JSE Limited (JSE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and thank you very much for attending. A warm welcome to this half year financial results presentation of the JSE. Today, we'll be delving into the financial performance, which is really a story of resilience and adaptability in a complex landscape. I'll start with a high-level summary or overview of the business before we review the group performance. And then after that, Fawzia, our Group CFO, will provide a detailed overview of our financials. I'll then close with an overview of the key strategic initiatives. And after that, we will open for Q&A. Overall, we are very pleased with the progress that we've made so far. We continue to structurally improve our performance over time through innovation and collaboration. Our core businesses remain resilient despite the challenging environment and our JSE Investor Services and Information Services business have delivered expected growth on the back of management focus and investment. We remain on track to deliver on our group strategy to position the JSE as a diversified and sustainable exchange by leveraging technology, expanding our range of products and services and entering into new markets to provide fair and transparent regulation and strengthening our operational capabilities. Starting now with Slide 4. The JSE delivered a stable set of results with NPAT of ZAR 493 million, translating into headline earnings per share of ZAR [ 6.06 ]. Notably, these results have been achieved despite the challenging macroeconomic and political and trading environment. Our operating income, which is revenues and margin, grew by 4.2% year-on-year, and this is reflective of our increasingly diversified revenue streams. This top line performance reflects our segment and asset class diversification as well as the strategic progress in growing nontrading income, which now we're pleased to say represents 39% of operating income. On the cost front, we've maintained a disciplined approach while investing strategically into our people and technology as well as looking to strengthen the foundations of our business. Overall, OpEx growth for the period was up 6.4% year-on-year. Cash generated from operations remains healthy at just above ZAR 500 million for the period, supported largely by a robust balance sheet position. Last year, we launched new collaborations to innovating data services, private markets carbon trading and also the modernization of our broker-dealer accounting system, which we are now in delivery and execution mode, and we're very pleased with the progress so far. I'll comment a little bit more in detail about the BDA project later in the presentation. We'll also continue to maintain our core value proposition through resilient and stable markets with our market uptime pleasingly well above the 99%. Then turning to Slide #5, where we'll quickly recap and set the scene of the environment that we're operating in. We're seeing the ongoing risk of -- the ongoing trend of risk-off sentiment, which reduced exposure to South Africa for most of the first half of 2024. Overall, volatility levels were lower versus last year, and we continue to see net foreign outflows in our equity market. Published average daily value traded was also down by 12% compared to a high base last year. Value traded in the equity market was up in quarter 2 by 32% compared to quarter 1 and 2% higher than quarter 2 in 2023. After a slow start to the year, value traded has recovered in the second quarter of this year, and the trend continues into July and August. High activity was driven by the positive outcomes of the national government elections and it was further buoyed by the formation of the Government of National Unity. The GNU -- if the GNU delivers on expectations, this could well translate into an improvement in the second half over the first half of 2024 and half year 2 over 2023. And that potentially could narrow the gap on what was expected from an equity trading perspective. Since last year, we've witnessed a shift in capital flows to offshore allocations from the local investors, largely due to REG 28 changes in allowances. However, by the end of the quarter with the national elections over sentiment towards South Africa improved. And in fact, since the formation of the new government, we've started to see increasing investment interest in South Africa as evidenced by strong rallies in the equity and currency markets. Although there was an outflow in equity at the same time, the situation was better for fixed income with a net foreign inflow of bonds amid interest rate cut expectations. Moving now to Slide 6. Global markets in the first half of this year were influenced by expectations for interest rate cuts, AI-related optimism and resilient U.S. macro data. Some pressure came as markets expected interest rates to be cut sooner. However, this eased following the softer macro data releases. China also showed signs of an economic rebound in the second quarter. We see this largely in the global indices performance, which all trended upwards on the earnings rate cut expectations and on economic optimism. In South Africa, the JSE All Share was up 3.7% in half year 1 of 2024, driven by industrials, which were up 4.4%, financials, which were up 5.6% and resources, which were up 2.7%. More recently, the JSE All Share Index has shown a year-to-date return of approximately 4.5%, outperforming the MSCI Emerging Market Index of 2.3%. And even if we look at what happened on Monday, the JSE ALSI was down only 1.19% versus the MSCI Emerging Market Index, which was down 4.22%. The South African repo rate remained flat at 8.25%, while U.S. dollar ZAR was mostly stable versus the end of December 2023, although we have seen a little bit more volatility since our results. Inflation also slowed down in the period above the Central Bank target of 4.5% nonetheless. Meanwhile, SA's weighting within the FTSE Emerging Market Index and all other emerging market indexes slightly decreased. On the FTSE side, it decreased from 3.45% at the end of December to 3.22% at the end of June. This was linked to increased weightings in India and Taiwan largely with investors diversifying their portfolios by investing into AI chip makers and India's infrastructure sector. Now moving on to Slide 7. We wanted to demonstrate the progress of our diversification strategy, which has improved the quality of revenue over the years. Overall, nontrading income now represents 39% of operating income. The graph that you see displays average daily value traded in the cash equity market, which is the green bar, total operating income growth, which is the blue bar. And then the line graph is nontrading income as a percentage of total income, which is operating revenue plus margin, as I mentioned earlier. We have -- are very pleased that we've delivered an 88% increase in the nontrading income since the first half of 2019. So on a nominal basis, that's increased from ZAR 316 million for the first half of 2019 to ZAR 593 million for the first half of 2020. So we're very pleased with that growth rate, 88%. And year-on-year, we can see that our nontrading income has increased by 12% from ZAR 529 million to ZAR 593 million. Trading income at ZAR 943 million is flat year-on-year. So I think what this graph is showing is that it's not just the ratio between trading and nontrading. It's also the actual nominal growth that we're seeing in the nontrading line. So for a consecutive year now, we can see that the inverse relationship between the green and the blue or the equity trading activity and the operating income starting to come through. Despite rather material 12% decline in cash equity markets, average daily value traded, we were able to deliver operating income growth of 4.2%. Since 2019, the increase in our nontrading income has effectively enabled us to protect ourselves against volatile downturns and reduce the impact of a low trading environment in the equity market, and this supports a greater financial resilience of the business. As a reminder, nontrading income largely consists of market data fees reporting under -- reported under the Information Services business, JSE Investor Services, margin income, colocation fees and primary market fees. Year-on-year, these lines grew 12%. So overall, we're seeing an improvement in the quality of our earnings, which is a very important indicator of future performance that underpins our strategy. That said, as we move on to Slide 8, I want to reiterate that our core market is a critical focus for us. While we are still working on the nontrading business lines, we continue to focus heavily on building our trading business. So next on Slide 8 here, we've grouped our trading and post-trading revenues. And as you can see here, the blue lines represent negative growth and the green lines positive. So as you can see here, the revenues from most of our asset classes have increased. However, the equity market trading and consequently, the clearing and settlement are down due to the risk-off sentiment that I spoke about earlier, and this has resulted in lower trading levels. Despite the 12% decrease in published equity value traded, we were able to keep the combined revenues from trading and post-trading stable from ZAR 1,094 million, which you can see on the extreme right-hand side to ZAR 1,096 million due largely to the activity in our other asset classes. Notably, commodity derivatives, bonds and financial derivatives, JSE Clear and margin income were able to offset the decline that we saw in our equity markets. Fawzia is going to unpack these moving parts in a little bit more detail and -- in the financial section, but I'll just very briefly go over some of the broad drivers. So despite the macroeconomic overhang and geopolitical concerns, we still saw solid demand for South African bonds purely on a yield play, supported by decent local and foreign interest. The bond market activity is largely driven by global interest rate expectations. And the end of quarter 2 has been politically driven for a risk on sentiment post the market-friendly election results. However, the Fed is looking for muted inflation and economic activities, activity before these cuts materialized. Equity derivatives value traded was down in the first half by 2.87% compared to the half 1 period of 2023. And activity remains robust in the mainline contracts, i.e., the ALSI. And while index levels have improved off the back of an improved investor sentiment and higher share prices, that line still remains muted. For commodities, increased trading and hedging activity largely owing to dry and hot weather conditions adversely affects grains and oilseeds production both locally and in the region. I'm now going to hand over to Fawzia, who will run us through the financial results.

Thank you, Leila, and good afternoon to everyone. I'd like to start with our usual key financial highlights, and we will look at the income statement metrics first. Operating income, which includes operating revenue and margin income was up 4.2% year-on-year. This was driven by asset class diversification, supporting capital markets revenue as well as contributions from nontrading income, which includes double-digit growth in JSE Investor Services revenue and solid growth in Information Services revenue. JSE Clear also reported double-digit growth. OpEx was up 6.4% year-on-year. This mostly reflects investment in our people and technology, supporting the implementation of our strategic initiatives as well as initiatives relating to our core business activities. We saw the impact of inflationary increases on salaries and licensing cost, while FX also had a negative impact on licensing cost. Consequently, our EBITDA margin was down 2 percentage points to 42%. We delivered strong growth in net finance income, which was up 36.5% due to the favorable interest rate environment. Meanwhile, NPAT and HEPS were both flat overall. Moving on to cash and capital allocations. We continue to maintain healthy cash generation with around ZAR 503 million cash generated from operations during this period. This represents a 3% increase year-on-year. Our cash balance was $2.3 billion at the end of June and the lower cash balance versus December '23 largely reflects the full year dividend payment. On the other hand, we do see that our CapEx was down 12%, but we remain on track to deliver within the guided range. Lastly, we remain adequately capitalized with regulatory capital of ZAR 876.3 million. Now taking a quick look at Slide 12, where we have included the snapshot on the income statement. As Leila mentioned just before, we have delivered NPAT of ZAR 493 million and HEPS of ZAR [ 6.06 ] despite a challenging macroeconomic and political environment. We also continue to maintain a disciplined approach to cost management as we closely monitor our operating leverage. And then lastly, to note that we have been impacted by lower share of profits from our investment in Strate with Strate also being impacted by market conditions. Moving to Slide 13. I will unpack our overall revenue performance. Capital markets revenue, which makes up 38% of our operating revenue, was flat for the year. This was linked to lower value traded with a 12% decline in equity market ADV, which was offset by the higher bonds, FX and IRD revenue, which was up 8%, whilst commodity derivatives revenue was up 25%. Meanwhile, colocation revenue was up 17%. Equity derivatives revenue was slightly down year-on-year, and primary markets revenue reported a 6% increase year-on-year. Moving down the table, I am pleased to report double-digit growth of 29% in JIS and we continue to demonstrate solid progress in growing market share and our service offering. The Post-Trade segment revenue was down 2% year-on-year, reflecting lower equity market traded and a 10% decrease in funds under management, which was linked to the lower JSE Trustees cash balances. JSE Clear reported 13% growth in revenue and Information Services was up 7%. On the next few slides, we will unpack the underlying drivers for each revenue segment, starting with Capital Markets & JIS. Primary market revenue increased by 6%, owing to a combination of annual listing fees and an increase in additional listing fees from secondary capital raising. Equity market trading revenue was down, as expected, given the dynamics Leila discussed earlier. Bond revenue increased by 8%, owing to an increase in nominal value traded, approximately 2%, and bond market activity is largely driven by global interest rate expectations and positive market-friendly election results. Currency derivatives revenue increased by 10%, largely owing to an increase in futures activity. Equity derivatives revenue declined, owing to the value traded being down, but the higher index level in H1 did provide an offsetting effect. Commodity derivatives revenue reported growth with the number of contracts up 9% and the number of tonnes delivered up by 21%. Moving on to JIS. Revenue was up 29%, driven by 6 new client wins in the first half of the year, growth in the share plan services and higher margin income due to the favorable interest rate environment. In the Post-Trade segment, clearing and settlement revenue was down 11%, which was directly linked to the 12% decrease in equity value traded, while billable equity value traded was down 10%. BDA fees were up 12% due to an 11% increase in equity transactions. And funds under management revenue was down 10% due to the lower JSE Trustees cash balances. So as a result, total Post-Trade Services revenue were down 2% year-on-year. Separately, JSE Clear was up 13% due to the growth in our underlying derivatives markets and the low base effect as clearing membership fees were introduced in April 2023. Our Information Services division reported growth of 7%. Now as you know, this segment benefits from USD denominated revenues. However, although we saw some positive impact from FX, this was less than what we had benefited from in 2022 and 2023. Overall, we reported 12 net new clients in the first half of the year, and the JSE Trade Explorer is progressing well with the top 20 equity members with 45% coverage by broker count and 60% by daily flows. Moving to Slide 17. I will break down our OpEx growth, which continues to primarily be driven by 2 key strategic factors: our people and technology. Starting with the largest component, personnel-related costs increased by 5% to ZAR 362 million. This increase was related to the annual salary increases and is in line with inflation. Technology costs recorded the largest increase and was up 18% to ZAR 208 million. My expenditure was related to OpEx investments in our growth initiatives, and that is Information Services growth strategy as well as the very important initiatives to protect and maintain our core, including cyber resilience initiatives. We also saw the impact of inflationary increases and a negative currency impact for licensing cost. Depreciation and amortization was up 4% to ZAR 103 million, and this increase related to new assets being capitalized in the first half of the year, namely the Securities Collateral project and computer hardware. Our regulatory, compliance cost and other fees increased by 10% from ZAR 133 million to ZAR 146 million, and this is primarily due to the increase in FSCA levies, which came into effect in April of 2023. So hence, the annualized impact. Note that our trading levies are passed on to our customers and the related revenues reflected in operating income. Finally, our general operating expenses decreased by 3% from ZAR 196 million to ZAR 191 million, and this was largely due to the lower marketing and advertising costs during the period. We will continue to proactively manage and strike a balance between managing cost growth and spending on strategic initiatives that strengthen our core business and enhance our capabilities for the future. Moving on to CapEx. We see that we spent ZAR 29 million compared to ZAR 33 million in the previous year, with total CapEx spend for the year weighted more towards the second half linked to the timing of project delivery. Around 80% of spend was on maintain the business initiatives, which includes rejuvenation and enhancement of infrastructure and systems. Spend also included regulatory enhancements related to the management of insider trading and then platform upgrades linked to the derivatives markets, that is commodities and bonds. We do expect to complete further upgrades in the second half of the year. The remaining ZAR 6 million was spent on growth initiatives relating to our Information Services growth strategy and the upgrades to our bond electronic trading platform to cater for trading of inflation-linked bonds, which is now complete. Information Services strategy spend, mainly includes transfer of market data to the cloud, data marketplace and self-service BI. We maintain our full year 2024 guidance and do expect to spend within the range of ZAR 145 million to ZAR 165 million. The guided range gives us enough room to assess business cases and to consider accounting treatment, but the nature of the spend in H2 will be similar to the first half. Moving to the next slide for a quick view of our cash position at the end of June. The JSE maintains adequate liquidity with the closing cash and bonds balance of ZAR 2.28 billion. This was impacted by the cash generated from operations, which was ZAR 503 million as well as investing in financing activities. Financing activities related to the acquisition of treasury shares and the repayment of the lease liabilities whilst investing activities related to the purchase of assets and investments in government bonds. Dividends paid remained fairly stable and is reflected in the movement for the period. Moving to the next slide, where we break down the split of our cash and bonds balance of ZAR 2.3 billion. So structurally, the group holds 2 levels of nondistributable cash, investor protection and other funds and then regulatory capital. These collectively amount to around ZAR 1.34 billion, which is 58% of our cash and cash equivalents, leaving ZAR 0.96 billion of available cash, which is used for CapEx spend, working capital, other investments and shareholder returns. All planned investments can be funded from the group's cash resources. Finally, on Slide 21, we have outlined our full year 2024 guidance, and this remains unchanged. From an OpEx perspective, we continue to expect cost growth between 5% to 8% and the drivers include spend on technology, our growth strategy with increases primarily linked to inflation. For CapEx, we expect to land within the range of ZAR 145 million to ZAR 165 million, as explained earlier. And then finally, we will pay a dividend in line with our policy of a 67% to 100% payout ratio. And with that, I'll hand back over to Leila who will conclude the rest of the presentation.

Thanks, Fawzia. Moving on to Slide 23. We just wanted to quickly recap our strategic priorities. As you know, we have 3 strategic objectives as part of our pathway to achieving our financial targets for 2024 and in order to generate sustainable, high-quality earnings over the period to 2026. We remain committed to protecting the core. As you saw from our CapEx spend, we prioritized operational excellence and stability initiatives, and we continue to progress on our cloud-based solution, which allows us to easily access high-quality data and better understand the trends and our client needs. We're also focusing on innovating and modernizing our legacy BDA system, and I'll provide you with an update on this in the upcoming slides. In addition to protecting the core business, our second objective, growth or transformation, is also key. We are committed to growing our core products and services, collaborating with our partners to drive innovation and particularly increasing our annuity and nontrading income and finally, progressing our Information Services strategy. Alongside these 2 objectives, it's important we operate as a sustainable marketplace. We retain our focus on client satisfaction, talent retention and of course, our listings reforms. So moving to Slide 24, I wanted to provide you with a more detailed status update in the context of our 3 pillars. So starting with protecting the core, we continue to invest in operational resilience, which includes the CapEx spend on infrastructure enhancements or rejuvenation, platform upgrades for our derivatives markets and our regulatory enhancements. We also made progress on the BDA modernization project, and we've completed a detailed assessment of application functionality. I'll discuss this in more detail on the next slide. Under the transform objective, we are pleased that we won 6 new clients in the JIS business, and we continue to report strong double-digit growth in this segment. We're on track to deliver the 2026 Information Services growth strategy, and we're continuing to move market data to the cloud with the migration of our essential data assets for our cash markets into our cloud-based data lake together with a minimum of 1 year's historical data. This project is a critical step to enabling our strategy. It's foundational. Our cloud-based solution allows us to easily access high-quality data and to better understand trends and clients' needs. In 2024, we will continue to migrate the supporting data assets and additional historic data up to the cloud. Following the launch progress and progress of our JSE Trade Explorer, we're establishing the big xyt ecosystems joint venture, together with our JV partner, big xyt. Our focus over 2024 has been on bilateral conversations with potential customer exchanges to better understand their analytics aspirations and potentially the Trade Explorer product as an out-of-the-box white label type solution to help them build their own analytics businesses. For the local product, we are working to roll out the public data version of Trade Explorer, which will further showcase the opportunities for global exchanges. JSE Trade Explorer is also progressing well with a take-up by the top 20 equity members, as Fawzia mentioned earlier, with 45% coverage and a couple more in the sort of final contract stage, and that represents 60% by daily flows. We also continue to see strong interest and steady interest in the sustainability bond space in our actively managed certificates and actively managed ETFs. Colo 2.0 is also performing very well, and this demonstrates our ability to innovate in order to meet our clients' needs, and it demonstrates the benefits of our partnership and collaboration approach. We added a third rack in June 2024, and we're on track to deliver a secondary solution at an alternative site before the year end. Through this offering, we've improved our market offering, and we're now enabling clients end-to-end with 24 to 48 hours. We've also successfully onboarded new trading clients in South Africa, U.K. and U.S. We delivered key milestones in our bond CCP project. The majority of 2024 is going to be focused on finalizing the CCP design and requirements with the aim of publishing market specifications and business process flows to allow participants to prepare for the implementation. Then on the sustainability front, we continue to simplify listings requirements. This year, you would have seen that we announced the sixth phase of the simplification project, and we've proposed amendments for Section 13 on property entities. In July this year, we released 13 out of the 19 sections of JSE Listings Requirements for public consultation. The final 6 sections are earmarked for release during August. Separately, we are also very pleased that we continued to maintain our BEE Level 1 status, which we know is a very important stat for our brokerage. Next, moving on to the BDA transformation project. As we mentioned in March, we've decided to modernize the system, which will also facilitate the transfer of data to the cloud, and it will position us to innovate and increase our agility. We've completed a detailed assessment of the application functionality, and the pilot phase started on the 1st of August. We will operate the pilot phase over the next few months until the end of the year in 2024. And then following the test run process, we would move into the next phase, which will be an 18- to 24-month code migration and testing phase. Note that this is dependent, of course, on unanticipated issues not being showstoppers and adequate customer feedback and functionality to greenlight the second phase. We've allocated ZAR 10 million in CapEx for the pilot phase for this year, and we've undergone an assessment of the financial year 2025 budgeted spend, which will be approved by the Board in November this year. Next, on Slide 26, I just wanted to give you a recap of the recent initiatives that the JSE has undertaken and some of those that we're still busy with. 10 years ago, many of you will remember, back in 2014, we launched our colocation service, which was a huge milestone for the exchange. While we are not the largest equity market globally, we experienced the same shift to high frequency and algorithmic trading like some of the largest markets in the world. Since then, we were able to provide our clients with lowest latency connectivity for trading, demonstrating our operational resilience. Then last year, through a collaboration with Beeks Group and IPC, you'll remember, we launched Colo 2.0, which is an advanced Internet as a service solution offering, which is -- offers cloud-based colocation services. This new solution is a really significant step in our strategy to advance growth across services in the South African marketplace. From the second half of this year, we've got a number of initiatives outlined, which will further contribute to our infrastructure build-out and nontrading revenue, of course, and future proof the business. Starting with the JSE FIX Hub. A FIX Hub routes messages from one trading participant to another. The South African market is currently serviced by one FIX Hub. The JSE's new FIX Hub solution aims to provide a competitive and appealing alternative to the existing offering. JSE Colo 2.0 secondary solution is really what we're planning to do in quarter 4 of this year. We'll be expanding the Colo 2.0 offering to a DR site to combine a redundancy solution for clients. The market infrastructure services portfolio is set to grow with the introduction of new additional services. With regards to the network alliance, we're in advanced stages of a partnership to expand Colo 2.0, involving the development of a full network service in partnership with an international network provider. The provision of a network service will enable economies of scale and redundancy in our network and our infrastructure. By partnering with leading global technology infrastructure players, we're introducing and enhancing specific capital markets infrastructure. And then finally, AWS Outposts and Local Zone. Through our partnership with AWS, we are seeking to power a truly cloud-based marketplace infrastructure, that's a modern hyperscalable ultra-resilient and highly performant and accessible to the whole market through the introduction of next-generation ultra-low latency infrastructure and proximity services. And then finally, before we turn to Q&A, I'd like to conclude with our commitment to our value creation for all of our stakeholders. As demonstrated in the last few sets of results, we continue to improve the quality of our revenue on the back of increasing diversification across our business segments and asset classes. Alongside this, our core value proposition remains unchanged as we maintain resilient and stable market access. We have a solid track record of our commitment to dividend payments, as you would have seen, and this remains unchanged. Finally, we're also focusing on transforming our business through innovation via collaboration and mergers and acquisitions. Our strategic direction and our delivery are underpinned by healthy cash generation and a robust balance sheet. We'll continue to execute on our goals in the second half, and we really are genuinely excited about the direction that the exchange is going in, despite the challenging trading environment. Thank you all so much for listening, and I will now open for questions.

Hi, Leila. We've got some questions in the chat group already. The opening question comes from Brian Thomas. He says, hi, team. Thanks for a good presentation. If one were to assume a 1% cut in SA rates over the course of the next year, what impact would this have on your interest rate income line? He said, I'm not clear on how geared this line item is given the regulatory nature of some of this cash, which may not be able to earn a full interest rate.

Fawzia?

Sure. So although the cash is earmarked for regulatory capital, it is our own funds. And so we do invest that. We invest that both in bonds and cash. So we do ensure that we get the highest possible interest rate. Obviously, we will be impacted by any change in the interest rate. So in terms of our NFI line, I guess, you could do the calculation just based on current average interest rates, what that works backwards to in terms of a cash balance because we would earn interest on all of that. So you'd be able to get the impact of a 1% decrease on that basis.

Thanks, Fawzia. I have a second question in the chat from Charles Bowles. He said, A2X suggests that they have a significantly lower cost structure than the JSE. You see this impacting your competitive position? And has there been any change in market share of equity trade for the JSE?

If we look over the last sort of 4 to 6 months, you'll see that the JSE market share has increased. It kind of hovers anywhere between 98% and 99% of equity market value traded. It did take a little bit of a dip towards the beginning of the year. Now it's very difficult to compare pricing across markets because one needs to look at the effective rate. You can't look at the maximum rate and compare that. On trading and clearing and settlement, we are comfortable that we are highly competitive. And then on the BDA line, we are engaging the market, and we're in the process of looking at our pricing model. What is also very difficult to compare is market data. The JSE provides market data for -- and our closing prices are used for both markets. So it is a very difficult line to compare. But broadly, I think there are a number of dynamics that affect the competitive value proposition of the JSE: the first is, of course, pricing; secondly, our quality of uptime and our resilience; and then thirdly and most importantly, is we run -- we are a very institutional market in South Africa and depth of market and the ability to execute on the quality of our market is crucial. And so we will continue to work very hard to remain competitive. We are in regular contact with all of our stakeholders, and we're looking to improve and increase the efficiency and the cost effectiveness of everything that we do in offering -- in our offerings. Some of the cost-effective improvements that we've introduced to the market would be, for example, in our colocation services, this will reduce the net cost of hosting a trading engine alongside our trading engine. There are also another -- a number of other initiatives that we are looking to try to reduce costs to market participants. I think the FIX Hub will also go a long way to reducing the overall cost in all-in trading costs. And our network service will add both redundancy, which reduces the number of lines that -- especially the larger traders want to have as backup. And we hope that, that will also contribute to lower trading costs.

Thanks, Leila. I have a second question from Brian Thomas in the chat group. He asks, I assume that you will capitalize the costs of the BDA upgrade once approved by the Board. And he goes on to say, does the BDA ZAR 10 million form part of the ZAR 145 million to the ZAR 165 million CapEx budget this year? Or will you be expensing it? And are you able to give a ballpark idea of the cost of the BDA upgrade? If it's going to take 18 to 24 months, I would imagine it to be pretty costly.

Thanks for the question. So just with regard to the ZAR 10 million for this year, it will count towards the CapEx. So we are fairly certain in terms of being able to capitalize the entire amount relating to the BDA modernization.

Questions in the chat [ from Keenon ] from Anchor Stockbrokers. He said, well done on the results and nontrading revenue growth amid a challenging environment. We are seeing improved energy generation from Eskom and more optimism post the GNU formation. The first question is do you see SA moving up the ranks as an emerging market destinations for foreign investors? I'll let you answer that and move on to the next one.

Do you want to give us both and then...

Sure. The second question is what level of nontrading revenue do you feel is sustainable for the JSE? And the third question is, is the current opportunity set sufficient for sustainable growth in JIS? Over what period can you sustain double-digit growth in JIS? And then the fourth question is, I understand that lower foreign exchange benefits resulted in softer growth in Information Services. You have previously spoken about the investment in building out distribution and new products in the market data business. How do you expect the benefits of these investments to translate into top line growth?

Great. Thank you so much, Keenon. Very interesting questions. And I'm also noting that your forecast and your perspectives were spot on and very much in line with the results. So well done on that. So, in terms of SA moving up the ranks. This is a very difficult question to answer because there are so many dynamics at play. We have -- we were in the U.K. -- Fawzia and I, we were in the U.K. a month ago doing pre-close calls with market participants. And we were pleasantly surprised with the openness. Some investors were saying to us that they haven't had South Africa on their radar for the past 5 to 6 years, and now they are starting to contemplate. I think factors that are not in our favor is the constant contraction of the JSE -- of South Africa in the Emerging Market Index. We're sort of hovering around 3% in both FTSE and MSCI. And the risk -- the downside risk is that we become irrelevant and that we are not on the radar of those investors. Many of the investors who we know have been congenitally underweight South Africa for up to 3 years now. We're indicating that they are starting to shift their positions to more of a balanced position. And they're taking a wait-and-see approach. They are very encouraged by the outcome of the Government of National Unity. There seems to be a universal level of comfort around the -- their perception is that the government is moving to slightly more of a centrist policy stance and the Government of National Unity constituents are also contributing to a business-friendly outcome. So those are the local dynamics. I think the key drivers in that will be stability of the coalition, the ability of the GNU to continue to deliver on what has been very positive outcomes around electricity, and then, of course, delivery -- policy certainty and delivery and quick wins on some of the items that have been put forward. So I think on balance, South Africa is one question. And then the second point to contemplate is the international global dynamics. Of course, we are competing against other emerging market destinations, many of -- and the reason one -- some of the reasons that we've been down-weighted in the index is more recently, Taiwan and India up-weighting in the index. And so there are other options. One of the investors said to us 10 years ago, South Africa was an obvious choice. We now have Mexico, India, Southeast Asia, many of whom are projecting very strong growth rates. So I think the geopolitical situation, the outcome of the American elections and, of course, the Fed position on rates are all confluent factors that are coming -- sort of a confluence of factors that are likely to affect the flows into emerging markets. If you have a look at how we fared, as I mentioned earlier, on Monday, it appears as if we are moderately less negatively affected at this point. It's all eyes on delivery of the government though. I think the next question that you're asking, nontrading revenue, is it sustainable? We certainly are not sitting on our hands. We don't have any published targets, and we haven't included that explicitly. Our intention is to continue to invest heavily in our core. That's our bread and butter, and we won't take our eyes off building the core. However, we will continue to build out new and additional services. So the second last slide that I went through, indicating the Colo 2.0 backup support, the FIX Hub, the network service and potentially additional collaboration with AWS in what would be a private zone for financial services all hold promising opportunities for revenue growth. But as with all new service levels or new markets that we're opening, it takes time to build these. So we will continue to work at delivering on our nontrading revenue, and we will continue to ensure that we balance carefully between -- in our CapEx envelope, in our investment decisions. Is the opportunity, you asked, to sustain double-digit JIS likely or sustainable? We don't expect that we will -- and I realize we did throw a caution last year. We don't expect that our JIS business will continue at the very extreme growth levels that we've seen over the last 18 months. We do, however, still see this as a growth node for the business. We think that there is an enormous amount of innovation that is required in the transfer secretary space to bring down costs for our issuers. And we've delivered constantly -- we've constantly delivered new products, whether it's the BEE verification service, whether it's our ShareHub, which reduces the amount of postage and snail mail that our issuers have to incur when communicating with their shareholders or most recently, there is work that's going to be happening around -- which is a JSE project, around our share reunification project. And so we will continue to grow in that area, but I wouldn't suggest that it would be feasible or practical to think that we're likely to grow at the same very, very robust rates that we have. And then building out the products and distribution of information services, we are planning to have a Capital Markets Day later on in the year. And we hope to get Mark to spend some time talking to you about the innovation that he's going to be introducing. There are a number of products. As we've said all along, there are a number of -- there's a large-scale foundational infrastructure that's required before any new products can be added. And the Trade Explorer and the big xyt solution for international exchanges are the first of a number of products. We are also looking to deliver new and innovative products in collaboration with a partner in the sustainability space, and those are imminent. Once we have all of the data in the cloud, it gives us the opportunity to provide innovative and new products in a shop front type environment that will open up not only new product types, but also new constituents and new stakeholders. So we are on track with delivery. We've moderated our spend over the years relative to what we're having to invest in the other businesses. And we will go into a little bit more detail when we present at our Capital Markets Day.

Leila, we have another question in the chat group from [indiscernible]. He said, looking forward, what will the extent of the share buyback program be? What was the rationale around starting the share buyback? And will it affect the dividend?

Thanks for the question [indiscernible]. So we commenced the share buyback program on the 21st of June, and the program was paused on the 28th of June ahead of the close period. So we did purchase a total of about 522,000 shares. Now that we are back in an open period, management is considering whether to restart the repurchase program. We'll reassess all of our options. And we look at a number of considerations such as the cash flow, liquidity investments and the M&A opportunities, as well as the market price of our share and the general economic environment. Just in terms of the decision to actually embark on the share buyback. So in our quarter 1 [ Board ] cycle, we did highlight the macro uncertainties and then the absence of the firm conviction in the JSE short-term earnings prospects. Based on that, management decided against the share repurchase in quarter 1 of 2024. We relooked at the share buyback program post the outcome of the elections and the formation of the GNU because we saw that as a likely catalyst for growth in earnings in the short to medium term. So this improved outlook for the earnings forecast in our minds was more likely to sustain a share price improvement resulting from a share repurchase program. So really, the outcome of the elections and the formation of the GNU, for us, was key drivers to manage this uncertainty. We also had an updated -- we did an updated cash analysis, and that did indicate that there was available cash to do a share buyback. And that cash was really freed up when we relooked at our regulatory capital requirements. So there was a [ recalc ] from that perspective. And so based on some of the uncertainty being removed as well as the cash being available, we decided to embark on the share buyback at that point in time.

We have one more question from [indiscernible]. He said, where is the JIS' market share currently? And what is the runway on market share growth for the business? Are these clients being taken away from Computershare?

So the JSE's market share is sitting at just around 30%. Market share is affected by potential delistings as well as acquisition of or switching of clients from our competitors. Now we focus on market share, so it's an important indicator. But given the nature of the transfer secretary business, what is also important in revenue-generating opportunities is the size and type of clients that get switched. So those clients, not necessarily with a massive market cap, but with a very large retail base are important in revenue considerations for JIS. So the market share is looking good. And I think -- and the other elements that drive our business, since we acquired the Share Plan Services business is that you've got to transfer secretary business and you have a share plan service. And we also -- our income is also quite materially affected by corporate actions and the processing of those. So there's not a linear relationship between market share and your revenue growth.

Thanks, Leila. We have one last question in the chat group from Chris Logan. He said, SARB in its latest FSR highlights, net company delistings every year since 2016 and states sustained delistings were a reason for increasing the offshore allowance. He said, does the JSE not believe it is time to follow the LSE stance, an example, and establish a capital markets industry task force to revitalize our market?

Thank you, Chris. And I fully agree with what you're saying. I spent quite a bit of time with the London Stock Exchange talking through the approach that they had taken. We will be coming to market with an announcement. We are looking at creating a policy reform task force. We've been engaging with very senior executives. Our dynamics are very different to the London dynamics because the listings reform sits in government. And we have a number of other really important dynamics to look at inclusion, retail participation as well as, of course, listings. And we are in the process of working quite hard at a plan around that, and we look forward to being able to come to market with a more formal response on that.

Leila, sorry, we have one more question from Chris in the chat group. He is asking about personnel expenses as a percentage of revenue rose to a record high of 27% of revenue in full year 2023 and outstrip revenue in the interims. Is it not possible to drive productivity improvements so that lower personnel expenses drive positive operational leverage?

I think the important thing to note from a headcount perspective is that we do maintain a level of personnel in order to support markets. And we need to support a market whether we're doing a ZAR 70 billion trading day or a ZAR 7 billion trading day. So there is an element of fixed cost base that we need to maintain. Having said that, we fully agree that we need to be able to maximize revenue with the fixed cost base that we've got, hence, the initiatives from a growth perspective. So we continue to look for opportunities. We do believe that the business is rightsized. And should the markets turn, we'll obviously see that ratio change. But we are monitoring it. We believe we're rightsized, and we'll continue to try and maximize the growth out of the existing staff base.

Thanks. Thank you, Fawzia. Thanks, Leila and Fawzia. There are no more questions in the chat group.

Excellent. Thank you very much, Romy. I think maybe just in closing, I'd like to say thank you very much to everybody who's dialed in. We look forward to chatting to you in our one-on-ones. And really, just to close out, we are highly -- we're well capitalized. We have a very strong balance sheet. Our diversification strategy is starting to show results. And we are working with a number of global leaders to drive innovation, to drive new technology solutions and to continue to deliver quality earnings. So we look forward to chatting to you.

Thank you.

Thank you.