefore, ROIC hasn't increased as much. Can you please share what the incremental ROIC we can expect in the long term and the key drivers of that?

We'd love to know. We'd love to know.

I can't give you my forecast, but it is positive. Considering our operating leverage that we have in our current business. At the end of the day, you're still going to look at 119,000 students and that growing and we're getting operating leverage on it. And a lot of your CapEx is now for the 13,000 -- 10,000 that we're adding on. I do think that our base is big enough to absorb a lot of the J curves that we're investing in. So I can't give you exact number, but I am positive that ROIC will keep on improving. The only time it really is, I think, is going to have a big impact is when you start getting to significant acquisitions or builds like in Emeris KZN, something, something significant ZAR 1 billion plus. You've got to go quite big considering the base that we're in. Yes, there will be small blips on a school maybe within a division. But at the group level, I think we're now at a fairly sizable size that the J curves doesn't impact us so much.

Can you give an indication of the average fee increases for schools and tertiary?

For this year just passed, we'll assume. Yes, we're averaging around 5%, 5.5%, varies a bit by brand. But having done some post analysis, it looks as if we've taken below market increases, and that's our intended position.

Okay. The rest of these questions are more or less unrelated, so I'm just going to run through them. The Star Schools JV, can you give some insight on the challenges in that segment, resulting in the impairment?

The Star Schools business is mainly focused on matric rewrites, as you've seen in the trend with the public sector as well, matric pass rates increasing and improving over time. And the public is also offering that matric rewrite service anyway. So finding it very difficult to build a private business in that market. And for that reason, we were prudent to rather start looking at what is the realizable value of that investment. It's a small ZAR 6 million impairment that we raised in the current year.

This question goes back to a previous one. The SA Schools fee growth appears to be in excess of inflation. Have you looked at how that is potentially affecting the enrollment growth?

Yes. I mean inflation has obviously been on a fairly sharp downward track. Let's see what it does with the oil price spiking. We have taken increases that are below education inflation, somewhere above CPI. CPI is maybe not wholly representative of our cost base, but we are endeavoring to make our fees as affordable as possible to drive enrollments, but just balancing exactly where we sit in the cycle between when we set the fees, when we collect them and what the official inflation rates are.

Next question is, given the strong growth in the Rest of Africa segment, can you help us understand how the group looks at currency risk across the African operations and whether there's any hedging employed?

Yes. I mean, I'll maybe just cover that quickly, and then we'll walk to you, Hannes. I mean, I think in this last year, we have had an adverse currency impact in the Africa division. In rands, we performed very well. But in local currency, we performed extremely well. So we've managed to absorb that currency impact in '25. But I'm sure you want to expand, Hannes.

Just to repeat on some of the previous principles, we've covered. Our Africa business are all funded and incurred in local currency, whether it's the capital expenditure teachers, revenue, et cetera. So in country, you don't have that significant risk only once you start consolidating it back into the South African rand for the group reporting purposes. And we've also kept a lot of the cash in these African operations, although they might be changed into dollars. And all of that cash was made available to buy our [indiscernible] through the acquisition. So we are currently treating the whole Africa portfolio as a bubble on its own. And if there is an opportunity, that's big enough and it needs funding from South Africa, we're happy to contribute as well, but very cash generative and not extracting those funds theoretically to South Africa for payment of dividend, it's used for the expansion of Africa business.

Could you give a bit more color on the strategy behind the Waterfall School of business?

Okay. So Oxbridge, which we transitioned to Waterfall is vocational, and it was a paper-based entity doing generally short courses. We looked at whether there was equity in the name, and there was very little, in fact, there was a view possibly that there was negative equity in the Oxbridge name. And we wanted to give it a clean sheet and a fresh start. We've digitized all of those paper-based courses. And that's a big step forward for us. We've overhauled the marketing. And I think the Waterfall name is far better than Oxbridge and also a much better fit with our Rosebank brand and our future plans. So that was the thinking there.

Can you please discuss the competitive positioning across the brands and how competitors are reacting to the new brands and capacity increases?

Well, if we look at reported numbers and we look at our own growth, then it's pretty clear that we're gaining significant market share. So I guess the competition will be aware of that and reacting to that. But those brand changes and simplification are definitely benefiting us. I guess if we really want insight into what the competition are doing, we should go and ask them.

Okay. Well, the Middle East war, if it persists and results in inflation increases, have an impact of the business -- on the business, perhaps a shift towards lower-priced distance learning.

Yes. I mean, I think the oil crisis could drive inflation. I mean, Hannes actually had a very interesting stat looking at the possible impact. I don't know if you want to share that one, Hannes?

I think as we all saw the article maybe in last week in News24 for every rand that the petrol price increase, we have a 0.4% CPI increase. So it looks like we're heading for 2% CPI increase, if I look at the share -- the petrol price increase for next week.

Yes. And I think if inflation racks up, then that puts pressure on interest rates. And I think we were all looking forward to an easing cycle that may not happen. It may need to go in the other direction, and that puts the whole country under economic pressure. We've never had a demand problem in our education business. What we have is an affordability challenge. And anything that puts parents under strain is clearly bad from that point of view. So we hope that, that conflict is resolved quickly and the short-term impact unwinds, but any negative economic impact will affect our business.

The question is, what sort of margins do you consider sustainable in tertiary?

Yes, we're going through an intense growth phase and some pretty big J-curves on new builds. So on the one hand, you've got operating leverage. And on the other hand, you've got a number of new sites. So I think balancing those, it's having a mitigating effect on margin improvement in the short term. I mentioned the 0.5 point impact of the new Ghanian University in the presentation. I think as that unwinds, we definitely have potential to further grow our tertiary margins.

And this should be the last question. Have you seen or do you foresee the emergence of AI having a positive, negative or mixed impact on education in general?

We think it's positive. And I think we're using it to support better teaching and learning and through proprietary systems to ADvTECH like ADvLEARN. So it's driving better experiences for kids. It's allowing us to communicate in different languages and to give better support. So there are a huge number of streams of work happening in that area. But generally, I think it allows us to provide better and more differentiated support to our students and also more efficiency in our operations. But we embrace it.

Yes, there's no further online questions.

Okay. Anyone else in the room?

Geoff and Hannes, congratulations on a very strong set of results. This is Frank Thompson, speaking, a former CEO. And I just thought I'd observe on your last comment regarding the achievement of the maximum or optimum margins for tertiary. It's always my view that the ultimate margin comes just before you go ex growth. You always need an appropriate percentage of entities that are marching up the J-curve and therefore, not yet achieving optimum growth as you continue to roll out new investments. So I think that question about the maximum margin for tertiary is a double-edged sword because achieving the maximum might mean you are ex growth and no longer achieving further growth into the future.

Yes. No, I think that's a very fair description, Frank. And as I mentioned, we're balancing the growth impact with the operational leverage impact. And ideally, we'd like to see those in harmony as we continue to grow student numbers aggressively. Okay. Are there any other questions? Okay, in which case, thanks for your attendance. And we have drinks and snacks outside and don't forget those Capsicum goodie bags before you leave. Thanks very much.