Dis-Chem Pharmacies Limited (DCP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is a great pleasure that we welcome you to the presentation of our results for the financial year ended February 2023. We have produced a solid set of results in a tough trading environment with market share gains across dispensary, Healthcare, medical and baby categories. Dis-Chem's customer-centric philosophy ensures that we continue to deliver everyday value to our loyal customers most especially including these financially challenging times. The group has historically taken the necessary measures to ensure that all our stores stay open during the periods of load shedding. But this does cover with a considerable increase in operational costs. The group achieved another milestone during the year under review with the opening of our 300th retail store. At the end of February, we had 258 retail pharmacy stores and 54 retail baby stores. Our health insurance products under the Dis-Chem Health brand continues to gain traction with improvements across all key metrics, the launch of our policyholder rewards program, extra budgets skim further supports our goal of breaking private quality healthcare affordable. Before going into the highlights, I would once again like to thank our dedicated staff for their unrelenting commitment to serving our new customers. For the full period, we've performed well across all key metrics, once again, demonstrating the resilient nature of our business. Group revenue increased by 7.4% to ZAR 32.7 billion. Total income margin was at 31.1% ahead of our internal target of 30%. Earnings per share increased by 17.2% in to ZAR 116.3 . Our full year dividend increased by 17.3% to ZAR 46.6 per share. Retail revenue grew by 6.5% to ZAR 28.9 billion, driven locally by dispensary market share gains. Like-for-like retail sales growth came in at 3.3%. We opened 13 Dis-Chem pharmacies and 8 Baby City stores in this reporting period. Online sales continue to grow steadily with an online revenue growing by 15.1% during this reporting period. Wholesale revenue grew by 10.4% to ZAR 24.2 billion. External wholesale revenue grew by 20.7%, underpinning the increasing support from our TLC franchisees and independent pharmacies. We are in the final stages of acquiring a distribution center, which will increase our warehouse capacity by 75%. This additional warehouse capacity will support the group's commitment to accelerate retail growth pace, adding warehouse capacity for the group to double its current store count and continue to grow its market share in the independent market. Following several strategic investments over the past 3 years, we continue to invest in building an integrated Healthcare ecosystem to realize our ambitions to increase access to quality and affordable private Healthcare. On Monday, it was announced that I will be stepping down and Rui Morais will take over from me with effect from 1 July. Roy has been many years working alongside myself limit and the founding shareholders. He has an excellent understanding of the mechanics of each of the retail categories and has been instrumental in leading the return on the investment focus, which in turn has created the capital efficiency to fund the group's growth. During the past 3 years, Roy has immersed himself in the pharmacy category, the heart of our business and what ultimately differentiates us as a brand and understanding of the importance of pharmacy and appreciating the sticking structure of pharmacy foot traffic, Rui initiated our venture into building a primary Healthcare ecosystem. The investments made to date have allowed us to take the Crucials first step into owning the Healthcare funding space. With the launch of Dis-Chem Health, enabling us to start delivering on the mandate of delivering quality Healthcare at a lower cost to more South Africans I believe Roy is well positioned to lead the group and deliver long-term shareholders' value by augmenting our group from a pharmacy retailer to a truly integrated Healthcare provider. I look forward to watching this unfold. I also look forward to continue to contribute in the growth of the business that [indiscernible] and I have dedicated more than 4 decades to. Together with [indiscernible], we will be focusing our time on retail. I will continue to identify opportunities to accelerate the expansion of our store network. Both of these structures are fundamental into the long-term ambitions of the group. The net will continue in our beauty and marketing role. I would also like to extend my congratulations to Julia Pope on her appointment as CFO. As I stepped down, I have no doubt that the senior executive team under Rui leadership will build on the foundations that the [indiscernible and I have made to realize the full potential of the Dis-Chem brand. I will now hand over to Rui, who will take us through the financial results.

Thank you, Ivan. And as is customary, I will run through the high-level income statement lines. Each of these points will be expanded on as we go through the presentation. From a revenue perspective, revenue up 7.4%, and important to note that as you look at FY '22 as a comparative base, Medicare was included from the first of October, so it runs 4 months in the prior year and Baby Boom was included from the 1st of March 2022 and therefore, effectively included in this financial year. We'll expand on the contribution of vaccines, specifically on the revenue line a little later. Total income, again, good performance growing at 15.7%. One of the important aspects, which we will touch on a bit later is the one-off nature of the property gain they've realized in the first half of the year, totaling ZAR 72 million. Other expenses moving at 16.2%, which we then unpack. Operating profits growing at 13.3%. Net finance costs really fundamentally driven by 2 principles, 1 being the [ maturation ] of our store leases, which results in IFRS 16 interest being just north of 2%. And this is counted by the bond that was taken on the distribution business has bought, which is obviously increasing our interest cost. And one of the points which we talked to in this specific slide is the increase on profit from associates and joint ventures. This is specifically due to Kaelo being included for 12 months versus 4 months. And as you would have been aware, we acquired Kaelo in the prior financial year from the first of November, and the taxation line running at similar growth rates to profit before tax, meaning net profit after tax at 15.4%. The noncontrolling interest line is reduced. This isn't a function of the performance of the retail stores in which we have minorities reducing. Those stores have continued to perform well. It's really the noncontrolling interests of our investments in our start-up insurance distribution asset, [ ServCo ] and our Health Tech business, which is building our pharmacy operating system, which we acquired together with the Medicare stores which is known as Healthforce. In total, equity holders of the parent then saw 17.2% gain in profitability. If we move on to the statement of financial position, we unpack working capital separately. Just 1 or 2 points worth noting. The property, plant and equipment increase of 20.1% is really due to the Warehouse property acquisition, the addition of new stores, as you would see annually and the additional hardware that we've invested in, which has come with ancillary costs that I'll talk about from an OpEx perspective as we revamp our new point-of-sale technology that gives us flexibility around how we promote and potentially offer loyalty changes going down the line. Bank loans have increased due to the new banking loan related to the property acquisition. And the other liability lines has increased as a function of an increase in the provision for bonus off the back of the performance of the group and increase in the leave pay provision. We do anticipate as a function of the leave pay change that we've implemented in the group that we will start to see the stability decrease with a forfeiture element to leave pay going forward. If we move on to the revenue slide, at a group level, group revenue excluding COVID-19 vaccines and testing increased by 9%. If you look at the retail revenue growth, our retail revenue growth, excluding COVID-19 vaccines increased by 8.4%. The delta between 8.4% and the 6.5% was really the declining contribution of COVID-19 vaccines and testing, which I will talk to in the next slide. It declined by 74% from ZAR 594 million in the prior year to ZAR 155 million in the current year. And again, to note, and as I mentioned when I spoke through the income statement, Medicare included in the group from the first of October 2021, adding approximately ZAR 1.1 billion to retail revenue in the current year. One of the other elements, and we will talk to it as we unpack some of the operational results was just the normalization of trading patterns compared to the highly influenced COVID-19 period. This influenced category mix with beauty categories growing ahead of health and dispensary categories in many instances where the consumption of Healthcare and Healthcare-related categories was much higher in the prior year than in the current year where we saw a resurgence of the beauty category. If we look at wholesale, wholesale external sales. Again, we unpack that in a bit more detail. Excluding the impact of Medicare and Baby Boom, which were effectively internalize sales when compared to the base grew 20.7%, really compromised by TLC growth of 23.9% and independent pharmacy growth of 18.2%, a really, really good performance and considering that, that market is consolidating and really taking market share away from competitors. Our like-for-like growth of 3.3%, a relatively low number, but very much influenced by the size of contribution of our Healthcare categories, dispensary spent categories relative to beauty, which obviously had a resurgence and important for us is the relationship not only from a like-for-like retail growth perspective, but also from a total income point of view, which I will talk to later. This slide just shows by half the impact of COVID-19 and testing. So what it denotes is it shows from March '21, so the first half of the prior year All the way up to the end of this financial year, so effectively 4 trading halves. It shows the contribution of vaccines. So in first half of last year, ZAR 222 million, which is reflected on the left-hand side of the slide. ZAR 374 million in the second half at the peak, which is obviously revenue growth supported the first half of this year at ZAR 143 million when compared to the first half of its comparative period, again, revenue growth supported. And as the vaccine program ended a minimal ZAR 11 million contribution in the second half of the year. The table below really unpacks the group revenue, retail revenue, pharmacy revenue and front shop as well as external wholesale revenue by each of those reporting halves. If we just focus on the excluding COVID-19 columns, you would have seen from the 1st of March '22 to the 31st of August '22. So our first half of the year, 10% group revenue growth excluding COVID-19, retail revenue growth of 10%. This was really supported by pharmacy revenue growth of 18.9%. It was a good performance from a market share perspective, but also keep in mind that we had Medicare, which was dominant from a pharmacy contribution, which didn't have a comparative base, and we had Front shop revenue at 5.4%. We were already seeing Front shop revenue being impacted by slower performance in the Healthcare category of a hugely compromised COVID base. And then 20.4% growth in the external sales revenue, which is just indicative of the market share gains that we're seeing there. In the second half of the year, group revenue up 8.1%. Total retail revenue up 6.7%, pharmacy revenue up 12.7%. Again, that's influenced by Medicare. If you think about Medicare being effectively included in the base from the first of October in the prior year, so not necessarily a comparative base, and then you had front shop revenue, which further saw the effect of the large Healthcare base influence front-shop revenue growth of 3.8% and again, an equally strong performance in the second half in terms of external sales revenue. Post year-end, just to give you an indication of what's happening post year-end in a very constrained consumer environment. We've increased the group revenue growth to 8.3%. 7.2% retail revenue growth and that 4.4% pharmacy growth, again, is a function of a declining market, which talks to the integrated Healthcare ecosystem strategy that I talk about slightly later. But you start to see the recovery of Front shop revenue, which is really indicative of Healthcare and Healthcare coming back and the contribution of health being so sizable that it's having a positive effect on front shop revenue. And again, an equally good performance in the first period post year-end of our external wholesale revenue, and we continue to take market share with growth of 16.5%. If we move into the total income line, again, as I said, really, really positive performance. We previously spoke about trying to get to a 30% group total income margin target. We're north of that at 31.1%. Again, we'd have to exclude the property gain of ZAR 72 million, excluding that, we just shy of -- we're just over north of the 30% mark, which is again, the target that we focused on. The retail revenue total income or the retail total income growth and from -- of 13.4%, changing from 28% to 30% was really driven by category mix which is total income margin supportive. As I said previously, the higher growth of Beauty. Wholesale, excluding the property gain, grew 18.3%. Both wholesale and retail get the benefit of the additional terms that we've been able to extract from vendors as we scale, and we're seeing the positive contribution at a total income level in both retail and wholesale. And from a wholesale perspective, that really unlocked the operating margin growth in that segment. The one point that Craig will touch on it later is just the private label opportunity that we identified with us being 50% through that in the first 18 months which again reflects in the improvement in the retail total income line. If we move into the retail operating expenditure. Depreciation and amortization increased as a function of new stores, again, coming through IFRS 16 and the rollout of new point-of-sale technology being [ GK POS SAP-based ] point-of-sale technology. I spoke about the importance of that point-of-sale technology to create flexibility around how to personalization and personal promotions and just in general flexibility around promotions. And occupancy cost, which is the unrelated lease cost because of IFRS 16, that grew just due to general electricity increases, and we did have some short-term rental charges, which then get accounted for in the occupancy cost that came through the Baby Boom stores. Employment costs grew at 14.5%, Important to understand and acknowledge that Medicare and Baby Boom don't have a like-for-like base. Excluding that, excluding that, employment costs would have grown 11.7% so significantly under the total income growth margin. Other operating costs grew 19.4%, driven by 3 real contributors, advertising expenses is at 34% in the comparative base, there was a cutback on the extent and the instances of promotional activity, which returned in this current year. That was supported by a recovery in the total income line. IT-related costs which essentially is a step change as a function of supporting the rollout of [ GK POS ] and additional investment in cybersecurity, which is becoming a more and more prominent requirement in today's day and age. And then the last contributor just the additional ZAR 39 million spent in diesel, up 80% compared to the prior year as we deal with increased load shedding. And that ZAR 39 million specific to retail operating expenditure. If we move into the wholesale operating expenditure line, depreciation and amortization controlled at 3.2%, a slight benefit there as a function of the warehouse property acquisition moving away from IFRS 16 into an asset held on the balance sheet and a traditional mechanism. Occupancy costs, again, as in the retail space increased through high electricity and municipal charges. Employment costs well contained at 9.9%. Chris will talk about night shift that we implemented in the Western Cape and to cater for the increased growth that we're seeing in that business. And then other operating costs increasing by 13.9%. I think important that we did have ZAR 43 million of unrealized and realized ForEx losses as a result of exchange rate weakness, which came through in the second half of the year. Excluding that, other operating costs would have been 7%. We did have very well controlled courier costs. But of course, we did see the effect of increasing diesel costs up almost 60% to ZAR 52 million, which in total means that the diesel the diesel cost is a function of load shedding totaled ZAR 90 million in this reporting period. If we move to operating profit. Again, retail and wholesale and group reflected on the slide, a slight compression in the retail operating profit metric. Just a softer second half sales number with some of the ancillary costs like diesel coming in the second half of the year. Wholesale continued good performance moving from 0.5% to 1.3%, significant improvement in the wholesale operating margin and then the intergroup number, relatively not material, which means total group operating margin was up from 5.1% to 5.3%, up 13.3%. In terms of EPS and HEPS, we then see the EPS and the HEPS change at 17.2% and 17.4%. As I explained in the income statement summary, the delta between HEPS growth and profit after tax growth is really around the minority interest line, which takes into account the technology investments that we've made through Healthforce as well as the insurance distribution business investment. So that's what you're seeing as the delta and the diluted WANOS and WANOS moving very insignificantly year-on-year. If we then talk to some of the aspects on the balance sheet from a working capital perspective, inventory days well held at 88 days. There was a significant buy-in in December and -- which you can see reflected on the cash flow graph. Again, I'll touch on that. But the important thing is that the automated F&R system reacted relatively well to the slower-than-anticipated sales in the second half of the year, and we landed on very well-controlled inventory days at year-end. Creditors days stayed stable at 87 days. And we still see and continue to see high utilization of the supply chain program. And then we had debt-to-days push out from 24 to 27 days really as a function of the increased wholesale trade relative to group trade. And we did have additional terms that were recovered through the debtor book from some of our vendors, which were in the debtor balance, which are subsequently been settled after year-end. So that number has moved south and currently sits on around 26 days at the end of April. We moved to cash management. Cash inflow from trading, just south of ZAR 3 billion. Significant investment in working capital. As I said, large buy-ins in December. We had brought in a slightly softer sales line in the last 3 months of the year. We have seen that unlock unrealized and we have seen an improvement in cash post year-end. Net finance costs, which we've spoken to previously, tax and dividends, self-explanatory CapEx and proceeds on disposal, really a function of our investment in assets alongside our properties and then small changes in acquisitions in ownership. Those were 2 small acquisitions that we made during the year and then the ZAR 203 million really a function of the lease repayments -- so a decrease in cash and cash equivalents, which is essentially tied up all intents and purposes in some of the working capital movements, which, as I've said, have unlocked post year-end, and we continue to do that through the ROIC strategy that Craig will talk to in a short while. If we move to capital management, expansion CapEx, up 54.6%. Expansion CapEx really driven by new stores and the investment that we're making in point-of-sale technology. Maintenance CapEx. Important to note, this excludes the property investments and maintenance CapEx up slightly to ZAR 227 million. Again, that is a function of the refurb that's rolling out into the mature store base as well as additionally invested costs into the wholesale environment. You would note that there are now 3 distribution centers as opposed to the original 1 distribution center that we had to maintain, and that's now coming through the number. So a slight step change, but I imagine that will hold going forward. Total CapEx of ZAR 594 million. Just one other point on the expansion CapEx is obviously the rebranding of the Baby City stores, which comes through that line. And they're required in IT investment that's gone into those stores. Obviously, again, a step change that would be nonrecurring as it goes forward. And those investments are then reflected in the expansion CapEx and maintenance CapEx with respect to being a percentage of turnover. From an outlook perspective, inflationary increases to the rate per square meter of floor space added. And that's just a reference of 15,700 of new Dis-Chem and 2,500 of new baby city space that we intend adding in FY '24, which we'll talk to in the outlook and Ivan referenced. I'm now going to hand over to Craig, who will take us through some of the retail trading performance followed by Saul and then I will conclude with an update on the health insurance elements of our business.

Thank you, Roy, and good day to all listening in. Market share performance across all core categories was really strong. Substantial dispensary market share gains were supported by the successful integration of the Medicare stores acquired into the Dis-Chem network. This underpins market share retention across personal care with fierce competition and in beauty, where we have a market-leading position. There are also gains in Healthcare and medical moving to 47%. And the baby market share for 12 months at 16.7%, including Baby City and Baby Boom with Dis-Chem stores only having improved from 10.6% to 10.9% share. As per our focus, retail margin at 12.9%, grew well ahead of revenue growth, which excluding vaccines was at 8.4%. This was driven predominantly by the normalization of margin in personal care and beauty, where COVID PPEs influenced the base substantially. The same factor put pressure on the Healthcare and medical turnover growth number, particularly from commoditized products like vitamin C, where the base was highly inflated. Despite that, margins still grew ahead or outperformed sales growth. And there was a good margin recovery that we saw in the second half for Baby. And in other category, this was positively influenced by stronger confectionery performance. Of a strong base, we continue to deliver on our work improvement strategy in FY '23. This is evident in the higher transactional margin and total income with stock and creditors remaining stable at levels that we believe are sustainable. Growth in margin was achieved whilst maintaining and growing market share and offering continued value for consumers. Support from our suppliers allowed us to maintain low everyday prices whilst funding deeper discounts on promotions. We also work with them to avoid increases wherever possible or to keep them at a minimum despite the inflationary pressures seen across retail. Product mix and margins are now at more normal levels as we traded out of the effects of COVID and supply chain constraints. In addition, our retail and pharma operations teams delivered on target operating margin levels set for the Medicare stores that were previously converted to Dis-Chems. We are also on track towards the ZAR 1 billion private label opportunity, having achieved 50% of this 3-year target after 18 months. These factors drove transactional margin growth ahead of turnover. From a trade terms perspective, we were very happy with 18% terms growth, which was well ahead of purchases growth at 9.1%. This was achieved through our category management teams collaborative efforts with suppliers to improve fee-for-service rebates and on the back of an expanded service offering that includes enhanced analytics, centralized administration and forecasting tools. The current terms level, we believe, is close to optimal and should be sustainable going forward. This was a huge contributor to achieving our stated medium-term total income margin target for retail, which was at 30%. Total income for the group was up to 31.1% from 28.2% and 27.5% in the previous 2 financial periods, respectively. This was achieved despite the additional fuel and load shedding related out of budget costs. Stock levels are stable, supportive of growth and ability to maintain our unique depth of range and specialization across store formats. F&R, our automated forecasting and replenishment tool continue to yield great results with the level of centralized control and flexibility at scale that it enabled. 83% of front shop stock really replenished into our stores is now processed automatically by the F&R tool, up from 75% at the half year. I'd also mention then that we've rolled it out to our distribution centers where we now have 90% coverage, which is close to maximum potential. This has been supportive of consistently higher percentage in stock levels and reducing lost opportunity sales. The next phase of the F&R role out has commenced to cover the dispensary scheduled medicines replenishments. F&R's ability to quickly adapt to volume and trend changes, we've been a predetermined strategy framework was highlighted in the second half of the year, as turnover softened, stock was adapted accordingly, resulting in group stock base reducing from 89 to 88.2. From an operational perspective, we look at rolling stock base considering stock at hand at the period end date relative to the previous 91-day cost of sales, the result at year-end 85.2 days cover. Creditors days remain stable at 86.5, maintaining the negative rolling stock day to creditors days working capital position. Our suppliers continue to benefit from our award-winning supply chain finance program, where usage remains very high. This program has added great value to our supplies cash flow management and is the largest in Africa by a number of tenders participating. Operationally, procurement is monitored and managed using the rolling stock days number I explained previously. And this is done on an ongoing basis, providing the procurement teams with an accurate daily view. 85 days stock cover over the gray line in the chart uses the stock value at the end of FY '23 and considers the average daily cost of sales for the preceding 91 days. Stock levels are stable and in line with sales growth, comfortably within our target range. This includes additional stock procured forward as part of strategic buying for both peak period over December, January and before the SEP or single exit price increase imposed on medicines by the Department of Health. The green lines at the bottom of the chart reflects store days cover of 48 and distribution centers combined at 37 days cover working back in half year increments. You can see the large spike in FY '19 when we decentralize into multiple new DCs and then reduction followed as coverage of auto F&R replenishment decrease increased towards stabilization to where we are now. This illustrates the benefit of improved DC forecasting and automated ordering as well as efficiency gains achieved through the work of the supply chain optimization team. Thank you for listening in, and I'm now going to hand over to Saul who's going to take you through the loyalty and e-commerce areas.

Thanks, Craig. Benefit program. We currently have 7.8 million active benefit program members across both the Dis-Chem and Dis-Chem Baby City brands. These members are responsible for around 75% of total retail sales and have a higher spend per basket and increased shopping frequency than non-benefit members. The advantage of being a member of our bounty partner benefit program include Benefit Rewards earned on all qualifying purchases as well as the following exceptional offerings: partner awards, instant discounts, a quarterly benefit magazine, access to our Baby program, at [ Hog ] double and bonus rewards, automatic entry into competitions. We also engage with customers through the program to ensure we target the correct customers with the relevant information. By shopping and swiping our benefit card, a certain percentage of all eligible purchases is also donated to the Dis-Chem foundation to assist worthy causes. Underpinned by philosophy of care and giving back to those who need it most, the Dis-Chem Foundation's main focus on core pillars is on health, nutrition and education. The Dis-Chem Foundation has provided over 2.4 million nutrition meals to children over the last year. The foundation also plants and assist in maintaining food gardens and provide safe and clean railing water in rural communities, which in turn provides work and nutrition to communities in need in a sustainable way. In addition to food security, Dis-Chem community clinics in the Western Cape and Pretoria region offer health services to those in need. This is made possible with the help of the Dis-Chem and Baby City benefit card members due to the foundation being a beneficiary of Dis-Chem Group's benefit program. The group also differentiates its benefit program from others in the market through its real-time earn and redeem program partnership and customer-specific focus groups. Strategic partners in the banking, medical aid and lifestyle sectors. E-commerce. We continue to witness a shift in consumer behavior towards online shopping with an overall increase by 15% for the past financial year. We delivered 60 minutes on-demand delivery service has had a surge in demand with 136% year-on-year growth. Our order fulfillment rate still remains stable with no compromise even with the increase in volume, utilizing our decentralized 82-hub fulfillment stores. The breakdown between Click and Collect first delivery remain at 30% and 70% split, respectively. The PackMyMeds online prescription service and WhatsApp for Business continues to boom. This is due to a number of factors, including the convenience of online shopping, the widespread use of mobile devices and the increasing availability of high-speed Internet connections for South African consumers. The shift in consumer behavior has allowed us to adapt to a successful omnichannel seamless experience for our customers across all platforms. allowing them to browse and buy our products or fulfill scripts online, in-store or on their mobile device. As a result, we have increasingly invested in technology and digital infrastructure to keep up with this growing demand, allowing us to cater to a wider audience and improve our overall customer experience. Despite some challenges, the e-commerce view shows no sign of slowing down and will continue to transform the retail industry in the years to come. I'll now hand back over to Roy.

Thank you, Saul. As I mentioned earlier, what we -- what I'm going to try and do is just unpack some of the strategic principles that underpin our vision to build an integrated Healthcare ecosystem. Essentially, it stems from the fact that there exists an opportunity to grow a market beyond the current medical scheme market, which drives much of the pharmacy traffic, which is a fundamental importance and important foot driver to the success and a differentiator in our business. So on the first slide, these 2 bubbles, the lime green bubble represents 9 million lives. That's current scheme membership. If you think about that as a proxy for how that influences any sort of pharmaceutical retail chain and people would engage in our pharmacies as a function of consuming care, which is funded through schemes, either through a retail product that's consumed by an individual or corporate-funded scheme products. And if you look at scheme growth over the last 10 years and many companies and corporations in the industry have spoken about this team, there's very little scheme membership growth for the last 10 years. We have an environment of Healthcare cost inflation. We also have, importantly, a fee-for-service model. And when I talk about a Healthcare ecosystem and kind of reimagining Healthcare delivery. The concept of a fee-for-service model is vitally important. The reality is that a fee-for-service model is not always appropriate care. The incentivization between health outcomes and the provider is not necessarily there because you have a very fragmented view of the patient. So what we have is we have a very little scheme membership growth for 10 years. We have 9 million lives in that cover. That's the market that we're predominantly playing into as a pharmacy retail chain. We're seeing higher Healthcare cost inflation and consumer budget undergoing pressure, which means we potentially have people and we do have people downgrading schemes and some people coming off schemes. On the right-hand side, we have 12 million lives, which are currently employed and uninsured. And by that, we mean there's disposable income that's being earned and these individuals are uninsured. This is in the formal market. So this doesn't include informal employment or informal income generation, which makes the opportunity even bigger. Now there is a reliant of this market to access Healthcare through the state which we know has its challenges. At the same time, there is cash consumption of private Healthcare from this market, which in theory would mean someone would walk into our pharmacy, can access our dispensing and our medication and cash rates. And I guess in that lies the opportunity. Because of the scale of scheme memberships and because of the market share contributions of schemes, they're able to use that scale to drive down price point. So what you actually have in South Africa is people who are earning less who are not on scheme membership or accessing private Healthcare when they can't access state Healthcare at premium prices. And there lies the opportunity for us to deliver what we think is an integrated Healthcare solution. So as we think about that opportunity, the HealthCare ecosystem started to play out strategically. I think globally, Healthcare systems are being reimagined and reorganized to increase access at lowest cost. And I think a point that's quite important for -- to understand is that access and choice is not necessarily the same thing. Choice is nice to have. Access gives you the ability to participate in Healthcare. Ultimately, the most important deliverable and objective of any sort of healthy ecosystem should be the health outcome of the patients and appropriate health outcome at appropriate cost. So our vision and certainly, my mandate is obviously to focus on this integrated Healthcare value chain to drive down costs and to increase private Healthcare to more and more South African. If we move away from the respective bubbles and we just look at what represents this came strategic intent and how we position certain assets to take advantage of that. On the left-hand side of the graph or on the slide, you see the patient entering the Healthcare journey. As retail pharmacy with dispensing capabilities with medicine, with medicine control and with clinics, we're really the lowest entry -- lowest cost entry point into the Healthcare supply chain. So if you think about some of the themes that have supported the investment thesis of our business, consolidation team will continue to play out. The importance of growing retail space, which Ivan alluded to and we've invested in with our new distribution center and the ability to step change space gives us a bigger network to service what we believe is a new market. We then also have a consumer-facing brand, which is important. It gives us credibility as a Healthcare player. It allows us to augment some of our other tools which I'll talk to a little bit later, like reward programs to create affordability for these -- for the Healthcare delivery. And then being the entry point into the Healthcare environment also allows us to understand as a function of the quantum of health consumption data that we have, which ties into the investments that we've made in Healthforce, which will is a technology that will build out what we believe is an innovative pharmacy operating system that will extend across pharmacy and clinic so that we can start delivering coordinated care. In terms of an integrated Healthcare network, which is a block in the middle, We, through the Kaelo investment have a provider network. We're able to augment product design. We're able to do fund administration just on product design, I think that's important because being able to be a service provider-led Healthcare player allows you to design product, which effectively start at the entry point of healthcare, and that is fundamentally important to reduce the cost of care. We do need to establish collaboration and partnerships between ourselves, hospital and pathology if we truly want to play in the related health solution funding space. As I mentioned, we're reimagining a pharmacy operating system, which would allow us to drive down medicine costs through further genericization of medicine. It allows us to treat the patient holistically. In many instances, patients have multiple chronic conditions. So instead of treating the condition, it's more important to treat the patient. And then ultimately, together with the pharmacy operating system to build a service provider and really important, the service provider led electronic health record. And from our perspective, the service provider that touches the patient first as they enter the Healthcare journey. We've obviously stepped into the funder space as we've explained previously, with our health insurance product, which is pointed at that addressable market of 12 million that I spoke about previously. Ultimately, we've been interested in all health-related solutions going forward. As a Healthcare provider, it does give you a different lens to look through when you look at a life insurance opportunity just because of the extent of health consumption data that you have and the ability to do continuous underwriting, which is very attractive from a life insurance perspective, you also touched the patient extremely frequently, which is unlike traditional life insurance products. And life and health really do go hand-in-hand. So once you establish this Healthcare ecosystem that we continuously make reference to the new ability to design product and becomes -- and design benefits to ensure that, as I said, you increase access but not necessarily choice. You reduce the lower -- the patient cost to the lowest cost and you drive patients through this Healthcare ecosystem with technology. And ultimately, you're able to really deliver value-based care, which is a concept that many people speak about. But we believe that until you own the ecosystem, certainly can dictate and control the ecosystem, it's quite difficult to deliver just because of the nature of the South African Healthcare market being fee-for-service. So the bottom part of this slide really talks to the business priorities, one which we'll see play into the market is just the repositioning of our brand away from just being a pharmacy retailer to a Healthcare provider and the centricity of our brand with regards to Healthcare and patients centered primary Healthcare services, a big focus, and I'll show you some of the work that we've been doing around what we're doing in our clinic space, triaging into virtual GP, for example, then in the Healthcare network space, as I said, the ability to influence benefit design and to capture and share value through the chain to truly align financial incentives with all providers with value-based care compensation as an approach. So in a nutshell, and that's really an integrated Healthcare ecosystem as a strategic intent as we think about the business going forward. Maybe just an update on where we are with the Dis-Chem health insurance product. As you can see from the banner, that gives us insights into the price points significantly lower than traditional medical aid. Of course, it doesn't have hospital benefits, and they're not influenced by PMBs. But what we are starting to see is at these price points, this becomes very attractive as day-to-day medical cover for many people that are employed and underinsured. It's been 15 months since the launch of Dis-Chem branded health insurance products, and we continue to see month-on-month incremental gains, which is very positive for us. And then talk to the concept of the market existing. We have sold close on ZAR 280 million of gross written premium within the first 15 months and we continue to report record months from a sales perspective each and every month. What we have decided to do is as a function of how the landscape is positioned is to continue investing in this accelerated member growth, which we believe will delay our breakeven in the distribution business by 18 months. We think it's important to do this. We think it's important to capture as much as the market that exists especially with our ambitions longer term to be an integrated Healthcare player. We then, as a function of looking at the patient and understanding that they're constrained. We launched Extra, which is a rewards program that is available to Dis-Chem health policyholders. The idea behind Extra is it will give you an instant 20% of over 2,500 products that are branded as healthier choice type products. And what it essentially does is it makes place in consumers' budgets for essential Healthcare. You can get up to ZAR 600 saving on these products, which for all intents and purposes means you can access Healthcare for free. And if you shop your Healthcare basket in the discount environment, and what we're starting to see in extra is really, really strong results of the first 6 months from launch. Policyholders are 3 times more likely to purchase extra qualifying products. So with the program and with the savings that they are unlocking on top of traditional promotional product savings, and we are pushing them to buy healthier products, which in turn, from an integrated Healthcare funder perspective means slightly lower risk. And ultimately, it's aligned with the ambition of enabling private Healthcare affordability and to ensure that we advance that access of quality Healthcare. If I move on to the last slide, which is talking about our health clinics. As you can see on the left-hand side, we continue to see traction in our nurse consults. Obviously, the vaccinations as they played out in our revenue number did have an impact in our -- in the number of consoles. And obviously, there was an opportunity cost of doing vaccinations with respect to primary Healthcare consults, which is what we want to be doing more of, but you can see that there's a steady increase in nurse led consults. We're starting to encourage more and more nurse-led consults and increase the utilization of our clinics. We're looking to staff our clinics differently. So we're starting to see a strong demand for clinic services on Saturdays and public holidays, which is a Phase I of extending clinic operating hours. And if you think about the nurse-based care, I mean the price point of nurse-based care, if they are -- if nurses are practicing at the top of scope of practice, is from a cost delivery perspective and again, aligned with the ambition of reducing lower cost down for the patient is very, very effective in terms of what they can do and how nurses can treat general elements without individuals seeing a GP. And then ultimately, Clinic Connect, which is our virtual doctor consult. You can see the continued growth there close on 8,000 consults a month now. And again, it's a learning environment for our clinic sisters. But you can see the extent of use of Clinic Connect and the virtual doctor consult. If you think about just the cost and convenience of this and the triage principle of nurses into doctors, again, it talks to the concept of value-based care that I spoke about in the strategic graph. I guess the last point I make is that our adherence management program, we now extend through health window to more and more chronic patients, really helping people live longer and healthier lives. And that ties in directly to the life insurance play an opportunity that I spoke about with respect to the funder block in the strategic slide. So that's a summary of kind of our health ecosystem ambitions. I'm now going to hand over to Chris to take us through the wholesale trading performance.

Thanks, Roy. Good morning [Foreign Language] Hello, everyone, and thanks for the opportunity to present. I want to thank God for what I feel is a great set of results in very trying times. As you have heard and we'll now see more detail of the wholesale division has once again had a very successful and less trading period for the 12 months of FY 2023. I truly believe that these results are a culmination of concerted efforts to improve very motivated and focused teams being operational, continuous improvement and financial teams. These teams remain committed and focused to continue driving efficiency improvements. We turn to Slide 29. Looking at the diagram, we can see that external wholesale revenue grew by 20.7%. Internalized sales of ZAR 169 million was taken out of the base to account for the Medicare and Baby Boom sales in the prior year. If we include the Medicare and Baby Boom sales in the base and the external revenue growth achieved is at 10.4%. The number of TLC franchise stores have increased from 147 to 171. The TLC customer group revenue grew by 23.9%, which once again proves the feasibility and success of the business model. The independent customer group grew revenue by 18.2% which can be attributed to 2 things. Firstly, our sustained focus on maintaining and improving service levels and secondly, our increased customer footprint. We now represent 39.7% of the total pharmacy wholesale market. If we turn to Slide 30. This graph seeks to compare total income growth to total expense growth. It can be seen that total income has grown by 18% compared to the same period last year. Total expenses grew by 11.5% over the same period. This was obtained by a sustained focus on efficiencies and growth in external customers, which is overweight pharmacy supply which in turn attracts higher logistic fees. Competitor expense growth was high at 88.1%. This was due to us moving our extended warehouse management system to an SAP hosted cloud solution. This has various advantages, one of which is ensuring scalability for our investment in the new warehouse space. Rent and municipal charges increased by 8.9%. This is mainly due to an increase of 17% in electricity costs. Payroll expense increased by 9.9%, which is mainly due to inflationary pressure as well as the implementation of a full night shift in the Western Cape to cater for the accelerated growth in external business. Depreciation increase of only 3.2% due to contained capital expenditure. Courier expense increase was well controlled at 8.4%. This is an area of continued focus for us as it is a big cost driver in our environment. It was managed by improving the following drivers: Firstly, Pallet height optimization and secondly, route efficiencies. Security reduced by 6.6% due to better scheduling and security guard allocations. Fuel increase of 57.6% due to increases in the diesel price as well as additional delivery routes being implemented. We move to Slide 31. We engaged with a service provider who's specializing warehouse design and process optimization to build us a model which would predict our warehouse capacity utilization over the next 7 years. The objective was to confirm that our investment in the new DC space would provide enough capacity for the medium to long term. The following assumptions were taken into account. We looked at the number of units of stock that we distribute in millions per annum. We then applied an aggressive store growth over a 7-year period, which effectively increased the current number of stores by 96.5% or doubled by FY '30, which is a 7-year period. The store growth was based on a medium-sized store. The annual units increased from ZAR 251 million to 539 million units over the 7-year period. I'm happy to say that even after using very aggressive assumptions in terms of expected growth that by year 7, we reached only 82% of the new Longmeadow of facilities capacity. We are, therefore, confident that the investment in the new facility will be sufficient to cater for our expected growth in the medium to long term. We turn to Slide 32. As can be seen, the group's revenue has increased to ZAR 3.264 billion for the 12 months of the 2023 financial year. This is a 15% growth in the group's retail revenue. We are pleased to see that TLC's collective dispensary market share now accounts for 5.2% of the market, equal to the supermarket group pharmacy share. The TLC customer revenue growth is partly driven by front shop support and ranging that we as a supply chain offers there. We're excited to say that the rollout and launch of our fully integrated e-commerce solution took place in a controlled group between November and January. We have since February rolled it out to 110 of our franchise stores and are now marketing it to the consumer. I will now hand back to Roy for the outlook.

Thank you, Chris. If we move to Slide 34, many of these points I've covered with respect to the Healthcare ecosystem that we intend building. These really represent the strategic growth drivers at the center in the puzzle piece that is in the skin green. That's really our mandate is to establish our position in South Africa's primary Healthcare authority. I think all the pieces that I've spoken about previously need to kind of work together to enable that. and the expansion of the TLC business model, which is generating incredible returns and really talks to the ownership of what will continue to exist as an independent market even post corporate consolidation and potentially the participation of TLC in the networks that we build to deliver our ambitions on the Healthcare ecosystem and our ambition to increase access to quality private Healthcare for more and more South Africans. I think we've made excellent inroads into establishing our position there. We've now proven through Dis-Chem Health that there is very much a need. We're seeing the take-up opportunities, and we're seeing the penetration. We've established the loyalty program that we will continue to augment to create affordability for that and then as I said and as Ivan alluded to, the importance of growing our store footprint, ultimately, if we want to be true to the testament of creating an ecosystem for South Africa, we ultimately need to increase our store footprint to be in areas that we currently underrepresented in and to continue to extend our pharmacy leadership position. Technology, if we think about routing people through this ecosystem that we intend delivering is it of vital importance. We've started I'm investing in that technology. It started with the investment in Health force, which gave us the ability to augment our clinic solution with respect to offering virtual GPs. This is now extending into our pharmacy operating system and ultimately, we want to have integrated primary care as a solution at the back of all of our retail pharmacies. And then fundamentally is the establishment of a skilled and transform workplace that really is representative of South Africa, and that goes hand-in-hand with establishing ourselves as South Africa's Healthcare authority. If we move from the strategic growth drivers into the outlook, and as Ivan has alluded to, and as I've spoken about, we do expect tough trading conditions to persist for the remainder of the calendar year, things specific to ourselves, Important to remember the one-off property gain that we experienced certainly in the first half of the year. We will annualize the current diesel spend and potentially incur more as low trending persists. This in itself is a challenge, but it also creates an opportunity for the way that the brand has been positioned. We've spoken so much about the obsessive focus on value and access to primary Healthcare and the group needs to and will continue to focus on the patient who is a constrained consumer and ensuring that we're opening our values through all of our mechanisms, all of our challenges and all of our channels to ensure that we can open up that value so that they can invest in Healthcare. And if you recall from the slide that represented our pharmacy revenue over the first half, second half and post year-end reporting. We are starting to see chronic repeat grips returning. And obviously, we had a softer second half, but we're starting to see that. That's important for us, as I've spoken about previously, chronic patients or from a value perspective, the most important patients in our environment. We see them very frequently. And that also talks to the primary Healthcare ambitions that we have to be able to provide share to do screenings to diagnose the undiagnosed and then to get them into our pharmacy to not only get them to shop it, but effectively to also improve the health -- and as I explained, the medical scheme market continues to stagnate, and this is aligned with our Healthcare ambitions. Again, it talks to the opportunity that we have to play into had also talked to the traction that we've received. The network, which continues to be a focus for us. And Ivan, as alluded to us, doubling the size of our group and step changing the rate at which we add stores. This will start to play out in FY '25 or FY '24, we've secured 18 new Dis-Chem and 3 new Baby City stores. It is more than the previous year. I think important to acknowledge and realize that in this reported financial year, we also had to do the rebranding of nearly north of 40 Medicare stores, which obviously was resource-intensive. So from a space rollout perspective, relatively successful and talks well to the ambition that we have to grow the store footprint. Ivan also as part of the succession process that is managed is also, together with myself, set up the management consortium, which is effectively a share option securing long-term senior executive commitment. The mix of that consortium plays into our longer-term strategy with their being insurance individuals, retail individuals and pharmacy individuals together with analytical individuals in that consortium. Again, as I said, I think the mix is well constructed to deliver into our longer-term ambitions. Our wholesale business continues to grow in a consolidating independent market. TLC, as I said, continues to be an important driver of that -- and even with new TLCs, if you look at the rate of space growth compared to the rate of value growth, value growth outweighs space growth, which is just instrumental or fundamental to the support that we continue to get from TLC pharmacies that were already in our base and in turn, their growth as a function of exposure that we're giving to pricing to stock hierarchies, et cetera. And then finally, just to continue to invest and innovate to realize our vision. We've spoken a lot about it. It's really important for myself. It's really I think we're really well positioned as this came to deliver an integrated primary Healthcare solution. We've started -- it will continue to be the focus. It complements ovens role with -- in the retail business to kind of deploy what made us different, which is service and value and really taking those brand fundamentals and adapting them to building a Healthcare ecosystem. And on that note, maybe before I close, I just wanted to say thank you to Ivan and Lynette I'm excited and really privileged to be given the opportunity to lead the Dis-Chem Group. I thank the founding shareholders that I've worked alongside as well and the Board were really entrusting me with responsibility. During the time of the group I've really experienced the leadership philosophy that has built the Dis-Chem brand, the success of focus on delivering value and access to Healthcare for patients and customers, and it's really that mandate that will entrench in looking after the Healthcare ecosystem. I think that philosophy is certainly well entrenched within our management team and our staff. And I do believe that with the recent strategic investments which underpin this ambition. As a Healthcare service provider, we really are at the front door of Healthcare delivery and well positioned to increase access and quality to affordable private Healthcare. Thank you very much for listening. We hope that the presentation was informative, and we'll see you in 6 months' time.