EPE Capital Partners Ltd (EPE.JO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ethos Capital Interim Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Peter Hayward-Butt. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks very much, and thanks very much to all of our investors and stakeholders who have taken the time to meet with us this morning. Yes, so it's nice to be able to sit in front of you today and talk about a strong operating performance. You would have seen in the results that we released this morning, a very strong operating performance with NAV up 24%, utilizing the Brait share price or 10% using the Brait NAV. So again, a strong operating performance. Clearly, there's a bit of base effect in that given the impact of COVID over the last 2 years. But I think it's great to see over the last 6 months, the 24% increase in NAV does talk to the operating leverage in the business. And very importantly, most of that growth in NAV has been driven by profitability rather than any increase in the multiple across the portfolio and with a 54% increase in average EBIT -- in EBITDA -- attributable EBITDA of the portfolio in the last 12 months. I think that's great. It's grown -- many of the portfolio companies have grown into and now exceeded their pre-COVID levels or their maintainable EBITDA levels that we held them at. And it's very pleasing to see the operating leverage coming through in the portfolio. It's also pleasing that in the last 6 months, we've completed a restructure and a capital raise both for Brait. We raised ZAR 3 billion in the exchangeable bond, which Ethos Capital participated in. And very importantly, we launched about 10 days ago, the recapitalization and a fundraising for Virgin Active at the Brait NAV for Virgin Active, which has been -- which is great, brings a lot of capital into the business. We've got a new CEO in that business, which we're very pleased about. And that business really is starting to perform. We'll touch a bit on that later. Also in addition, ZAR 431 million of new investments over the past 6 months. Really, most of that is in Brait exchangeable bond. And in the Crossfin transaction through the mid-market fund, which is an investment in the tailwind sector, and we'll again touch in a bit more detail on that new acquisition. And then finally, and probably equally importantly, the track record of exits since we set up Ethos Capital nearly 5 years ago has started to prove both realized IRRs, 24% realized IRRs across 8 transactions. But I think probably more importantly, an average of a 34% increase in the prevailing NAV when we sell the assets. So that sits in our book at 100. We end up selling that asset for about 34 -- sorry, ZAR 134 million. So again, we'll touch a bit on that later, but I think it does provide some [indiscernible] and collaboration around our valuation methodology, which we get a lot of questions on. So again, a good start to the year. Obviously, the year-end is June, and we would like to hope that the performance will continue. In terms of some of the high-level executive summary, the NAV per share increased to ZAR 10.08 from ZAR 9.19 as of June. So a 10% increase. That's assuming we consolidate the Brait investment at its NAV per share. Or from an NAV per share perspective, if you include Brait at its share price, the NAV grew to ZAR 8.26, up from ZAR 6.67 as at June. So a 24% increase. So it says on the right-hand side, a very significant increase in the NAV over the last 6 months. The carrying value of the portfolio is now ZAR 2.6 billion. It's 100% invested. And as I mentioned earlier, very strong growth both in revenue, but also most pertinently in EBITDA. So a 12% increase in the last 12 months' revenue and EBITDA growth of 54% showing the operating leverage in the business. As I mentioned, investments of ZAR 431 million, about ZAR 120 million of that relates to the Crossfin transaction and the mid-market fund. The residual ZAR 171 million was the Ethos Capital direct investment into the Brait exchangeable bond. And then Fund VII funded its own investment into the exchangeable bond for ZAR 121 million. As we know, Ethos Capital continues to trade at a very significant discount. And if you look at the implied valuation, we'll talk a bit about these multiples later on, the market implied valuation of the portfolio is around about 4.7x last 12 months EBITDA. How does the performance correlate relative to the market performance? As we've shown you this chart before, in the 6 months, 1 year or 3 years, we try and benchmark the various funds against the performance of what we call an Ethos mandate. So we take JSE, we exclude all the large international stocks, Naspers, mining and real estate to give us 182 companies, which we compare ourselves against. Over the last year, that portfolio -- sorry, that's Ethos mandate, stocks have grown by 34%. And you can see below the growth in the various funds. So Fund VI, up 24%; the mid-market fund, up 19%; Fund VII, excluding Brait, up 40%; the AI fund up 40%. And the laggard in that is Brait, and that's really largely driven by the fact that the Virgin Active NAV has been relatively constant and flat over the last 18 months or so. So overall, as I mentioned, our NAV per share increased 24% over the last 6 months, which compares to the 16% increase in the Ethos mandated stocks. And as you can see below, most of that has been driven by profitability. We'll talk a bit about that later. Most of it is driven by the increase in the maintainable EBITDA. We still continue to value the portfolio at about a 50% discount to the peer group. As you can see, the peer group is valued overall on an average at 14.4x. We've kept the multiple of the portfolio relatively consistent at 7.5x EBITDA. So if you talk to the drivers of the value accretion over the past 6 months, the 10% increase in NAV per share, largely driven by a 13% increase in the unlisted portfolio. And that really was driven very broadly across the portfolio. We'll talk a bit about it later. Channel VAS performed very well at both in dollars but also with the weakening in the rand but also just about all of the portfolio companies. And I was saying earlier, about 75% of our portfolio companies now have EBITDAs in excess of where they were prior to COVID. The listed portfolio increased pretty significantly. Brait NAV, as I mentioned, increased by about 3% from ZAR 7.90 to ZAR 8.14. And the MTN Zakhele Futhi share price increased by more than 100% over that period of time. So if you took the NAV as at June of 2,137 one of the constituent parts of the growth, ZAR 107 million of that is an increase in the maintainable EBITDA across the portfolio. The next big increase there really is around the FX movement. That really was a reversal of the same ZAR 72-odd million we saw when the rand strengthened during the last half of the year. So that unwound was a bit of weakening in the rand relative to the dollar, increased the Channel VAS valuation in rand by ZAR 72 million. And then the increase in the listed investments, which increased by 61% over the 6 months, of that ZAR 248 million, ZAR 215 million of that relates to an increase in the share price of Brait and ZAR 33 million of that is an increase in the MTN Zakhele Futhi share price. And that gets you to a valuation of the portfolio of ZAR 2,563 million as of the 31st of December. Assuming, again, using the Brait share price in terms of the NAV per share, that results in a 24% increase in Ethos Capital's NAV per share. And as I mentioned, the maintainable EBITDA -- whilst the actual EBITDA grew by 54%, the maintainable EBITDA, which we've only increased by 3% is what drove the valuation earnings uplift. If you look at across the top 5 portfolio assets, they grew EBITDA at 15%, 1 5, which, as I mentioned, compared to the 54% across the total portfolio, which shows that the rest of the portfolio and some of the smaller and laggards in the portfolio have grown very significantly over the last 6 months. In terms of liquidity, we have -- we're now fully invested, as I mentioned, ZAR 2.6 billion invested. We have a facility of ZAR 270 million with RMB drawn as at December with ZAR 450 million of that facility committed. So as yet quite a significant amount undrawn. And the net undrawn commitments in the existing funds of ZAR 150 million. So you can see well covered from a liquidity perspective. From investments and disposals, as I mentioned, Ethos Capital -- Ethos Funds invested around ZAR 760 million over the past 6 months. Ethos Capital's share of that was ZAR 431 million, of which ZAR 121 million was funded through the Ethos Fund VII debt facility. So it wasn't effectively a direct exposure for Ethos Capital. Importantly, below that, we'll talk a bit about exits at the end. Neopak sale was agreed in December and very pleasingly, at a 20% premium to where we held it in our books at the time. And the Consol sale in Brait was agreed in November '21, and that was at a 37% premium to the Brait valuation at the time. So again, giving confidence to the valuations and the NAVs that we currently have in the portfolio. From a strategic perspective, I don't think the outlook hasn't changed. The Board is still very keen to see flowback from the funds and to discuss capital allocation at that point in time. And I think around exits, starting to see a proven track record in exits at significant premiums to NAV. And if those continues, we'll be able to give different options for the board to return capital to shareholders, whether that be in the form of buybacks or other methods of returning capital, as well as investments into new investment opportunities where the Board sees value. I'll give you a very brief overview of the companies. We'll go into a lot more detail later on. But at a very high level, Channel VAS's performance continued very, very strongly. In fact, even more strongly in the last 6 months a 26% increase in year-to-date EBITDA in dollars. And that was really driven by advances growth really across the portfolio in different jurisdictions. And very pleasingly, traction around Mobile Financial Services. And that business is up 84% compared to budget, and we'll touch a bit on that later. And we continue to see the defaults at a very, very low level with tight cost controls in the business. So there are still growth opportunities in that business. We're seeing them both across product and geography, and we're very pleased with the continued performance in Channel VAS. Echo is a bit of a tale of two cities there. The South African business really is performing well, significantly ahead of budget, despite having some significant investments in sales. That's very pleasing. However, the international business has faced some headwinds from lockdown restrictions. But very importantly, there was a very large client win with a South African retailer, which we will now be -- Echo will be doing the services for in most of the countries, which we are present, which gives a lot of positivity to the strategy that Echo is following, but the international business has had a tough time over the past 6 months. Vertice, obviously, the traditional business actually performed very well and are growing, particularly cardiology and cardiovascular. We'll touch on those later. But we're still seeing the slowdown in electives, particularly around Omicron at the back end of the year, having an impact on performance, more than 60% of this business is dependent on those electives. Hopefully, that would reverse. It's slowly coming back, probably slower than we expected. And management continues to focus on ensuring that we have the right cost base without impairing any growth prospects for the business. Synerlytic. The business has performed well. It's 16-odd-percent up EBITDA year-to-date. That said, in the last couple of months, there has been a bit of a slowdown particularly in WearCheck’s business around COVID. COVID-related restrictions have delayed access to certain sites and affected volumes there. We would hope that, that business does recover. Now the things seem to be opening up. And I think the lifting of the state of emergency would obviously positively impact that business. AMIS which is the other -- if WearCheck’s 2/3, it's the other 1/3 of the business, is performing very, very well, definitely benefiting, obviously, from a rising tide of buoyant commodity prices. It's great to see Gammatek, which has bounced back very, very strongly over the last 12 months, but particularly over the last 6 months. Year-to-date, EBITDA growth of 16% in that business. And that's despite some pretty significant supply chain disruptions and service delivery -- sorry, device launch delays around Samsung, et cetera. So very positive on that business, which has been great. And we'll go into a bit more detail later on about Crossfin. It's the new business that the mid-market fund has invested in, a very, very interesting differentiated fintech-type business with an ecosystem of complementary businesses. We'll touch on those later. And very pleasing just to give you sort of a headline, I mean the business has been growing well, both pre our acquisition, but more [indiscernible] post our acquisition. And year-to-date EBITDA has grown to 80% and very, very significantly above budget. So it's been a very good start for that acquisition. Just touching on the Brait portfolio for a second. And again, as I mentioned, we will go into more detail. Premier's performance has continued to be extremely strong, both on a relative and an absolute basis with the last 12-month EBITDA up 23%. And this is largely driven by volume increases in the main, but obviously, some price increases. Performance in Millbake, which is a very significant part of the business, is also up 23%, but there have been very strong contributions from all of the various business units, which has been very pleasing to see. As you know, we have now finally commissioned the Pretoria bakery. That's been CapEx of about ZAR 500 million we spent on that, and that will drive operational benefits for the business going forward. Obviously, the business is not going to be totally isolated from the Ukraine crisis. Premier secured volumes for the next 5 to 6 months. So this is not a short-term issue. But clearly, if the Ukraine crisis continues for any significant length of time, it will impact prices, especially wheat prices and maize prices, which will have a knock-on impact for bread prices and maize. In terms of Virgin Active, as I mentioned someone the other day, it's been very pleasing for the first time to sit with management every Tuesday and get the numbers on what's happening around the world. There really has been a very, very significant turnaround in all of the key territories over the last 2 months. Most of the restrictions have been lifted in -- certainly in the U.K. In South Africa, we still have operating restrictions in terms of spacing and obviously, which equipment you can use. And there's still very draconian restrictions in Italy, which will be lifted on the 31st of March. The U.K. performance has seen a very, very strong bounce back. And very pleasingly in the last 6 weeks, even in the inner city gyms, I was talking to someone yesterday from Morgan Stanley, he said that 90% of their workforce are back, certainly the front office guys, which bodes well for our inner city gyms, which are always the most profitable gyms in the U.K. But I would say the sales across the U.K. are somewhere between 20% and 40% up on 2019 levels, depending whether you're talking about inner-city gyms or our London residential provincial gyms. So a very, very strong bounce back, strong member engagement. Utilization is above 2019 levels again. And terminations are significantly less in most markets than they have been. As I mentioned, sales in Italy approach -- have approached over the last 6 weeks or so 2019 levels. And that's before the major restrictions are lifted at the end of March. And just to give an anecdote around that, we set up a new gym in Milan, and it normally takes you 12 months to get those businesses to a membership base that is breakeven, and it took us just over 4 months. So it does show there's latent demand, particularly in Italy, and we'd hope that when those restrictions are lifted at the end of March, we will see further increases in our membership base. The APAC business has been in and out of lockdown, Singapore, Thailand and to some extent, Australia. It's a very small part of the business. It's very frustrating. We've seen those numbers recover very quickly once those restrictions are lifted. And we would hope that, that happens once those areas are out of their next level of COVID restrictions. Importantly, the South African business, which is obviously a very significant component of Virgin Active has seen very strong sales in January and February. In fact, February sales were an all-time high for February. And obviously, as the state of emergency is reduced and hopefully, that enables us to operate at full capacity, we will see that ramp-up continues. So again, some very positive movements across the Virgin Active portfolio. And you will have seen a couple of days ago -- about 10 days ago, we announced the appointment of a new CEO in the form of Dean Kowarski, someone who's very well known to the business. Dean was the founder of Real Foods, which owns Kauai. They've been operating in the Virgin Active businesses for many, many years. We've had a relationship with them since 2005. So Dean knows the business. He's done 3 months of due diligence and him and his partner [indiscernible] Paul have invested just under GBP 20 million at the Brait NAV for Virgin Active. And in addition to that, Titan, Christo Wiese's business also injected GBP 50 million directly into Virgin Active. And the shareholders in the form of Virgin Group and Brait will also contribute around GBP 20 million. So very significant recapitalization of the business. And as a second phase of that will be the acquisition of the Real Foods business that Dean has founded. Just the last business, New Look, it's relatively small in the portfolio, but to give an update, I think all retailers in the U.K., anyone who follows that sector will know that they were very significantly hit by lower footfall. It was down 30% year-on-year compared to 2019 versus a budget which we thought would be down 15% during November, December and very significant supply side constraints, particularly coming out of Asia and China. I think that impacted all of the retailers and therefore we had lower than budgeted sales in the quarter. And there are a number of management initiatives underway to recalibrate operating costs and improve the logistics of our business. So whilst these are not unique to us, the management team is continuing to focus on how that can improve the operating performance of that business going forward. Just in terms of the strategy, and I won't dwell on this. You will have seen this slide before. But just to touch on where we are around the 4 key components. If you move from the commitment phase to the investment phase, that's really around asset selection. As I've mentioned before, we are absolutely focused within Ethos investing in tailwind sectors. I think Channel VAS, Echo and many of the recent investments have been cases of that. The new Crossfin transaction, again, talks to that theme. And we're very pleased with some of the recent performance, not just in that new asset, but in some of our tailwind sector assets. Moving from the investment phase to asset growth. We're starting to see the benefits of the changes -- strategic changes and operational changes we've made in the portfolio with NAV growth up 24%. So that is starting to benefit. Obviously, the 54% increase in EBITDA is testimony to the fact that many of the changes that we've made are positively impacting the portfolio. Then if you move from asset growth to realizations, that's really around exits. As I mentioned, since we started Ethos Capital, there have been 8 either full exits or partial exits, all of which have achieved very significant IRRs. The average of that is 24% realized returns, which again is not far from our target of 25%. But I think equally importantly, on average, we've seen a 34% increase in NAV when we sell the assets relative to the prevailing NAV in our books at the time. So we sold assets for more than we had them in our books at the time. And then finally, moving from realizations to capital allocation, that's all about reducing the discount. And clearly, part of that is capital allocation in the form of buybacks and other mechanisms to ensure that once we have capital to deploy, we're doing it in a mechanism that ensures we reduce that discount as quickly and efficiently as possible. Moving on to the portfolio as a whole, just to give a bit more detail on the portfolio. The NAV, as I mentioned, grew from ZAR 9.19 to ZAR 10.08. The significant contributors to that, you can see in the changes column, ZAR 136 million of that is Channel VAS, probably half of that through profitability and half of that through a benefit in the weakening rand. ZAR 171 million increased investments, that's the direct investment for Ethos Capital into the Brait exchangeable bond. As I mentioned, ZAR 120-odd million was also funded through Fund VII but that was funded through a debt facility, which is ring-fenced away from Ethos Capital. The Crossfin transaction, the Ethos Capital contribution to that was ZAR 124 million. And as you can see under the borrowings, the borrowings increased by 270, reflecting effectively the acquisition of Crossfin and the investments in the exchangeable bond for Brait. Moving on to the portfolio as a whole. Again, it hasn't changed particularly much in terms of the portfolio. The top 9 assets still constitute about 84% of total assets. We still recognize as a Board that Channel VAS is overweight at 26% of the portfolio, but it's overweight for a good reason. It continues to grow very significantly, 25% increase in valuation in NAV year-on-year. Exacerbates that issue, but it's a nice problem to have, but there is recognition of that. We're very pleased with the performance and the outlook, quite frankly, for that asset. If you look at the only other asset that's new in the book is the Brait exchangeable bond at 7%. As I mentioned, that's really a direct only exposure to the exchangeable bond. Just for those of you who don't follow it, the exchangeable bond effectively gives full upside in the share price over ZAR 4.37. So any share appreciation of ZAR 4.37 accretes to the owner of the exchangeable bond. There's a 5% coupon and effectively front ranks anything other than the RCF within Brait. So good downside protection with effectively full upside on that instrument. If you look at the contribution around -- South Africa being about 60-odd percent of the portfolio, 34% being the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa, not all but quite a significant component of that coming through Channel VAS. In terms of the performance overview of the portfolio, very pleasing, more than 50% by value of the portfolio grew sales by more than 25%. And again, I did some research on the various sectors across the JSE. That's significantly higher than the average growth. So I think we are starting to see the benefits of the repositioning of those various 23 portfolio companies. As I mentioned, 50% grew -- by value grew at more than 25% in revenue and 27% by value or 63% by number grew EBITDA by more than 25%. So again, a very broad increase. It's not just the top 2 or 3 assets that are performing well. 63% of our portfolio, by number, grew EBITDA by more than 25% over the last 12 months. On the right-hand side, what it shows is over the last 6 months, what's happened -- what's the contribution to the investment return. The Brait share price performance has contributed about 183. The share price was up by 50% over that 6-month period. Channel VAS's performance continued very strongly at 29% return and up ZAR 153 million. And as I mentioned before, the MTN Zakhele Futhi share price has increased by 100%. It's increased since December as well. This was as of December, that constituted ZAR 33 million of value accretion. Also importantly, again, talking to exits or partial exits, Tymebank. We doubled the value of that asset. There was a $70 million capital raise done by Tencent into that business probably in November, and that was done at 100% premium to where we held it at the book. So we've had to mark it up to that current valuation, which has increased the valuation by ZAR 31 million. [indiscernible] which is slightly disappointing is Kevro, we'll touch on a bit on that later. There's a debt restructuring and the valuation that we're holding this asset is at the valuation where that debt restructuring will take place. Just moving over to the valuations of the portfolio. And again, I won't dwell on this slide. These are the market implied valuation. So the multiples you see at the bottom in the green and blue blocks are EV/EBITDA multiples. And in the red dotted blockers at the top, those are effectively PE multiples for the various assets. And the only one that I would point you to is Channel VAS, which as you know, is about 1/3 of our portfolio, that's currently got a PE ratio of 6.6x. I'll repeat that, it's 6.6x, despite it being a dollar-based business, which is growing at more than 25%. So this is a reflection of the fact that we traded a very significant discount to our NAV. We've said many times, we don't think it's warranted. We've shown in our exits that the NAVs that we have are conservative when we exit the businesses. It's at about a 34% premium to those numbers. But also the assets are growing very well, and particularly some of our core assets, particularly Channel VAS. So a valuation of the PE of 6.6 doesn't seem reflective of the quality of that asset or the portfolio, to be honest. And if you take the contribution of the assets relative to our market cap, the valuations that we hold Channel VAS and the Brait listed value, so that's assuming the Brait share price. Just those 2 together constitute more than our current market cap. You can see the constitute parts of the rest of the business. And if you look right on the right-hand side, that gray bar there, that's the increased over the share price in the Brait NAV. And I'll just repeat, we've currently raised GBP 88 million of fresh capital into Virgin Active at that NAV, not at a discount at that NAV. So again, we do genuinely believe that the NAV that we hold our assets at is the right number. It's been proved over a number of exits and capital raise that people see value in our various portfolio companies at the level that we see it at or above. Moving on to Channel VAS. And again, I'll go through these relatively quickly. There's a lot of detail in the pack, which I'm sure people can reflect on. The current valuation of -- within Ethos Capital's books of the asset is ZAR 673 million, which constitutes nearly a 29% increase over the last 6 months. That has all been driven by growth in LTM revenue. We'll talk a bit about that later. And we currently hold the assets at 2.21. So if we invested 100, it will be currently worth 2.21x that number versus the 1.8 it was held in June 2021. If you look at the financial performance, very strong growth across both the mature markets and the new geographies. So we're in a lot of new territories also with new deployments. LTM revenue in dollars was up 32% year-on-year. And pleasingly ACS advances were up 35%. So again, advances have been driving the growth here. This hasn't come through different pricing strategies. You can see the advances growth and the revenue growth very much in sync. And we're very pleased. And we're seeing that continue across the portfolios. The run rate in January and February for this business is already exceeding the budget we have for December. If you take the EBITDA in the business, the EBITDA was up 25% in dollars year-on-year. Again, a very strong performance in the business. And whilst we're very pleased with the ACS business, which, as I mentioned, the advances remain very resilient, it's actually the Mobile Financial Services business, which has been -- had such a pleasing performance. We've always said that this is the second leg of the business. ACS is always what's driven it before. But we've always said that MFS could become up to 50% of the business if it continues along the trajectory we think it can. It's continued -- it has demonstrated very significant traction over the past 6 months. It's outperformed our budget by 84%. And really is starting to contribute very strongly to EBITDA. So from a valuation perspective, the equity value in dollars increased by 12% in the 6 months and 25% in ZAR. As I mentioned, we only increased the maintainable EBITDA by 14% despite the slightly higher growth. There was no change in the multiple. And obviously, there was an element of weakening ZAR as of December. So again, a very pleasing performance from the business, up 29% over the past 6 months. Moving to Echo. As I mentioned, with Echo, a bit of a tale of 2 halves here. The first is the South African business, which has generated about 13% increase in revenue year-to-date. Some very pleasing and larger client wins has invested behind the sales force, which has been great, and we're starting to see the benefits of that. They've already achieved 94% of their year-to-date target with many months still to go. So turning that into revenue is the next key thing and there's probably a lag of 6 to 8 months on that, but we're very pleased with the pipeline and the conversion. The corollary of that is the international business, which does -- is still continuing to be negatively impacted by very long sales cycles. So converting leads into actual sales and then converting those sales actually into the till have been very long, and the conversion of the pipeline has remained very -- relatively difficult across those territories. That said, we -- Echo, the international business won a very large contract in December with a very large South African retailer to do all their services across the continent. And I think that really does show and it validates the investment thesis we invested behind, which was if you want to grow outside of South Africa, you need to be able to offer your client-based in-country solutions and services, which we now can do. And the first one of those very big wins and is very, very meaningful in the context of the international business, hopefully, will give that business a leg up. In terms of the equity value, broadly flat, the maintainable EBITDA was slightly down driven by the international business. The EBITDA multiple didn't change much, and there was a slightly better cash position in the business. Moving on to Vertice. As I mentioned, Vertice has still been impacted by the fourth quarter lockdowns around Omicron. We're starting to see, and it hasn't come back as quickly as we would hope, as I'm sure many of you follow the health care operators, elective procedures have come back and started to come back, but it's certainly not back to anywhere near like pre-COVID levels, but certainly, this business, which -- 60% of which is tied to electives will be a great beneficiary of that, and we're starting to see it in the early months of this year. So performance revenue year-to-date growth of 7%, maintainable EBITDA down slightly, again, largely driven by the COVID impact. We do think the hospital capacity and the elective procedures will have a positive impact on this business in this current year, but it will remain to be seen how quickly that happens. The traditional businesses and really, we talk about cardiovascular, ONCS, cardiology have really grown well, 14% up year-to-date. One of 2 of the -- well, one of the acquisitions, in particular, has performed a bit weaker than we would have hoped and a lot of management attention is going into that business. So broadly, we've kept the equity value of this flat, largely because we wait to see how the impact of the elective procedures and COVID hopefully being slightly behind us has on the business going forward. Moving on to Synerlytic. Synerlytic -- the AMIS business has had a very strong run, to some extent, buoyed by to be fair, the rising tide of commodities. That business also made a strategic acquisition in Canada, which has performed very, very well. So we were very pleased with the AMIS performance. The outside of that -- the other side of that is WearCheck, which is call it, 65% of the business and the bigger component. That business has been impacted and it remains impacted to some extent by COVID and it's running slightly behind budget for the year. That said, LTM revenue growth of 8% with 16% EBITDA growth year-on-year is not a bad result for the business. We've kept the valuation flat over the last 6 months until we see some of the recovery in the WearCheck business start to come through. So a slight reduction in the maintainable EBITDA of that business. We haven't changed the multiple and the slightly lower net debt in the business. So again, on a 12-month performance, not a bad performance, 16% up in EBITDA, but we'll wait to see the benefits, hopefully, of some of the COVID restrictions and hopefully the state of emergency being lifted on this business going forward. Moving to Gammatek. Gammatek, we had a very, very strong performance, up 15% from a valuation perspective over the last 6 months. It's traded well, and that's despite a pretty difficult environment. To be honest, the civil unrest had an impact on this business. COVID-related restrictions definitely impacted. And obviously, there were still some supply chain bottlenecks and actually a delay to the Samsung launch. But despite all of that, LTM EBITDA in this business was up 23% ahead of revenue. So seeing the operating leverage in the business come through. And we continue to see ongoing market share gains. We've got new customers and new channels and new brands and products that are coming through, and it's been very pleasing to see, and that continued in the beginning part of this year. I think there are some structural tailwinds that are benefiting this business. I think the 2 of that really are increased digital connectivity. Everyone needs a phone these days. And with that comes all of the products that we sell around that. And I think the OEMs are reducing the accessories you get in the box, as you know. If you now buy an Apple phone, you get nothing with it, and therefore, buying those from -- effectively from us has been a boon for the business. So the equity value, as I mentioned, up 15% in the last 6 months, driven by maintainable EBITDA, we increased only by 8% despite a much bigger increase in EBITDA. It's going into the maintainable EBITDA to some extent. The multiple hasn't changed, but there's been very strong cash flow generation in this business. Moving to Crossfin. This is the new acquisition that the mid-market fund did. It's a new investment. We invested or committed to invest ZAR 1.5 billion into this business with a number of co-investors of which $500 million is for growth capital. So $1 billion for the existing assets and we're putting growth capital behind, moving this business into the next, hopefully, stratosphere from a growth perspective. It's a platform of complementary fintech assets really around merchant acquiring and payments around card issuances and some SME funding. I'll touch a bit more on those businesses below. And it's got an extremely strong management team. They've driven a -- it's been a great story over a number of years and performance since we effectively agreed the deal probably more than 6 months ago, has been extremely strong. So both prior to our investment, but most [indiscernible] since our investment, I think the EBITDA is up almost 80% compared to where we [indiscernible]. And so a very, very strong growth. And we brought in at a single-digit EV/EBITDA multiple, which again, I think, gives us a lot of comfort that we brought into a great business with great optionality. If you look at the ownership of the business between the mid-market fund and the AI fund who co-invested together [indiscernible] 33%. But with the other co-investors, which we brought into the group, Ethos effectively controls 51% of this business. We believe it's a tailwind sector, which we're investing in. There's lots of white space in terms of the opportunities for growth, and we're seeing that come in. It's really around the issuance of cards and also the acceptance infrastructure payments -- acceptance infrastructure, which is changing rapidly in South Africa. We've seen what's happened around the globe. And we're starting to see this business is absolutely focused on Tier 3 and 4 merchants, which we think has got a lot of white space to grow into. And also closing the SME funding gap. The one business retail capital, I'll give a bit more detail later on, has got a very innovative data-driven approach to lending, not to dissimilar quite honestly to Channel VAS. And that's proving very, very successful. And the Sybrin business, which we've recently acquired, again, talks to the new trends, the regulation and digital trends that we're seeing in the financial services space, and this business develops solutions and software around that. So again, we're very positive about the start of this business, great management team. We managed to corral a lot of co-investments -- coinvestors into this business, and we look forward to putting the growth capital to work to see it grow. If you look across the portfolio, what this business does, is effectively 5 key pillars. The first one, which is 58% of the value, call it, 60% of the revenue, but probably slightly more in terms of -- sorry, of value is what we call Adumo. Our effective interest in that is around 35%. If you look at the shareholding, we, when I say we, Crossfin effectively controls more than 50% of the vote of CATS, C-A-T-S, this business. And in that pillar, there's the merchant acquiring business platforms of innovation, which is our point-of-sale integration solutions business. The payment acquiring services business, SureSwipe been very successful. GAAP, which provides point-of-sale software and devices, particularly into the QSR sector. And then the last one, which is probably the biggest component of value is iKhokha, I'm sure many of you have heard of Yoco. This business is around about 50% of that business's size. And Yoco and iKhokha are the 2 key players in the Tier 4 space. So it provides mobile point-of-sale devices to the Tier 4 merchants, been extremely successful. The growth continues somewhat unabated, quite frankly, and we look forward to trying to grow that business from here. So that talks to the first pillar. The second pillar is what we call retail capital. It really is a merchant cash advances business, very data driven in its lending approach, as I mentioned, to some extent, similar to Channel VAS, it does point-of-sale advances. So obviously, when you're advancing to someone on their card, you provide lending to the merchant, but you were first in the queue to effectively be repaid once obviously, the card -- the payment is repaid. So quite innovative. It really does [ cross this ] divide of helping lend into the SME market. And again, we're very excited about both the growth prospects and the ability to continue to grow that business's capital base. Crossgate is a card issuance business, demonstrably the leader in this space. There's lots of cards for many of the retailers, many of the banks, et cetera. There is still growth in this space, and we continue to see the benefits of being a market leader. And then Sybrin is a business recently acquired, still subject to completion on the final CPs. But it's a financial -- it's effectively a software development business for regulatory and digital compliance in the financial services space, very successful, has done very well. We own the other 50% -- we own 50%, the other 50% is owned by another private equity firm. And again, we look forward to closing this transaction and getting the growth prospects. The last one is it's just an early stage investing. It's like an incubator. It's very small in the greater scheme of things, but we've seen many of the assets on the left-hand side of this page come through the incubating platform, which management has driven. So again, without dwelling too much on this page, there's really 4 parts to the business. The first, which is Adumo and the iKhokha business really around merchant acquiring and the like. And you can see the different businesses and how they play together. We're likely to merge the first 4 of those into one operating business, leaving iKhokha separately. The second is Crossgate, which is like a cards and card issuance business. The third is Retail Capital an alternative funding platform. And then the fourth is Sybrin, which is, as I mentioned, a software development platform for the financial services space. So again, a very, very exciting business performing well, and we look forward to the growth in this business over time. Just in terms of the rest of the portfolio, Primedia business has performed very well over the last 6 months, very strong rebound in EBITDA. The strategy was recalibrated. We appointed a new CEO probably 9 months ago, and we're starting to see the benefits of both the strategy and the new CEO in place. And it's pleasing to see how quickly the EBITDA, we've always said -- has bounced back, and we always said this business is a barometer for consumers and GDP growth in South Africa. So we're again pleased with the performance and hopeful that it will continue as GDP outlook improves. TymeBank, as you know, has continued to grow very, very strongly, probably ahead of budget, certainly, from our perspective in terms of customer growth and transaction volumes. We've managed to -- together with the other shareholders, significantly reduced the cash to breakeven. But very importantly, been 2 series of capital raises, the first was to APIS, about 9 months or 8 months ago. The second was to another consortium, which is $70 million, which was raised in January 2022, and that was raised at 100% premium to the valuation, which we had in our books at the time. In terms of Kevro, this is the one asset that has continued to be behind budget. And [indiscernible] behind is probably in line with budget, but it's a very long way back from many of the own goals that it created over the last 2 years, plus obviously the impact of COVID. We are restructuring -- looking at a recapitalization of the business. We will inject a small amount. We've effectively reached terms with the various lenders. And the valuation which is reflected in the books now is the valuation at which that debt restructuring will happen. Autozone had a very strong bounce back in full year 2021 as to June. Trading this year has been slightly impacted by the civil unrest. Many of its stores happen to be closed and a couple were burn down. And obviously [indiscernible] relatively aggressive pricing by competitors who had stock issues. Recent trading has been a bit better. So again, a strong bounce back from where it was, and we would hope that some of that performance continues. Eazi has been a very pleasing story. We recapitalized the business, as you know, probably 12 months ago, boarding a new team, probably 2 years ago. And the EBITDA, a very substantial growth in EBITDA in this business over the last 12 months, really talks to growing into the new strategy and credit to the management team on that. Again, just talking about the 2 key Brait assets in the form of Premier. Premier's had an unbelievable run for the last 9 months. If you look at EBITDA over the last 9 months, it's up 31% by comparison to the 9 months before, a fantastic performance, up 26%, if you include the Mister Sweet transaction. Pleasingly, the margin -- EBITDA margin has grown to 10.3% from this time last year at 9.1%. And probably most pleasing to me is the fact that the return on invested capital, despite investing very significantly behind the Pretoria bakery and to be honest, the Mister Sweet transaction has increased to 14.1%, so probably in line with our cost of equity. The integration of the Mister Sweet transaction is complete, completed probably 9 months ahead of schedule, to be honest. We've exceeded the synergy expectations we hope to get out of that business. And I think this business is on a great trajectory going forward. Clearly, the Ukraine crisis may well have an impact on this business. As I mentioned upfront, we have got stock and have priced the stock for 6 months. So it's not a short-term issue for us. But clearly, if the Ukraine crisis continues, that would be a problem potentially for the whole sector in terms of being able to pass prices on. Now clearly, in history, we have been able to pass prices on. Wheat prices are about 40% of the cost of bread. So it's not 100% obviously. But obviously, the impact on consumers would be meaningful. So hopefully, there will be some resolution soon around the Ukraine crisis. In terms of Virgin, I'll talk a bit about the performance and little bit about the transaction. It's great to see, as I mentioned for the first time in a long time, very strong sales across the various territories really -- and that's across the U.K., across Italy, across South Africa, APAC slightly behind, but APAC constitutes I don't know 5% of the business. So -- and it's pleasing to see they're above 2019 levels. And it's not to say that 2019 was actually a pretty good year across most of the territories. So we're very pleased with that. As I mentioned in the U.K., sales are somewhere between 20% and 40% up on 2019 levels. And even now in Italy before the lockdown restrictions are released, we're back to close to 2019 levels. And in South Africa, as I mentioned, we had a very, very strong February and that's including all of our historic sales during that February month. And very pleasingly, usage levels are a key indicator of membership engagement. They're back to above 2019 levels in just about every territory, i.e., more members are using the gym more often, which is a great sign. And I think the restrictions that we see in place will hopefully be lifted. They will be lifted mostly at the end of this month and [indiscernible] act in order during April in South Africa, and I think that will have a massive positive for the business. But probably the most positive part of this was the recapitalization that we announced a week ago. And I think it's very positive. And I think important to mention to everybody who -- many people have got it wrong, this is not Brait raising capital. Brait is not raising capital. Virgin Active has raised the capital at Brait's NAV. So we had a lot of questions from investors quite rightly over the last 18 months around our NAV valuation for Brait. These are very sophisticated investors. This is [indiscernible] Paul, who many of you know very, very well. There's been 3 months during due diligence. This is Christo Wiese, he knows this business inside out. And both of them have agreed to invest into the business at the Brait NAV into Virgin Active. We think it's a massive endorsement particularly when Brait's trades at a 50% discount to NAV that we are able to raise capital and a very significant amount of growth capital into the business at our NAV. In terms of the transaction as well, what we've agreed with the banks, both international banks and the South African banks is to reset covenant levels and defer covenants, it was based on the fact that if we're going to put in the money, we needed to get some breathing room. And I'm very pleased to say both sets of lenders are there, and we should have that completed relatively soon. In terms of the transaction itself, the page on the left sort of sets it out. The first step was raising GBP 20 million from Brait and Virgin, so Brait put in GBP 16 million, 1 6, Virgin put in GBP 4 million and then new shareholders, which is effectively Titan and Paul and Dean Kowarski, injecting GBP 68 million at the Brait's NAV [indiscernible]. It's at the Brait NAV despite the fact that we traded a massive discount to that NAV. Secondly, the existing shareholders that have agreed to capitalize the current guarantee. We already had that guarantee in place. There was a negative carry on it. It didn't make any sense for us to continue at Brait level to give a guarantee to the banks and pay cash for that and then have a negative carry in the business. So we capitalized the ZAR 950 million shareholder guarantee. Our share of that was ZAR 760 million. And again, in exchange for shares. The third part of that was Phase 2 of the transaction is the South African business will merge with Real Foods, which is the Kauai business. Kauai is already in 100 of our gyms and the new business. It's been a great relationship with them. It's growing well. But to get the real benefit of this transaction requires data and the ability to speak to both sets of customers. I think Dean and his team have been probably more successful than we have in terms of engaging with their members. And we do think giving a holistic offering across the Virgin Active group, but also around Real Foods, really gives us a differentiation and an ability to talk in a different language with a different offering to the combined membership. And then the fourth part of the deal is the part of those GBP 30 million of the raise will be injected as growth capital and liquidity into the international business. So again, a very, very significant transaction. We're very pleased to have Dean as the new CEO. He knows the business very well. He doesn't need to have a 100-day plan. He's done that already. He started about a week ago, and he's got massive energy for the business. And if you look at the table below, effectively, Brait at the current NAV, so there's no NAV dilution. It's shareholding moves from about 80% to 67% but obviously [indiscernible] bigger pie. So you can see the equity value of 470 [indiscernible] Brait valuation. The VASA capitalization of GBP 46 million moves that to GBP 517 million. The additional subscription of GBP 88 million, moves that to GBP 605 million of fresh cash in the business. And then if you -- the Phase 2, which is the Real Foods transaction of GBP 28 million moves the valuation to GBP 634 million. So if you take 67% of GBP 634 million, my math suggests you get a very similar number to 79%-80% of 470. So we're very pleased with the transaction. It should complete towards the end of March. In terms of the proceeds, what will they be used for, really, it's around growth initiatives into the business. And those really talk to improving membership engagement, quite frankly, and that's very broadly around redoing -- rejuvenating the estate, which in many cases is required. Investing in sales and marketing, particularly new acquisition channels that we probably haven't done in the past. And then very importantly, investing into the product infrastructure and the facilities to drive penetration and reduce churn. And then the last one is really around digital and technology and improving customer loyalty, our CRM systems, data and personalization to make the membership engagement and the membership experience far better than it is today. In terms of the Real Foods rationale, these are 2 businesses that know each other very, very well. We believe that nutrition and exercise are 2 parts of the same coin. You need to ensure that it's not just about going and thrashing the treadmill, it's about what you eat, how you eat, what advice we can give our members around that. And we do believe putting these 2 businesses together, ensuring that we can cross collaborate around data, marketing and customer engagement really will move us and expedite our transition, which we've always talked about moving away from being just a fitness operator to a proper wellness-themed business. And if you look around the world, those businesses trade at significant premiums to those businesses that are merely focused on fitness. So again, very pleased with the transaction. We look forward to working with Dean and the new team to drive it forward. [indiscernible] pleasingly, Mark Fields, who is the MD of the South African business. He's replacing [ Joe ] who is leaving as the CFO of the business. And again, I think the combination of Dean and Mark will bring both new energy and experience to the platform. Just quickly touching on liquidity before we run out of time. Again, we've seen this chart before. I won't dwell on it. Net undrawn facilities there -- sorry, commitments there are ZAR 150 million. So those are existing commitments we have to funds who can draw down on that amount of money, so ZAR 150 million. We have a debt facility, which is at green box outstanding [indiscernible] 389 so -- and treasury shares of 46. So actually, effectively, what you see is a commitment surplus. That means we are fully funded, but to the extent of ZAR 285 million on our existing commitments, which is, again, very pleasing compared to where we probably were 12 months ago. On the right-hand side, again, a chart you would have seen before, and I'm sure most of you will tell me that you don't believe in the NAV. But these are -- based on the current view of when assets would be realized. So talking about 2 years out, you can see very significant realizations of forecast out of the portfolio. These are done at the current NAVs. So as I mentioned, in many cases, which I'll talk to over the page, we've exited assets at a very significant premium to where we hold those assets in the book. So just talking to that since we set out Ethos Capital in 2016, there's actually been 8 either full exits, partial exits or capital raises. And it's worth dwelling on this page for 2 seconds to go through them. So the charts show a couple of things. The first is the IRR on the investment for Ethos Capital. So that's the blue box. And in case of Kevro, we achieved a realized return there of 32% for the time that we held that asset. The 1.3 , the green box is effectively the times money back. So if we invested 100, we got out 130. So you can see on that asset, we owned it for less than a year. And the most important box for me is the gray box, which is the exit valuation compared to where we held it in our books. So if our asset was held in the books in Kevro's case at 100, we effectively sold it and crystallized an exit value at 127. And if you go across all of the portfolios, so Eaton Towers, we realized a return of 20%, 1.8x money back just above the NAV. Neopak, we've owned that asset for the 5 years. We've got 1.6x money and 11% realized return and a 20% increase over our NAV, i.e., 20% higher than we held in our books. Take Iceland, Iceland Food, we've excluded from the averages because we achieved more than 100% IRR. We owned it for a very short period of time. We achieved 1.7x money back compared to when we as Ethos to took it over. And we sold a 69% premium to the NAV in the books. DGB, you can see the numbers. Consol, similarly, 37% premium to where we held it in the books. And then even the 2 capital raises in the form of TymeBank, where we raised capital at 100% premium to where we hold into the books and Channel VAS, where we sold out a very small portion of our share at a 26% realized return and a 15% premium. So on the right-hand side, as you can see, the average across those assets, excluding Iceland is a realized return of 24%, which I think is very pleasing. Anyone can talk about book values and the like. These are all realized returns at 1.6x money. And equally important, we've managed to realize value in those assets at 34% premium to the NAV, which we held them in the books prior to the sale. So just in terms of the outlook, I'm glad to see there's probably more greens than reds at this time as opposed to this time last year. We do believe the economic growth outlook is positive, albeit off a low base. Clearly, the impact of Ukraine is being felt and will be felt significantly if we don't have a resolution relatively soon. That said, and I've mentioned this to many people in the past, we believe that consumer sentiment has proved much more resilient than many of the market commentators gave it credit for, and this has driven really strong operational turnarounds in our portfolio. So we believe that's going to continue. And we do think the operational and strategic changes that we've made to the portfolio have now started to enhance operating leverage. We see that in the 54% increase in EBITDA, and we believe that will continue. We believe we've got better businesses to survive and thrive in this environment. We've seen a strong bounce back, but most prudently across the whole portfolio. This is not around 1 or 2 assets. It's across just about every single portfolio of company has seen a bounce back, which is very positive. And we believe the new investments in the tailwind sectors, which has started off well and we can include in that Channel VAS, Echo, Crossfin, these are all new investments in these tailwind sectors who produced very good results thus far. And I think most importantly, as I mentioned, we're starting to see a proven track record of delivering exits. We've always said that we believe our NAVs were right. I think that's proven the case, both in terms of the realized returns, but also in terms of the premiums we sold these assets to. And all our assets remain very strongly capitalized. I think following the capital raise at Brait, Virgin Active and TymeBank, those are probably the 3 assets that we were concerned about. Those have all been done. And we think those assets are now set for a very strong rebound. In terms of the negative column, obviously, the inflationary impact of the Ukrainian crisis will continue to be felt by consumers not just here, but across the globe. We still believe that there is a risk to new COVID variants. We'd hope that further lockdowns are not as draconian, but we are not of the view that we've seen in the back of COVID, and we need to make sure that our portfolio of companies strategize around that. The global economic impact of the Ukraine crisis is uncertain, we'll be honest and there will be multiple compression, valuation multiple compression. We've seen it across a number of sectors, particularly around the fintech-type space. And we need to keep monitoring that and ensure that we can exit our assets at or above our NAV. And obviously, the continued discount to NAV, it prevails. I can't say anything more other than we genuinely believe our NAV is the right number. Second point is when we get realizations and reverse flows, we will be using some of those flows to buy back shares to close this discount. And those capital allocation decisions will be taken once we have reversed flows. With that, I will hand it over to any questions.

Thank you, sir. At this stage, sir, we have no questions on the Chorus Call line.

Okay. Perfect. The first question is Channel VAS. Has there been any changes to the fee sharing arrangements with the mobile networks. Paul, the answer to that, I mean I don't know how far you want to go back. I mean if you go back 3, 4 years, absolutely, there has. If you're talking about the last 6 to 12 months, no is the answer. And you can see that from the advances growth and the revenue growth are very, very similar. If the advances growth was growing at 35% and revenue is growing at 15%, that would suggest you've got a different contract in place. The fee sharing arrangements haven't changed. As I mentioned before to many of you, they have changed over a period of time, but not in the last certainly 6 to 12 months. And we genuinely believe that there is a symbiotic relationship between the MNOs and ourselves in Channel VAS around low attrition rates, fee-sharing arrangement. In most cases, the MNO is getting 80-odd-percent of the revenues and taking no risk and no costs. I mean it's a very difficult model to replicate, if you ask me. Has the business -- sorry, question 2, has the business won contracts with new networks? Or is it just expanding geographically with existing clients? The answer is both. And I would say in equal measure, to be honest, we've won a whole lot of new MNOs, actually also in new geographies. So I would say probably more 60-40 new clients in new geographies than existing clients in existing or new geographies. Question three, what is the differential between the official [ Naira USD ] that you achieve in the parallel market. Paul, I don't have the exact answer to that. I'll be honest with you. But all I know is we've managed to get -- we did it every month. We have yet, and I'm touching lots of wood here, ever had an issue, it's a relatively small amount of money in the greater scheme of things. And we haven't had an issue on getting money out. We are quite conservative in how we forecast and we've been overly conservative, to be honest, around how we thought the [ Naira ] would depreciate. It's actually held its own for quite a long period of time now, and we've managed to get out most of our -- well, all our [ Naira ] on better rates than we certainly had forecasted at the beginning of the year. How big is Nigeria for Channel VAS at an EBITDA level? I would say -- and I don't have an exact number here. So again, don't shoot me if it's not exactly right. I would say it's now around just below 40% and going south, and that's not because Nigeria is not doing well. Nigeria is doing unbelievably well for us. It's a fantastic market. It continues to grow very strongly in dollars and -- local currency and dollars. But the rest of the business are growing faster than that and the new acquisitions mostly have been -- new customers have been outside of Nigeria. So my guess, it was below 44. The next question, what was the EBITDA multiple paid for Crossfin? I'm not supposed to be able to give you this because we've got other people in our consortium, but all I could say is it was a single-digit EV/EBITDA multiple. So if you look at the very similar business, which was bought by a competitor at 15.8x EV/EBITDA, our number wasn't much shy of 50% of that number. Second question, if Virgin has turned around so dramatically over the last 12 months after substantial cost cutting, why is there requirement for fresh capital? Well, the requirement is on 2 things, right? The first is [ there isn't ] liquidity requirement. As we mentioned in the U.K. business, part of that GBP 30 million will go into -- for liquidity purposes. So it's still -- it has turned around. It's turned around very quickly, but these are still operating leverage businesses, which when you're working with 78% of what you had in 2019 from a membership base are still going to be negative from a free cash flow perspective. The second question is a lot of our competitors are also recapitalizing and growing quickly. And we could wait and we could try and work this thing out on our own, why would you not, if you Brait raise capital at NAV despite you trading at a 50% discount to help grow one of your biggest assets and expedite your way back to 2019 levels and beyond. It was very simple. So if you'd ask me, could we take more capital at this level, I would still suggest that we can. There's lots of growth opportunity, lots of things that we could be doing, which we've held back out of necessity. And as you can see, we've -- there are 2 options available for GBP 25 million each to ourselves and also to the new consortium to put in further capital. And I think that reflects the fact that this business has got great growth opportunities. We're starting to see the rebound, but the better you can get in your membership engagement. And that comes through, as I mentioned, investing in the product, investing in the facilities, investing in your systems. Why would you not do that in 6 months as opposed to trying to do it over 3 years? So it was quite a simple answer for us. Raising capital at our NAV was probably, if you had to ask me, one of the best deals I've done in my -- certainly in my career. Are there any other question? What is the timing for the Premier unbundling? [ Craig ] look, to be honest, it's not the right answer that it's unbundling. The unbundling can only happen once we repay the convertible bond, right? The timing of the Premier listing, if that's what you're referring to, which would be an IPO of the business, we are still on track to try and do that in June and July. Clearly, there's no requirement to do it from a liquidity perspective for Brait. We're not going to be forced to take a window that doesn't work for us. If the window is open, the business is performing fantastically well. But I've always said the business -- IPO-ing a business is 70% of our market conditions being open and 30% about how your business is positioned. On the 30%, we'll give 5 ticks in the box. We're growing well, 30% growth, business is performing well. We've integrated the acquisitions. The 70%, which is will the market be open? I can't tell you will it be open in June, July. All I can say is if it is, we will be ready to go by then. If it isn't, we have no urgency to list the business. If Ukraine -- so commodity markets mean that Premier listing should be deferred. Would it be correct to say that post VA capital raise, Brait would not -- yes, not need to raise further capital? Sorry, I'm answering the same question, Charles. Yes, we -- through the exchangeable bond that we issued and based on our forecast and the capital that we would get out of Premier. Remember, Premier has been extremely cash flow generative, right? And it is correct to say with that and the [ VA ] capital raise we won't need to raise. I think what I can't say is there's another lockdown. I'm just talking about status quo. We won't need to raise any further capital. Next question. What is management's attitude to buying more shares? Why are you not bigger buyers of the shares, if you believe strongly in NAV? Nick, I don't know where you get the value -- just -- and I can only talk from my personal capacity and that of Ethos both Ethos and then me in my personal capacity have more than doubled our share of Ethos Capital over the last 12 months. It isn't a disclosable event because we're not on the board. And doesn't have to be. We're happy to disclose it. I've doubled my stake in Ethos Capital and so has Ethos partners have doubled their stake. So we are very, very significant shareholders because we absolutely believe -- for me, it is the easiest way to make money is to invest in Ethos Capital shares. It is more than 50% of my share portfolio and will continue to be more than 50% of my share portfolio. Just moving down. How is the competitive environment changing for Channel VAS? Is the market getting more crowded? Nick, it isn't. And I'm not saying it can't get more crowded. It seems to be a survivor's bias. There used to be a lot more competitors. Many of them have fallen over, didn't do the job that Channel VAS has managed to do for the MNOs. And what's happened is actually those MNOs have moved from having 2 or 3 providers to 1 provider in many cases. Can it change? Of course, it can change, but I do think this is not a winner take all, but first-mover advantage here and having data across 530 million customers gives you a massive competitive advantage. And the operating leverage in the business is testimony to this. So we continue to see growth. I'm never going to tell you it can't change, but we're confident that there's a lots of growth still to be had in Channel VAS. Graham, please can you give an update on the change in the shareholder register? So it's difficult to give the exact numbers. But I mean if I could give you -- institutional investors are significantly up, retail investors, down. And then you've got the Ethos related investors which are [indiscernible] Mark, Pfaff, Derek, the Chairman, myself and the Ethos Private Equity, who are up. So I would say Ethos related investors up significantly. Institutional investors up significantly. Retail clients, down, would be the broad answer. And the question. The portfolio is now concentrated in a handful of assets, and this will probably get worse. Is management happy with this concentration and that there is no burning need to diversify balance the portfolio? Graham, as I said, when we talk to that chart, part of the reason -- Channel VAS is at 26%, despite remember having sold down a portion of our stake is the fact that it continued to grow so well. So it's a positive curse, if that's the right way to put it. We're not going to try and get it done for the sake of getting it done. If we believe in the asset, we believe in the growth, we will continue to remain invested. I still think that if you had to say to me is 85-odd percent of your portfolio in 10 assets, the right number? I definitely think it is. I don't think we want to have a tail that's 50% of the top 10 and 50% in the bottom 15. So I'm not sure we would want to change our diversification strategy. I think Channel VAS is a separate issue. It's traded very well, continues to trade well. We believe in it, in the asset. There's -- I think, there's a lots of interest in the business. So I think it's an asset we want to back. And if you look at the new assets that we brought in, Crossfin is picking up, I think it's 5-odd percent of the portfolio. We've invested in downside asset in the exchangeable bond in Brait. We've got limited downside and full upside with a 5% coupon. I think that's a good investment for us. So I think we got to a point where we're relatively comfortable with the portfolio as it stands, Graham. I think those seem to be the only questions that we've got unless there are any others on the phone?

At this state, sir, there are no questions on the line.

Okay. So well, thanks very much. And again, we really appreciate all of our stakeholders taking the time. As I mentioned at the end of all of these calls, we're available whenever. We don't have to have these calls every 6 months. If you need to reach out to ask any questions, feel free to chat to either Rohan or I, and we'll try to get back to as soon as we can. Thanks very much.