Lewis Group Limited ($LEW)

A very good afternoon, and welcome to all our shareholders, colleagues and all other interested parties. Joining me today, Jacques Bestbier, our CFO; and Graeme Lillie from Tier 1 Investor Relations. On our agenda, we'll start off with a review of 2026, followed by our debt analysis. We'll then move on to our financial results, followed by the target and outlook section of the presentation. And at the end of the presentation, Graeme will gladly read all of your questions that you can submit during the course of the presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, it is with pleasure that I report a solid set of results this afternoon. The Lewis Group demonstrated strong sustained growth momentum. This was driven by the disciplined execution of strategy and the unwavering dedication of our staff. Revenue increased by 11.1%, supported by a merchandise sales growth of 7.3%. Gross profit margin settled at a healthy 43.7% and our operating profit margin expanded by 110 basis points to a very encouraging 23.8%. We continue to invest in our debtors book and our investment increased by 15.2%. Our debtors cost showed a nice improvement from 13% a year ago to 14.3%, a very strong earnings performance with earnings per share increasing by 13% and headline earnings per share expanding by 18.3%. Our total dividend increased by 12.1%. And we are proud of the fact that our return on equity strengthened further from 15.4% a year ago to 16.2%. I think it's fair to say that this set of results were achieved in a very challenging and constrained environment. We all know all about the geopolitical tensions and the war. As a matter of fact, when we started this reporting period, it was the Russian-Ukraine war at play. And then unfortunately, 1 month prior to concluding the set of results, we also saw the war in the Middle East that had just started at that point in time. And I think we're all fully aware of the fact that the impact of the situation in the Middle East has not been fully felt through our economies yet. We also had to deal with infrastructure and supply chain constraints. The interest rate environment can also be described as constraint, although we saw some gradual easing and the number of interest rate cuts during this period, it was just simply not enough to stimulate the economy to really get things going. On the exchange rate front, the situation can also be described as a very volatile one. As a matter of fact, the rand-dollar exchange rate ranged between ZAR 19.93 coming down to levels as low as ZAR 15.43 during this period, a 23% swing within a short period of 12 months. So it wasn't easy to navigate through this, but happy to share with you that we at least enjoyed some benefit of the stronger rand during the fourth quarter and we'll get to that when we discuss our GP performance. We also had to deal with very high levels of unemployment that once again continued to impact sales growth. It also had a negative impact on collections during the period. And then finally, it also led to an increase in loss of employment claims. Finally, elevated household debt levels also impacted payments and I'll unpack that a little bit later on in the presentation. But I think it's most visible in our credit application decline rate that increased during this period from 38.5% to 41.8%. If we go back 2 years, our credit application rate was actually sitting at 35%. So we went from 35% to 38.5% to 41.8%, clearly illustrating that the consumer is taking stay. But ladies and gentlemen, despite these headwinds, our resilient business model once again carried us through and the strong growth momentum continued during this reporting period. With strong merchandise sales growth, we also maintained sound collections and the good quality of the debtors book. We managed to expand margins and we accelerated our store expansion program. As a matter of fact, we opened a record number of new stores during the period. We also maintained our proud dividend track record that now spans over 22 years. We improved returns and we closed this period once again in a position where we can say that our balance sheet remained resilient. Merchandise sales, strong performance with an increase of 7.3%. Sales out of our traditional brands increased by 7.5% and now accounts for 89.7% of total sales. And in the case of specialty, an increase of 5.4% for the period. Sales growth predominantly driven by an increase in credit sales, 9.6% for the period, with cash sales, an underwhelming increase of 2.5%, once again, reflecting the weak economy in which we traded. Other revenue increased by 15.7%, once again benefiting from strong credit sales and this is now strong credit sales over a period of at least the past 4 years. Gross profit margin, a very encouraging performance, settled at 43.7%, mainly as a result of the successful introduction of new furniture ranges in last year. These lines gained good traction, all margin-enhancing lines with good sell-through coming through in quarter 3 and 4. And we also had the benefit of a bit of a tailwind during quarter 4 with the strengthening of the rand. Store opening target for the year was set at 40 new stores. We handsomely exceeded that with a record number of store openings for the period, 58 stores on a net basis. Important to note that 25 new traditional stores were opened during this period and 36 new Real Beds stores in the specialty segment. We also further right-sized the UFO business and closed 3 underperforming stores. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, as the digital adoption continues to accelerate right throughout South Africa and the rest of the world, we believe that our engagement strategy with customers is well accepted. And this is actually showcased in the fact that we now enjoy more than 4.6 million followers on Facebook. We saw a nice increase for our traditional brands of 18.6% in terms of Facebook followers. And in the case of specialty, a nice traction from the new brands coming through with an increase of almost 31% during the period. This remains a very cost-effective marketing through and one that will continue to serve us well as we move into the future. We then move on to our returns to shareholders, a very strong story when we look at the dividend slide. Over the last 3 years, our dividend payout more than doubled from ZAR 4.13 in 2023 to ZAR 8.97 this year. Over the past 5 financial years, our average dividend yield settled at 10.7% and for this financial year, a very attractive dividend yield of 11.4%. Our return on equity strengthened further during this period from 15.4% to 16.2%. And I can mention that management remains focused on achieving the medium-term return on equity target of 17.5%. We move on to our debtor analysis. I would like to start off by saying that the quality of the debtors book remains sound and we continue to enjoy the benefits of having a healthy debtors book, not only in terms of collection, but also because of the fact that we can really mind all of these good paying customers as sales prospects. I think we all know that the consumer are currently taking strain. Inflation is on the rise and more specifically so in our customer base, the impact of fuel and food inflation. And the Lewis customer is not immune to any of this. It has been a challenging collection period for us. But I can mention that the fact that we've got the ability to still go and look customers in the eye and that we still employ people out of the communities that can talk to customers in the language that they understand and that can actually show empathy for their problems have really served us well during this period. The mere fact that we've got the ability to go and make payment arrangements and to go and follow up on these out of store have continued to serve us well. Although we've seen a slight deterioration in our collection rate and an increase in our arrears, we can confidently say that the general underlying quality of the book remains solid and sound. Collections for this period increased by 13.6%. Our collection rate declined slightly from 78.9% to 78.1%. Arrears increased from 23.4% to 25.4% and debtor costs because of the fact that the composition of our payment buckets remained really, really healthy, increased by only 9.8%, well below the actual growth in the debtors book of 15.2%. Debtor cost as a percentage of the gross book, down on last year's 15% to a position of 14.3%. Satisfactory paid performance settled at 82.6%, that is down from last year's 83.5%, but above the upper end of the target range that we shared with the market when we started this financial year. I must also pause to just highlight that 82.6% is actually our second highest achievement measured at year-end, that's the second highest position ever. One must also focus on the performance of customers that are now classified as nonperforming. We've seen an increase in the nonperforming bucket from 4.1% 12 months ago to 5.2%. 4.1% was, in fact, a record achievement, all-time low. And that 5.2% that we report today, ladies and gentlemen, is our second lowest achievement ever. So a deterioration, but from a very, very strong base. Our impairment provision increased from 37.2% to 37.7%. And I also want to talk about our increase in number of customers. We've seen a very nice increase of 78,000 customers. More importantly, 58,000 additional customers in that satisfactory paying bucket, a great, great source of future sales. So just to highlight and to once again reiterate our second best performance in terms of satisfactory paid performance. If you just look at our achievement in 2024, a record at that time at 81.3%, now 82.6%, still well above those levels. We can then move on to our financial results. Revenue passed the ZAR 10 billion mark for the first time, after a solid increase of 11.1%. We closed the period with revenue of ZAR 10.3 billion. I spoke about merchandise sales and the good support that came through that line. Our operating costs increased by 9.6%, well below the increase in revenue. Insurance service expenses increased by 24.3%, mainly as a result of an increase in our claims ratio that moved from 29.4% to 31.1%. Operating profit, a strong story with an increase of 12.8% and the attributable line increasing by 13.1%. Our 2 trading segments, our traditional trading segment really performed well with an operating margin of 27.7%, well up on last year's 25.5%. I can also mention that all 3 of our traditional trading brands, those being Lewis, [indiscernible], Best Home and Electric performed well during this period. Our specialty division showed a small operating profit before impairments of ZAR 20 million. But unfortunately, after we've taken our predominantly right-of-use asset impairment charges, we closed the period with a loss of ZAR 53 million. Maybe to pause to just discuss the performance of UFO and then to move on and to give you a bit of an update on where we are in terms of our specialty basic brands. So UFO had a very poor start to the last financial year with no sales growth whatsoever coming through. As a matter of fact, we moved backwards during half 1 for UFO. In half 2, we saw some sort of recovery coming through in the sales line, mostly as a result of the introduction of new ranges that went into those stores. And on a like-for-like basis, UFO came very close to breakeven during half 2. As things stands, as footfall UFO basically speaks to new merchandise ranges that will once again be launched to attract a broader proportion of the target market into our stores. But there's also a lot of time that's being spent on getting our marketing efforts on standard. First and foremost, we've strengthened our marketing team at head office and we've appointed a new General Manager of Marketing about 10 months ago. We've also appointed a dedicated Brand Marketing Manager that is just responsible for the specialty segment in this business. And we've appointed a new external marketing agency to actually assist to extend the reach of UFO's marketing efforts during the next 12 months. I mentioned that we closed 3 underperforming UFO stores and I really believe that the cost base in this business has now been rightsized. Hopefully, with a better merchandise offering that we take to a broader audience, this business will get going in the next 12 months. So just to summarize, UFO, unfortunately, for this reporting period, once again posted a small loss. Basics and our specialty brands, we did well in terms of achieving our targets in terms of giving the Real Beds brand at scale. You saw from the numbers that we've opened 36 stores during this period. I'm also satisfied that the merchandise range for this business is ready for market. And when we launch our newness in 2 months' time, I really believe that, that will also assist in terms of giving us sales traction. On a like-for-like basis, the basic business increased sales by 6% during the year. And I think in terms of our rollout plan, we are right on schedule. And in terms of our budget, we still believe that we will actually turn the basic portion of our business into a profitable business within the next 2, 3 years. Our balance sheet remains resilient and well capitalized. I would just like to point out that our stockholding levels, our inventory basically closed the year in line with last year's achievements. This is after we've added 58 new stores to our footprint. Stock levels well managed. And I can also share that the actual quality of our stock can only be described as good. The levels of obsolescence in our business is really very well under control. Then we need to talk about borrowings as well. Borrowings increased by ZAR 336 million. We also carried a little bit less cash in the business at closing. So on a net basis, borrowings increased by ZAR 350 million. Our borrowings ratio increased from 17.3% to 22.4%. This is well below the 25% ceiling that we communicated with the market. Our interest cover ratio improved from an already very healthy 9.4x last year to 9.8x. So what did we do with the money? What did we go and spend it on? We actually didn't spend it. We went and we invested it. So the size of our debtors book during this period increased by ZAR 1.2 billion, whereas our net increase in borrowings only speaks to ZAR 350 million. A different simplistic way to look at this is to say that we only had to fund 29% of the actual growth in the debtors book through borrowings. Over the last 5 years, just to give you debt view, we invested ZAR 3.7 billion in receivables during this period and our net increase in borrowings speaks to ZAR 1.7 billion, once again, an excellent investment that has been made in a healthy debtors book that actually offers very, very healthy yields. We've touched on most of the key ratios. Earnings per share is 13% up, headline earnings per share 18.3% up, in our achievement in terms of further expanding ROE from 15.4% to 16.2% and our borrowings ratio that moved from 17.3% to 22.2%. Total dividend up 12.1%. Ladies and gentlemen, we've met or exceeded all of our targets with the exception of operating costs, which I will unpack as we go through. But on a look-through basis, a very balanced and very solid set of results. Gross profit margin actually exceeded the upper end of the target range. Then on to operating costs. Expense management remained a top priority during this phase of rapid expansion. I'm happy to share with you that operating cost as a percentage of revenue actually reduced during this period. It came down from 34.5% last year to 34%. And I think that, that underlines that the cost-conscious culture of the company once again came through with a solid cost containment effort. Satisfactory paid above the upper end of the target range, debtor cost settled right in the middle of our target range. Operating margin, very encouraging expansion, far exceeding the upper end of our target range at 23.8%. Borrowings at 22.4%, well below the ceiling of 25%. But you will note that we've adjusted our targets for borrowings and for gearing for the 2027 year and the new ceiling is now being set at the borrowings ratio of 30%. The reason for this is that we are trading in very uncertain times. It is not unlikely that one can see a reduction in collections as we move forward. It's also possible that gas sales can reduce far below levels that we have seen during this period. And we might also see an increased appetite for credit from good paying customers, in which case we want to be in a position to actually extend credit to those customers. For those reasons, we have adjusted the ceiling to 30% and we can give you the assurance that we are also in the process of revisiting our credit facilities and those will obviously be aligned to ensure that we continue to manage the business in a conservative manner with ample headroom available. Just finally, I must reiterate that the upper end of this target range, that 30% borrowings level is still below management and the Board's appetite in terms of borrowing levels. Yes. I guess the most tricky slide today is, in fact, the outlook slide and most probably also the topic that everybody is most interested in. The operating environment and all of these external factors won't come as a surprise that we all know that the general levels of uncertainty is much higher than 12 months ago. We thought that uncertainty with regards to the GNU and AGOA is real problems, but I think we've learned differently with the situation in the Middle East, ladies and gentlemen. And who knows when and how all of this is going to pan out. In the meantime, it's fueling inflation. We know that there's high volatility in the energy market at this point in time. The agricultural sector, which is really the backbone of a lot of towns in rural South Africa is under severe pressure. As we moved into the Middle East situation, farmers were already dealing with foot and mouth disease. Following this, the actual price of diesel has increased by 80%, 8-0 percent since February this year. And the cost of fertilizer, which is another very big input component in the agricultural sector has actually increased by 40% since February. So there's severe margin compression coming for farmers in South Africa. And obviously, all of this will wash through in the food inflation line if this war in the Middle East continues for much longer. Also very high levels of unemployment. And against this background, ladies and gentlemen, your question must be what does this actually hold for Lewis because these are -- this is really -- paints a really dark picture, all of these external factors. So for us at Lewis, it's part of our DNA to actually focus internally rather than externally. Although we fully understand all of these factors and although we are dealing with these on a daily basis, we believe that our time and efforts are better spent in terms of focusing on the execution of our strategy and in terms of pulling the right operational levers at the appropriate time to continue that -- to basically continue and to ensure that this ship keeps sailing. Because of these reasons, we believe that we are well positioned to continue to grow market share in a very tough climate. We entered this financial year with a very clear and well-developed strategy, a good quality debtors book with the highest number of re-servable customers that we've ever had in the history. We enter this phase with a very resilient balance sheet and a very experienced and committed management team. We believe that credit sales will be a big driver of future growth. And as a group, we are very well positioned to go out and find new credit customers to grant credit to in a responsible manner and more importantly, to then actually utilize our very unique way of following up, collecting to go and make contact with customers when it's necessary. We will also continue to focus on the affordability of merchandise and to make sure that our shops are continuously fully stocked. As you can imagine, suppliers locally and internationally are also facing a lot of challenges. The shipping market as things stand today is also not all that stable. And to merely say that one will keep your stores fully stocked is easy, but to do, it's a different story. As things stand today, happy to share with you that our stores are fully stocked. Our new range have already been selected. The imported component of that is on the water as we speak and we will be ready to launch new exclusive range into our stores over the next couple of months. I've spoken about the debtors book and how important it is to maintain the quality of this book. And I can assure you that there's heightened focus. We've also strengthened our head office collection team to actually make sure that we increase visibility and that there's additional energy and effort to maintain the quality. Despite uncertainty and challenges, we will continue to invest for the future and we will open no less than 40 new stores during this period. 25 of those will be traditional outlets and 15 will be opened under the Real Beds banner. As always, the foundation is our people. People are really at the center of what we do at Lewis. We will continue to invest in upskilling and training our people. As a matter of fact, over the last 12 months, we've actually seen the highest number of training interventions in our group ever. I believe that our people are ready for the challenges that should be faced. I want to leave you with this thought. At Lewis, we do not train our people to defend market share, we train them to grow it. And with that, Graeme, we are now ready to deal with your questions.

Thanks, Johan. We have 2 questions from [ Joe Streitner ]. Says congratulations on the strong performance. Nonperforming accounts as a percentage of the total debtors book rose from 7% to 9.1% this year. What is management's comfort zone for this NPL ratio? At what specific threshold would it trigger a red flag resulting in a tightening of your current 41.8% credit decline rate?

Yes. Thank you very much for a very good question. I think first and foremost, I would like to start off by saying that if we look at the NPL range, it's the second lowest that we have seen since we listed this business. And for that reason, we are very comfortable at these sort of levels. I must also mention that as soon as it becomes uneconomical for us to collect from an account, that account will be written off. And if we look at the actual impairment coverage that we enjoy against those customers in that bucket, you will note that it's touching on an impairment provision of 87%. Obviously, from an operational level, we've got a whole host of reports that's being monitored by our credit team on a daily basis. And none of these movements can actually come as a surprise. Like mentioned, if it's not economical to collect from these accounts, they will actually be terminated. They will be written off at that point in time.

Thanks, Johan. Second question from Joe. In light of the supply disruptions in oil and other critical commodities caused by the tensions in the Middle East, what specific trends are you seeing in international shipping rates? And what is your base case expectation for these costs for the remainder of the '27 financial year?

Yes. So at this point in time, I can mention that the rates that we secured with our shipping partners have remained stable for the Lewis Group. We haven't seen an increase in the base rate. But unfortunately, the fuel surcharges have actually increased quite significantly. And to give that color on a 40-foot container out of China today, depending on which shipping line you utilize, those bunker or bunker charges or fuel surcharges now ranges between $250 and $1,000 per container. To put that into perspective, the market rate out of China today, the base market rate is closer to $2,600. So on top of your [indiscernible] depending who you contract with, you will now pick up an additional $250 to $1,000. How do we see this pan out? We believe if we look at where we are at in the shipping cycle now in terms of what we have booked to come in already and what still needs to come to cover sales up to the end of this calendar year, i.e., December, that we can comfortably in this environment, still run our business within the targeted GP range of 40% to 42%.

Thanks, Johan. The next question from Rudi van Niekerk. How should we think about the insurance service expenses and claims experience? How do you expect it to impact earnings going forward?

Yes. I mentioned our claims ratio. So we have seen an increase from 21% to 31% during this period. Obviously, a big driver in all of this is loss of employment claims. It's very difficult to actually see how all of this is going to finally pan out other than to say that we haven't seen a significant change in trends recently during the 2 trading months of April and May.

Then a question from Lauren [indiscernible]. Do you anticipate further increases in the size of the book in the year ahead? Given your increased gearing and increased uncertainty surrounding the consumer, is it prudent to slow down the pace of investment in the book?

Yes. Very good question. Yes, in tougher economic times like this, the appetite for credit normally increases. Yes, you will see a further increase in decline rates just naturally and not because of the fact that we plan to actually tighten our credit granting criteria at this point in time. So I think it's fair to assume that there will be a further increase in the actual size of the book. And for that reason, we've also started to actually adjust our borrowings CD.

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

And then just ladies and gentlemen, to once again say thank you very much, and please be in contact if there's any follow-up questions. Thank you. Have a good day.