Araxi Limited (AXX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Aimee McNamara, and it is a privilege to welcome you to the Araxi Group's first investor presentation under our new name. This marks an exciting chapter in our journey. On behalf of our Chairman, Michael Pimstein; our CEO, Brad Sacks; and our Chief Financial and Value Enhancement Officer, Sjoerd Douwenga, we thank you for joining us for Araxi's H1 results presentation for the financial period FY 2026. First in our lineup is Brad Sacks, who will present the group overview, followed then by Sjoerd Douwenga, who will take us through the group's financial performance. We will conclude with closing statements from Brad Sacks and then open the floor for our questions, asking Donn Engelbrecht and Michael Shapiro, our Managing Executives for Payments and Softwares, respectively, to join us. Please feel free to add your questions to the chat as we go through the presentation by clicking on the questions tab on the top left of the screen. We will endeavor to get to as many questions as possible in the time we have. We wish to draw your attention to the safe harbor statement, which will be included at the end of the presentation. And without any further ado, I hand you over to Brad Sacks.

Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us. It is an exciting day as we start our engagement with shareholders as Araxi. It has been a journey for us, and we're very pleased with where we have come to. The presentation today is going to follow a similar format to what we have done in the past, and I will jump straight in. As you have come to know, our Payments division has a number of different companies, African Resonance, Dashpay, Halo Dot, which we've consolidated into payments and our investment in LayUp. In the Software division, we have consolidated the Responsive Group into Synthesis. And so we have Synthesis, Dariel and Asset Pool. And our International business continues to include our international operations in Synthesis, Regal and Halo Dot. When we talk about our investment case, it is consistent with what we have demonstrated in the past. From a secular growth trend perspective, we think we are very well positioned as a company for both organic and acquisitive opportunities. There is strong demand for Payments and Software, it continues to be the fuel, which drives lots of operational efficiencies and opportunities for companies in the financial services sector and beyond. We are a trusted partner to a number of blue chip customers in South Africa. And as we look to expand internationally, we hope to be in a position to replicate that. We have a very talented group of people, and our team is very dedicated to our mission. So, we are very well resourced to be able to pursue our objectives. Our track record is demonstrable, and we are recognized as a leader in a lot of what we do. As a company, we are not only focused on the short-term results. We are making deliberate investments for the future with a view to creating a sustainable business that will exceed this half year or even this calendar year. Our businesses are cash generative. They are resilient as a business model, and we have a substantial amount of annuity income. Our balance sheet is debt-free. And so, we have a lot of flexibility to pursue opportunities as they come our way. And from a cash resource perspective, we ended the half year with a cash balance in excess of ZAR 300 million. We will be able to use that for acquisitive growth to continue to drive our organic growth investment strategies as well as pay dividends and pursue share buybacks. In terms of recent events, this has been a busy period for us in what I think is -- it can be characterized as a tough market. We changed our name and that took us a little bit of time. We have got a new livery. We hope you all like it. Our Payments division has executed on its strategy and has performed exceptionally well, not only in this half year, but we have a strong pipeline for opportunities going forward. The Software business, as we indicated when we released our last set of results was going to go through a little bit of a restructuring to try and achieve some cost savings. Those initiatives were undertaken. They are progressing in a way that is satisfactory. It is a difficult thing to do in a business that is human capital intensive and where our ethos is to be very focused on our team. We are starting to see a recovery in our sales initiatives within the Software division, which we hope will evidence themselves in H2 of this fiscal year. Both businesses have managed expenses really well. We continue to have a commitment to BEE and our software business in Synthesis, a Level 1, Dashpay too is a Level 1, with our Group overall being a Level 2. We did indicate at the end of our -- during our fiscal '25 financial year that we had a number of restatements that were brought about by a change in auditors. Those results were for the full year. We now have had to apply those same restatements into our half year for fiscal '25. And so, our comparisons this period to last period have both the reported results as well as the restated results. In a sluggish economy, we think we have performed really well. While our headline earnings are only up 1.8%, we have declared a dividend of ZAR 0.045, which is consistent with what we did in last year's results. We have seen a growing demand for our services and our products. Our Payments division had an outstanding period with revenue up 23%. EBITDA was up 33%, which shows the operating leverage that we have within that business. We have received significant orders for our terminals in H1, and we have a good pipeline for H2. Our estate grew by 15%. So, we have approximately 450,000 terminals in our set across the country. The restatement that we had to undertake was a result of the revenue recognition policies that were brought about through our change of auditors, and we had full recognition of a multiyear software license agreement come into last year's first half results, which made our comparison for this year rather challenging. There were new software contracts that are signaling growth for H2. We are encouraged by what we are seeing in both divisions. And when we, as a management team, look to try and understand the underlying performance, we've come up with a normalized view of the performance, taking into account the restatements and also the restructuring charge. And on that basis, we had EPS and HEPS grow by almost 60%, which we think is a tremendous performance, particularly in a really difficult market. So, as we turn to the accounting changes that we had, we reviewed all of this with you in the full year results, which we released in June. And all of these categories are the same, except for Matter 7, which didn't present itself in last year's results, but make themselves much more felt here, and that relates to the revenue recognition of recognizing revenue at a point in time as opposed to over time. So, as I go through that item, it was a multiyear contract, which we had recognized proportionately in each year over each of the years. The new accounting policy requires us to recognize the full contract in the period in which it was signed. And so, we had a full ZAR 42 million of revenue, which comes through in last year's half year results, which we think distorts that performance quite considerably. The net effect of that was ZAR 32 million pretax, ZAR 23 million post tax. And we have done an analysis to try and demonstrate what that means from an operational perspective. And here is an illustration of that analysis where we have done two things. We have adjusted for the way in which we now have to treat that software contract. And we have also taken into account the restructuring costs that we incurred at the Software division for the restructuring that we implemented this year. And so, when we adjust for those two items, you can see a normalized headline earnings number of 58% with normalized EBITDA being up 43.8%. Overall, we think this is a really good indicator of the underlying health and performance of the business and is something that we think is worthy of being proud of. We do have one other element which we are going to discuss, and that is how we have recognized the liability for the appraisal remedy. When we released results in July, the court had not yet decided on the value at which we would need to repurchase the shares. It was a determination of fair value. We had accounted for the shares at ZAR 1.06 per share. In our financial statements, the court came back with a determination that the purchase price needs to be ZAR 1.19 per share. We were advocating for ZAR 1.06. The appraising shareholder was looking for something materially larger than that. We also have to pay interest on it. We get the dividends back that we had already paid with interest. And the net result is we will be repurchasing 18 million shares at an effective cost of ZAR 1.61 per share. Our profitability over the period, notwithstanding the tough comparison has kept pace with that after we made the adjustment for the software contract. We had revenue increased by 4.3% and -- and overall EBITDA was up just slightly at 0.4% against the restated 2024 numbers. Our EBITDA margin remains stable and cash flow from operations was much improved at approximately ZAR 90 million. When we turn to the Payments division, I continue to talk about the migration to digital payments and digital payments growth, which is an underlying driver for the demand for our solutions and services. This is a chart which you have seen before, but it bears repeating given the experience that we're all seeing in the marketplace, not only with a use of credit and debit cards, but also with the use of digital wallets. A digital wallet is nothing more than an incarnation of a digital account, and we are seeing that drive demand for our services and solutions. Our growth strategy within the Payments division is -- continues to be the same. It has worked well for us to date. And for our company that has the scale and the capabilities that our Payments division has. We think there are lots of opportunities to apply that skill and knowledge. We are focused on continuing to grow our market share in the established segments in which we operate. But more importantly, we are looking to grow the customer base and the markets for our devices. We have seen a number of our clients look to enter new markets, and we have worked to try and develop solutions for them that are fit for purpose in those particular market segments. The migration away from the 2G and 3G devices continues, and we are working with the larger institutions to help them down that path. Our initiatives across Africa continue to evolve. And while it's not going as quickly as we would like, it continues to be an area that we are going to invest some time and effort. We have introduced a number of new services, and we are looking to help our established clients enter markets that they haven't played in before, particularly lower-tier markets and providing services to merchants that are software-based. We have a very affordable feature-rich Android device that we think is well suited for that market. We continue to look at our Payment Software-as-a-Service initiative, which is completely hardware agnostic. And we have our MicroPOS strategy, which has seen tens of thousands of downloads already, which is very encouraging. Our focus is to continue to look at enterprises, and that initiative is going well. And within our Halo initiative and our Payment software-related activities, we are looking at international markets, and I will talk about that a little bit more shortly. And so, our overall strategy is to continue to innovate and drive solutions in a market which is moving further away from cash and is looking at digital applications. MicroPOS is one of those solutions that we've spoken about in the past and is core to our strategy in helping customers focus on smaller merchants. The objective is to help merchants move from a countertop of chaos to one of order. And so, the picture on the left demonstrates a number of devices and tools and artifacts that merchants have. They have a calculator, they have a POS machine, they have a menu, and it is a lot of clutter. All of that gets combined onto a single device. It gives the merchant the opportunity to manage its stock, demonstrates what items are sold out, gives them basket totals, so you don't need the calculator. It accepts payments immediately without having some type of finger error and it -- and it provides an amount of reporting to the merchant at the end of the day or shift or whatever the case may be, which helps them with their business. This has experienced a relatively good uptake. And we think that there's lots of legs left in that initiative. Halo Dot, which is the SoftPOS solution. We have spoken about the global opportunity for Halo.Growth in the past, and it continues to be something which we are very focused on. The opportunity in terms of transaction value is in the billions, if not hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars. And we are very well positioned to capitalize on that with our solution. We have also seen, as I mentioned last time that Apple has embraced SoftPOS as a solution that it is advancing and marketing quite strongly. In that arena, Halo Dot has been approved as a Gateway Service Provider, which effectively is an implementation partner for Apple Solutions with PSPs that are looking to have a SoftPOS solution that is enabled on the Apple platform. That is a relatively unique position for a SoftPOS provider and speaks to the capabilities, both technical and functional that the Halo Dot solution provides. In terms of the Halo Dot Growth, since April of last year, we have had a number of initiatives commenced together with customers and integrations in the U.S.A., in Mexico, Brazil, the U.K., Netherlands, some additional ones in South Africa, Turkey and Singapore. So, as we had indicated, we are starting to see some really nice traction on the Halo Dot solution and are quite bullish on its prospects going forward. Most importantly, it is a validation of the technology solution set that the team has developed, which is getting international recognition. We are able to demonstrate the capabilities across multiple industry segments, all the way from telcos, logistics, transit, events, retail and financial services. So, the opportunity for Halo is starting to take effect. We have spoken a little bit in the past about a number of different applications for the Halo Dot solution. So, there's this notion of Tap to Pay, which we all understand. But there's also opportunities around identity and other functionality, and we are -- we've got those array at the bottom of this page for you to look at. In the first quarter of 2026, we are going to be launching a proof-of-concept in partnership with a gaming company and the local schemes and a local bank, which is going to have a gaming company embed Halo Dot within its application. It is going to allow users of that app to complete transactions on their own device which does a number of things. It helps -- importantly, helps reduce fraud. It converts what was previously a card-not-present transaction into a card-present transaction, which results in lower fees for the gaming company, and it reduces the complexity of facilitating that payment. So, a much more seamless experience. One of the things that we have come to realize with the Halo Dot application and the way that it's constructed is that we are going to follow in the footsteps of our Payments division and be platform agnostic. So, while we started on the Android platform, and we have also been approved as a GSP for Apple, we are looking at other platforms as well. And we think that there is a tremendous opportunity to make this universally applicable across different ecosystems. A use case around Halo Dot in the South African marketplace that you may be interested to explore is with a company called NightsBridge. It is a company that manage -- that's in the leisure industry. It manages hotels and accommodation facilities, and they wanted to embed a payment acceptance capability within the application that many of their customers have. And it has been tremendously well received and is working well at scale. So, we are pleased with how that application has unfolded. And if you stay at the bed and breakfast or some of the smaller hotels, you may come to experience its use. LayUp is a company which you've heard us talk about. It is starting to gain some really nice traction. The largest transaction that has been executed in year-to-date in this financial year is for just under ZAR 800,000. The transactions are large. We are getting very good returning customers. We are -- excuse me, one second. We are seeing that there is a large uptake of net new customers who are using the solution. And overall, it is being a positive experience for the merchants. And you can see a number of our merchant customers and partners in the enterprise space where we are seeing some real traction. Across Africa, you are seeing a new notion evolve, which is not Buy Now, Pay Later, but rather Save NOW, and Buy LATER. And that is exactly where LayUp is focused. There are a number of new innovations and solution sets, which will be introduced in H2, and we look forward to sharing that with you when we chat next. When we turn to our Software division, it is interesting for you to note that our responsive operations have now been fully integrated into Synthesis. And going forward, its logo will no longer appear. We will talk about Synthesis, Rethink and Dariel. It is part of our cost savings and strategic realignment, and we think it is going to be a very positive net effect for all of the people involved. Our action plan for improving the performance of Software, as we noted, was multipronged. We knew the business wasn't unfolding as we had hoped. It was primarily demand related with a constriction on the amount of money that some of our larger clients were willing to invest in new and complicated software projects. This required us to undertake a number of different initiatives. Some of them were internally focused and others were externally focused. From an internal perspective, we find the roles and responsibilities of our leadership team, which allowed us to be much more deliberate on our strategies. We initiated a headcount reduction, of which we expensed -- we registered an expense of ZAR 10 million in this set of half year results. We also were much more diligent on our relationships with outside contractors. We rebalanced some of our resources to optimize across the division. So people within Dariel worked on Synthesis projects and vice versa. We used the time and resources of bench resources to help with the internal development project. And we were very judicious against the -- against hiring for committed demand only. The cost management initiatives that we undertook have been followed in a very disciplined way. And you saw that not only in -- you see that not only in Payments, but you see that in Software as well. The operational efficiency initiatives around overheads, et cetera, were an area that we paid some attention to. From an external perspective, we refocused our sales effort to improve pipeline quality and most importantly, the conversion ratios. What we are starting to see is a much greater desire to engage with us on innovation projects. So conversations have evolved to a point where we are having meaningful conversations with clients about new initiatives and how technologies are able to help them drive revenue opportunities as well as how to optimize their costs. We have got enhanced commitments to and from our strategic partners like Confluent and AWS and GCP. We are very focused on applying our efforts against high-impact long-term projects that we believe are meaningful to our customers. And we're working with them to try and explain where we see the opportunities for them to drive value. Our proposition is very value enhancing in its approach. So, our growth strategy continues along the lines that we have spoken about in the past. We are working closely with the partners and relationships that we have, not only in the South African market, but in international markets as well. We are looking to grow our portfolio of intellectual property and licenses, proprietary software. That gives rise to very good annuity revenue for us. And so, we continue to invest in that. AI is a very important element for us in our strategy and also our conversations with clients, and I will provide some use cases around that shortly. We are very focused as an organization on innovation. We have done that in Payments well. We are doing that in Software, too. And we think that, that is starting to pay some very good dividends for us. The AI initiatives for us are not only focused on our external customers, but also on our own internal efficiencies, and we are looking to expand internationally. As we turn to AI, there are two elements to how you think about AI as a force multiplier. You can think of it for internal opportunities and how it helps us drive internal efficiencies and be more productive. But then, there are a number of other areas for us to help our customers enhance their value proposition to their end customers. And that is an area where we are focused acutely. And in that vein, we have been able to gain some projects or we've been able to land some projects where we are helping customers through the implementation of AI. AI doesn't only present a compelling opportunity in concept. It has moved to implementation and the experimentation that people have seen and been willing to undertake is now starting to unlock business value. And that's the conversation that we are having with customers is how to unlock the business value and what do we need to do with them to help them achieve that. So, here are some examples. Capitec, I think everybody on this call would acknowledge is a bank that is performing very well. It has a reputation for being at the forefront of technology and engaging with their customers on a technology forward basis. We have worked with them to develop a system of real-time fraud detection around their transaction activity. It is using AI. It is delivering substantial value for them. And there was an article recently which speaks about the value of fraud that they had been able to prevent through their systems. We're very proud that we are working with them on this initiative, a really good use case for real-time AI detection. A second example is with another large financial institution in South Africa, and this is the implementation of an Agentic AI solution. Financial institutions have many channels through which they engage with their customers, whether it's an in-branch network, the ATMs, digital channels on mobile phones, desktops, et cetera. Agentic AI becomes yet another channel for a financial institution. In this instance, it is going to be used to help originate and process home loans, an area where the bank's reputation and brand can be particularly useful in helping their customers through what is often a difficult process. And this is an example where we started a conversation around the idea of Agentic AI and what it may portend for the institution. And it was recognized that the solution is hugely value enhancing, and we were able to start this initiative with the institution and look forward to them launching it as soon as they are ready. An area where we are very active with AI and data is with an initiative with Credeq, which is an affiliate of a large insurer in South Africa. It is a very focused credit insurance business. And the mantra within the organization is all the data all the time. It is intended to allow the institution to have a single source of truth and to allow the organization to rely on the data that it has in making affirmative value-adding business decisions. And so, this is an initiative which takes advantage not only of our AI capabilities, but also our cloud capabilities and intelligent data capabilities to deliver a platform that has compelling business value opportunities. AssetPool is the minority investment that you are aware of. There have been a number of initiatives over the course of this year that have helped the business advance. You can see the growth in the number of assets and inspections through the graph on the right-hand side. Overall, the business is growing nicely. There is a new platform, which is going to be released called AP -- AssetPool Nova. We have had a number of customers join the platform across the Americas, Europe and South Africa. And overall, we continue to hold good hope for the AssetPool business and its growth. With that, I am going to turn it over to Sjoerd, who will walk through the financial performance. I'll come back at the end and answer any questions that you may have. Sjoerd, over to you.

Thank you, Brad. If we start with the financial performance, let's -- we'll focus on the Payments division firstly, where we've seen significant revenue growth continue about 23% year-on-year growth into September '25. EBITDA up 33% year-on-year. And that's really been supported by significant terminal orders still. And as we mentioned previously in some of our discussions, we're also seeing interest in lower-tier market segments, which we haven't necessarily competed in previously where we can offer more affordable feature-rich devices specific to our market, and we're certainly seeing some of that coming through. I think what's really pleasing to also see is the focus on the expense base or the cost base. So, despite the top line revenue growth, the expenses have continued to grow below inflation. Diversification in revenue streams remains a key focus in the business, and I'll show in the following slides just how that continues to evolve, but very pleased with how that is progressing. And then just a reminder that the Halo Dot payments Soft PaaS business, which was previously classified as part of Software segment is included in the Payments business. So, we move on to some of the key metrics in the Payments business. Some really pleasing numbers we're seeing. The total terminal estate in the hands of customers growing to 446,000 units, up 15% year-on-year and significantly from year-end. We're also seeing a good EBITDA margin improvement, certainly aided by increased license fees, which we continue to speak about, and that growth has been quite strong, and I'll touch on that in the following slides. Despite the strong top line growth and hardware growth, our annuity income has followed suit. So, in terms of overall revenue composition is largely stable at 55%, but individually grew about 22%, which is really good. If we move on to the next slide, just on the revenue composition. Sale of terminals up 23% really driven by unit sales. So that is quite strong. We've seen on the rental side of the business, it being really flat year-on-year. We've seen a, I suppose, a stabilization of rental contracts within that estate and probably a return to outright sales as we look forward into the business. The maintenance and support fees have been growing steadily year-on-year, given that the state, especially the growth in the last couple of years has been quite strong. And we do see a temporary slowdown in the maintenance and support fees element of the revenue, mainly because the estate is fairly new. And then significantly, the license fees and related services. This was previously called transaction-related income, but I think it's more appropriate to reference terminal license fees and related services, up 86% year-on-year, and that's really a function of increased terminal sales, but also the shift of the estate into more Android platform devices. So, that's a really pleasing growth that we're seeing in that line item. And that certainly supports margin as well as the annuity income of the business. If we move on to the Software side of the business, Brad has spoken quite a bit on the remedial -- just move to the next slide, Brad. Some of the remedial actions that we've taken in the business, given the sales pipeline, et cetera. We have mentioned the cost of around ZAR 10 million of restructuring cost that has been incurred in the period. But I think more importantly and significant going forward is that we estimate currently that to equate to about a ZAR 35 million annual run rate in cost savings. The majority of those cost savings would not be reflected yet in this half of the year and will be forward-looking in nature. We've also seen the sales pipeline strengthening quite reasonably well at the end of this financial period towards the end of September. Those are multiyear agreements, that we -- that should support the business growth or the return to growth in the business going forward. And certainly, given the rightsizing exercise of -- that we've undertaken in the business, I think sets the business up fairly well to return to what we're targeting in terms of profitability for the business going forward. When we look at the comparison year-on-year, and I suppose just trying to understand or unpack what the underlying earnings for the business is excluding the impact of the license fee, which was quite significant being an upfront recognition of a 5-year license in the first half of '24 and also excluding the ZAR 10 million restructuring cost. The year-on-year progression in EBITDA is from ZAR 7.6 million in 2024 to ZAR 16.9 million in 2025. So certainly heading in the right direction, not at the level that we want or think the business should be performing, but certainly really good momentum and some of the corrective actions starting to take effect. So, a pleasing trend that we are seeing in the Software business. If we look at the revenue composition for the Software division. Services and consultancy is really where we've seen the pipeline pressure. And as we mentioned, we have secured quite meaningful large capital projects towards the end of the year. So that should support the services and consultancy side of the business going forward. In September '24, looking at the license and subscription fees, clearly reflected in the September '24 was that upfront or at a point in time recognition of the 5-year license fee. That will happen from time to time, depending on the nature of the licenses we sell. And hence, the drop to September 2025 is not unexpected just given the nature of the accounting for that license. And then security and hardware fees up 42%, driven by third-party sales and third-party licenses. So, a good trajectory there as well. If we move on to the consolidated income statement, statement of comprehensive income. So the revenue line increased slightly by 2.3% on a restated basis. So higher payments performance, especially in terminal sales and license income, offsetting a softer software or lower software performance. If we look at the gross margin down slightly. Obviously, the recognition of the 5-year license in September '24 had a major impact on increasing the gross margin in '24. So the 2025 margin, excluding the license fee recognition has come down by 210 basis points. On operating expenses, I think this is the one key line item for us in this period. Only marginal increase in overall OpEx. This still includes the ZAR 10 million -- roughly ZAR 10 million in restructuring charges incurred during the period, but also more importantly, excludes what we anticipate to be future savings in terms of the rightsizing of the cost base in the business. On the EBITDA margin, relatively stable. So, positive mix in the Payments business, especially due to license -- due to software licenses and then obviously, the restatement of the license fee in the prior year. On the finance income, slightly higher than last year. It's the impact of a finance lease arrangement we had with one of the big financial institutions on the Payments business, and that's taking full effect in the 6 months and the prior 6 months was not in -- fully deployed within that financial period. Finance costs remaining largely stable, predominantly relates to the capital appreciation empowerment trust and then slightly reduced finance lease liability costs. If we move on to the condensed statement and the comprehensive income. This really just reflects the overall performance summarized. And I think, when we think through or look through the restatements and unpack the overall impact of the restatements on the prior period, most of these restatements, as we've said, it's -- there are no new restatements. It is just reflecting the adjustments made at year-end to the September 2024 numbers with the only really meaningful adjustment being the last one on the list being the software license, which was recognized at a point in time, which had a significant impact on both the revenue and EBITDA for the period. So overall, the impact was about 29% on the business, on the earnings per share for the period. If we look at the statement of financial position on the next slide, it's a fairly stable balance sheet. We've seen property, plant and equipment come down slightly. That's largely due to a result of a stabilization of our operating rental book in the payments business. So that's just depreciating the operating rental book essentially. On cash and cash equivalents, still quite strong and majority of debtors, which is included in the following line, and has already translated into cash post period end. So the cash balance on hand currently is much stronger and is available to us, as Brad mentioned, for further investment, acquisitive investment, organic investment, et cetera. On current liabilities, important to note just for the comparison does include at this point, the share appraisal right liability of about ZAR 38 million, which is included in this number. And as we showed in the slide previously in the presentation, the net outflow is about ZAR 26 million or about ZAR 1.61 per share that we estimate upon settlement of the liability. From a cash flow perspective, on the next slide, we've seen net finance income received, they increased slightly, again, largely due to the finance leases, which we started rolling out in the first half of last year, now fully present in the first half of 2025. The net working capital increase since year-end has been about ZAR 52 million. Majority of the net working capital move has been in receivables or net receivables, of which the majority has turned or has converted into cash post period. And then on Item 3, net cash paid for acquisitions, that's just confirmation that we have settled the profit warranty that was settled to Dariel on the closeout of their profit warranty period. So net cash paid out in addition to about 7 million shares was about ZAR 14 million. And then we still acquired treasury shares, about 28.9 million treasury shares, just shy of 14 million allocated to buybacks at a good value of about ZAR 1.37 a share. So, as we think about capital allocation going forward, that will still be certainly top of mind as well. Then looking at the operating cash flow on the next slide as well as dividends declared for the period. Dividend declared of ZAR 0.045 per share. That gives us operating cash generated coverage of about 1.5x. So the cash flow really gives us the ability to maintain a strong dividend practice, which, as you can see from the history, has been quite progressive over the last few years. And over 8.5 years, operating cash generated has been about ZAR 1.8 billion, of which ZAR 825 million has been paid out in dividends or ZAR 0.61 a share. So a really strong yield on dividends. Then, just the last slide from my side, just on treasury shares. It is likely given the level of treasury shares that we currently hold that some might be -- or will be canceled. As at year-end, we held 63 million or just shy of 64 million in treasury shares. We also had 75 million in deemed treasury shares, because of the consolidation of our Capital Appreciation Empowerment Trust. In addition to that, we will be acquiring or buying back another 18 million in shares from the dissenting shareholder, which we've discussed. Those will be bought back and canceled and not held in treasury. And then, since March '25 to September '25, we bought an additional 28.9 million shares, as I mentioned. So that leaves about 92.7 million shares directly under the control of Capital Appreciation directors. And with that, I will hand it back to Brad to speak about prospects.

Thanks, Sjoerd. So overall, I think you can get a sense that the business is performing well. The opportunity set that we have in front of us is good. We are positively inclined to a view of what the future looks like. We are looking at funding the organic growth of our businesses. We think there are many and the businesses are performing well to warrant that continued investment. So, we are going to do that. The opportunity for acquisitions continues to present itself. We have been very active in looking at opportunities, and we'll continue to do so. The strategic fit of opportunities is obviously very important to us, and we will come back to you at the appropriate time when we have something to talk about. The economic climate in South Africa is obviously something that we take into account in our planning and the expenditure or CapEx expenditure plans of our customers is important as we think about where to invest. But overall, we are positively positioned for H2 in '26, and we will continue to focus on looking at other areas for us to continue to grow and take advantage of our capabilities and skill set. So with that, I am going to bring the presentation to an end and turn it over to Aimee, who can field any questions we may have, and Sjoerd and I will be happy to answer those as necessary. Aimee, anything that you want us to address?

Thanks, Brad. Thanks, Sjoerd. We do have a few questions here. The first question I have is from [ Amara from Kanisa. ] Extending a well done to the team. And it's a question in two parts. The first applicable to Software is, we've spoken to remedial action. Is there any additional remedial action that we foresee taking? It's the first part of the question. And then the second part refers to decline in international revenue. And can we provide some detail on those contracts, Brad?

Okay. So, I will take them in order. So we were very reluctant to do anything within our Software division when we saw weakness. Our people are critical to our success and our internal culture is such that we were very focused on keeping people even when the business was not doing that well. Over a period of time, we saw that the demand for the service wasn't materializing, and we had to take some action. We were very deliberate in how we did it. We did it in a way that we thought was very thoughtful. And we did it in a way that we only needed to do it once. And so, we had the plan. We communicated it to our team. It was a very difficult decision for our software leadership, but it is now behind us. We have moved on, and we are starting to see that our way of working is also starting to yield enhanced demand. It hasn't yet all come through, but we have seen some enhanced demand in the latter half of the H1 period. And we think that, that will evidence itself as we move forward. So, the need to do anything further -- doesn't exist. At the moment, we are very focused on growing the business, and we are focused on implementing our growth plan that we went through. As it relates to the international opportunity, we have the office in Amsterdam, which is effectively a business generation office for us. We do a little execution out of there with the majority of our execution being done in the South African market through our South African staff, and we will continue to do that until the need arises where we have a much higher demand for international activity. We are doing it on a very deliberate basis without trying to incur excessive cost. And so, as we think about it, we expect the international opportunity to grow, but grow at a relatively modest rate for the immediate foreseeable future. We obviously would like it to grow faster and to become a much larger component of our business. But at the moment, it is still modest.

Then Brad, as it relates to Payments, also a question from Amara. How soon can we expect transaction-related revenue to grow ahead of terminal estate growth?

So Amara, it's important to recognize when we talk about transaction-related revenue, it's not frequently that, that considers the transaction value. There are very few areas where we earn ad valorem on the value of the transaction that is processed through our terminal. We are much more focused on either flat fees or use fees or something like that. And so that will grow primarily as the estate grows on the one hand. And then with respect to our software that we deliver into the Payment sector, it will grow based on the number of Software licenses that we issue, which isn't necessarily tied to our estate. As we indicated, we have become platform agnostic. And so we can offer our Software on devices that are not necessarily supplied by us. And so, that will continue -- that license fee will grow as we enhance the value proposition that, that Software presents and as we license more terminals that are not supplied by us. So, I don't know the time at which those two lines cross, but we are looking to do both. We are looking to grow our estate, so have the fleet of terminals that are supplied by us increase as well as continue to provide our Payment software as a solution into states which are not supplied by us.

Brad, our next question is from [ Mark Tobin. ]

Sorry, I just wanted to add to that question, two things. So I think transaction-related income, as we've noted in the presentation, we have changed the naming convention to terminal license fees and related services, exactly to the point that Brad was saying, it's not a specifically a transaction-related item, predominantly relates to license fees. If we look at the current year growth period-on-period on in the Payments division, it is -- actually did exceed terminal growth already, both in percentage terms and in absolute terms -- absolute terms, just slightly ahead of the sale of terminals, but in percentage terms, was up 86% compared to sale of terminals of 23%. So I just wanted to make that additional comment.

Thanks, Sjoerd. Mark Tobin's questions relate to our associate companies. The first one as it relates to LayUp. Are we able to share the gross merchandise value passing through LayUp and how it is growing?

So Mark, that is not a decision which we make alone. We make that decision in conjunction with LayUp. It is not yet comfortable for them to disclose that. So when they are, we will certainly do that. But it is fair to say that the growth in GMV is growing nicely as we -- as they grow the merchants and their user base increases.

Thanks, Brad. The next point is more a statement. Just with regards to the chart for AssetPool, with regards to their results, if we could please provide a current graph as the existing one is only up to May. Thank you, Mark. And then, I've got an interesting question here as it relates to AI. What are our observations on new entrants in the market from AI and/or new fintech partners entering the South African market?

So Aimee, you cut out as you spoke. Could you just repeat the question?

What are our observations on new entrants in the market from AI or new fintech partners entering the South African market in that space?

Okay. So AI means lots of different things. It's a question of how that AI is manifested in the specific use case. You get AI, which we're talking about as large language models like a ChatGPT or Claude or something like that or you get companies that are using AI in their product. We think that AI is much more impactful when it's put to use in a specific use case than we are concerned about it in the generic. We have a great range of capabilities around AI, and we have a deep knowledge base on different applications. We will continue to push those forward. So, I'm not too concerned about AI competition, because it is a huge area. And I think the skills that exist in implementing that are relatively limited. I do think AI, though, does have a marked impact on the production capabilities of Software firms, where AI assistance can help software developers become much more efficient, do more with less and be able to develop solutions that are really compelling. And it is incumbent upon us to continue at the forefront of that. We have done that in our Payments division. We have done that in our Software division, and we'll obviously continue to do that as these technologies become more and more useful. In the Payments area, there are a number of new entrants that are coming to the market. And from our perspective, that adds opportunity. We are -- we view ourselves in the Payments division as an enabler. So, I saw today that Wise, a money transfer company out of Europe has received a license to enter the market. That's a great opportunity for us to engage with them on how we may be able to be of assistance and help them. Revolut is entering the market. I think that is also useful to us and presents an opportunity for us to add a new client to our roster. So, from that perspective, I think new service -- financial services companies entering the South African market is a net positive overall.

Our final question before we close out from [ JT Lopes ] is with regards to our Microsoft partnership. Is it important for our line of business? And do we plan on expanding partnerships with the likes of Microsoft going forward?

So, as it relates to Microsoft, we are a very competent partner of Microsoft on Azure, and we have great skills in Azure as we do in AWS and as we do in GCP. We are not a reseller of Microsoft software. So, being a Microsoft partner means different things in different context. From our context, we are a well-regarded and very competent Azure implementation partner. And the decision on which platform to use in that particular circumstance is most often not ours. It is our customer or clients' decision. They could decide that they want to standardize across the Microsoft suite of products or they could go across the GCP suite of products or they are happy to use AWS. But that decision is not ours mostly. It is a decision that the customer makes.

Brad, that's all the questions we've got on the chat line. Before I hand over to you to say our goodbyes, just a warm wish to everybody for the festive season to our audience for joining us on this call and all the very best. Thanks, Brad.

You stole my words, Aimee. I want to wish everybody a good holiday break. I hope you like the new Araxi profile. We look forward to seeing you all again next year with another set of good results. So thanks, everybody, for joining us, and we'll see you soon.