KAL Group Limited (KAL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to shareholders, investors and other interested parties joining us for the results presentation. This is a prerecorded results presentation. And as per normal, with webcast, I would ask you to start sending questions as soon as you are ready, and we will try our best to answer all of them at the end of the results presentation or will follow up with you on any specific matters we are unable to handle appropriately. The presentation of our full year results could take about 45 minutes. I am supported by my Financial Director, Graeme Sim today. We are excited to deliver these results today as we believe our company has performed very well under the circumstances. Today's agenda on the screen cover strategy, milestones, operational updates, financial performance, segmental reviews ending with balance sheet movements, after which, questions will be handled. Although our purpose and strategy execution remains largely unchanged year-on-year, I would like to highlight a few areas. Firstly, growth remains focused on diversification while growing volume and value. Secondly, our optimization initiatives are positively impacting our bottom line and are ultimately focused on labor, stock margin and operational effectiveness. Thirdly, we continue to invest time and effort into our culture and people as we strongly believe this will result in continuous performance acceleration over the medium term. Lastly, a number of digitization initiatives are underway, focused on the way we interface with our agricultural customer on a B2B basis as well as our general retail customer on a B2C basis. The outcomes we'd like to achieve include continuously improving ROIC and annually adjusted growth target catching for a CPI plus reoccurring headline earnings per share growth, whilst keeping our medium-term be audacious goal of ZAR 1 billion PBT by FY '25, inclusive of M&A in mind. The group structure and shareholding has not changed since our previous presentation. The TFC BEE ownership status is still 47.2% on a modified flow-through basis for both TFC Ops and Props, and a 40.2% on a direct Black ownership basis, well above the current requirement of 25% as required by the liquid petroleum fuel charter. For those seeing the presentation for the first time, please note that Kaap Agri Namibia is a 50-50 venture with Pupkewitz in Namibia, and furthermore, the Kaap Agri has a right to buy out the minority shareholders. In PBS, trading has forged at the end of 2021 based on specific earnout clauses. With the information to our hand -- based on information that has been given to us, this would seem highly likely to happen and will take us to circa 85% of PBS. Also to note, as per the market announcement on fourth of October, TFC Properties has been disposed of subject to performance of the necessary CPs, whilst TFC operations remains as is. This slide depicts all our trading brands used by the different divisions. On the left-hand side, we have all our company-owned brands, and on the right-hand side, all the non-owned brands being deployed by the business. The convenience retail store and quick service restaurant brands are all linked to retail fuel sites, which are operated by TFC, the fuel company. This business segment and trading brands slide remains relevant to understanding how we differentiate the business in terms of income streams and the trading brands within each one of those income streams and excludes the corporate division. The largest division is still our trade vision, consisting of 144 business units, up from 135 in the prior year, contributing 69% to profit from operations, and includes the Agrimark brands, New Holland agency business, Forge Brands and the Farmsave business, which was added during the year. The second largest division is the fuel company TFC, consisting of 47 units, of which 43 are retail fuel service stations. These business units have remained similar to prior year, contributing a further 15% to profit from operations in our group, and now operate all major Oilco brands in South Africa. It is also within this division that we have concluded the transaction to dispose of 21 of the properties owned by TFC on a sale and leaseback as highlighted to shareholders in previous communications. Our Grain Services division, Agrimark Grain, consists of 15 silo and seed complexes and focuses on silo, grain handling, as well as wheat and potato seed processing and trading. The last trading division is the manufacturing division, consisting of 5 business units, hosting Agriplas, which focuses on the manufacturing of irrigation products as well as TEGO, which focuses on manufacturing of large injection molded products. Our Supply Chain division acts as a support service for the acquisition, distribution and logistics of our products for the group. All the above are supported by our corporate and financial service departments with 2 offices and 13 financial service units spread throughout South Africa. In total, there are currently 226 business units in 106 locations in South Africa and Namibia, having added 7 units in the last year, mainly due to the Farmsave acquisition as mentioned in the Trade division. We have added an additional statistic on the top right-hand side for you. This is a comparison of channel trading profit contribution and give clear insight into the results of our diversification strategy, which we have been following for the last number of years. It is important to note that about 65% of fuel trading profit contribution is also deemed to be retail-based, given that the TFC footprint expansion that has happened over the last few years. And therefore, our weighted trading profit contribution from retail-based activities is now 58% of the group's trading profit. This has been a successful transition from highly agri-based trading activities to a more balanced contribution between agri, general retail, convenience retail and fuel. It is also important to note that although the agri activity trading profit contribution has dropped from 45% to 22%, the fact of the matter is that agri trading profit in value has delivered a 10% compound annual growth rate over the last 10 years, given our positive market share gains in that channel. We believe this is now a unique retail combination in South Africa. This slide is a geographical heat map of all the business units. On the left, the whole Kaap Agri group, and on the right, just the TFC business units. The concentrated exposure in Western Cape is diminishing year-on-year as a result of footprint expansions in the rest of the country. But exposure in the rest of the country remains low, which bodes well for further growth. The group now operates 106 retail fuel licensed sites in South Africa and Namibia, of which TFC operates 43 in South Africa. Whilst the Agrimark footprint has largely been focused on water-intensive areas of South Africa, the TFC footprint has focused on clusters in specific provinces in order to achieve economies of scale in terms of management and support services to that network. We have continued to grow our footprint with most of the business unit growth since 2017 being in the Agrimark and TFC divisions, indicated by the blue and the red bar graphs, having grown to 191 business units at a total of 226. We did not add sites to the TFC network in the year as planned, and therefore, growth in this division has mainly been of a like-for-like basis with some annualization occurring. Some of the group milestones have been that group real revenue growth of 19.4% was achieved in the year. Inflation of 4%, giving us a total revenue growth of 23.4% on a statutory basis. Secondly, that group real retail revenue growth of 11% was achieved on last year, and 14% on the pre-COVID year. This year's inflation was 7%, giving us a total growth of 18% for the year. Agrimark Grain delivered another record profit contribution this year. Our New Holland agency profitability has accelerated. Total support service costs to serve our business as a percentage of GP has been reducing, where -- and especially when excluding non-like-for-like and COVID-related costs. Group fuel liter growth of 13% from managed and owned sites was achieved partly from COVID recovery, annualization, as well as real growth. Trading profit contribution from non-agri related activities, as I said, has grown to 58%. Working capital requirements have grown at a slower rate than revenue growth. Our net interest-bearing debt has decreased by 8.9% and contributed to increased return on invested capital. Our group Level 3, BEE accreditation will be maintained. And as I've said, the TFC Propco disposal was concluded this year and circa ZAR 450 million of proceeds will be achieved during the first half of the financial year '22. All of the above have resulted in a recurring headline earnings per share compound annual growth rate of 15.1% since the financial year 2011. All of the above confirms that our company has not only beaten the slow poison of COVID and load shedding, but instead accelerated on many fronts. This slide is a quarterly turnover growth year-on-year trend graph, the blue graph being our retail sales and the green graph being our agri sales movements. Firstly, in terms of retail, the blue graphs. One can clearly see the COVID impact in quarter 3 of F '20. In this regard, there are 2 points to note. The sales drop was not as severe as with other retail players in the general retail sector. And secondly, that the recovery in F '20 was very quick, especially in quarter 4 last year. In contrast, from quarter 1 to quarter 4 of F '21, retail has performed very strongly. It would also be pertinent to emphasize that our retail sales have been very resilient. If we use quarter 3 as an example and comparing that to an F '19 base, one can clearly see that quarter 3 this year is 29% ahead of quarter 3 2 years ago. And quarter 4 this year is 24% ahead of quarter 4 2 years ago, very healthy growth. In terms of Agri, COVID impact was relatively low last year. And although supply chain issues linger, Agri categories have shown a strong acceleration on the back of market share gains on the one hand, an inflationary impact in quarter 4 of F '21 like in fertilizer categories. In general, agri conditions are positive with capital infrastructure spend on farms still being subdued due to land reform uncertainties. An analysis of revenue growth shows us that we've grown by 23.4% overall, and this on top of prior COVID year growth of 1.5% despite COVID, with inflation this year of 4%. The basket size continues to grow with transaction growth at 17%. The revenue growth has been made up of a strong performance from the Trade division, again, in which Agri gave us 13.6% overall growth; Retail, 18% overall growth; and Forge had a second outstanding year growing 22%. On the other hand, TFC grew by 31%, although still impacted by long COVID. Our grain ending up having a great year off the back of a higher grain handling as well as seed processing volumes. In terms of manufacturing, Agriplas contributed 10.3% of the growth with the rest of the manufacturing growth coming from TEGO on a non like-for-like basis. I'll now hand over to Graeme to take us through the highlights of the year in terms of the financial performance.

Thanks, Sean. Looking at the highlights for the period. We believe the group has delivered an impressive trading performance. Revenue has grown 23.4%. It's like-for-like comparable sales growing by 12.6%, the number of transactions increasing by 17%. Must be remembered that during the severely COVID impacted 2020 year, we still grew revenue by 1.5%, so this year's strong revenue growth is not off a weak COVID base. EBITDA increased by 19.2% to ZAR 552.8 million. As indicated previously, EBITDA was calculated including interest received, but excluding interest paid. This calculation has been changed to exclude both interest received and interest paid. This is just deemed to be a better reflection of the true operational performance of the group and an improvement in our disclosure. Comparable EBITDA performance has also been updated with this improvement in methodology. Recurring headline earnings has grown 23.8%, with recurring headline earnings per share growing by 21.7%. As a reminder, we consider recurring headline earnings to be a key benchmark to measure performance and to allow for meaningful year-on-year comparison. Group fuel volumes increased by 13%, with TFC growing volumes by 9.7%. As mentioned, we saw a 17% increase in the number of transactions during the period, this mainly coming from a 23.9% increase in the number of transactions in the retail fuel and convenience space, and a 5.9% increase in the trade environment. Final dividend of ZAR 1.11 per share was declared, bringing the total dividend for the year to ZAR 151 per share. And this represents a return to the previous 3x cover methodology. Regarding segmental performance, you'll see that trade, retail fuel and convenience and grain services all delivered good results year-on-year, with only manufacturing showing a decline. Important to note is that this methodology applied to segmental reporting has been improved in the trade debtors and borrowings as well as the associated interest received and interest paid have been allocated to the operating segment to which they relate, then this will provide a more accurate representation of invested capital within the various segments. The largest focus area of the company's activities remain in the trade sector, and the sector is also the greatest revenue and PBT contributor. Trade income grew 18.1%, with PBT increasing by 35.8%. The trade segment includes our phased in subsidiary Forge, which grew revenues by 23%. Retail fuel and convenience segment was hardest hit by COVID, but still grew revenues by 31.2% and PBT by 66.1% thanks to a combination of non-like-for-like sites, fuel price increases and improved contributions from convenience store and QSR offerings. The performance of this division has been encouraging, however, below expectation due to the longer-than-anticipated impact of COVID-related restrictions. Grain services or Westgraan, as we previously referred to the segment has delivered very pleasing results, growing revenue by 38.1% and operating profit before tax by 12.5%. The improved performance was due to the increased wheat harvest and higher grain trading income. Latest harvest estimates indicate the likelihood of an above-average wheat harvest for the new financial year across the total region, which bodes well for performance going forward. Manufacturing income grew by 20.4% with another strong performance from Agriplas. During the previous year, interest paid on borrowings related to manufacturing assets acquired in TEGO was capitalized prior to commissioning and this contributed to the year-on-year interest expense being higher in 2021, resulting in operating profit before tax decreasing by 13.9% this year. The corporate division, which includes the cost of support services as well as other costs not allocated to specific segments, increased from 0.3% of revenue to 0.8%, largely the impact of performance-related group incentives. So as a reminder, in the operating segments, gross assets include stock, trading fixed assets and debtors and net assets reflect the impact of trade creditors and borrowings. With regard to corporate, gross assets include corporate fixed assets and net assets reflect the impact of borrowings related to corporate assets only. I'll go into more detail around debtors in a later slide. This is a graphic representation of the previous slide, showing contributions by segment. The trends have not changed this interim result. It is evident that trade is still core of the business. Retail fuel and convenience growth has been impacted by COVID, but still contributed around 16% to group PBT. Grain services contribution are significant for the year and remain strategic in maintaining strong customer relationships and that manufacturing remains the smallest segment contributor to group PBT. Looking at the income statement. As mentioned, revenue grew by 23.4%. Gross profit increased by 20.2% and at a rate slower than revenue growth due partly to a high contribution of lower margin fuel revenue exacerbated by fuel price increases as well as sales mix changes and margin pressures in certain retail and agri trade categories. Effective cost management remained a key focus area during the period, specifically the optimization of salary-related expenditure and associated costs. During the previous financial year, the group implemented several covered related cost interventions that did not repeat in the current year. On a true like-for-like comparable basis, expenditure grew 7.3%. Recurring headline earnings grew 23.8%, with recurring earnings per share of ZAR 475.55, growing 21.7% for the year. Return on equity ended up 15.3%, up 1.5% time last year. The total dividend per share of ZAR 1.51 per share increased from the ZAR 0.50 in the prior year, bearing in mind that during 2020, the interim dividend was declared. So the 3 graphs, again, illustrate the continued strong 5-year performance of the business, culminating an exceptional recurring headline earnings per share performance for the year. Looking at the balance sheet. Total assets grew at a rate lower than the average of the past 3 years and in line with the decision taken to slow down footprint expansion, especially TFC, to rather focus on delivering returns on previously invested capital. During the year, ZAR 124 million was spent on CapEx and acquisitions, and I'll deal with CapEx in the later slide. Working capital has again been exceptionally well controlled, increasing by only ZAR 108 million year-on-year. The debt is at stock growing at rates lower than revenue growth. Net working capital days have improved by 1 day total. Management views our debtors' book as being healthy and adequately provided for. Our debt equity ratio of 56.1% calculated on average balances has reduced from 64.9% last year, and is in line with our commitment to reduce gearing in the group. Net debt to EBITDA improved to 2.2x versus 2.9x last year. Our net asset value per share continues to increase, albeit that assets are at historical values. Interest cover increased to 6.8x. So in summary, the balance sheet has strengthened from a year ago and has remained robust throughout the challenging COVID months. Gearing levels are back to 3 years ago levels, well within our internal thresholds and with sufficient headroom available to meet the coming year's requirements. As mentioned in our announcement on the fourth of October, TFC Properties has been disposed of, subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions precedent, notably approval in terms of competitions act. The disposal of TFC properties has no impact on the ongoing trading of TFC operations. Proceeds from this disposal will in the interim be used to further reduce borrowings and to fund higher return-generating acquisition opportunities. Purchase consideration payable to Kaap Agri, taking into account equity and shareholder loans, approximates ZAR 445.6 million. This slide reflects the recurring headline earnings waterfall from 2020 to 2021. Gross profit growth was strong, albeit slightly lower than revenue growth. Expenses grew by only by 7.3% on a true like-for-like comparable basis. Total expense growth, however, was driven by the non-like-for-like impact of costs related to conversion of 2 managed TFC fields sites to own sites, the addition of 7 new retail and agri trade sites and the impact of costs normalizing after prior year savings. Interest received reduced due to lower interest rates, lower average debtors balances and lower overdue debtors. Interest paid reduced due to lower interest rates and lower average borrowings. So in total, recurring headline earnings grew 23.8%. We have added in the slide this year to illustrate the items impacting earnings to calculate headline earnings and recurring headline earnings. Headline earnings adjustments relate to profit on disposal of various low return generating or nonessential assets. Nonrecurring items includes costs associated with new business development as well as certain legal costs. Furthermore, adjustments for the remeasurement of put option liabilities exercisable by noncontrolling subsidiary shareholders also added back. The performance have forged during the year has been exceptional and above expectation, which has necessitated an upward reval of the put option liability for the remaining minority shareholding. While this negatively impacted headline earnings, it's added back to calculate recurring headline earnings, and furthermore, bodes well for future earnings enhancement. As you will see, recurring headline earnings per share grew by 21.7% this year and has grown at a compound annual growth rate of 15.1% over 10 years. Given our expansion acquisition strategy and the prior increase in gearing in the business, we've prioritized return on invested capital, or ROIC, and EVA as key value indicators to measure our efficiency of allocating capital within the business. We invested heavily into the business over the past few years, both in upgrades and expansions as well as acquisitions. At the same time, we experienced subdued economic conditions and drought, which reduced returns, particularly in our like-for-like space, and we also saw the impact of COVID over the past 18 months. Despite this, through committed actions and focus on ROIC and EVA, we've been able to reverse the prior declining ROIC trend and significantly reduced debt levels. As previously indicated, we embarked on a prudent capital expenditure approach. We also reviewed the TFC portfolio and have successfully disposed of TFC properties without any negative impacts on the operations of TFC. This disposal will definitely enhance returns on invested capital going forward. Trading is expected to be strong in the coming year, and we will continue to explore high return, low capital requirement opportunities. As a reminder, as indicated in the remuneration reported in our AGM in February, we've also included EVA into the executive long-term incentive scheme as a performance hurdle. I'll hand back to Sean for the segmental reviews.

The next few slides will inform you of our segmental strategy, reviews and outlooks. Firstly, our Trade division, which is made up of Agrimark, New Holland, Forge, including Farmsave. From a review point of view, strategy has remained largely unchanged and is focused on organic growth, a selective footprint expansion, maximizing sector consolidation opportunities and improving our share of the building materials sector. Optimizing retail with increased DC utilization, combined with lower DC cost to serve and also implementing centralized optimization initiatives in terms of assortment, pricing and replenishment. Agri inputs for the year grew by 12.3%, that coming from packaging material growth of 14.3%, fertilizer of 19.1%, infrastructure sales of 29.3% and feed sales dropping by 19.6%. The New Holland agency sales grew by 29%, both from spare sales as well as equipment sales. Retail sales in the Trade division grew by 14.7%. This came from pet growth of 17.8%, pet being pet foods and accessories, as well as building materials growth of 31.3%, and pool and garden category growth of 13.1%. Forge, including Farmsave now since the acquisition, had revenue growth of 23% within this division with an OpEx growth of 21.8% because of the new sites added, but PBT by 40%. This division's total revenue grew by 16.2%. The operational expenses by only 9.1%, including the new sites of Farmsave and interest cost reduction of 21.9%. The DC cost to serve reduced by 13.6% second year running, and this division's PBT grew by 35.9%. From an outlook point of view, we aim to continue our market share drive while revenue should continue growing from annualization of stores and new stores added to the network. The fruit sector outlook is very positive for '21, '22 harvest, and we can confirm that an above-average wheat harvest is expected by the end of this year, which will bode well for grain handling income and storage income for the rest of the year. We, therefore, expect farm infrastructure spend to increase on the back of these forecasts. Retail diversification in this division will continue and expect cash contribution of 29%, contributing 44% of divisional GP to continue improving over time. Our continued focus on central pricing, assortment and replenishment optimization bodes well for margin improvements over the short term. Our TEGO agency business, which is the marketing of products manufactured at the Brackenfell factory will continue to improve into the new year. This division has commenced with some exciting B2B initiatives as well. Our TFC division, better known as the fuel company, which hold 43 retail fuel sites as at year-end and 4 additional QSRs and convenience stores. From a review point of view, the strategy remains unchanged, that being a very selective strategy on footprint expansion. We remain focused on Oilco collaboration, centralized support services while leveraging diversity to solidify our market share in South Africa. No new retail fuel sites were added in the year, with only a few sites converting from managed to owned. Long COVID is still impacting certain sites more severely than others, like cross-border sites into Zimbabwe, for example. Liter growth of just under 10% was very respectable for the year being partly COVID recovery, partly annualization, but more importantly, partly real growth. This led to a huge PBT recovery of 66% for the year, which improves the return on invested capital for this business significantly. Average site tenure remains high even when considering the impact of the Propco deal, as we've mentioned. From an outlook point of view, the petrol mix has stayed similar to the prior year. It would seem COVID has impacted travel patterns more permanently than what we would have thought. We have only one pipeline retail fuel site for the next year. This is by choice, as we have consolidated our portfolio and we can move our preferences to more select sites. Therefore, our forward-looking liter growth should reach 13% by the financial year in next year of the back of COVID recovery and sites annualizing and the 1 new site in the pipeline at this stage. The focus on expenses in this division during F '22 is one of the must-win battles. We still believe our strategically-placed TFC direct Black ownership of 40% bodes well for our ability to secure top quality sites going forward. And our forward-looking site tenure is expected to be above 20 years, although this could change depending on any major M&A in the OpCo space. We again have included this slide to illustrate that fuel price changes don't drive profitability in this channel. What does drive profitability in this channel is margin per liter. An important driver, therefore, within this channel is volume more than price, as can be seen in the scenario in the block -- at the bottom left when the price is 20% up on a year ago, but because the margin per liter is the same. It means that the margin percentage is lower after the price increase, yet margin per liter, i.e., the profitability measurement, is the same. Therefore, in the last year in which TFC contributed over ZAR 70 million profit before tax, only ZAR 9.7 million was arrived out of price changes. TFC's volume growth of over 9% was actually the key driver to the increased profitability. Our grain services division, which includes Agrimark grain and seed processing from an F '21 review point of view, the strategy remains focused on market share, facility optimization and being a regional role player. The F 2021 wheat harvest was the highest in 10 years. Interestingly, this division has a sweet spot on wheat volumes, and when exceeded incurs higher transport cost on inter-silo movements. Profitability of the division ended up 12.5% higher, a new record for the division. From an outlook point of view, the '21-'22 harvest is well on track and is expected to exceed last year's record as can be seen in the right-hand graph with the red line probably ending up above this prior year. We have also had a 20% increase in canola tonnes handled and stored in our silo complexes on top of the prior year growth of 15%. And wheat prices have been favorable over the last year, allowing us to fix our wheat surplus sales earlier this year. For farmers to price at these levels bodes well for infrastructure spend, it remains to be seen what if the inflation on fuel and fertilizer will have on the farmers. In terms of the last segmental review, the Manufacturing division, which includes Agriplas and TEGO. Agriplas producing irrigation products for the agriculture sector, in particular, the fruit sector. And TEGO currently producing bins for harvest and storage in that very same sector. This division contributes about 4% of profit from operations. From an overview point of view for the last year, the strategy has remained unchanged. Agri players grew revenue by 10.3% and PBT by 37.4%. TEGO achieved a modest 10% to 50% market share in the fruit bin market, which we believe should and could be 40% to 50%. Overall, Manufacturing PBT decreased, as Graeme mentioned, by 13% for the year. From an outlook point of view, Agriplas will continue product range expansions and drive topline market share improvements, while TEGO's performance should improve in the new financial year, and we expect to launch a new bin for the POME sector in late 2022. Graeme will now cover cash flow, capital spend and debtors.

Thanks, Sean. Moving to the cash flow performance. One can see that the group continues to generate strong cash flows from operations through strong cash profits and effective working capital management. Net working capital movement utilized ZAR 18.1 million in cash during the period. Although lower than previous years, investment has been made into the business to drive growth in terms of capital expenditure and acquisitions. This will be dealt with in the CapEx slide, which follows. ZAR 138.4 million was utilized to repay borrowings and lease and interest paid was significantly down year-on-year. Overall, a very healthy cash performance for the year. The ongoing diversity strategy of the business continues to increase the cash component of turnover, which bodes well for periods going forward. 37% of total turnover is now cash compared to 36.8% last year. And 4 years ago, our cash turnover made up only 30.2% of total turnover. With regard to capital expenditure, during the year, we spent ZAR 124 million on CapEx, including acquisitions compared to ZAR 313 million in 2020. Of this year's amount, 47.8% went towards trade and TFC acquisitions, 26.2% was allocated to expansions across all the segments, and 26% was spent on replacement and upgrades, including further modules of supply chain software. Spend by division was less weighted to TFC this year compared to previous years as we focused on driving returns on capital already invested. Trade and TSC collectively received 70.5% of capital allocation. Given our ROIC focus, a decision was made pre-COVID to curtail capital spend, except for acquisitions and projects already committed to. This has proven to be the right decision and reflects positively in our EVA numbers. As always, a bit of detail on our debtors book. Our strategy to grow the debtors book remains through responsible credit extension for the purposes of enabling revenue growth by increasing the consumers' ability to purchase from our various offerings. Credit granted can only be used for purchases at the various Kaap Agri and TFC outlets, so we provide production credit and not consumer credit. Our credit vetting process takes into account a number of variables, including financial and nonfinancial factors as well as the nature and value of any securities provided. The result in credit rating is then used to determine the size of the facility that is approved as well as the interest rate chartered to the account. Our debtors book grew 16.2% during the period and has grown at an average 8% compound annual growth rate over the past 5 years. The book now totals just over 16,000 accounts with roughly 21% of these accounts being seasonal accounts with payment periods linked to the cash flow cycle of the underlying product. These seasonal accounts could have payment terms up to 12 months. Debtors by product type remains fairly similar to last year, except for fruit, which has grown in contribution. And our bad debt write offs once again, bear a testimony to the quality of the underlying accounts with only 0.23% of the book being written off during the current year and only 0.19% over the last 5 years. So let's look at our out-of-term debtors, in other words, debtors that are overdue. This graph shows the monthly 4-year trend of overdue debtors as a percentage of total debtors and highlights the following. You'll see from the graph, the monthly trends are similar year-on-year, except where we have specific events as we saw in 2020 with COVID-related table grape and wine grape payment challenges. 2021 out of terms have been of the lowest we have seen during the past 4 years, and we have ended the year in a very healthy position, with out of terms lower by 1.3% of debtors when compared to last year and below the 5-year average. So in summary, given the challenges we and our customers have faced over the past 18 months, our book has been resilient, is in a very healthy state and is well secured by various securities. Furthermore, we are well-positioned given the favorable agri conditions being experienced in our areas. Sean will close out from here.

We can summarize them as follows. From an F '21 review point of view, we've had exceptional growth from our Agrimark, New Holland agency and a record from grain services. We've had continued healthy agri performance throughout COVID and market share gains as well. We have diversified our growth. We've recovered it in TFC, not only avoided the COVID iceberg, but proven to be very resilient. We've continued optimization and digitization initiatives. Our OpEx working capital and CapEx were well managed during the year. All in all, a great year culminating in improved EVA. From an outlook point of view, as stated, our wheat harvest should be another record. The positive agri sector bodes well for farm infrastructure spend, albeit under inflationary circumstances over the next 9 months. TFC will be focused on non-property and higher feasible sites. TEGO's performance will remain subdued in F '22 but the second bin launch is very promising, while Agriplas is expected to maintain momentum into the new year. We are cognizant, however, that the economy is expected to remain sluggish and our itch to increase market share are paramount. Finally, we expect to achieve our medium-term growth targets. We thank you for your time, and we'll move forthwith to any questions that have been sent in.

Thank you very much for the questions that have come in so far. One of the questions is how our stock levels are looking for New Holland agency aftermarket product sales. I can report at this stage that, fortunately, in our place through [ great lives ] and with our New Holland suppliers we are currently sitting on a very healthy stock situation versus a year ago. In the ports side, we are struggling like most suppliers on the whole goods side to deliver on time due to the logistics issues in ports and in the world. But from an aftermarket ports point of view within our agencies, we are in a -- sitting in a healthy position. Then I understand the next question to be the dynamics around the fertilizer end market. But yes, we are obviously already aware that the inflationary pressure has hit fertilizer and aligned type of products with the inflation exceeding anywhere between 35% and 100% on certain products. Now, we need to understand that it is not a lack of supply of fertilizer, which is the issue in the fertilizer market of the world per se. There are some shortages because of the factory failure in China. But essentially, all our suppliers are saying they do have stock. But what's driving the increased prices predominantly for South African inputs are the logistic costs, which have doubled and tripled overnight, making it as expensive to transport the fertilizer into South Africa as what the product value is at this stage. How long that will last is anyone's, I think, guess at this stage. But this -- for the next 3 to 6 months, our suppliers are indicating continued pressure on logistics and continued volatility in logistics. And that is what's leading to massively buying frenzies on the short term and higher logistics costs, which are driving the price. So that really is the current structural dynamics, there is stock, it's just very highly priced. Where will it affect that? It will affect farmers in the fruit sector that are bringing our fertilizer over the next 3 to 4 months, it then could limit the maize farmers over the next 2 months that are feeding plants. And then hopefully, by the time that the wheat harvest is planted next year, fertilizer prices will be stabilized. I can't really comment much further on that. There is another question regarding Zeder, which appear to be selling assets and eventually being collapsed, and what we can do in this process. I think at this stage, I mean, we can't really comment on the zero portfolio and the zero strategy. Our focus is on Kaap Agri and what the outcomes are that we need to achieve as indicated to us by our Board. Our indication from our biggest shareholder is that for us, it's business as usual at this stage. And I, therefore, would not like to comment on the rest of their assets and processes. I think Kaap Agri at this stage is a healthy company, and is focused -- the executive team is focused on our medium-term growth targets and achieving our big area of those goals. What happens from an ownership point of view, is partly out of our control. Then I think any -- another question around Zeder. I think from a Zeder point of view, our Zeder shares can be placed and -- shares in an overhang situation. I think that those sort of questions should rather be addressed to Zeder CEO, who is on review directly from that point of view. Then just see if some more questions have come through. There is another question around New Holland and whether there is market share being taken from the equipment brands in South Africa. So it is true that New Holland is taking market share away from Landini and John Deere at this stage, and the particular reason for that is a more appropriate-sized tractor for the orchard and vineyards in Western Cape as well as a super duper wheat harvester, which they also -- a year or 2 ago, which is starting to make inroads into the Western Cape and elsewhere, as well as extremely well or category improved fuel efficiency that they're achieving with their tractor range compared to some other competitors. So yes, there is a move, and there's been a huge focus from CNHI in Italy to improve the New Holland market share in South Africa. And fortunately, our New Holland agency business has been able to benefit from those joint efforts with them. We take note of the suggestion to -- we look at the serious situation and be more proactive from our point of view, it will be taken up with our Board, so we thank you for that suggestion. Graeme, would you please comment on the ongoing maintenance CapEx requirements, which are quite low versus our total spend and how they will defer from the depreciation charge going forward?

Yes. Thanks, Sean. If we look at our CapEx spend in the year, we spent ZAR 124 million in the CapEx. And included in that is over ZAR 30 million worth of replacement CapEx. So the bulk of the CapEx went into the acquisition that we mentioned with the few fuel site and Farmsave and then some expansion, so we've increased our reach on certain stores and certain sites. Yes, looking forward, our replacement CapEx is probably going to be a little bit higher than the current year. I don't think significantly higher. We did hold back on some CapEx during the last 18 months, especially in the early stages of COVID with the uncertainty of COVID, so we did hold back a tad on that. And I think if we're looking forward at our prospects, for the new year, we see a significant normalization of our performance. Our forward-looking performance is looking really positive, and as such -- we definitely intend stepping up on some of the maintenance and replacement CapEx we held back on. So the F '22 year, I think, will be a slight uptick in the replacement CapEx. And then obviously, with that, on the slight increase in the depreciation. But yes, not anything too material. I think as a whole, CapEx for the new year, as indicated in our various reports and commentary, CapEx for the new year will definitely be up on the current -- on the previous year. We have indicated -- we've got a new TSC site in the pipeline. That site will not include the purchase of the property, so it's just the purchase of the operation. We'll be buying out the minorities in Forge. Is there some development CapEx going into TEGO and some upgrades and expansions and the like, so you will definitely see an increase in CapEx in the new year, but definitely not to the levels we draw before. In our last year, we won just over ZAR 300 million worth of CapEx in 2020. So 2022 will definitely not be a return to those type of level.

Thank you, Graeme. I don't see any other questions there. We've seen that we've got at the end of the questions and answers part of the session. I would really like to thank everyone that has taken part and taking the time and the interest that you show in our company. We trust that you -- I believe the executive team will again deliver on the medium-term targets, and we look forward to the new year, the first 8 week of trading will fortunately, be quite robust. Thank you very much for everyone joining.