Lewis Group Limited (LEW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for taking the time to join us at our annual financial results presentation for the year ended 31 March 2022. Joining me today is our CFO, Jacques Bestbier; and I also have Graeme Lillie from Tier 1 Investor Relations in the room. On the agenda for this afternoon, firstly, we'll have a look at our highlights. We'll then move on to discuss our data performance in quite a bit of detail. Following, we'll move into financial results. And then finally, we'll deal with targets and also our outlook for the next financial year and the medium term. The group delivered a solid set of results, supported by a balanced performance during a very challenging trading period. Revenue increased by 7.9%, supported by a strong merchandise sales growth of 11.5%. Gross profit margin at 40.5%, a strong achievement against the background of significantly increased shipping costs. Our operating margin settled at a solid 15.2%. Cash generated from operations remained strong at ZAR 863 million. Headline earnings per share expanded by 21.2%, and headline earnings per share benefited from our aggressive share buyback program and reflects an increase of 37.7%. Once again, management and the Board feels very confident about the future. And against this background, a total dividend increase of 26% has been declared for the year. And that brings us to a total dividend of ZAR 4.13 for the year. Ladies and gentlemen, we believe that we've delivered a solid performance for the year against a background and backdrop of real challenges. Retail environment during this period can only be described as a challenging one as the continued impact of COVID-19 washed its way through the economy. This also resulted in record high unemployment numbers during the period. We also had to deal with rising inflation. And the economy as a whole tightened significantly during this 12-month period. One thing that none of us planned for was the unfortunate event of civil unrest during July 2021. In our case, 57 of our stores in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal was directly impacted. And obviously, far more than the 57 stores were impacted by the aftermath and the impact of these unrest in months to follow. Then we've spoken a lot in the past about local and international supply chain challenges. And maybe I must just pause a moment to just give a little bit more color. Prior to the COVID period, the Lewis Group paid just a little bit more than $3,000 to ship a 40-foot container from China to South Africa. During the height and -- the high demand months, September, October and November, high demand shipping months that eased, in certain instances, we had to pay as much as $10,000 to get the same 40-foot container from China into the Durban Harbour. Like we said, we dealt with these challenges and we still managed to post what we believe is a competitive GP at 40.5%. You will also recall that, that performance is in line with the guided target range that we gave 12 months ago. We continue to invest in our store network, and we opened a net 12 new stores during this period. Three of those stores were opened outside of South Africa. I can also mention that we've taken a decision to strengthen our senior management team in the rest of Africa with some good early results. Our stores outside of the boarders generated a 12% sales growth and contributed 18% of the group's total merchandise sales. We believe that there's a lot of value that can be unlocked outside of the borders of South Africa, in the countries where we've got a presence, and this will be one of our focus areas over the next 12 months. Our program of reducing store sizes and opening new stores in a smaller format under the Lewis brands has continued with success, and we now have 48% of our stores trading out of smaller formats. We've also continued to invest in keeping our stores looking up to date and 150 stores, in line with our target, was refurbished during the year. Merchandise sales, in line with our budget. Merchandise sales increased by 11.5%. We had a very strong Black Friday trading period during half 2 that supported sales growth. Both cash and credit sales performed well during this period. We also launched new merchandise ranges into our stores in August and September. And most of the new lines that we introduced into our stores gained good traction over the Christmas trading period. Like-for-like comparable stores increased sales by 9.2%. Nice expansion in credit sales. And I think 12 months ago, when we spoke to the market, we made the point that the big driver of growth for the Lewis Group would, in fact, be credit sales. Very happy with the solid 16.7% increase in that line. And then our sales actually increased by 18.9%, if one goes back to the more normalized sales base of March 2020. The credit application decline rate reduced from 38.1% to 36.1%. Ladies and gentlemen, we were very successful to attract more lower-risk credit consumers into our stores and especially so during quarter 3 and quarter 4 of last year. And these targeted marketing initiatives and strategies placed us in a position to attract, like I said, more lower risk credit customers into the fold. I must make it very clear that we did not reduce our credit granting criteria. We did not open the [ taps ], and we did not actually approve any higher-risk credit customers. On the contrary, it's lower credit risk customers that were attracted into our stores. One of the things that we monitor is the debt-to-income levels in our customer base. Similarly, we've also monitored this over the last 13 months and the actual debt-to-income level of customers that we approved during the last 12-month period is below the average of our existing customer base. In some good news, some support coming through in the other revenue line where we posted an increase of 2.8%. I must also pause to just highlight that the actual interest rate in our book at this point is at, at least a 10-year low. Happy to share with you that the average interest rate in the book is now sitting at 19.6%. And following the recent increases in the South African interest rate, we are now charging 21.75% on new contracts. So on a look-through basis, some further support is expected to come through in the other revenue line as we move forward. We've also continued our strategy of carrying higher stock levels to meet customer demand and the strategy has served us well, though we had a couple of hiccups in the UFO brand, our traditional stores were mostly fully stocked during the last 12 months. The next slide illustrates the success of our diversification strategy with 34% of sales in 2018. It was done on a cash basis. We've seen a nice uptick in cash sales, bigger contribution coming through with 50.9% reported in 2021 and a very healthy 48.6% reported in 2022. When we get to the target section later on, you'll see that we once again left our sales mix targets unchanged. And we believe that credit sales for the coming year will settle between 52% and 56% of total sales. Expenses were tightly managed. So expenses increased by 10% for this year in the middle of our target range and set a target range of expense increases of between 8% and 12%. But I think, more importantly, when one go back to a normalized base of March 2020, it becomes clear that expenses were, in fact, well contained with an increase of 6.5% [ based on that ] basis. The balance sheet remains healthy and our cash flow remains robust. When you look at the current condition of the debtors book, I think one can expect both the balance sheet and our cash flows to remain in good [ standing ] as we move forward. Share repurchase program, 8.8 million shares repurchased for the 12-month period and 37% of shares repurchased since the listing. Just look at our share repurchase performance. Very, very aggressive share repurchase program over the last 5 years with 2020 being the year during which the highest number of shares were repurchased at 8.8 million shares. Ladies and gentlemen, the next slide speaks to delivering of shareholder returns through avenues being share buybacks and then the return of income through repayment of dividends. It's all there for you to see. Our annual return to shareholders, measured as a percentage of our market capitalization at that point, speaks to a very healthy return of 20.8% during this financial year. And if we look at the last 3 years, our average return to shareholders settled at 18.2%. To put this into perspective, one must also focus on the attributable line and our achievements for the last year. We are posting or reporting an attributable profit today of ZAR 483 million. And if we look at the total that we spent on buybacks and on dividends during this period, you will note that we've actually returned 127% of the attributable line to shareholders during this period. Dividend per share slides, going back to 2018, we paid a total dividend of ZAR 2. That position is now more than doubled with ZAR 4.13 dividend that will be paid during this period and a healthy increase of almost 26% on last year's performance. I also want to mention that since we listed the business in 2004, we never suspended the payment of the dividend. We then move on to our debtor analysis. One of the highlights of this set of results for us as management is the very, very strong improvement in the quality of the debtors' book. It occurred not only over the last 12 months, but also if you go back and you look at our achievements and compare that to the pre-COVID period. Ladies and gentlemen, so group collections settled at an all-time high of 79%. Prior to COVID, and I must just remind you that before we went into COVID, we were already entering a phase of very solid improvements in the debtor's book and collection rates at 76.3% were already on the high side. We further improved that to 79%. We also thought that it's good to once again just illustrate the movement from the pre-COVID [ 29 ] collection levels where we collected just over ZAR 4 billion out of the debtors' book that were just 3% smaller than what it is today. So a 3% increase in the size of the debtors' book, because of the improvement, a 10% improvement in the actual range collected. We've spoken about the collection rate, well up on last year, but also significantly better than 2019. Contractual arrears, well down on last year and pre-COVID levels, and contractual arrears now accounts for 33% of the book, well below the 38.5% mark in 2019. Debtor costs, a solid result, 13.6%, down on last year. And once again, if you just pass your eye to the 2019 column with a debtors' book that's now 3% bigger, still quite a substantial improvement of 4% on the debtor cost amounts that we reported in '19. So debtor costs as a percentage of the debtors' book with gross carrying value, 12.3%, below the lower end of our target range. Then we move on to our payment buckets. Satisfactory paying customers now at 79%, well up from 74.4%. Ladies and gentlemen, I think the most important point that I want to make today is that the improvement of the quality of the debtors' book is as a result of the overall improvement in all of these payment buckets. So the composition of the debtors' book improved significantly over the last 12 months. And the release is as a result of an improvement in the quality of the book. It's not as a result of any other releases that has taken place. And to really drive that point home, it's important to focus on the actual impairment position or percentage in each one of these payment buckets. So in the satisfactory paid bucket, we added 20.7% provision last year. That has increased to 21.5%. Slow payer bucket, up from 67.5% to 73.2%. Nonperforming bucket further increased from provision covering 86.5% of balances in the bucket to 88.4% today. So the overall improvement in the quality of the book resulted in a lower impairment provision percentage. Next slide is very worth noting, once again, just highlighting our position pre-COVID to what it is today. Maybe just to point out, the nonperforming bucket pre-COVID, 13.4% of our customers were, in fact, in that nonperforming bucket. That reduced significantly to 9%. From a sales perspective, great reserve opportunities with 456,000 of our 576,000 customers now falling in a category where we as Lewis has got appetite to do repeat business with these customers. Highest position in 15 years and just more recently, up from 68.4% satisfactory paid position in 2018 to 79% today. On to the financial results. On the income statement, we've already discussed the nice increase in merchandise sales of 11.5%. We've spoken about gross profit. Solid performance and the circumstances. And then today, we also need to talk about the impairments and other capital items that led to a reduction in our operating profit of ZAR 99 million from ZAR 767 million before the adjustments to ZAR 668 million. And we'll get to that detail in a moment. So now just to mention that the operating profit margin at 15.2%, still a solid result and then a nice increase in the attributable line of 11.6% and earnings per share increasing by a healthy 26.8%. On the segmental analysis, solid performance by traditional retail. Merchandise sales for our traditional brands increased by 13.3%. And the worst performing out of the 3 brands still increased merchandise sales by a very healthy 11.6%. So a very good balance all-around performance by Lewis Best Home and Electric and Beares, thus resulted in a solid operating margin for the traditional section of the business of 18.5%. In the case of UFO, UFO performed below management's expectation during this period. And although UFO only contributed 8% of revenue, I must mention that UFO is a very, very important strategic brand in our fold. It's also a brand that performed very well during the 2 previous financial years. And we believe that we'll be in a position to restore this brand to the sort of trading levels that we've gotten used to prior to this period. If we look at the reasons why UFO underperformed, it's important to note that close to 70% of what we import for UFO or what we sell in UFO is, in fact, imported lines. We all know about the pricing pressures that came through in that line. And unfortunately, some of those pricing increases had to be converted to the broader market that influenced volumes. Then I can also mention that we had some import difficulties out of the country of Malaysia. This basically resulted because of continuous hard lockdowns that took place in Malaysia. And unfortunately, some of the merchandise that were due to arrive to cover Christmas sales only arrived during the middle of January. Then the final reason for underperformance in UFO also lies in the fact that the looting in July had a more severe impact on our store base, which is still predominantly centered in Gauteng and also some big stores in the KwaZulu-Natal area. Also this underperformance and slow performance in UFO, goodwill has been written down to the extent of ZAR 31 million. And we've also had to basically impair our right-of-use assets in UFO to the extent of ZAR 44 million. The swing of just over ZAR 70 million then resulted in our operating profit of ZAR 39 million, reducing to operating loss of ZAR 36 million. Ladies and gentlemen, just to make the point and just to make it abundantly clear, management is very much committed to this -- to serving this segment of the market. We've shown in the past that this is -- UFO has been a good acquisition. It's got a good place in our stable. And for that reason, we will continue to open stores, expand and to refine this business model. And hopefully, in the fullness of time, shipping rates will also normalize and that would alleviate the current pressure that we are seeing in UFO. Expenses, target range of 8% to 12% in terms of growth. We achieved 10% growth in expenses for the year. I think more importantly, if we go back to the normalized base of 2020, expenses were really well contained with an increase of 6.5%. Maybe just to touch on the 2 big lines here. Marketing expense increased by 52%. This is simply a result of the group returning to normalized levels of marketing spend. And as a matter of fact, if we go back to pre-COVID levels, you will note that we are still 6% below what we spent in 2019. We all know about fuel inflation and what happened over the last 12 months. Our team did really well to contain the growth in our fuel expense. And as a matter of fact, if we go back to 2019 levels, only a 2% increase in this line were actually reported during this period. If we look ahead, we've set ourselves a target range of containing the increases in operational expenses to a level of between 4% and 8% over the next 12 months. We now move on to explain the impact of impairments and capital items, and that impact during this reporting period has been a significant one, touching on ZAR 99 million. So ladies and gentlemen, the impairment of the right-of-use assets increased substantially. So last year, the impairment charge was ZAR 34 million, that increased to ZAR 99 million during this reporting period. ZAR 55 million resulted from an impairment that we raised against our traditional retail stores and ZAR 44 million came as a result of provisions that we raised against our stores in UFO. So other than the deterioration in the performance of certain stores, the actual point in the lease renewal cycle, the actual aging of the lease resulted in a higher impairment charge than last year. During this period, 34% of leases became due for renewal. Put this into perspective, that compares to 24% of leases that were renewed during the comparative year. But when looking ahead, there is some good news and some good news coming. 17%, 1-7, of leases will become due for renewal in the new financial year, in 2023, that is. Then furthermore, secondly, our strategy to carry plus/minus 50% more merchandise, 50% more stock, negatively impacted our cash flow projections, and this resulted in an increase in the number of branches that were impaired. So as soon as the supply chain normalizes, stock levels will be reduced to normal levels and the pressure on the impairment line will subsequently ease. I just need to add that this increase in impairment is not an indication of an increase in nonprofitable branches. As a matter of fact, at group level, the number of profitable branches during this year actually increased. So we've got less unprofitable branches at group level. Maybe just to pause and to just talk about UFO-specific situation here. In the case of UFO, we renewed 46%, and this is in terms of the value of leases. In UFO, we reduced 46% -- we renewed, I should say, 46% of all leases during the reporting period. This compares to 18% in the prior year. And when we look at the 2023 year, ladies and gentlemen, 9% of leases will come up for renewal during this period. So I just think that this gives a little bit of perspective. It's a big number. Like I said, if stock levels can reduce and most probably debt reduction will not take place over the next 12 months because there's still a lot of uncertainty in terms of supply chain. But in years to come, as soon as stock levels normalize, there will be a little bit of relief in this line. And then I've given you the renewal numbers that's going to come through in this financial year, nowhere close to as onerous as what we had to deal with in the reporting period. I've spoken about the write-down of goodwill in UFO, ZAR 31 million that came through into smaller numbers. The profit on the disposal of fixed assets, the [ 72 ] buildings that were no longer of strategic value to the group that we sold and that's the profit that we realized on those sales. And then finally, profit on the disposal of fixed assets due to civil unrest, we raised insurance claims and made recoveries that basically exceeded the actual value of those assets in our books. As you can imagine, those assets were already significantly depreciated in our books, and that resulted in a net position or a profit of ZAR 14 million for the year. So here is a big impact, reducing our operating profit line from a nice increased position of 4% to a reduction of 4% for the year. And just to put that profit -- operating profit number in perspective. Last year, we recorded an increase of 174% in operating profit. So we are comparing against quite a tough price. On the balance sheet, we've touched on most of the items, I would just like to pause on stock inventory, a further 7% increase to our stockholding position at year-end. We now see this stockholding position as the high point. Over the next 12 months, as things stand today, we plan to maintain the status quo. We basically plan to continue to run the business at stock levels very similar to what you see today. It's a strategy that has worked well. We just recently learned with the floods in KZN and the fact that the main rail line that runs between Durban and Johannesburg region is not working at this point in time, we've just once again realized the value of running the business in an overstock position at this point. We had a little bit of borrowings on the balance sheet to the extent of ZAR 81 million, cash on hand of ZAR 308 million. We can share with you that as things stand today, all of those borrowings have, in fact, been repaid and the business is [ ongoing ]. Key ratios. Headline earnings per share, a healthy increase of 27.7%. And then another highlight. We've been promising the market that ROEs will move into double-digit territory. Ladies and gentlemen, we're there. It's the first milestone, 10.1%. And if we just go back and look at the history. In 2018, return on equity of 5.1% was reported. And today, we almost doubled that to 10.1%. Although this is a milestone, we know that it's not time to pop the champagne as yet. There's still a lot of work that needs to be done. And we just want to once again share with the market that management remains committed to work hard to further extend our return on equity to further grow it. And that we have, in fact, got a 5-year horizon that management are incentivized to get the business to a position at a way we can report a 15% ROE to the market. So that's a 5-year horizon and a very clear target and goal of 15%. Headline earnings per share, up from ZAR 3.03 in 2018 to ZAR 8.49 in 2022. And the net asset value per share increased by no less than 30% over the last 4 years. Ladies and gentlemen, if one looks at the actual discount that we are still trading on, still more than 33% discount to net asset value per share, and I think for that reason, the company has not done any acquisitions over the last 12 months. Of course, we could not find any bolt-on businesses where we can actually go and do better and buy better, we then actually continue to invest in our own shares. It's been a very, very successful strategy of ours. And for that reason, we will continue to buy back shares as we move forward. Then move on to targets, and [ review ] with our outlook. If we look at the targets that we communicated to the market 12 months ago, you will see that in most cases, we've been successful to achieve those targets. In the case of gross profit margin, 40.5%, lower end of our target range. I've already explained the challenges that we had to face. But just to give you a little bit more color. We went back and we did a calculation to actually see exactly how much we've spent in terms of shipping costs. It's a massive number over the last 12 months. So what we did is we went back to what we paid in pre-COVID times. We looked at the actuals that actually went through the income statement this year. Ladies and gentlemen, we actually spent ZAR 130 million more in terms of getting those containers dock in South Africa. A massive, massive number. I can also mention that we've now secured a shipping deal for the next 12 months. And although the shipping rates are still high, still really onerous, this puts us in a position to properly plan ahead. We've had the opportunity to stress test every individual SKU, every individual item. And we will only be ranging products -- only introducing the products into the market over the next 12 months that can actually sustain these much higher shipping rates. Operating margin, well within our target range. We set the target for the new year of a range of 14% to 18%. And in the medium term, we believe that we can expand operating margins to somewhere between 16% and 20%. Spoken about expenses, target range for this year, 4% to 8%. And in the medium term, we would like to bring it back to 3% to 6%. Credit sales, happy with our achievement of 51.4%. We believe that the credit sales growth will support the group's growth over the next 12 months, and that we will most probably be closer to the upper end of the target range that we've set for the short term. Satisfactory paid, all-time high, 79%. Target range that speaks to 74% to 79% for this year. And in the medium term, we believe that there's a little bit of scope for further improvement, upper end of the target range settling at 80%. Debtor costs, below the lower end of our target range at 12.3%. Target for this year, 12% to 15%. We also believe that that's a reasonable target range for the medium term. Gearing now at 15.3%. Our ceiling, I should state that this is not a target, but rather a ceiling. It's not to go beyond gearing levels of 20% this year. And in the medium term, there's appetite to actually push it up, the ceiling level up to 25%. That takes us to the outlook. I don't think that it's necessary to convince anybody in the audience that there will be increasing pressure coming through the economy over the next 12 months. We've entered the rising interest rate cycle seeing that the Reserve Bank is rightfully becoming more aggressive. Inflation needs to be halted and contained, and that will, in the short term, still put quite a bit of pressure on the economy. We've got rising food and fuel prices. Both of these are very important indicators in the market that we sell to. And then if we look at input costs, specifically referring to what the agricultural industry is going through at the moment, all of this is also fueled by the Russian-Ukraine war. Just look at something like fertilizer prices, for instance. The farmer that goes out to plant small grains, as we all know, in the Western Cape, it's planting season, those people are now paying 2, 2.5x more for fertilizer. The impact of this is still going to wash its way through the economy. And I believe that we are going to see a significant rise, further rise in the price of staple foods. We all know about Eskom and load-shedding, it's part of our lives. It's causing significant disruption. And we believe that the situation can become even worse and more dire over the next 12 months. I've spoken about supply chain challenges. At this point in time, we don't believe that any of these challenges will ease as we move forward. And we will have to deal with all of this as we manage the business on a day-to-day basis. So that's it. It's a mouthful. And if you add very high unemployment levels to that, it becomes a very big picture. Ladies and gentlemen, I think that our business model now proven over very, very many years that it's very resilient in the real sense of the word. And that the experienced management team has got the ability to actually successfully trade in a constrained environment like this. We don't believe that the market -- the furniture retail market will expand over the next 12 months. We can't see that happening with all of the factors that we've mentioned. So for us as a management team, it's really important to accelerate our market share gains. And we believe that, that will place us in a position where we can continue to successfully grow merchandise sales. We plan to do so by introducing new ranges into our business, into all brands during the trading months of August and September. We also believe that we are arming our salespeople on the floor with very good ammunition in terms of offering our customers same-day delivery service. This remains a competitive advantage, and none of our big competitors are actually in a similar position. We also believe that our appetite to continue to extend credit into the segment of the market remains a massive competitive advantage and we can do so with confidence. Of course, we've proven that we can successfully connect in the segment of the market that we extend credit to. I think that we have pointed that our balance sheet is now in a very, very great shape and our debtors' book is more than collectible, both [ makes us ] to continue to invest in the growth of the debtors' book. We will also continue with our share repurchase program. At the last AGM, we got authority to buy back 10% of shares in issue. We've exhausted 48% of that mandate, and we plan to execute on the rest of it if the share are, in fact, available in the open market. When we get to the next AGM in October, it is our intention to once again go ask shareholders for a 10% buyback mandate. The investment for the future will continue. We plan to open a net 16 new stores during the period. Four of those will be UFO stores and the rest will be opened in additional camp. And we will continue to revamp at least 150 stores during this period. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to close off by saying that this is not the first tough year that we will be entering as a group. We believe that we have prepared ourselves as well as possible and that we are in a position to go out and to go and compete for every available sale that will be available in the market. And with that, I would like to once again thank you for your attendance. And Graeme Lillie will now turn his attention to the questions that you've sent. If you haven't done so, please feel free to send those questions through now. Thank you.

Johan, the first question comes from Chris Reddy with All Weather Capital. Chris says, "Well done on a very good result." He has 3 questions. The first question, "Please, can we get CapEx guidance given the 16 new stores, similar revamp of another 150 stores this year?"

All right, Chris, thank you. Thank you very much for the compliment. Once again, CapEx will not be significant in our business. If we look at our budget for this year, we will be spending between ZAR 100 million and ZAR 110 million.

Second question from Chris. How's the completion of the current buyback program? Is it expected to be renewed for a similar size?

Chris, yes. So we've executed on 48%. We bought back 4.8% of shares in issue under this program. Like I said, it's our intention to continue to buy back. I'm sure that you've noticed that liquidity has been quite tight over the last couple of months. But it's certainly our intention to once again go and ask for a 10% mandate when we get to October.

And the third question from Chris is, "On the 5-year ROE target of 15%, what are the key levers that are expected to assist in achieving this?"

Chris, so there's a number of factors. First and foremost, we expect a further improvement in the debtors' book to be quite a good driver. And if you look at the solid foundation that we are currently enjoying, we believe that it will actually play out along those lines. We also expect to see significant support coming through in the other revenue lines. We've seen a couple of interest rate increases recently over the last 12 months and we expect to see more. I made the point that the average interest rate in the book is currently at an all-time low and that we're already entering into new contracts now that basically speaks to an increase of 2% in that interest line. Just to make a point, the increases in interest rates is only applicable to new contracts. So obviously, these increases will actually wash its way through the -- basically through the income statement as these new deals or contracts mature.

We've got a question from Charles Boles from Titanium Capital who says, "Well done on the results and the overall discipline in the business in terms of costs, capital allocation." He says, "I appreciate the benefit of the share buyback program, which we are supportive of. However, can you confirm that Lewis will continue to maintain a balance sheet with low levels of net debt, which has been a key strength historically?"

Charles, yes, thank you for the compliment. And the short answer to your question is yes. Obviously, we basically lived at a whole lot of different scenarios. And as things stand today, we can afford and we can comfortably continue to buy back shares to the extent of 10% of shares in issue per year, while maintaining a dividend payout of 55%. Charles, obviously, circumstances change, but we can tell you that this is something that is high on the Board's priority list. And this is something that we review on at least a 6-monthly basis. So there's absolutely no risk that we will go and buy back shares at the expense of over gearing the business. So far, all of our purchases and dividend payments have actually been finalized by funds that we had available.

There's a follow-up question from Charles. He says, "Why do stock levels impact the impairment of right-of-use assets? As Lewis do valuation of CG use at store level and with higher stock, the value and use could not support the carrying value of the store. Is this a right-of-use impairment or more a provision against the carrying value of the store?"

Charles, I'm going to give you -- I'm going to start at a high level, and then I'm going to ask Jacques to actually give us a little bit more detail. So the actual impact of the higher stock levels is actually twofold. First and foremost, it actually increased the size of the asset in that store. And then secondly, because of higher stockholding and higher stock purchases, it has got a detrimental or negative impact on the projected future cash flows. And I think the point is, as soon as you start slowing down and you start reducing your stock levels to more normalized levels, the cash flow in those stores will just naturally improve. Jacques?

Absolutely correct, Johan. And Charles, to your question, we do indeed do based on a cash-generating unit per store. And for that reason, what Johan explained, when you discount that already lower cash flow, it needs to be allocated against our higher asset as well before the allocation gains the right-of-use asset occurs and hence the higher impairment under right-of-use asset.

Thanks, Jacques. Franca Di Silvestro from Titanium Capital says, "Well down on your results. Please, can you elaborate on what SKUs are less feasible from a shipping perspective? Will there be any impact on product mix in GP over the next 12 months?"

Franca, yes, that is a very, very good question, and it actually gives me the opportunity to also put this into perspective. On a look-through basis, it all comes back to the actual loadability or the loading of a specific product. Obviously, the bigger the product, and this is normally the case for the furniture categories, the less of a specific SKU can actually go into that 40-foot container. To give you an extreme example, in UFO, for instance, some of our motion lounge suites are so big that you can only get 18 of that specific lounge suite into a container. And if you look at the significant increases that we've suffered, some of these merchandise items can actually not -- can actually not sustain those sort of price increases. And one needs to go and find alternatives. So in the traditional business, absolutely, no problem. We've got the opportunity there to still maintain 98% of our range. It still remains competitive when compared to merchandise that one sourced locally. Obviously, in the case of UFO, there's a number of challenges. But this, Franca, also opens a door of opportunity for local suppliers to actually now enter the market and happy to share with you that we have actually entered into new business relationships with 2 new local suppliers, and we believe that they are going to play a big part in terms of keeping our stores fully stocked. So on a look-through basis for the consumer in terms of servicing consumer needs across all merchandise categories, happy to share with you that we've concluded our range of reviews for both traditional and UFO, and we will have merchandise in all categories to basically cater for all different customer tastes.

And the second question from Franca. What impacts of growing competitive flat-packs having on furniture demand going forward? Or is that customer different to the typical Lewis customer?"

We are already doing quite a bit of flat-pack furniture imports. And we also have some local manufacturers that also only manufacture and distribute furniture flat-pack. In certain categories and instances, it will be a partial flat-pack merchandise that gets imported. To give you a practical example, if we look at that dining room suite that you now see on your question page, something like that will see a partial mark down. We'll bring that in with actual table top and the base of that table comes in separate boxes. And similarly, with chairs like those, the pack will actually be assembled and that gives great benefit in terms of container loadings. So in times like these, even factories that did not consider a flat-pack manufacturing are now considering it. Otherwise, they will just lose market share and will go and buy somewhere else. So for case goods, things like plasma units, wardrobes and bedroom suites, big opportunity, but some of those opportunities have already been tapped into.

Thanks, Johan. Jan Meintjes from Denker Capital says, "Congrats on the great results. I believe you are doing more debit order business. Is this the main reason for better collections? And can you do more of this?"

Yes. Jan, thank you. Thank you very much. Yes, our collection strategy have evolved and we believe we've improved our collection strategy quite significantly over the last 2.5 to 3 years. Debit orders is playing an important role in our business. Happy to share with you that 35% of our customers have currently actually entered into -- onto the debit order platform. And there's most definitely opportunity to further expand this, Jan. In 2 years' time, we believe that more than half of our customer base will, in fact, be paying their accounts through that avenue. But I must immediately mention that we believe that the reason for our success is not only debit orders. It also lies in the fact that we still have the ability to go and make personal contact with customers. And even if the customer's debit order fail, we still fall back on our in-store collection processes to get hold of that customer and to fully understand what the reason for failure in terms of payment is. So 35% now, Jan, will go up to 50%, and we'll keep you updated as all of this unfolds. See, because of the fact that you now have far less defaulting customers in your store, the people in in-store grassroots level has got more time to go and spend with the remaining 9% of nonperforming customers in that bottom bucket. And because of that personal attention, it will continue to improve the actual condition of the book.

Thanks, Johan. Johan, there are no further questions on the webcast.

Yes. Thank you very much, everybody. Have a good afternoon. Thank you.