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

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Dis-Chem Pharmacies Results for 2024. I will start off by summarizing the group highlights for the financial year ended 2024. Before I go into each of the highlights, I would just personally like to thank my immediate team and the greater group for the support as I've started my tenure as CEO. I think fundamentally, some of the strategic objectives have been supported, and we can see them playing out in some of the highlights that I'll talk to and in the residual presentation. If we look at group, group revenue increased by 11.1% to ZAR 36.3 billion. The second half, as I mentioned earlier, delivered profit before tax growth of 22%, fundamentally a function of operational positive leverage as we managed to control cost well. And we'll talk a lot about cost control as we go through the presentation, and we saw increased revenue growth in the second half of the year. That delivered after what was a relatively poor first half that delivered earnings per share, excluding the property gain in the previous year, which is nontrade of just over 4%, and certainly, a second half that exceeded our expectations internally. We ended with full year dividends of ZAR 0.457 per share. And similar as a function of our dividend policy being held a 21% increase in dividend for the second half or the second half dividend. If we move over to retail revenue. Retail revenue increased by 9.7% as a function of the maturity profile of our stores and as well as the new space added. Retail revenue is just shy of ZAR 32 billion now. Like-for-like retail sales growth, the strong 6.9%. Significant amount of that in price inflation with just north of 1.5% volume growth impacting that number. As I said and as we will discuss in more detail in the presentation, we deployed what we internally call Framework 1.0. The idea behind Framework 1.0 was to ensure that we created positive operating leverage, specifically within the relationship of sales and payroll cost. Payroll cost, as will be discussed, is the largest contributing cost to our income statement, and it's important to have positive leverage between sales and the payroll inflation number. The idea behind Framework 1.0 was to simply ensure a similar deployment of staff across each of our different store profiles, which has been done. That's yielded in excess headcount being deployed into the 15 new Dis-Chem stores that we've added for the financial year under review. Chris will discuss wholesale revenue. But as per usual, wholesale delivered really, really good results, up 13.3% to ZAR 27.4 billion. A huge part of that is internalized sales as a function of our wholesale environment supporting our retail stores. If we look at external revenue, which is servicing a market that is growing essentially at very muted volumes, predominantly single exit price, we saw a 21.4% increase in external revenue, close on ZAR 5 billion, so ZAR 4.6 billion, driven by our TLC franchise offering, which we believe is best-in-class and the continued support of independent pharmacies, which is -- which are starting to see some of those TLC franchise benefits being yielded in the independent space. And then we will touch on it, and I'll touch on it in the outlook, but we have warehouse expansion supportive of retail growth. And as you can see from -- on the last pillar, which really talks about our longer-term growth ambitions, we focus on group highlights, the importance of retail space and the growth thereof, as we've described previously and as I'll give you some indications of going forward is a fundamental pillar with fundamental focus in terms of the group as we look to entrench ourselves as South Africa's largest pharmacy by market share. We have also continued to invest in our mandate, which is to reduce cost and increase access of health care to South Africans. We term it and we deem it under integrated healthcare. We speak significantly about the ecosystem progress. And on the back of that, we've invested in a strategic life insurance business, which is the next evolution of the medical insurance and gap cover, which is the next evolution of our integrated healthcare strategy. Again, I'll cover that in a little bit more detail in that outlook. I'm now going to hand over to Julia, who will take us through the financial results.

Thank you, Rui. Good morning, everyone. The group is satisfied with its performance during the current year and specifically with the strong performance in the second half of the year. The group's performance in the current year was impacted by the once-off property gain in the prior period of ZAR 72 million due to acquisition of the warehouse properties. You will therefore see we have shown our statement of comprehensive income, both including and excluding this property gain to give a better representation of true transactional performance. COVID-19 vaccine administration and testing services have also impacted the results in the current period with ZAR 143 million in revenue in the prior period, which has not been repeated in the current period. The main aspects from a statement of comprehensive income perspective is revenue growth of 11.1% and 11.6% when excluding COVID, and an operating profit increase of 6.4%, excluding the property gain, which we will unpack in the subsequent slides. Three other points to note in the statement of comprehensive income is finance costs, tax and profit from associates and joint ventures. Finance costs have increased in the current period with the increase in the prime interest rate, the use of the overdraft facility for inventory buy-ins as well as the property acquisition loans that was taken out in the prior and current period of ZAR 957 million. The effective tax rate has reduced with the change in the corporate tax rate from 28% to 27%. Profit from associates and joint ventures has increased due to the excellent performance of Geniob in the current year. In the statement of financial position, there is an increase in tangible assets with the purchase of the Longmeadow warehouse for ZAR 502 million in order to sustain our retail growth ambitions. This has also resulted in the higher bank loans at the end of the year. Intangible assets increased due to the pharmacy operating system that is currently being built, which is a key component to our healthcare strategy as well as goodwill on the acquisition of an independent pharmacy in East London. The inventory balance has increased by ZAR 806 million from February '23 due to new stores that have been opened and strategic buy-ins that were done at year-end. The high inventory levels, together with the additional trade terms that have been negotiated, has resulted in the high trade payables balance. Lease liabilities continue to decrease as we cycle through the lease periods. Revenue has been broken down between the wholesale and retail segments. Retail revenue has grown by 9.7% to ZAR 31.7 billion. In order to get a better reflection of true trade over the period, COVID-19 vaccines and testing of ZAR 143 million in the prior period needs to be excluded, resulting in the retail revenue growth of 10.3%. Like-for-like retail revenue grew by 3.3% in the prior period to 6.9%. External wholesale revenue growth has been well supported by the growing TLC franchise model at 19.6% and the continuing support of independents at 23.2%, which Chris will discuss in more detail in the later slides. Total income for the group, excluding the property gain, has increased by 10.1%, with the total income margin moving from 30.9% in the prior period to 30.7%. Total income margin has been improved by the group's focus on ROIC and continued improvement in back-end terms with trade terms increasing by 14.3% against purchases growth of 12%. The increase in terms has been offset by the compression in transactional margin of 0.2% due to the investment in price to maintain market share in certain core categories. More details will be given on this when we discuss the trading performance of the group. Wholesale margin increased from 8% to 8.1% when excluding the property gain in the prior year. Moving on to retail operating expenditure. There has been a 5.7% increase in depreciation, mainly as a result of the IFRS 16 depreciation as well as fixtures and fittings from rolling out new stores and additional depreciation in the current year from the completed rollout of the new point-of-sale technology. Occupancy costs have increased by 21%, predominantly due to increases in municipal charges, such as electricity and rates and taxes, as well as short-term leases. Employee costs is still the largest expense within the retail segment and has been well controlled in the second half of the year through the implementation of the retail framework, which we will discuss a bit later. Other operating costs increased by 17.9% due to additional advertising expenses, IT-related costs, delivery costs and ZAR 39 million spent on diesel to support trade during load shedding. Advertising expenses are due to promotional activities and continue to be recovered with a marginal benefit in other income. I will briefly touch on wholesale expenditure as Chris will cover this in more detail later. Wholesale has done well to keep expenditure growth at only 8%, which is below the growth of wholesale total income of 10.9%. Depreciation has increased by 8.5% as a function of new warehouse equipment, mainly relating to forklifts and motor vehicles, as well as some investment in computer equipment and software. Occupancy costs have increased by 35.6% through high electricity and municipal charges, as well as rental paid for the Longmeadow warehouse before it was transferred to us. Employee cost growth has been due to annual increases as well as additional employees for the Longmeadow facility. As discussed at the half year results, we implemented a new retail framework in order to better manage the employment cost line, which makes up approximately 62% of retail costs. Since implementing the framework, we have already seen cost savings with employment cost line only increasing by 6.4% in the second half of the year compared to a growth of 9.7% in the first half of the year. The initial focus of the framework was to ensure the optimal store staffing while still maintaining customer service. This was especially important with the retail store rollout plan to ensure all new stores were opened with the correct staff complement. As we continue to improve on the framework, we are now focusing on optimizing our staff investment in the consultant space across different stores. In order to ensure sustainable cost focus, the framework targets have been included in KPIs of management and executives. This slide depicts the overall performance across the 2 halves of the year. The second half of the year resulted in a significant improvement with an earnings before tax increase of 22% over the prior period comparative. This improvement has come from increased sales of 12.8% in the second half of the year compared to the comparative period as well as the already mentioned cost focus. Operating profit for the group, excluding the property gain in the prior period, improved by 6.4%, with operating margin declining from 5.1% to 4.9%, which is a function of the delta between total income and total expenditure in the period. EPS and HEPS for the period is ZAR 1.147 and ZAR 1.146 per share, which is a decrease of 1.4% and 1.6%, respectively. When taking out the property gain in the prior period, which gives a better representation of trade in the current period, EPS and HEPS increased by 4% and 3.8%, respectively. We now move on to working capital in the statement of financial position. Debtors days has been well managed and increased slightly from 26.5 days in the prior period to 26.8 days. This increase is mainly driven by the wholesale growth to independents and TLCs, and the debtors book recoverability is still a key focus and well controlled. Increased inventory is held within the group at year-end with the SEP and promotional buy-ins, but inventory days has been held at 88 days. Inventory days is a strategic focus, and we plan to have a 10% improvement over the medium term while maintaining debtor and creditor days. Trade creditors, the most significant part of trade and other payables, has increased by 16.6% from the prior period with a continued focus on supply chain financing. Creditors days have, however, decreased from 94.6 days in the prior period to 93.2 days in the current period due to the averaging of the base in the calculation. If trade and other payables at year-end is used instead of average, creditors days would have increased from 97.4 days to 98.7. The waterfall graph depicts our cash movement in the current period with an increase of ZAR 194 million since February '23. Cash inflows have come from normal trading and additional property loans taken out, and cash payments have been made for taxation, finance costs, dividends declared as well as for lease payments, CapEx and loan repayments. Including in investing activities is also the ZAR 55 million relating to the acquisition of Berea Pharmacy. Expansion CapEx is mainly driven through the opening of our new stores and IT assets. Expansion CapEx to turnover has decreased from 1.1% to 0.9%, mainly due to 21 stores being opened in the prior year compared to 15 in the current year. Maintenance CapEx to turnover has reduced from 0.7% to 0.4% in the current period, with reduced CapEx acquired in the wholesale space and renovations. Property acquisitions relate to investments in both the wholesale and retail space. There has been no significant change to the outlook of cost per additional floor space added. Now over to Rui and Craig to talk to retail performance.

Thank you, Julia. We were really pleased with a healthy set of retail results bolstered by strong second half trade, including during the Christmas period. In dispensary, Dis-Chem maintained its pharmacy market-leading position at 24.6% market share. Whilst we gain in personal care, this was somewhat offset by a slight reduction in beauty share due to a shift to the mass fragrance segment, overall, resulting in a 19% share achieved for the personal care and beauty category. In our key health and medical categories, we continued to see share gains from 46.8% at FY '23 to 46.9% for FY '24 as well as in baby care, which increased from 10.8% to 10.9%. When including Baby City, the total baby share was at 17.8%, a very strong 1.1% gain in what is a highly competitive space. We saw strong double-digit retail revenue growth of 10.3% with margin growing at 9.2%. Considering the modest SEP increase last year, dispensary revenue growth of 7.4% was noteworthy, with margin growth of 5.8% on the back of ongoing investment in price in OTC medicines. Increased promotional activity in personal care and beauty drove higher than budgeted revenue growth of 14.6% and margin growth of 11.8%. In health and medical, we've seen a nice uptick in growth, particularly in the second half and margin grew ahead of revenue at 8.2% versus 6.7%. The trend was similar in baby, where margin increased by 15.5% ahead of revenue, which grew at 12.6%. This coupled with the share gains that I mentioned. We remain committed to the ROIC improvement strategy, having proved fruitful after the considerable groundwork done in establishing a strong foundation of retail revenue growth of 10.3%, the transactional margin increase of 9.2% was very good, driven by strong margin performance ahead of revenue in healthcare and medical as well as baby categories. The strategic investment in price on over-the-counter medication is ongoing. We also increased promotional activity by over 20% in personal care and beauty, including more personalized offers, which yielded superior returns in loyalty, basket value and frequency of shop, but did require additional discounting. Private label grew ahead of core categories and target was exceeded 6 months ahead of plan on the ZAR 1 billion private label opportunity identified. Total income growth of 9.3% was driven by incremental gains in fee-for-service rebates. This is illustrated by terms growth of 14.3% ahead of purchases growth, of which these terms are generally based growing at only 12%. Stock days were down marginally to 88.1 from 88.2, with rolling stock days, which considers a 91-day cost of sales, at 87.6, reflecting the downward trend. Target coverage levels for AI-driven fully automated forecasting and replenishments have been reached in the front shop, exceeding 91% of front shop orders. We've also now deployed the platform in the pharmacy environment. Creditors days at 93 remain within optimal range, continuing the negative stock to creditors days working capital position. The working capital graph illustrates the larger gap maintained between creditors days in yellow and group stock days in gray. The 88 stock day level achieved at FY '24 compares to 85 days at FY '23, the difference being a substantial SEP buy-in on the back of the higher SEP increase, which wasn't the case in the base. This will be margin accretive. The opening of our Longmeadow DC facility was well managed without a substantial impact on total group stock, which was the case and experienced previously in FY '19 when decentralizing to Cape and KZN DCs, as you can see in the spike in the gray stock line 5 years back. Working capital is one of our key growth drivers and a significant opportunity to further improve. We believe that a 10% day stock cover reduction target, which would take us to an 80-day cover level, can be comfortably achieved within the 3-year timeframe we alluded to at the half year, if not sooner. Our modeling suggests that this can be done without any compromise to range or levels of in-stock when using a strategic optimization approach enabled by F&R and other technologies we've deployed over the recent years. A cash unlock of over ZAR 600 million is possible, as a result to be invested into growth. Thanks for listening in. I'm now going to hand over to Rui.

Thank you, Craig. If I briefly touch on loyalty, I think as a group, we are reimagining the purpose of loyalty. We understand how value-conscious the consumer is. And we also appreciate the role that loyalty has to play in delivering value to our consumers. And if you look at the extent of customer profiles that we have, so 15.8 million customer profiles, of which 9.3 million are benefit members, up by 6% and 8.1%, respectively. And you'll notice that through all of the metrics that I talk to, these metrics traditionally overindex what you would see in the market. Again, it talks to the value-conscious nature of consumers and the importance of thinking about loyalty differently into the future. Benefit members continue to contribute a significant amount to retail turnover at 77.9%, up from 73.6%. The importance of that penetration also ensures that we access specific data points. Data points and the customer understanding and the customer profile understanding is fundamental if you think about integrated healthcare. Our active loyalty shopper spend increased by 15%, again, talks to the principle of value conscious. We also see that through the promotional shopping line that we see from our loyalty base. And the redemption rates stayed stable at 90% on -- 97% on average, which again is the indicative nature of how frequently that loyalty program is consumed and used and opens up value. The foundation, which is a localized community-led foundation, which is funded by the benefit program, gave back over ZAR 34 million in FY '24. This is core to the way that we think about loyalty in today's world and in the reimagined world. And then we launched our Better Tomorrow Starts Here campaign on the back of the Rugby World Cup, which has committed ZAR 12 million to 12 staff nominated projects. Specifically, I'm personally proud of this. I think it's been excellent to see the staff being included in the initiative and nominate projects of their choice. In terms of culture deployment, like fundamentally really important to the group going forward. And then what we do, and we have also launched our Baby program. Effectively, it was relaunched as an all-in-one parenting program. It features tailored specific unique pregnancy and parenting elements. It really is an all-inclusive journey, a 20-month journey. And we are really excited to see the returns and the potential additional engagement that is encouraged for moms and dads or expecting moms and dads. If we move over to e-commerce and consumer convenience, I think internally, there's an acceptance and you'll see it as I discuss the strategic pillars or the strategic areas of focus. Digital becomes an important area of focus for us. As you can see from FY '20 to FY '24, specifically in FY '24, increased revenue growth of 32.9%. That has been supported by -- we've always experienced and we've always run a decentralized hub structure, effectively meaning that we service all of the online orders regardless of the channel. So whether through the on-demand delivered channel or the traditional website e-commerce channel through our hub stores, we're well positioned because of the range that our stores carry to be able to do that. But at the same time, especially in the on-demand space, the geographical representation and the ability to ensure that fulfillment hubs are closer to the consumer means that we need to continue the expansion of these hubs. You can see that it was quite static from FY '24 to FY '23. But with our renewed focus on the importance of e-commerce and the digital space, the expected number of hubs in FY '25, as we roll these out monthly, is now increasing to 158, allowing us to do a few things, ensure that the on-demand delivery space can be marketed through the line nationally as opposed to localized, this is currently the play; and ensuring that from an SLA perspective, we continue to deliver to the 60-minute SLA as expected. I think ultimately, if I think about digital longer term, we specifically want to own digital in the health space. We have the ability now, for example, to offer all of our services in our in-store, including pharmacy and claiming on pharmacy through our digital platforms, and that is the way that we'll position ourselves in the digital space. If we move over to the property expansion strategy, and as I said in the highlights, property unlocks all of the other strategic areas of growth. It is the fundamental or the most fundamental strategic area of growth and pillar. If I just remind everyone of what we had explained previously, this slide is a replica of what we positioned in our half year presentation. On the top right-hand side, it gives Dis-Chem's national pharmacy share of 24.4% or that was the pharmacy share at the time. Gauteng's pharmacy share of 35.9%. The importance of Gauteng pharmacy share is that Gauteng is the geography where we have equivalent number of retail square meters on the ground in relation to our largest competitor, whose specific share is -- in Gauteng is 21.6%. That delta is obviously fundamentally important and something that we chase through the other geographies in South Africa, and it's purely a function of space. I think what it denotes is that -- does denote the best-in-class brand positioning. And I think importantly, what you do see, and this is independent of not only our largest competitor in the retail pharmacy space, but also of grocer competition, the tight relationship between our front shop share, so that front shop share is effectively Nielsen's view of our share in our core categories. So if you think about a normal store layout what we carry in our stores, but the tight relationship between the front shop share and the pharmacy share, which for all intents and purposes means if we can attract the script and we promote and price well in the front of our store, we retain against many, many other doors in South Africa. We retain the equivalent front shop share on the back of the pharmacy foot traffic. The table at the bottom just depicts that across each of the geographies. So you can see in Gauteng, our space ratio is 1, effectively for every 1 retail square meter we have, our largest competitor has got 2. I've spoken about our pharmacy market share of 35.9%. Our competitor's share of [Audio Gap] [ 21.6 ]. And then our front shop share, which is very tightly compared to the 35.9% [ are ] 32.1%. If you run your eye past across all of the other provinces, I think conceptually, some things worth noting. In each of the other provinces, we have less than ideal relationships from a space perspective or a retail space perspective against our competitor. To highlight a few of the Eastern Cape, which is an example we'll talk to. Our competitors got 3.2x the number of space. The Western Cape as well as KZN, which are, from a rand perspective, some of the biggest geographies in the country. And certainly, as we think about our property strategy going forward, this will be areas where we will deploy over-indexed space. What is noticeable is the relationship between space, pharmacy share and front shop share. And again, you can see our largest competitor taking over-indexed share in areas where they've got an overinvested amount of space relative to ourselves. Simply, if you recall, there were 3 elements to the property strategy. The first one was to maintain our share. We're obviously very aware that both grocers and our competitors are going to continue to lay down space. It's important that we at least match that space. There's an element of consolidation in the pharmacy market, which requires us to over-index space in relation to traditional space investment by grocers, meaning that our space investment will continue to consolidate the independent market. And then the third element is, obviously, this replicating Gauteng property strategy, which requires specific deployment of retail space in certain geographies in relation to how underinvested we are in that specific geography. If we move over to an example of the expansion strategy specific to the year under review. This is the Eastern Cape as you can see from the green highlighted area of the map of our country. On the right-hand side, just some metric examples of what's happened. So we had a single store in February '23 in East London, a big opportunity node in the Eastern Cape. We increased that to 3 stores in February 2024. We've seen revenue growth of 74%. Importantly, that revenue growth of 74% is obviously against the market. As I've explained previously, that's growing at muted volumes plus price inflation. And we have an additional store planned in FY '24 for the East London node. If you then take it a level up and you then look at the table at the bottom, which represents what that has actually achieved for us in the Eastern Cape. So August 2023, Gauteng is the proxy. That's obviously what we're chasing, a one-to-one relationship. That's just been pulled from the slide that I've just discussed. In Feb 2023, which is our comparative period, I mean, the Eastern Cape, our largest competitor at 3.21x the amount of retail space. What we have done through our 3-pronged property strategy was identified the opportunity to roll out just north of 8,000 square meters, right? Our current pharmacy share at the time was 7.5%. You can see the delta between ourselves and our largest competitor, their share being 26.6%. And we have a slightly over-indexed front shop share as a function of the competitor retail landscape in the Eastern Cape of 9.3%. Feb 2024 in the Eastern Cape, as of the end of the financial year, you can see the ratio has changed as a function of the investment in the 2 additional spaces. So that ratio is down from 3.21 to 2.71. It will further come down as we add the planned stores for FY '25. We've invested an additional 2,644 square meters of space in the Eastern Cape. And what has that done from a metric perspective? Well, our pharmacy shares move from 7.5% to 11%. So we've taken more of that market. That's obviously underpinned the growth of the 74% revenue. We have impacted -- as we've said, we've impacted our largest competitor's pharmacy share, which has come down by 2.3%, while ours has gone up by 46.6%. And our front shop share has mirrored that, an increase from 9.3% to 9.9%. So that's a practical example of how we'll look at localized opportunities or local markets within the broader geographies of South Africa to deploy our space and to get to our overall ambition of entrenching ourselves as the largest retail pharmacy player of our market share. If we move into the primary healthcare space, and we think about integrated -- the integrated healthcare ecosystem, everyone would be familiar with this block graph that we've previously discussed. I think when we think about the Dis-Chem of the future, we will always stay true to what drove the brand's growth, which is pharmacy retail. But I think as we try and differentiate ourselves as a business and as a brand and stay true to the mandate of lowering cost and increasing access, it's more and more important to think about how we achieve that through integrated healthcare. This slide depicts what we have from a pharmacy retail perspective and potentially the relationship between what we have in pharmacy retail, what we're building in the funder space and the interrelatedness of this in achieving lower cost and increased access. So I guess as a reminder, in the pharmacy retail space, we have a very, very strong consumer-facing brand. We've got a bricks-and-mortar footprint, which continues to grow. Think about the principle that I've spoken about around the investment in space that we continue to make. We carry many clinics, which I'll just -- I'll talk a little bit about it. That is the lowest cost entry point into the healthcare environment. And we continue -- as I said, in the loyalty slide, we continue to consume data and to understand the importance of that data in terms of commercializing it internally within this ecosystem as we get data from our patients and our customers, not only about them as individuals, but about their health consumption and their behavior. The integrated element, so the middle block, that talks about a provider network, product design, fund administration, partnerships as we think about taking our medical insurance opportunity across the spectrum of what is funded health cover. And we've invested in our reimagined pharmacy operating system. Julia spoke about that being an intangible asset. And we certainly are doing the necessary work around thinking about an electronic health record, which sits on top of this integrated healthcare system for participants to use to better control the management of patients through a network and obviously inform the reduction of cost appropriately. On the right-hand side, the funder space. As I will talk to a little bit later and as is aware, we obviously launched Dis-Chem Health, which has got both a gap offering and a medical insurance offering. In those instances, certainly in the medical insurance space, we've had to sell into a market that we're building. And by building I mean educating. We've had great success in that market. We continue to have record month after record month, which is indicative of the opportunity existing, the need for healthcare and specifically the need for healthcare at lower cost. But as we think about the evolution into what is truly integrated healthcare, the life opportunity, which is denoted by Dis-Chem Life is a very real one. On the back of that, and I'll touch on it in the outlook, but we've invested in OneSpark, which is an innovative long-term life opportunity business. We like the play. We like the maturity of the market. Again, as I've said, in the funder space previously, we will only invest in products and businesses that can be seen through a healthcare lens. So we have to -- with our retail pharmacy assets, we have to be able to entrench ourselves and make a difference and differentiate the products that we offer the market as opposed to just selling product into the market. And ultimately, that's all underpinned by our business priorities. And I mean, we've spoken about the positioning of us as a retailer to a healthcare provider, and we think that's fundamentally important. Specifically, as we think about NHI, even though NHI is certainly going to be rolled out in phases, and we do believe that there are some challenges with the way that has been promulgated and proposed, and we're supportive of the private sector view on NHI, there's an opportunity to certainly play into NHI as a service provider because of the differentiated offering that we have in the retail pharmacy space, because of the number of clinics that we have for it to work at scale. And I think there's an acceptance of that, whether you sit in the private sector or the public sector, there requires a partnership between private and public, and it also requires the ability to route people through the entry point and the cheapest form of healthcare before they get triage to expensive healthcare. That talks to the affordability of the NHI. So I think ultimately, when we think about the integrated healthcare system, the one thing that we wanted to achieve is it needs to reduce cost, it needs to increase access. And through that, it differentiates us from other players in the market. And at the same time, it does justice to what the brand is truly supposed to represent. If we focus a little bit more on Dis-Chem Health, just some imagery around the importance of the loyalty program that is specific to the policyholders of Dis-Chem Health. That loyalty program gets you 20% off on an extensive basket of supporting brands in our space. The idea that we always had or conceptually the idea that we always had was the savings. We're really there to justify the investment to open up the wallet to justify the investment in your health. The mandate and certainly the way that we thought about it internally is that we need to create value for people to invest in their own health. And as a function of that, the importance of extra into that space has been incredible. It's been supported. We continue to see extra penetration into the basket of our policyholders. It's certainly driving policy acquisition. And as I said, we continually see record month after record months. We continuously see the sustained momentum, even in a market that we're educating and growing. We do have, as we launch extra 2, we do have 35 new brands included in the extraRewards program. I think important for me is it indicates the increased support from vendors and it strengthens the policyholder value proposition. Again, the idea behind extra was to open up value to invest in the healthcare and again, plays directly into the concept of reducing cost and access to healthcare. Metrically, as I said, extraRewards continues to be a key retention driver with up to 50% enhancements in collections. And I guess that's one example of this -- the integrated nature and the relationship between what we can do with our retail assets and a loyalty program that is run through our retail stores and how it fundamentally can, through an interrelated relationship, change the mechanics and the metrics that you traditionally see in the funder space. And I guess that is the benefit of an integrated healthcare ecosystem. If we look at our health clinics, again, this is just an update on the performance of our clinics. I think I see our clinics as vitally important to the deployment of integrated healthcare. I've spoken a little bit about the potential opportunity with regards to NHI, the importance of the price point of our clinic sisters and the fact that our clinics remain the cheapest alternative to enter the healthcare supply chain. The other important factor is that from a private sector perspective, we have the most clinics in the market, 513 healthcare clinics across the national retail pharmacy store network. As I said, it's fundamental to delivery on the vision of increased healthcare, specifically as a function of reducing cost. We are also trialing and again, aligned with the principle that I spoke about, NHI, public and private health partnerships at scale, really, really important. The same kind of mandate that we have as a business should be and is the mandate that the state is driving, which is increased access of healthcare. We see that in terms of the progress that we're making with provincial departments of health in terms of contracting. And we have also seen it with a further implementation of family planning and baby vaccination provisions. I think if you look at both the nurse-led consults, and if you look at Clinic Connect, which is our virtual doctor offering, you can see the continuous growth. We're starting to use these benefits in the way that we think about benefit design in the funder space. Again, another example of integrated healthcare, unlocking the assets in the retail space, dropping them into the funder space. So fundamentally, health clinics an important driver of not only retail revenue, but also our vision to deliver integrated healthcare. I guess the last point on the slide is just the adherence management program continues to be extended to more chronic patients, helping more people live longer and healthier lives. Again, a function of how we're thinking about the opportunity set with regards to that risk profile in the life insurance space, what it means from a health consumption perspective and foot traffic point of view in the pharmacy space, the investment in chronic patients fundamentally important to the success of our business and obviously, the health outcomes of those individuals. I'm now going to hand over to Chris to take us through the wholesale trading performance.

Thanks, Rui. Good morning. [Foreign Language] Thanks for the opportunity to present. I want to thank God for a great set of results. As you have heard and you will now see more detail of, the wholesale division once again had a very successful and blessed trading period in FY 2024. I want to thank and congratulate my whole team on their dedication and continued focus on driving sales, exceeding customer expectations on service and controlling costs. Results like these are only possible through a team that is passionate about excellence, consistency and continual improvement. Our customer-centric approach forms the basis of everything we do, and we see these efforts being reflected in the numbers that will be shared below. [Foreign Language] If we turn to Slide 31, external wholesale revenue. Total wholesale revenue growth of 13.3% was achieved. Looking at the diagram, we can see that external wholesale revenue grew by 21.4%. There were no internalized sales in this financial year. The number of TLC franchise stores have increased from 171 to 205 up till end of February 2024 year-on-year. The TLC customer group revenue grew by 19.6%, which once again proves the feasibility and success of the business model. The independent customer group grew revenue by 23.2%, which can be attributed to our sustained focus on maintaining and improving service levels and our increased customer footprint. If we now turn to Slide 32, expense efficiencies. This graph seeks to compare total revenue and total income growth to total expense growth. It can be seen that total revenue has grown by 13.3% and total income has grown by 10.9% compared to the same period last year. Total expenses grew by 8% over the same period. This was obtained through a sustained focus on efficiencies and cost control. I will address some of the higher percentage growth costs. Computer expenses grew by 25.8% due to an increase in hosting costs after moving our extended warehouse management system to an SAP hosted cloud solution. This will ensure scalability for our investment in the new warehouse space. Rent and municipal charges increased by 35.6%. This was driven by 4 main key drivers. First one being the K101 warehouse rental contract expiring in July 2023, which was renewed for 1 year and is therefore no longer accounted for as an IFRS 16 lease, but as direct rental. Secondly, the Longmeadow facility was rented up until the transfer date in November 2023. Third point, additional municipal costs, which obviously for Longmeadow facility. And then the fourth point, increase in electricity costs. Payroll expense increased by 7.5%, mainly due to inflationary pressure as well as additional staff needing to be employed for the Longmeadow facility. Depreciation increased by 8.5% due to depreciation raised on the Longmeadow facility as well as extra investment in forklifts and motor vehicles. Courier expense increased by only 3.8%, which is great to see as this is an area of continued focus for us due to it being a big cost driver in our environment. It was influenced by the following main drivers: firstly, the introduction of transportation crossdocking based on learnings from a network study that we've done; renegotiation of fees with service providers; and lastly, improved route efficiencies. Motor vehicle expense increase of 11.4% is attributed mainly to the increase in fuel costs. If we now turn to Slide 33, The Local Choice retail performance. As can be seen, the group's retail revenue has increased to ZAR 3.665 billion for the full 12 months of the 2024 financial year. This is a 12.3% growth in the group's retail revenue. The TLC customer revenue growth is partly driven by front shop support and ranging that we as a supply chain offers them. We currently have 205 TLC franchise stores. I will now hand back to Rui for the outlook.

Thanks, Chris. If we quickly go through our group strategic growth drivers, I think this is a circle that I've discussed previously with one change. And I think it's visually an important change. It's certainly how I'm thinking about the business going forward. It's certainly how we're adapting the business going forward. You'll see at the heart of the circle lies the big analytics bubble. I think as a business, considering the number of -- the amount and the number of data points we consume, data informing some of the decisions that we make across each of the strategic drivers is fundamentally important to the success of a business playing into integrated healthcare. Whether it's in the retail space as we think about the lifetime value of a customer or patient or whether it's in the funder space, in the integrated health space, where we think about benefit design, where we think about margins, where we think about some of the loyalty programs that we envision, ultimately, the analytics function needs to start serving the business better holistically. So it's an important visual change, the analytic bubble dropping into the middle of that concentric circle. And then the other different piece, as I alluded to earlier, is the evolution, or I suppose the addition of digital with our mandate being we want to own the online space in health. I think it's differentiated our potential offering into health, as I've spoken about, and the concept of a script allows you to do different things in the digital space. And that's certainly the ambition that we have is to own the online health space. A quick recap of the others. Property, we've gone into quite a bit of detail on. A reminder, 137,000 squares approximately over the next 36 months. We're obviously a few months into that. I'll touch a little bit on the next slide as to where we are progressively on the deployment of that space. Total income, we've done a really good job, as Craig has explained of holding our total income margin. I think over the years, we've gotten to a point where we're quite agnostic of the rand of retail delivered. That's important at a margin level because as we go into smaller spaces, the mix of potential categories changes and we don't want the return profile of the store to change. So total income, we've got into a nice point. We want to incrementally improve that over time. Cost control, a big, big focus for us, tied in closely to property. I think naturally, the more property we deploy, the quicker we can redeploy some of the resources that we open up in cost control, and I'll talk a little bit about the Framework 2.0 that Julia made reference to. So cost control, an important function. Craig spoke about 10% improvement in stock days, working capital management. Again, from a creditors and debtors days perspective, I think we've done appropriate work. And we're quite looking -- we're looking forward to seeing some of the benefits of what is a fully fledged F&R solution rolling out into our stores. The wholesale market share expansion is really important. I think from a network perspective, it supports our retail space ambitions. But I also think and testament to Chris and his team, I also think that what you're seeing in the wholesale space is this consolidation of the independent market. Obviously, wholesale requires scale. So you would expect consolidation to happen in chunks and quicker in the wholesale market. And through TLC and certainly allowing some of the independents to unlock or taste some of those TLC benefits, we're starting to see fundamental support from the external customers in the wholesale space. Really, really nice to see that we're taking as much share, if not more share, in the wholesale space than we are in the retail space. And then the integrated healthcare ecosystem, which I've alluded to and discussed conceptually in quite a bit of detail. We continue to think about the portfolio of health-centric products. Life insurance is the next big opportunity for us, which we've unlocked through the OneSpark transaction and the expertise that lies -- that lie in that asset and that management team. If we move over to the outlook, as I think is similar to all of the other retailers and I guess any corporate in South Africa, tough trading conditions are expected to persist. I think you have to acknowledge that and expect that to continue. We will continuously -- and it sounds like a very general thing to say. But I think in the way that we think about concepts such as loyalty, we'll be very obsessed with a focus on value, whether that's traditional front shop value, whether it's value in terms of access to healthcare in the funder space, but value, which has been something that's so centered and so close and true to the brand is something that we really hold close to ourselves and something that we'll be focused on going forward. As I've discussed previously, a slight change in the way that we think about property to ensure that we deliver the 137,000 square meters. I think there's a more proactive approach to it, a more analytical approach in terms of how we identify space. There's been resources added to our team internally to support that, which I think is important. And we do expect an accelerated rollout, specifically weighted to FY '26 and 2027. And that's a function of the work being done today. The pipeline being unpacked, some of the analytical work, again, which sits at the center of that concentric circle being done to identify new space opportunity, based on front shop and pharmacy shares. In the current year, we anticipate north of 22 sites. 22 sites have been secured. We do anticipate that being north of 22 sites for FY '25. Seven of these sites are already trading and then 2 new Baby City stores for FY '25. As we've said with Baby City, these would be ad-hoc if the opportunity presents itself. We will continue to focus on cost containment. As Julia explained, I think the shift has now been from Framework 1.0 to Framework 2.0. The initial framework that I envisioned was certainly just to consolidate some of the very inconsistent staffing frameworks that we had across the group. And we've got input from the operational business. We aligned a framework. We deployed the framework. We rolled it into the KPIs of senior management, and that's obviously started to unlock resources. Resource heads, those have been deployed into the new space. I think the next step, and she made reference during her presentation, is to now really test the return profile of some of those invested heads. So do they make sense from a return perspective together with the service element that we're offering our customers? If we think about the wholesale business, it continues to consolidate. We wanted to grow into that consolidating independent market, continued focus on TLC and the independent pharmacies, which has been a success over the last 4 years. I think importantly, as we think about wholesale, it doesn't sit in isolation to our retail property strategy. And as such, we've not only invested in warehouse capacity, which Chris has spoken to, but we've also looked at a specialist network firm doing a study to kind of optimally define how we think about the evolution of wholesale space and how it plays into retail space going forward. That takes into account things like logistic cost savings, it takes into account SLAs, it takes into account essentially all the efficiencies that live below the gross margin line that allow us to scale retail and ensure the service delivery of that wholesale supply chain and in turn, ensuring that the SLA is then in place for the support of external business, both TLCs and independents. I think importantly, the management retention scheme has been implemented, funded by the founding family. On behalf of myself and all of the participants, a big thank you to Ivan and the family. I think that commitment to a team that ideally is going to unlock value over the next 9 to 10 years is incredible. We're looking forward to unlocking that value. I think the team has been well selected. It could augment over time, but it's certainly been well selected in terms of ensuring that we have the individuals that are accountable to elements of the strategic growth areas. And thus, it secures long-term senior executive commitment, which is, I think, is important for the group and certainly important for me as I think about my team longer term. And then finally, we're excited about the OneSpark acquisition. It certainly does enhance our integrated healthcare vision. It's aimed at increasing access, reducing cost and ultimately delivering better health outcomes for more and more South Africans. It's a portfolio of products that we will bring to the market over the next 18 months under the Dis-Chem brand, and we're excited about the evolution of those products, and certainly, the evolution of our group with respect to the funder space and really deploying and building significant returns out of the funder space into the integrated healthcare environment. On that note, I conclude the presentation. I'd just like to say thank you to everyone for listening. And once again, as I said in my opening remarks, a big thank you to the team, the broader business, and every single person who approaches their day under our Dis-Chem brand and really wants to make a difference to the health of South Africans. Enjoy the rest of your day.