Altron Limited (AEL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome to Altron's Annual Results for the 2025 Financial Year. My name is Siphamandla Chabalala, I am an Altron Ascent beneficiary. So a little bit of my back story. In my past life, I was actually enrolled for BCom Accounting, funny enough. And then within that same year is when I actually chose to deregister because it just didn't make sense for me. At this time, I went soul searching, and I looked at my own temperament, and what I was like mostly drawn to. So as I was looking through the different industry, tech is the one that actually like clicked to me. As I delved in and did more research, that's when I discovered like web apps, that's where like web development would come in and mobile apps, that's where like mobile development would come in. And around the same time, I grasped the fundamentals in Python, HTML and CSS, yes, in that order. And fortunately enough for me around the same time as when my mother approached me. So my mother is actually an employee of Altron, and she approached me with an opportunity to join Ascent. I took the opportunity because this was a no-brainer. Needless to say, 5 IT certifications later, and here we are. With me today are Altron's CEO, Werner Kapp; and CFO, Carel Snyman. To our viewers watching online, if you have any questions, you can post them in the chat box. Aligned with our values of inclusion, you will see that we actually have our results being interpreted on behalf of the deaf community. As a reminder, we'll be making forward-looking questions. Please be mindful of the cautionary language that is used in our presentation and the risks and uncertainties linked with forward-looking statements. Unless otherwise noted, all growth comparisons will be relating to the prior corresponding period. Some words of today. If you're going to be anything, be a spring mark. With that said, I'd like to welcome aboard our captain and CEO, Werner Kapp, to walk you through the results.

Sure. I think we can just end there. An easy race to the crown. Thank you very much for that introduction, Siphamandla. As he mentioned, he is one of a number of people that is a recipient of the bursary through our Ascent program. Delighted to have your mom with us. I'm sure you are as proud of him as we are, and best of luck for your future studies. Thank you very much, everybody. You know you're getting old when you have to take your glasses on and off for a presentation like this. Altron turns 60, I turn 50. Welcome to the results presentation for the financial year ending 28th of February 2025. Thank you very much for joining us. I'd really like to thank Investec, our sponsor, for hosting us, members of the analyst community, shareholders, a number of our Board of Directors. And then, of course, I see almost a full house, I think, for the Altron Group Exco and our Managing Directors. So really the people that are responsible for delivering the numbers that I have the privilege of presenting to you here today. So let's jump straight into it. Really, really delighted that very disciplined execution of a focused strategy that we put in place about 2.5 years ago has resulted in what I think is a really outstanding set of results in what remains a very constrained economic environment. This is evidenced by -- in our continued operations, revenue growth of 3%. EBITDA is up 27% to ZAR 1.8 billion. We're just shy of the ZAR 1 billion mark in operating profit now, so a 50% growth in operating profit year-on-year, which results in a 73% increase in our headline earnings per share to ZAR 1.78 a share, a 64% increase in earnings per share of ZAR 1.56 per share. And of course, as Carel will tell you a bit more about later, a 23% increase in cash generated from our operations. If we turn towards our group results, now just to remind you, that includes, hopefully, the last of our remaining discontinued operations, which is Altron Nexus. We have signed a sale and purchase agreement for Nexus. It's a management buyout. Subject to condition precedents being met, we are targeting 30th of June to be able to conclude that process. So including the results from Nexus, revenue is down about 1%, EBITDA up by 69%, operating profit up over 100% year-on-year, and headline earnings per share up by over 100% to ZAR 1.34 per share, and our earnings per share up by over 100% to ZAR 1.03 per share. Cash generated from operations up by 7%, and this has allowed us to declare a final dividend of ZAR 0.50 per share, which is up 52% year-on-year. I really want to take this opportunity to thank the -- over 4,000 people working for Altron that has produced these results. I mean these are the real heroes. These are the people -- I mean, if you look at these case studies, these are the people that are out in the field every day, helping our customers and guiding them to drive their business forward and are their partners on their digital transformation journey. This is the easy part to present it. So thank you for our real-life heroes who are out there every day really using technology to solve some epic problems. So I mentioned our strategy, and how we believe that the execution of that strategy is leading to these kind of results. So I just want to give you -- firstly, maybe just remind you of our strategy and then just give you a little bit of an update on where we are in the strategy. We think we're really well positioned in high-growth markets. This digital revolution, I'm sure all of you, there's not a day goes by that you don't read about some new advancement in technology, particularly in artificial intelligence. And this is really resulting in a growing need from our customers to be able to understand how they can use these digital technologies to really drive their business forward. And this is really addressed by Altron. We think that our combination of Platform, IT Services and Distribution businesses puts us in a really unique opportunity to be a preferred technology partner for South Africa's big corporates and for public sector to be able to drive their business forward. And this informs our strategy of being the leading Platform and IT Services business in our chosen markets. So what does that mean for us? We really have 3 key growth levers that we are focusing on: to grow revenue, to improve our operating leverage and to continue to drive transformative growth in our business. This is really enabled by a very disciplined allocation of capital. I want to touch a little bit later on some examples about how we believe we are differentiating ourselves through collaborating better between our different OpCos, so we can really bring the power of the group to our top customers and also continuing to develop our high-performance culture. I think the investment that we're making, not just in our people, but also in students through Ascent is an example of it. And what that really allows us to do is to -- been able to deliver on the short-term profit improvement strategies in Netstar, and what used to be our Altron Systems Integration business. We are still targeting in the medium term to deliver on at least 19% operating profit margin in our Platform businesses and at least 7% operating margin in our IT Services businesses and in the long term to create value for our shareholders from our portfolio of leading Platform and IT Services businesses. Just so that this side of the room doesn't feel left out. Now you've got your chairs in front of me. There are sort of 3 things I want to just focus on, which is customer obsession, which is something that is the absolute heart of what we do as a business. How that's translating into revenue growth. And then I want to talk a little bit about what we're doing in transformative growth, and how we see that. So as you know, our mission really is to be our customers' trusted partner on their digital transformation journey. To be able to do that, you need to really be able to understand your customers well. I think it was about 2 years ago that 1 of the key things we looked at was consolidating our property. I think today, we're in about 46% of the property space that we were back then. And we made a conscious decision to reinvest those savings into growth. We did it in 2 places. The 1 is to really implement this stack of leading marketing technology that I'm going to give you a bit of an update on that helps us understand and serve our customers better. And the other one then really is across the board, investing in our sales force. I mean, hopefully, you guys can see a really revitalized brand. You can see our updated go-to-markets and just a different engagement that we have with our customers in our online presence. So 2 things that I touched on when we did interim results was a tool called [indiscernible], which is really our customer dashboard, how we engage with our customers and a tool called Templafy, which is an AI-driven tool really leading to internal operational efficiency. We've got about 32 customer touch points met in [indiscernible]. I think there's about 35,000 data points that we've ingested into the system from our customers over the last year that we use on a sort of a daily, monthly and weekly basis to analyze our customer behavior to be able to understand them better, serve them better and, of course, sell to them better. My team is sitting here. They know every business review that we have, before we go into the financials, we start with our top client dashboard. We always start with guys, how is it going with customers? Are they happy? Even forbid, if they're unhappy, what are we going to do to be able to fix this. Templafy, really -- the amount of collateral for those of you in the room, and I'm sure there's many of you that also spend your time servicing customers, the amount of collateral and documentation that this produces can be overwhelming sometimes. We've got about 46,000 documents that we've now produced through the system, and we reckon we've saved about 6,000 hours of manual work by doing this. Now all of these efforts in understanding our customers better, investing in ourselves, what this is really leading to, as you can see, is growth in our Platform business is off a relatively high base of 12%. Most importantly for us, that very profitable annuity revenue, which is a key focus for us, is up 10% year-on-year and about 63% of our business is now annuity revenue. And that's really very much driven by this transformative growth in our business. We look at transformative growth through 5 lenses. The first one is to continue to expand our current Platform ecosystems and create network and flywheel effects through that. Very practical examples of that is the Fleet Bureau in Netstar, which we launched last year. I'm going to tell you a little bit more about that, which has led to 13% growth in our Enterprise business. You're going to see a stellar set of results again by our FinTech business, and that is really because of the extension of that Platform ecosystem, focusing specifically on value to that small and medium enterprise in our credit, rating, collection and payment space. And similarly, in HealthTech, really transitioning from focusing on just the private practice management switching part of our business to really exploiting the health care data through the use of AI to help drive our customers' expansion. The second thing that we look at is embedding AI everywhere in our business. And we look at it through 3 elements. That is enabling our customers. Altron Digital Business has been recognized as having 1 of the leading data and AI practices in the country. So we really help our customers to really use the technologies that they've got, and how do they leverage that, and how do they leverage the data capabilities better for their business. We embedded in our different OpCos, that HealthTech solution that we were talking about, Netstar, which I mean, Grant will be able to tell you better than I. I think by the time -- I think we probably ingested about 5 million messages 2 hours into the day. AI really helps us to be able to interpret this, to be able to respond better to our customers. And then, of course, Templafy is a good example of how just internally, we're embedding AI to be more efficient in our business. The third area of transformative growth for us is to be able to deploy capital to look at strategic acquisitions where it makes sense, where we believe we can drive sustainable competitive advantage in our business. The fourth one is really able to leverage the group data that we've got to be able to monetize that data, and we really do that by helping our customers use that data to get to tangible actionable business insights as that helps drive their business forward. And the fifth one that I really want to take you through on the next example because it touches on this differentiation through collaboration is really how we show up better, and how we can more powerfully bring all the solutions that Altron has got as a group to our top clients. And I want to give you an example now -- we can give you a number of examples. The reason why I chose retail is I think for most people in the audience, it's something that we can associate with. We partner with 4 of the top 5 retailers in South Africa, and we believe that we are a unique South African technology partner in this segment. So if you will just take yourself through kind of simplistically speaking, what the value chain of a retailer looks like? Goods have to be receipted from suppliers. That has to go to a -- typically a distribution center or a warehouse that then has to go out to a very distributed retail footprint. Once it gets to this warehouse, you have to manage this really well. You've got to manage your own business better, and you have a large distributed workforce because of your retail footprint that you've got to manage. Then, of course, when you get into the store itself, of course, payment has to be facilitated. And then payment doesn't just happen, of course, as we know, in-store for us these days. It's really omnichannel. Online delivery is a very, very important thing for us. That online -- that channel has to be secured. I mean we read a lot of what's happening, kind of a lot of interesting behavior happening through e-commerce channels. And of course, there's a real opportunity for retailers to understand your behavior better and in other words, give you better offers that makes more sense for you and for them. So if we look at our business, Netstar, particularly the Fleet Bureau that we were talking about and the managed service solutions that we've got really enables more efficient delivery of that supply chain and logistics. Altron Digital Business really has digital solutions that helps drive retail forward, whether it's better warehouse management, whether it's better workforce management, whether it's modernizing your applications or your infrastructure or whether it's supporting the till point where the transaction happens in store. FinTech, of course, I mean, you saw the VisionWorks example, experts at facilitating that payment, but more than that, also allowing value-added services to be done at the point of purchase. If you're using an online channel, our Altron Security Business is the biggest seller of digital certificates in the country and secure service layers that really helps to authenticate that channel. And then in our Health Care business, by using health care data, we can, as an example, reward you partners with, whether it's retailers or reward programs to reward you, not a good example for me necessarily, as you can see, for healthy living, kind of understanding what you are doing. So I hope that gives you a real practical example of how we believe that this integration through collaborating really positions us uniquely with our customers to help them drive their business forward. And we're really delighted to see that this strategy that I've just taken you through quite quickly is delivering sustainable growth for us. So if we look at that over a kind of a 2.5-year period since we put that strategy in place, I mean, almost doubling our operating profit and very pleasingly for us, doubling our operating profit margin during the same period. Cash generated from operations has improved significantly. And of course, we keep an eye on making sure that we have a very healthy EBITDA to cash conversion ratio. Very importantly, for us, what that is resulting into a significant growth, I mean, from ZAR 0.73 to ZAR 1.78 in headline earnings per share. Very importantly, our dividend payment has almost tripled over the last 2.5 years. And of course, something that we really kept an eye on kind of 3 years ago, our return on invested capital was actually below our weighted average cost of capital. And as that has moved over a period of time from 7% to 19% to a point where we are now really materially above our weighted average cost of capital. And we're really humbled as we celebrated about 6 weeks ago, I mean, you saw some of those of you that we early saw the video reel, we were really humbled to celebrate our 60th anniversary as a business. And really nice to know that the efforts that we're putting in and that all of our people are putting in is also being rewarded in the market in terms of being one of the best performing stocks in the JSE. We were really humbled to be awarded by Sunday Times. We finished fourth in the top 100 companies. That's shareholder return measured -- total shareholder return measured over a 5-year period. And very importantly for me, considering the focus that we have on our people is that last year, for the first time, we were recognized as one of the top employers in South Africa. And this is really as a result of continuing to solve real-world problems from the epic to the everyday in FY '25. So let's go into some of the details about how that translates into performance per business. So in Netstar, so again, I want to take you back to the profit improvement strategy that we put in place, and what it is that we wanted to do. We wanted to do 3 things. We wanted to grow market share. There were some key operational efficiencies in that business. You may recall, particularly related to our contract fulfillment ratios and our [ prefit ] conversion ratios that we wanted to improve because that was negatively impacting profitability. But we also wanted to have transformative growth in this business. We wanted to future-proof the business, and we wanted to build out our Big Data as a Service offering. And we've managed to do that and have another year of growth and profitability in this business. Netstar itself celebrated its 30-year anniversary last year, and we're delighted during FY '25 to have passed the key milestone of 2 million subscribers. 16% growth in subscribers, 10% growth in consumer, 13% growth in that key enterprise space for us. Churn at 19%. That is really impacted, which I'm going to talk to you about next about some of the significant churn problems, unfortunately, that we have experienced in our Australia business. The South African business' churn is very much on target. And we have managed to continue to keep those operational efficiencies at the level that we wanted. We targeted our contract fulfillment ratio to be above 90% and our [ prefit ] conversion ratio to be above 60%. We've managed to maintain that by continuing to expand our fitment center, and we're really driving growth through continuing to digitize and really integrate with a lot of our strategic partners. Very proud of our Big Data as a Service offering. So since we launched that Fleet Bureau, I think it was January of -- April of last year, 33,280 assets are now being checked in that Fleet Bureau. I mean this is a staggering statistic. Now you know why we need artificial intelligence. 226 billion data points processed per annum, that's up 26%, and that is a key part of growing that Platform ecosystem for us and growing that global managed fleet solution that I spoke about. And that is really translating into a really good set of numbers where our forward momentum in this business gathers strength. I think the South African business has really been kind of transformed over the last 2 years. As you can see, as a group, 10% growth in revenue, 17% growth in EBITDA and a 3 percentage point margin expansion in the business. Unfortunately, H2 is softer than we would like it to be, and that is really because the 3G to 4G migration in Australia, and this is disappointing for us. That simply has taken longer or the impact of that, I think, took a lot longer to work its way into the market than we anticipated, leading to us actually making a loss in that business, I think, for the first time since we acquired it. As you could expect, we're all over this. In fact, the reason why I think Grant is still fairly blurry eyed is he just landed back from a trip to Malaysia and Australia. I think it was on Saturday morning, and we expect it to take about 12 months for us to be able to restore that business to profitability. But I think overall, a really fantastic set of results in the Netstar business, and I think evidence again of us continuing to execute on the plan that we set out in that profit improvement strategy from 2.5 years ago. If we turn to FinTech, outstanding performance in FY '25 and really building on a very strong performance in FY '24. The growth opportunities in enabling microfinancing in underserviced communities is really a big driver of that growth for us. I mentioned under transformative growth about how we really made very focused investments in the quality of our platform, also our sales distribution system to be able to grow that segment for us, resulting, I think, an astonishing performance, 17% revenue growth. What's very important for us, as you can see there now, is look at the shift of the annuity revenue. That has now shifted from 74% to 84%, and that's really led by that collection and payment platform where we're also really investing in it. You can see we put ZAR 20 million of innovation into building that out further and also really using the data insights that we get to enhance the credit risk profiling and give our customers bigger insights. That revenue growth in the annuity translates into a 38% growth in EBITDA and a 6 percentage point margin expansion, which is really driven by the higher-margin annuity revenue mix in the business. We are also proudly a founding member of the Association of South African payment providers. So we're playing an active role in the national payments reform, which hopefully can drive further financial inclusion. Fantastic performance, well done to the FinTech team. If we turn to Altech, just another example there, as I said earlier on, about where we really want to grow our capabilities and expand the platform ecosystem, really exciting opportunities for us in data, and that has resulted in a 6% increase in revenue. I mean this has always been a large annuity business for us. 93% of that business is annuity revenue. We specifically, as I said, focus on building out our corporate segment and then really building out the data opportunities. And as you can see there, 17% growth in the corporate segment. 3% growth, that's very important for us. We want to continue. You can see there the acquisition versus churn ratio for us in the private practice management space, very important. We always wanted above 1, ideally above 1.5, so really pleasing to see that at 1.6 with 862 new customers added in FY '25. And as you can see there, the 17% growth in the corporate segment driven by 22 new corporate logos that have been added in this business. And we continue to see really exciting opportunities with health care, banks, insurers, financial service providers to really use data for health care-led informed expansion. Also, our oncology practice is growing. We've got 22 new practices on that platform. And all of this has resulted in a 15% improvement in EBITDA and a 3 percentage point margin expansion in FY '25. So really superb performance by the health care business. Now before I turn to IT Services, our next segment, I just want to remind you of the reason of why we look at the businesses in terms of the Platform segment and the IT Services segment is because you've got fundamental differences driving the economic models of those business. Platform businesses, high -- you invest in the platform, high annuity revenue and you really kind of get that flywheel effect in unit economics. IT Services, lower annuity revenue and much more exposed to the cyclical buying patterns of our customers. Altron Digital business launched on 1st of March last year. That was really the amalgamation of our Karabina, Altron Systems Integration and Managed Solutions business. We really did that because we wanted to provide a digital business at scale that can help corporate customers on this digital journey of this, and it really was a growth play for us. You may recall, in ASI, we drove a profit improvement strategy that was very much aimed at the cost out and containing costs, but we want to make sure that we grow this business. Three ways that we really looked at that growth. Now for better or for worse, that's probably why I'm so gray. I've spent about 25 years in this industry. And by and large, about 30 to 40 clients at any given point in time makes up 80% of your -- of the utilizable spend in the market. It's just the nature of that. I think you'll find that with any of our competitors as well. So we really want to make sure that we look after them really, really well. We want to cross-sell into those customers. We want to increase our hardware sales. Why is that important? Because ultimately, if we can do that and attach services to it, we get to be able to drive up our annuity base better. And that's the third thing that we're focusing on. So it's really pleasing for us to see that the leading indicators in that business, as you can see there, are all heading in the right direction, significant improvement in pipeline with our top 30 customers, net new annuity and an increase in new annuity contract signed. So we've really built a solid pipeline there. At this point in time, I do have to bring my gray hair to bear a little bit. So for you -- those of you in the room that love to model this kind of information, I just want to remind you, the sort of pipeline to profit conversion cycle in this business is typically 12 to 18 months. And unfortunately, it is a business that is kind of most impacted by uncertainty in the market. When people are uncertain, they sit on their hands. They don't spend CapEx. And that could kind of move out those cycles to 18 or 24 months. And that's very much in FY '25, for example, what we saw in this business. We believe, as I mentioned, that we're very well positioned to benefit when the deferred IT spend is released. The integration has gone really well. I think we've built a world-class leadership team and a world-class sales leadership team. As you can see there, we've got strategic sales programs that are deployed throughout the business, and we've extended our partner ecosystem. Very importantly, we've strengthened our key cloud and security capabilities as well. Unfortunately, it is vulnerable to economic and political uncertainty when large enterprises delay their IT CapEx, and that has adversely impacted our performance in FY '25. I think at interims, we already spoke about these 2 large projects that were delayed. We had some legacy nonrecurring costs. So we think we're on top of that. And there were 2 large customers that reduced our spend. And that has resulted in our revenue being below expectations. If you exclude the ATM business, revenue has been flat year-on-year. And unfortunately, because of the lower annuity contribution, you can see as your EBITDA goes down -- EBITDA is down by about 44%, so will your EBITDA margin. Having said that, I want to congratulate the ADB team. As I said, I think the strategic intent that we have in this business, the team is doing all the right things, and we're building a world-class organization that I think is poised for growth when the market opportunity does present itself. Altron's security, again, you may recall, the revenue pressure in that business comes from 2 things. One, so again, I sound like a little bit of a stuck record, but you've got your biggest customer that decided to delay CapEx spend. And then it's just -- there's an accounting principle there as well. I'm not sure, Carel, if you're going to take the audience through a little bit more detail, which is how revenue mix between agency and principal is recognized. I mean we saw that. We looked at the business, and we're really focusing on -- the leadership team is really focusing on 3 key things. Number one, always how you go to market, how you build out that annuity in Managed Services. Of course, when revenue is under pressure, you have to tighten your belt. So we looked at some of the costs in the business. And we also wanted to make sure that the business is really focused in terms of its go-to-market. So as you can see there, we've won -- this Managed Services focus of us has resulted in winning 2 notable contracts in the Managed Services space. We've realigned our go-to-market so that we're very clear about the 4 go-to-markets that we have. And this has resulted in a 13% improvement in EBITDA and a 17 percentage point EBITDA margin expansion despite the 12% decline in revenue, and that's really on the back of those annuity contracts, optimizing an optimized cost base and also boosted by -- as I said, when revenue is tight, I mean, you just -- you tighten your belt, and we had about ZAR 7 million worth of once-off cost savings in FY '25. So to the security business as well, really well done to that team on responding to market conditions, building out the future capability of the business, delivering a very good set of results. Altron Document Solutions, as you know, this is a business that has gone through some seriously challenging times. This was in discontinued operations. It was held for sale when I arrived at Altron. That sale ultimately fell through, I think, in February of 2024, if I recall correctly. At that time, we made some leadership changes, appointed Warren to manage this business for value. We made the decision not to sell the business. We thought it would not be beneficial to shareholders if we do that. And I think an absolutely fantastic performance by the leadership team under very, very trying conditions, having to really restore staff morale, having been held for sale, I think, for about a 2.5-year period. This is a tough market, only growing by about 1 -- it's only growing by about 1%. We've really strengthened our relationships with Xerox. Steve Bandrowczak, the CEO of Xerox, was down in South Africa for our 60th celebration, spent about a week here, spent time with Altron customers, partners, the distribution channel. There are some key product initiatives that are underway because ultimately, you've got to win in the market. So we're really focused on making sure along with Xerox that our solutions are relevant and that we can ultimately win in the market. This is a long journey. It's a tough one for this business. But having said all of that, I'm sure that you will agree that this is a phenomenal result. Maybe just to point out from a comparative perspective, I mean, the FY '24 number did have, I think, it was about ZAR 94 million worth of provisions that we took in the business at the time, but still a fantastic performance, 1% revenue growth, over 100% improvement in EBITDA and delivering an EBITDA margin of 6%, and this business is profitable, and it is, in fact, generating cash. Last but not least, if we turn towards our Distribution business, Arrow, now this is a business where you really see the lead times coming for quite a while, probably about 12 to 18 months. You can see the supply chain. We -- I think we said at interims that we could see that the revenue was really -- the supply chain was normalizing in the industry. Inventories was coming back to kind of pre-COVID levels. But we really felt that we've got a really good team. We've got a business that adds a lot of value. We're not just a distribution business. And we really wanted to see if despite that decline in the industry, we could kind of maintain our profit and EBITDA margins, which I'm delighted to say that we've done. I mean there's a very early sign of maybe that industry downturn reaching the bottom. I'm delighted to say that during this time, we've actually improved our market share by 4 percentage points, and that is despite a 44% contraction in this broader market. We've managed to keep our EBITDA flat and actually expanded our EBITDA margin by 1 percentage point to 10%, which I think is industry-leading for a business of this nature. We have a really good management team. They're really on top of this business. We've done that through a 20% reduction in operating expenses and also by making sure that we really get all the kind of savings we can out of freight and procurement. But of course, what's always important for us is to keep an eye on the future, make sure we keep on winning in the market. So this team continues to develop really, really innovative solutions. We've got an engineering team that really adds value to these products in working with customers. We continue to invest in value-added solutions. And I think really exciting for us is the partnership that we've announced with ASUS. We are now an NVIDIA distributor in South Africa. So I think with that, Carel, I'm going to hand over to you to take us through some of the more details on the finances.

Thanks, Werner. Good morning, everybody. I hope you hear me all right? Okay. Let's get into a bit of the detail around the numbers. As Werner has pointed out, this is just a summary of our income statement. We're very happy with the results coming out of the businesses and once again, credit to the MDs for their respective performances. Top line flat, and we'll get into that a little bit more in some of the slides to come, but operating profit, 50% up. And once again, margin expansion is really something we keep our eye on, and I'm very pleased with these results. This has then led to headline earnings being up 73%. And I just wanted to point out something on the discrepancy between operating profit growth and headline earnings, the 50% and the 73%. We have had the benefit of assessed losses in the group from prior years, but those assessed losses are running out quickly. So I expect our tax rate going forward to get closer to a normalized level, which will then close the gap that you see here between headline earnings and operating profit. I just wanted to point that out. So these results have given us the opportunity to pay a dividend of ZAR 0.50 that was approved by the board, and that's in line with our payout policy of at least 50% of headline earnings from continuing operations. So very happy with the performance. On the next 3 slides, what I want to do is just spend a little bit of time on the revenue mix in our business, how that, together with operating leverage, delivers the results for us because I think it's important to understand the shift that is happening in the Altron Group with regards to contribution by Platforms versus IT Services by distribution. Werner has pointed this out, but we have also, in previous periods, we have made the point that we focus on quality revenue. And what that has led to in the current year, specifically IT Services is revenue that looks flat. But what we have done is we've really focused on we want to have high-quality revenue at the right margin for that business because when the market is tough, the way it is at the moment, the temptation is there to go and chase any revenue just to get a top line moving. And that is very dangerous because it will come back in future to bite you. So that discipline in the IT Services business, Craig and his team, he has built an enormous amount of quality salespeople in the business. And that discipline is critical for us because there is really no point in chasing revenue that will just result in write-offs later. So if I look at the -- let's start with the Platform businesses first. You'll see the 12% increase in revenue. Now that's a very strong result because it's already off a high base. But what the Platform businesses are giving us is very high annuity revenue, high-quality, high-margin revenue. And you'll see later when we get to it, that translates into a steady cash flow stream coming into the group, which provides us the ability to invest behind growth. So phenomenal performance by the Platform businesses. IT Services, I've made mention of the revenue being flat. But I also think it's a tale of 2 stories. We've replaced legacy low-margin revenue and contracts. We've taken that out of the business, and we are replacing that with revenue at the right margin. So Werner mentioned that in the current environment, that conversion cycle might be longer. But ultimately, we stick to focusing on the quality revenue we bring in the front door. Security, just quickly on the difference between agency and principal revenue. So just to remind you, again, we've pointed this out previously. On agency, you only bring in the margin. Principal, you bring in the revenue. So when you look at the results, even though the revenue contribution looks low, it doesn't have any impact on the margin. As a matter of fact, we've managed to expand margin in the Security business. And then distribution has declined, but that was in line with our expectations, and that's really still on the back of a very constrained electronic components market out there. It hasn't really changed from previous periods. So credit to Renata and his team for managing that business and making sure they maintain margin and looking really at any kind of efficiency that they can get out of the business. So that's the story around revenue. And I'm really quite excited about what we're seeing on the right-hand side, and this is the annuity revenue base. That base has grown 10%. It's now north of ZAR 6 billion of our total revenue, 63%. This allows us really to have a much better idea of what's coming because, as you all know, annuity revenue base easier to forecast. And it also -- if you look after your margins and you look after your costs, it generates healthy cash flows. So this will continue to be a focus for us in the year ahead, growing this annuity revenue base, and that's not only out of the Platform businesses. It is also out of IT Services businesses. So this is a very important part of the puzzle for us for the year ahead. We made mention of this last year. The focus on top line growth and quality top line growth is really top of mind. Just quickly then on operating leverage. On the left-hand side, we've shown you the impact on gross margins. On the right-hand side, operating expenses. I'm particularly pleased with the left-hand side of this graph because gross margins are really showing you how efficiently management is running the business. The quality of the revenue coming in, can you contract at the right margin? And this is really -- Werner refers to this as a measure of management. This is how much better you can compete in the market than your competitor. And for us to be able to expand this by 6% in the current year is really testament to the quality of the teams running the businesses. Having said that, on the right-hand side, we always keep our eye on operating expenses. These things can run away with you overnight if you don't focus on them. Just FY '24, the anomaly in there is really the provisions that was created or booked in the ADS business that Werner spoke about. But I think what's important to note here, we are not cutting ourselves into profitability. If you look at the operating expenses FY '23 to FY '25, they've increased, but we are very conscious about cost increases and making sure that we operate at the right level. So this has given us the operating leverage we've seen in the business. I will go through just the contribution of all of the businesses to our operating profit. So year-on-year, Platforms, IT Services businesses, both strong performances. Platforms added an additional ZAR 185 million and IT Services, ZAR 99 million. So in total, operating profit from Platforms, ZAR 798 million, that was up 30%, very strong performance by Altron FinTech, as Werner pointed out earlier. They grew their operating profit by 46% to ZAR 423 million and expanded their margin by 7 percentage points. So to Johan and the team, that's a phenomenal performance. HealthTech, strong profit growth, up to ZAR 120 million, 3 percentage point margin expansion. And maybe just to point out, you would have seen on the graph earlier that Werner showed you the money that we have invested in R&D. We expect that to start reducing in the future. And so we're looking forward to seeing the return on the money that we've invested in the business. Netstar, 15% operating profit growth to ZAR 255 million. And this is despite the challenges that we faced in Australia, where the business swung from a profit to a loss in the current year. Just as a reminder, Netstar uses an accelerated depreciation of their tracking devices over 3 years. Our peers are typically anything between 5 and 8 years. We are currently evaluating that with our auditors to ensure that this policy reflects the actual life of the tracking device. And that would be a change in an accounting estimate, which is a prospective adjustment from the date of implementation or from the date that the decision is made. If I then shift to IT Services, operating profit, ZAR 230 million in total from ZAR 131 million in the year -- in FY '24. Just to note again that, that prior year number was impacted by the provisions that was raised in Altron Document Solutions. Werner has spoken about ADB. It's been disappointing for us. The profitability deteriorated. Operating profit down 47% to ZAR 83 million. But I think Werner took you through the dynamics of what we're currently facing. The uncertainty in the market affects this business more than what it does, the Platform businesses, and we work our way through this as best we can. Then security, some revenue challenges. Werner also again pointed out the loss of one of the CapEx investments from one of our largest customers, but operating profit growth 19% to ZAR 86 million and margin expanding 6 percentage points. It does also -- it did also benefit from a once-off cost saving of ZAR 7 million. And just for us, we look at the businesses all the time from an efficiency perspective. And if we see something happen in the market, we take action immediately. We do not wait for something to happen or the market to turn. If the business is behind its target, we immediately take action. We can always open the doors and allocate more capital again in the future, but we -- that's one of the things that we stick to the discipline that we have around expenses. Then Document Solutions, phenomenal performance by Warren and the team, ZAR 61 million operating profit against the operating loss of ZAR 97 million in the prior year. Distribution, Arrow, even though the revenue declined, as I said earlier, Renata and his team managed to maintain their margins, actually grew that by 2 percentage points to an operating profit of ZAR 67 million. So just finishing up on the results and the income statement. Some of the businesses are facing headwinds. We are addressing those. Some of them have outperformed our expectations, but we continue to stick to the strategy, and we allocate capital behind growth. And that for us is the focus for the year ahead as well. If I shift gears to the CapEx that we've spent in the year, in total, ZAR 708 million of CapEx, 91% of this is behind growth CapEx. We are very fortunate that we see growth in all of the businesses in our group. And so therefore, we have the ability to allocate capital to support this growth. So of the ZAR 645 million, ZAR 442 million for Netstar Capital rental devices and ZAR 31 million in FinTech. Just a reminder, FinTech has now also started shifting towards a rental device model where on multiyear contracts, it will deploy these devices to their customers. That drives annuity growth. So for us, that's a great win. We spent about ZAR 103 million on our systems and platforms to support this growth. And we will continue to do that because the risk that we face here is that this phenomenal growth that we're seeing at the moment that we cannot support it, that our businesses cannot support that our systems is under strain. We don't invest and then we have a problem in years to come. So as long as we see growth coming through, we're very happy to invest capital behind that. And then lastly, ZAR 69 million on our own internally generated IP. Last thing I want to say about CapEx, we are in the fortunate position, where we can fund all of this out of operating cash flows. We do not have to have debt on our balance sheet to fund growth, which is a position that we are very happy with. If I look at the group cash flows, so starting off on the left, we generated about ZAR 1.7 billion in operating cash flows. Just on tax, again, I've pointed this out earlier, but when the tax rate starts to normalize, it will have a cash flow impact on us because we will not have the benefit of these losses from previous years. So that will have an impact on our cash flows. We then have about ZAR 1.9 billion of cash available for investment. You will note that our maintenance CapEx, this is where we really make sure that we don't spend money that we don't have to. We do want to maintain what we have, but the focus area is growth CapEx. And when we talk about growth CapEx, if we invest behind our platforms to be able to support growth, that's what we classify as growth CapEx. Then finally, we spent ZAR 285 million, paying out net dividends, and this is in line with our payout policy of more than 50% of headline earnings from continuing operations. We then ended the year with ZAR 993 million of cash, which is up 58% from the prior year. Working capital, I've made the point in the past that we had to really look at streamlining our working capital. There was a lot of inefficiency in the system and funds being tied up on the balance sheet, I think we have now gotten to the point where working capital moves in line with the business now and moves in line with the business requirements. It's decreased slightly by ZAR 46 million year-on-year. But we now -- I think when you see working capital movements, it will be in line with what you see in the business is where we invest capital, the growth coming out of it. I'm very happy with this, but we are never completely satisfied with the result because there is always opportunity to further work on working capital efficiencies. When we then look at our balance sheet and our cash flows, this has all resulted in our balance sheet being in an inferred net cash position. Here for covenant purposes, we make adjustments, and that shows you that our net debt has decreased from ZAR 313 million to ZAR 113 million. The brackets at the top shows you that from a covenant perspective, it's actually in a net cash position. Finance expenses have come down because of the position that we find ourselves in. So what is very important to us here is the fact that this allows us now the flexibility to invest in the business. When we see opportunities, when we have opportunities for growth, whether organic or inorganic, we have the balance sheet to support that. And if we had to raise debt, we have businesses generating strong operating cash flows that can support the debt. So very happy with the results. I'm very happy with the position that we're in. And just once again, thank you to the guys running the businesses. So I'll hand over to Werner for the outlook.

Thank you, Carel. If I could just close off briefly with just our outlook before we go into Q&A. We continue to target in the medium term an operating profit margin of at least 19% for our Platform businesses and operating profit margin percentage of at least 7% for our IT Services businesses. I mean, as you can see there, and I think Carel took you through it quite a lot. I mean, our capital allocation remains quite weighted to investing in our Platform businesses. We do expect the operating environment to remain constrained and some of this uncertainty may impact Altron's growth into FY '26. We intend to maintain our dividend policy of paying out at least 50% of our headline earnings per share from continuing operations. And really, our goal is to be able to continue to execute on this strategy that I think I took you through in a lot of detail at the beginning of my presentation, to continue to focus on that high-margin annuity revenue growth. You're probably tired of hearing about annuity revenue growth at this point in time, but it's really something we're quite obsessed with, to continue to grow our operating profit and expanding our margins. And hopefully, if we continue to do that effectively, we can continue to increase our returns to shareholders. Once again, before we go over to Q&A, I just want to again take this opportunity to thank our Board of Directors for their support of myself personally and the business, our Exco, our employees and then certainly also my family without whom none of this would be possible. Thank you very much for listening. I think we're going to play a brief video, and then we're going to go over to Q&A. Thanks for your time.

[Operator Instructions] My opening question goes to you, Werner, on the top line growth, the flat top line growth that you alluded to and your outlook going forward?

Yes. Thanks, [ Bon. ] I'm actually not disappointed. Look, you always want to do better. We have this phase in the business that says that we're satisfied but never happy. But I think if you see it in the context of, firstly, the relative contribution of the IT Services business. I mean, if you look at those numbers, IT Services and Distribution, I think, about 60% of our revenues and the cyclical natures of that. I'm not unhappy with 3% overall. I mean that 12% revenue growth in the Platform businesses and the fact that the Annuity business has grown by 10%, we're very happy with that performance. But we always focus on growing profitable revenue.

Then, you spoke about investing for growth. Talk to me about the optimal capital expenditure level.

[ Bon, ] when we look at where the growth is coming from in our businesses. And when there is growth and opportunity to invest behind it, we don't have a specific set level. We adjust our CapEx according to what the business requires. And if we are satisfied that we generate the return on the capital that we put into the business, then it's not an absolute number. It is as a function of the growth that we see that we can drive. And the thing for us, if we invest in these Platform businesses, these are multiyear revenue contracts that you then gain from investing behind this. It's annuity, it's multiyear. So for us, that's very attractive.

We've got [ Vivay Capiso ] saying from [ PCN ] saying, well done on strong results. Could you please give color to the H2 performance on Netstar? Were there factors besides the Australian device migration that drove the 10% reduction in EBIT?

Thanks, [ Vivay. ] No, there were no real -- there were no other factors. I mean, as I said, the South African business is -- I mean, there was a slight slowdown in OEM subscribers because some of the OEM producers have cut back on their production, which we're starting to see normalize now. But no, almost in its entirety, unfortunately, because of the Australian performance. The South African business has achieved all of our expectations.

[ Vivay ] with another question, please can you give us a sense of the competitive dynamics of the FinTech market? Is FinTech's strong growth cementing its place in the market as a leader? And what entrants are you seeing coming into the market? Any big well-funded entrants into the market?

That's a big question, [ Vivay. ] I'm tempted to hand over to my FinTech MD, but I think he will never forgive me for doing -- I think you'll never forgive me for doing that. Look, I think we -- so I suppose to the direct question of are we seeing big other funded entrants into that market? The answer is no. But -- and you must take this as it comes -- for us, that's kind of irrelevant because we want to make sure that we focus on what we do well. And that is continuing to invest in that platform to really make sure that we add more value to our customers and then really our sales distribution system, which really makes sure that we get the solution out and then make sure our customers are happy. So I hope that answers [ Vivay's ] question.

Miles [ Foree, ] is Netstar making traction in Southeast Asia? And what does -- so there are a couple here, right? Let's pick up on that first. So Carel, you come in on whether Netstar is making traction in Southeast Asia.

Thanks, Miles. So [ Bon, ] what we have there, and I think it's well known is the business in Malaysia. That business continues to perform. They have also come through a cycle of where they come to the end of life in contract. So you've got to replace the contracts. And the focus is always to make sure that at that stage, you do not have churn that gets to a level where you don't want it to be. But for us, the Malaysian business is still a very good business. We have looked around for opportunities in Southeast Asia. Something that's really meaty and that can really add a lot of traction is difficult to come by. It's a very fragmented market, but the market continues to be attractive to us. We are continuously looking for something, but it has to be meaningful for us to deploy capital.

While we're on Netstar, Karooooo trades on a 30x multiple, ZAR 25 billion, from a revenue perspective. We've seen the value unlock from the likes of WeBuyCars. You've been asked this repeatedly, but is there a potential listing for Netstar in the offing?

Look, I know I sound like a real stuck record on this, but the reason why we always take people through our strategy is, obviously, when I came into the business 2.5 years ago, we really had a look at kind of where the business is, how it was performing. And we're delighted to see that, that strategy is delivering results for us. So we don't see any real reason to change that. Having said that, of course, strategy is a flexible thing, right? I mean we look at the business every year, and we look at what it is that we have to do to be able to make sure that those businesses, firstly, continue to grow, sort of have that competitive advantage in the market and obviously deliver to shareholders. So it's something that we review on an annual basis.

And the M&A pipeline in the next year or 2. Carel, perhaps you want to take this one again from Miles?

[ Bon, ] thanks. Yes, so for us, M&A is just one of the opportunities for transformative growth. We don't see it as the only way to transform your business. Werner pointed out in his presentation how we are reinvesting in our existing businesses, how we are tapping into parts of the business that we haven't done before with our deployment of various AI tools, our mining the data that we have in the group. And as from a transformative growth perspective, those are very attractive because these are things that's under your control, and they have a much lower risk profile than doing traditional M&A. Of course, M&A is always one of the things we look at. And once again, if we find something that fits into the strategy, then we will have a serious look at it, but it has to tie into the strategy of the group.

I think we're going to close out then on an online question still with Miles. And he says, please can you give a little more color on accelerated growth into FY '26?

Sorry, just to be clear, when we say accelerated growth into FY '26?

So he's saying, what does accelerated growth mean for FY '26 given FY '25 growth of 73%.

Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Look, I don't know if the room is aware of this. I mean the way the JSE works, I mean, you can't talk about specific numbers in the financial year that you're in because then that essentially becomes a profit forecast, and it's our policy not to do profit forecast. But I think we set our stall out there in terms of the medium-term targets that we have, the businesses that we're investing in. And in the medium term, we are still targeting that at least 19% operating profit margin in the Platform business and at least 7% operating profit margin in the IT Services.

Werner Kapp, Carel Snyman, thank you very much, gentlemen. That brings us to the end of today's Q&A, Altron's full year results FY '25. Thank you.