Pepkor Holdings Limited (PPH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our interim results announcement in May 2020. It surely is a unique and historic opportunity for us. It's the first time that we use the Pepkor boardroom for an announcement. We don't have an audience, except for 1 or 2 that are sitting here. So welcome to the audience. And it is indeed strange circumstances. Our lives might have been turned upside down during the last few months and things are a bit extraordinary. But I would like to remind you of many people in our communities that are much worse off than the inconveniences that we are having at the moment. I looked at some research done by Ask Afrika yesterday. And some of the research was staggering to say the least. To give you an example, 1 in 3 adults are going to bed hungry in the evenings. 29% of people go an entire day without food. For me, that is almost unimaginable. 20% of people have lost weight during the last few weeks and months and not because they wanted to. And 76% of people are concerned about the livelihood of their families. So if one takes statistics like that into account, then the small inconveniences that we have to make during the current times and the small uncertainties -- or big and small uncertainties that we have to face are actually of minor importance. And that's what makes this business that we work for so great, because if we look at the mission of our business, then it so very aptly supports the current environment that we are living in and in which we as a business have to trade. Now our mission reads as follows: we make a positive difference to the daily lives of our customers and the communities in which we operate by providing convenient access to everyday products and services at affordable prices. So those people that may go and sleep hungry in the evenings, that do not have food on their tables for every meal, those are the people that we also, through our business, want to support by giving the best prices and most affordable offer and services that we can possibly provide. To start off the proceedings today, just a small reference to the agenda that we're going to address. I will just give a brief overview of how we've done in terms of the performance for the 6 months. Then I'll hand over to Riaan Hanekom, who will be talking about the financial results in more detail and then I will finish off the day. But before we get there, and having talked about the environment that we operate in at the moment, we've seen it as obviously very important for us during the COVID crisis and the lockdown period to support the communities that we operate in. As you would've seen in the press, we made salary sacrifices, like many other companies did, at executive level and at Board level. We've donated money to the Solidarity Fund. That was in line, obviously, with the President's request that we support the aid that they give to the communities. But we've also looked at feeding schemes because we believe that people that go hungry and especially children and vulnerable people that go hungry, that they are very important in our lives, and we've made several commitments on that front. We believe that just through the one donation that we gave, we fed more than 100,000 people through parcels or food parcels that they received. We used the CoCare foundation -- or the CoCare project, which is a FLASH project through which we download funds to individuals and which they then can use to buy food at spaza shops and in the local communities. We also supported the Do More Foundation -- the [ Do For More Foundation ], very well organized throughout the country. And they distribute and have always been or, for the long time, been distributing food to the most vulnerable people in our country and also specializing on making sure that our hungry children, that they get food. We've donated to them. But on top of that, we've also enabled our stores so that customers who want to -- that who also want to make a difference, who also want to donate, that they can donate ZAR 5 and ZAR 2 to -- at those stores and those funds will then go to the Do More Foundation to provide more meals to more people in our communities. We've also supported hospitals. We've provided the Tygerberg Hospital with some products and -- to help people that go into labor in the hospitals, to help the parents of babies who can't stay or who can't go home and then return to the hospital, who have to stay there overnight. So we've helped them and supported them so that they can spend that -- those first few days with their children in the hospital. And then as we've also reported, we are -- have donated face masks, Class Is to the government, the local government. We've -- we're in the process of starting the production of surgical gowns as protective equipment, and we'll be donating a huge portion of that also to the local authorities. So as you can see, we take our responsibility in communities very seriously. And we've donated on a wide basis and a wide range of different services, but especially aimed at the vulnerable and hungry children. If we look at today, I think most important, obviously, is to look at a little bit of the past. Now we don't dwell too much normally on the trading conditions. What we do know is that this period -- and we often forget, dealing with all the current circumstances, we often forget that we were dealing in a difficult environment even before this began. And that we were in a recession already when the COVID disruptions and lockdown began. So the last 2 quarters of last year were recessionary. We were in a constrained economy. Unemployment was already high. Unemployment, the last measurement that we have, unemployment was at 29%. And that was up from about 25%, 26%, 1 or 2 years ago. So the country wasn't going in the right direction. And for the 6 months that we look at now, it was really a constrained environment. If you take March. Obviously, March was more impacted than the other part of the 6 months, mainly because of the lockdown. So we missed the last week of March, and we'll describe later at what we thought we lost in terms of our revenue and our profits because of that. And that also impacted on these figures. So nevertheless, besides those -- or in spite of those constraints, I believe we have a very commendable performance that we put together for the period concerned. On the retail side, there were some areas that I would -- that I was particularly pleased with. Firstly, our gross margin, we managed to keep. And during the current circumstances, you can imagine that, that was quite some feat. So despite the fact that we had these disruptions, despite the fact that there were difficult trading conditions, we still managed to keep that gross margin and actually increased it by 20 basis points. Also important during these current circumstances is how we manage our costs, and we'll talk about that again a little bit later, but only a 2% growth in operating expenses for the period, which I think is exceptional, and I think there's very, very few other businesses that would have been able to achieve that. And then again, and we often -- we don't often enough speak about it, but the technological platforms that we have in the business, the sophistication and the quality of the systems and processes that we run, enable us continuously to improve our business and to improve inefficiencies in our business. And again, if we look at how it benefited financial services during the last 6 months and more, where in PEP, Ackermans and in FLASH, we had growth in financial services of more than 20%. And that's only because we have the platforms and the systems, that can enable us to do that. Eventually -- I mean the numbers that we ended up -- I mean we -- in my belief, we showed very good revenue growth for the period, despite that factors that I've already mentioned to you. So we're quite happy about that, and I think in the market -- and in the market circumstances, it is, again, as I said, quite commendable. And then in terms of market share, we keep on gaining market share. As we have done over the last many years, every month, we seem to creep up a little bit. And over the last year, we've increased our market share by 90 basis points, which, I think, again, has been a very good performance. So overall, quite happy with the performance. If you look at the numbers specifically, and you can see it on your screen now, you can see revenue up by 6.5%, up to ZAR 37.6 billion. Operating profit by -- up by 0.3%, and good to see that at least positive. And then if we look at the HEPS number, you can see a reduction there of 3.8%. This is obviously before IFRS 16 is included. Now these numbers and the reason why the operating profit and decrease -- and why there's a decrease in the HEPS compared to where our revenue growth is, mostly caused by debtors costs and finance costs, and Riaan will take you through the specific reasoning or the specific numbers there. Some of our businesses have been more better performing than others, and the profitability in PEP Africa, Speciality and the building company decreased, unfortunately. And then obviously, we lost some money during March due to the national lockdown. And obviously, we lost some trade there, as I mentioned earlier. So that's a very brief summary of our results. Riaan Hanekom, our CFO, will now take you through the financial accounts and do it on a more detailed basis. So without further ado, Riaan.

Thanks, Leon. Morning, all. As Leon said, if we move then on to the more detailed financial results for the period under review, needless to say, we start off the statutory results. As you can see and as you -- I'm sure you're aware, the statutory results have been severely impacted by the implementation of IFRS 16. That fact that we've used the modified retrospective approach has resulted that these results aren't really comparable to previous years' results. From the top line, Leon mentioned, the 6.5% revenue growth. That obviously does not get impacted by IFRS 16, taking us up to ZAR 37.6 billion. On the EBIT or operating profit level, that's been increased by 17.2% to ZAR 4 billion, and that's directly as the result that you reverse your lease expense and then now have to bring in a depreciation charge, as per IFRS 16. And then on the HEPS line, because of the additional finance cost charge that gets charged to the finance line being greater than the impact of the benefit of the reversal of the lease expense, has resulted in a decrease of 13.6% to ZAR 0.44 on the HEPS line. Just to expand and explain a bit more and to confirm what I've just said. So we adopted IFRS 16 from the 1st of October. As I mentioned, we're using the modified retrospective approach, meaning that we don't restate any of our comparables, it still stays the same based on IAS 17. Maybe just some of the key stats, to give you an indication of this project. It's basically been an 18-month project for us to go through this process of going to all our leases and doing the conversion. We've got 5,500 leases. The majority of our leases, we signed a 3- to a 5-year term. We usually do have an option in the majority of them to extend it to 6 to 10 years. And I think what's important to take note of is that 75% of these leases are really in the first part of the term. Some of the other big impacts was the introduction of the new DC, specifically the Hammarsdale DC of being over a longer-term period, but also being right at the start of each leased term. So if you take all of that into account, plus the fact that over the last 2 or 3 years, we've had a very aggressive store opening program, you'll see the result of that is that the finance charge impact is much greater than the reversal of the lease. Hence the negative impact on your HEPS line. Just to explain that in a bit more detail from a number perspective. So we showed you here the profit as it was previously -- or as it would've been under IFRS 17, before tax, the ZAR 2.6 billion. If you then reverse the lease charge and you then bring in the new depreciation charge, taking the other -- and most of the other relates to ForEx differences because of the operations we've got in Africa and reversing -- we're translating those leases into rand. You get an impact on the EBIT line of ZAR 576 million positive, which was the reason for that growth of 17% on the EBIT line, operating profit line. Finance charge, ZAR 846 million, obviously, a negative impact, meaning that your HEPS has had a decrease compared to last year's by ZAR 0.05 on that line. Just also take note of, as we gave a high level indication at the end of last year, but there's an additional increase to our debt levels. The lease liability that's now accounted for on your -- capitalized on the balance sheet has had an overall impact of ZAR 17.1 billion increase on your debt levels or lease liability. So that just gives you an overview of the impact of IFRS 16. The rest of the presentation, I'm going to talk on comparable numbers or IAS 17 reporting to make it much more comparable. And you can explain it a lot better and understand it a lot better. So again, just focusing on the revenue line, as explained, 6.5%. If you break that down a little bit, we still had the impact of the growth of the new books that assisted us in that line. If you eliminate that and also the acquisition of Abacus, the real retail sales was 4.7%. As Leon mentioned, the operating profit growth is lower than the revenue growth and that's been impacted by a couple of factors. The one still -- as we said in the introduction in the building of the books, which we have now completed. It's now at the level that we anticipated it to be and which we communicated previously. But it doesn't mean that there's an additional -- was an additional charge in the 6 months period, ZAR 134 million, because of IFRS 9, because of the building of these books. And as we explained last year, it does impact you significantly when you build a book, the IFRS 9 charge. Now that' we've reached the optimal level, we obviously see that it will now normalize. That was one of the main reasons, plus the additional debtors cost that we've seen in the last couple of months, that impacted -- that the growth on operating profit is at 0.3%. Other factor really to take into account, and it's the last point you'll see there, is the fact that we were closed for a couple of days at the end of March due to the lockdown implementation. That has resulted in ZAR 150 million loss in operating profit. So you'll understand that our expense base was still the same for March because we paid the full expense. But the fact that we lost that margin of roughly ZAR 150 million that, that number dropped to 3.3% if you exclude that or add it back. That operating profit growth number would have been 4.7%. Headline or HEPS, declining by 3.8%, as mentioned, mostly due to the finance charge. As we explained, the 6.1%, impacted by the growth of the books, where we had to invest another ZAR 1.2 billion during this period on the 2 new books being the Capfin book and the JD Connect book. On the -- just giving you an indication of the different operating companies. Obviously, for our PEP and Ackermans and FLASH, we've again seen very good results, driving that top line and the profit number. Unfortunately, PEP Africa, Speciality and the building company did not have a favorite impact -- or favorable impact on both their revenue and operating profit line. Just last one to take notice. As I've always reported in the past, because of the significant goodwill number that we've got on the balance sheet, it doesn't always make sense to look at your return on equity number. We prefer to look at the return on net assets. The positive news is, we've seen an improvement on return on net assets compared to the similar period last year. There, taking into account the books that we've put on the balance sheet, but more impacted by the improvement in our working capital ratio as resulted in that improvement. If we then breakdown the revenue a bit more into the different segments, you'll see, really, again, the clothing and home -- or clothing and general merchandise segment improving or growing by 5.4%, as I mentioned earlier, really driven by good performance in PEP and Ackermans. Unfortunately, not so good performance in Speciality and in Africa, offsetting that good performance by PEP and Ackermans. On the furniture segment, a positive increase, helped really by the introduction of the book, as I said, but also by Abacus now being part of this segment for this period. On the negative side, the building company -- or the building materials segment, negative increase, mainly driven by the weak economic environment and then also the lockdown already playing an impact on that during the month of March. Positive news is still seeing strong growth in FLASH, in the FinTech segment. And also as I said, with the introduction of the books -- or the Capfin book in that segment has resulted in a growth of 36.4%, giving it an overall 6.5%. As I mentioned earlier, we anticipate the last couple of days that we were closed had an impact of ZAR 467 million on revenue. If you add that to the 6.5%, you get to an overall top line growth that we would have achieved of 7.8% for the period. Again, just to take note of clothing and general merchandise, still making up 65% of our total revenue. So still, by far, the biggest segment overall. Then as Leon mentioned, we were really very pleased by the gross profit margin being maintained -- actually, increasing slightly. That was assisted by the financial services. Again, the books and Abacus being introduced. However, even if you take that out, our margin was still exactly the same as last year. So taking the current trading conditions into account, the fact is, as Leon mentioned, that we gained [ mostly ] performance and we're very pleased with being able to maintain that. So specifically driven by less markdowns, again, in PEP and Ackermans because of their good performance that we've seen during this period. Other income, I think as I communicated at the end of last year, we did anticipate a reduction in this number, mainly due to the fact in the previous year the Capfin book was still managed by Century Capital, sitting outside of the group. So we received a distribution fee for that of ZAR 85 million in the comparative period. That's obviously excluded, [ and certainly ] the majority reason for the drop by 7.9% on other income. We did, however make up for that in very strong growth on the commission line, driven specifically by significant increase by bill payments, money transfers and specifically DStv payments, showing very nice growth and commissions now making up the majority of our other income. As Leon mentioned, we're still very happy that we were able to manage our expenses very effectively and only showed a 2% increase on the expense line. Our cost of doing business, if you exclude the impact of financial services -- so we've taken financial services out of this and only show the retail portion, was really maintained at 25% compared to last year, with the top line now growing at a significant rate. This has really been a significant achievement for us, driven really by the fact that we were able to manage our property cost. We've now had 2 or 3 years of negative rental increases, which is starting to play out, which saw that growth overall of 0.1%, also due to the fact that we have closed quite a few stores, and still reducing space in some of our existing stores overall, has assisted in that number. Also to take note of, the fact that African countries depreciated significantly in this period has also assisted that the African country expense line has actually decreased significantly compared to last year, existing in that low expense growth. Majority of expenses still sitting in the salary line as normal in the retail environment. It was very important for us to maintain or manage that line effectively. On the books, as I mentioned earlier, we have both the 2 books have now reached the level that we anticipated, that was communicated previously, specifically the Connect and the Capfin book. I think it is important just to take note of, going forward, we don't anticipate that the Capfin book will grow further. We actually see that their balance will reduce -- it has already reduced because of the collections we've seen in end of March and end of April. A number of active accounts on those 2 increasing on the Connect, 187,000; at the Capfin to 333,000, which we do anticipate will still increase slightly on the Capfin side, but because we're going back to shorter-term products, we don't anticipate that the overall balance, as I mentioned, will increase. It will actually be reducing in the next couple of months. We will end up at a much lower balance than the ZAR 2.6 billion at year end. However, as we've seen in the last quarter, with bad debts increasing, and us also increasing our credit granting criteria and taking certain risk bands, we have seen an increase -- or seen it necessary to increase our provision levels in all 3 books, more so on the Capfin book because of its nature. But also on the Tenacity and on the Connect book. I think it is important to take note that 7% of the sales in the clothing and general merchandise still comes from credit, predominantly in Ackermans, which is sitting at 18% of the sales coming through credit. On the JD side, we've actually had a reduction in credit sales, down to 17%, because of the stricter credit granting criteria that we've implemented. On the comparable profit, as I mentioned earlier, there's really 2 impacts this period. The one is the closure over the last couple of days, which has resulted in a profit impact of ZAR 150 million. The IFRS charge that we've had now for this period of ZAR 134 million. Last year, we only started with the Capfin book, so there wasn't really an impact on that. And we had the JD book in place for 6 months, so there was only a ZAR 50 million impact. If you eliminate that from last year, the ZAR 50 million and the ZAR 134 million from this period, you get to more comparable operating profit growth of 7% compared to the 0.3% that we have reported for the period. Breaking that down per segment. Again, positive growth from clothing and general merchandise and by JD, more impacted by the Abacus and the book, as previously communicated. However, the difficult trading environment, the economic impact, has had a negative impact on building materials. FinTech FLASH still showing good growth, but because of those provisions on the books, as I mentioned, unfortunately, Capfin not showing a positive growth for that period on an EBIT line. Overall, 92% of our profits still come from the clothing and general merchandise segment. On the finance cost line, because of that additional ZAR 1.2 billion that we had to investment in the book, this has increased by 6.1% compared to the comparative period last year, which we're very pleased with. I think it is important to take note of here, because of the 275 basis point drops we've seen in interest rates over the last 2 or 3 months, we do anticipate that this number overall, on an annual basis, will be reduced by roughly ZAR 450 million in the next financial period. Effective tax rate, seen a slight increase compared to last year, mostly driven also by the underperformance in the building company, where we had some companies there that still got unrecognized tax losses. And also in Africa, Angola specifically, has resulted in an additional charge of 2% on that line. Withholding taxes on dividends, because of repatriation and dividend declaration by PEP and Ackermans in Botswana, is also higher than it was last year, resulting in a 1.9% charge. And then as we reported last year, still the preference shares being unproductive interest resulted also in a charge of 2% to the tax line, giving you that overall 35.7% compared to last year's 34%. Cash generation, this is, as I've previously communicated, always a very difficult period, end of March compared to end of September, because end of September, you're still building up stock for Christmas trade, where this period we already built up all the stock for Easter at the end of March. From a working capital impact, still a ZAR 2 billion impact for the period, which is in line with our expectations, significantly better compared to the previous year. And then the change that were contributed to the 3 books, and that includes Tenacity, was ZAR 1.6 billion. So taking into account, we still generated ZAR 1.8 billion. If you exclude the 2 new books, we generated ZAR 2.9 billion in cash for the period, which translate into a 72% cash conversion rate, which, compared to the 40% for the last year, is a significant improvement and is very much in line with our expectations. On the net debt level, it's ZAR 14.1 billion. At the end, it was sitting at ZAR 13.5 billion. So again, with the books of ZAR 1.2 billion, we have seen a slight increase in the debt level. Again, very much in line with expectations. Net debt-to-EBITDA at 1.7, similar to was at year-end and still well within our covenant levels from a debt repayment profile through the ZAR 500 million in September this year, that needs to be repaid, which we already entered into discussions with the banks on a refinancing around that and also the ZAR 5 million payable in May 2021. Just some activity that happened during this period I think as we communicated previously, we've been busy with developing a bond program, DMTN program. That was launched during -- very successfully during March, ZAR 10 billion. We launched -- we issued ZAR 1 billion at very competitive, favorable rates. That was always part of our strategy to utilize and diversify our funding options and also improve the level of cost of funding or reduce the level of costs. So that's really assisted in that. It was also for us, again, after the issue with bonds, Moody's also confirmed our rating. And it stayed at the same rating that's previously done. I think the only change was the outlook change from stable to negative. But overall, very positive for us. This program, obviously, in the current environment is now first on hold and we'll evaluate again going forward when we'll do again the next issue around that. And then the last, impact around COVID-19. So obviously, it's going to have quite a significant impact in the second 6 months. It hasn't had a significant impact, really, on our first 6 months results, except for the last couple of days. So a couple of areas we are really focusing on, we're reducing impact on the results for the next 6 months. The first one is around the provisions for the books, the 3 different books. As I mentioned, we did obviously slow down credit granting and actually reduced it from the 3 different books. We're really pleased to say that from a collections' perspective, specifically on the Capfin side, it's exceeded our expectations in March and April. We continue to see that great trend. Similar to Tenacity, once we open stores again, we're also very happy that it's in line with our expectations. But we still do see that there's going to be additional revisions required. Impairment indications, as you're all aware, we've got a significant amount of goodwill intangible sitting on the balance sheet, so we are continuously evaluating that number. And as trading conditions change at -- going forward, we will evaluate again. But it's also significantly impacted by our WACC calculation, with the change in government bonds over the last couple of months that does mean that your WACC rate jumped up quite -- up and down quite a bit. So we are still monitoring that closely, and we'll evaluate it closely to year end again. Debt covenant waiver, with the lockdown happening, several discussions with the bank were really pre lockdown around our covenant levels, current -- and we ask for additional facilities, which we did get. I'm very happy to report, as we stand here today, we don't need any of those additional facilities. We backed -- our cash levels are back to the same levels it was pre lockdown. However, we have entered into discussion with the banks around the waiver on the covenant for September. And then also an amendment, focusing specifically on March 2021. As we've announced in our results, no dividend declared for this periods, as we've done in previous years. However, we also don't anticipate any dividend payable at the end of the financial period. In capital structure, we've always been very vocal around our desire to reduce our net debt-to-EBITDA to 1x. Hence the scrip dividend that we declared last year, the diversification by using the bond program to look at other forms of debt. We are currently considering various options going forward or we can still reduce our debt. But I mean the current indication is that we won't get to that 1x net debt-to-EBITDA in the 3-year period, as we previously communicated. And then the last point, as you can be sure and you are aware, we've done several scenarios -- scenario planning. I think my finance team is now very good when it comes to scenario planning, probably doing 7 or 8 different scenarios over the last 2 months. And I think the only thing we're assured of at the moment is there's a lot of uncertainty. Those numbers change on a weekly basis, so very difficult to guide, but we obviously monitor them and we continue to do forecast and review our outlook for the next 6 months. That's overall, just a high level impact of COVID-19 and how we see it playing out. I'll now hand back to Leon to take you through the rest of the presentation.

Thank you, Riaan. I'll take you through the segmental performance. We normally give you, firstly, obviously, we look at the clothing and general merchandise division, which is the biggest of the divisions in the business. We always give you 1 slide, and this is especially for the analysts on PEP and Ackermans. As you can see there, very good sales growth in those businesses. If you take the like-for-like of 3.6% and you compare that with the rest of the market, then I think that was a very good performance. Retail space is still growing, and I'll expand a little bit on that when we get to the individual businesses. The -- I get a lot of questions on the inflation rate, and that's the retail selling price inflation. The 9.8% does seem high. The reason for that is purely, it's one reason only, and that is the costing rate that changed because of the rand-dollar exchange rate, which means that there's hardly any inflation in the product itself. So all of that is caused by rand-dollar, and it works from 1 season to the next, which is basically a year apart. So that will fluctuate from time to time, but I'll give you some feedback a little bit later on, on how is that potentially or not potentially impacted on our retail selling prices in the stores. If we look at PEP as a business, PEP is still obviously a huge contributor to the overall group. Very important in this business is how -- and this refers to the inflation statistic that I mentioned earlier on, is how price competitive has PEP been able to stay over the last 6 months. You see the number there, they are still 97% competitive. That means that on 97% of all the products that you get in PEP, they will be cheaper or at least the same as anyone else in the market. That is still, in any or staggering statistic, if you look at retail all across the world. But PEP has managed this consistently for a long time. The number hasn't changed. So despite the fact that there was a higher inflation or retail selling price inflation than usual, the number has stayed the same. If you look at PEP and you compare it to a basket of opposition companies in the same or in clothing and apparel and general merchandise, PEP is 26% cheaper than the other group or the opposition group, if I can call it that. That number has also stayed very constant over the last few years, and again just points to how effectively the team at PEP manages their prices and their buying function. Number of stores increased by 44 stores, so we were on track in terms of the guidance that we gave you at the year end result last year. So store is still increasing. Still a very robust operating model and very successful in terms of their expansion plan. Some areas of growth in the business that performed particularly well. The PEP Home business grew by 15% in today's -- or in this environment, that's a very good performance. FMCG has become -- there's been expansion of range, there's been more private-label additions, so we had a 20% increase in PEP, in FMCG. And then as I mentioned earlier, when it comes to financial services, 21% -- or PEP money, as we call it, a 21% growth there, which is exceptional under any circumstances. Part of that is the PAXI. PAXI means parcel in a taxi. I've spoken about that before, I think you'll remember the name. And that's basically our parcel distribution service that we provide to all our stores. So you can go to any PEP, drop a parcel there, and then -- and then that parcel can be picked up at any other store. The number of transactions that we've done in PAXI has been 730,000 basically in the first 6 months of its operation, which has been an extraordinary amount of something that's really new. What that points to is the fact that -- is how we can leverage our footprint when you have one that is as big and as vastly geographic -- over the vast geographical expansion area, then it shows how you can leverage all of that, and PAXI is just another example of that. If we look at Ackermans, Ackermans has been one of the top performers, if not the top performer in retail of all apparel companies in South Africa over the last, I would say 7, 8 years. Still performing well. In this business, we -- which is aimed at the value market and really playing a big role in the children's and babies' areas, the business has been voted again this year as the favorite children's or kids' store in South Africa by the consumers. And they've strived to provide the best for mothers with children in their lives. Again, a very good performance by them. Credit sales increased slightly from 17.5% to 18%. They have added another 33 stores to their portfolio. So good growth there in the store numbers and a lot of potential still left for Ackermans to grow their store numbers in the future. 19% lay-bys. I think the lay-bys, that have increased, that's an increase from 18%. And it just shows you that the customer -- our customers are becoming more and more under pressure, but they've been able to increase that number. A 15% growth in babies clothing, that's the sort of sweet spot of the Ackermans brand, and they've done exceptionally well in growing their babies business again, on top of a very high base. So they've done exceptionally well there. And then as I've mentioned before, they've opened -- they've started opening a new business model called Ackermans Woman, which is obviously aimed at the women and at the adult market. And that's been doing quite well, and they're up to 20 stores now and performing on budget and those stores proving to be quite profitable. So we're quite pleased with the progress there, and we'll see how we'll roll that out over the next year or so. As far as PEP Africa is concerned, Africa going through quite a volatile time, as always, I would say. A lot of the African countries that we trade in -- or most of the African countries, but specifically more to where we trade, a lot of them are one-commodity economies. If you take Angola and Nigeria as an example, very reliant on oil and the oil price. And obviously, when the oil price drops as much as it has during the last periods, then you pick up the tab in terms of sales dropping, et cetera, because the economies in those countries really suffer. The same can be said for a country like Zambia, where if the copper price is not good, it affects the whole country and so you can go on. So these types of economies are not conducive to great sales, and we can see that in the numbers. You can see minus numbers there. On the sales growth, you can see minus 5.5%. Like-for-like sales growth, minus 8.1%. So those are not ideal. We have been fortunate, though, that because of the exchange rate, and that's the rand weakening, at least you get a benefit for rand weakening. We got the benefit in Africa. And the -- and we were -- we managed to be profitable for the 6-month period, which I think is quite exceptional considering the sales and the circumstances. Zimbabwe is still closed or we're nearing the exit or nearing the completion of the exit there. Africa, in a phase of consolidation at the moment. I don't see us expanding to a great extent. And certainly, from a CapEx point of view, largely consolidating in Africa. And I always say that in Africa, you've got a time that you can speed up and then there are times to slow down. I believe that currently, we're in an environment where it's better to be prudent and a bit more conservative, slow down and consolidate the businesses there. But the fortunate thing is we're still running it profitably. The Speciality business haven't performed as well as we would have liked. I think this is more in line with other similar type businesses in South Africa. In other words, businesses that are not necessarily in the discount and value markets, where the constraint of the economy -- constraints of the economy have been more severe than in a PEP and an Ackermans, for instance. This is where there's more discretionary spend, and it's not based on essential goods like we have in babies, kids and some of the replenishments products that we stock in PEP and Ackermans. So the performance, slightly worse -- or worse. Minus in sales growth. Like-for-like sales growth was a disappointing 2.9%, again, I think, dictated by the market -- the overall market. This division was much more influenced by the fact that we had to close for lockdown in March, much more influenced than, again, the PEP and Ackermans brands. And that reflects in the -- in both the profitability and the sales numbers. It's still a big business, 943 stores. I just want to remind you what our intention is to achieve with the Speciality business. We want to -- we feel that there's a lot of market share that we can gain in the adult wear market. This is all based on -- or mostly based on the adult wear sector of the market. We've made good progress there. The 6-month period wasn't our best for the circumstances or for the reasons that I've mentioned, but we're very positive that we can make inroads into this market and keep on gaining market share. Despite the performance that we've had, they've basically maintained. If I look overall at the Speciality division, they've maintained market share, which means that the whole market struggled. John Craig didn't have a good 6 months, and we've got to look and adapt our customer value proposition there. Tekkie Town, basically, in terms of their growth, ended up level to last year or just below last year, which we hoped would have been better. But I mean it's high-priced items and very discretionary for our customers. In terms of Dunns, we're still seeing positive growth there, and we are quite optimistic and excited about the early signs of its recovery. If it wasn't for COVID, we probably thought -- we probably would have gotten to making a profit there for the 6-month period. In terms of Refinery, it's still a young brand, but growing quite well, and we're happy with the progress that we're making there. Our challenge with -- or our next sort of objective with Refinery is to scale the business into a bigger one and better profitability, of course. If we look at the furniture business, furniture appliances and electronics or the JD Group as a whole. You'll see there, revenue growth by 1.7%. The sales, which basically a retail sales decline of 0.1%. The revenue growth is because of the books that we were still building during the period. Sales declined. And then you can see like-for-like sales decline of 2.7%, which, again, is very similar to the rest of the market in this specific sector. Online has been very positive. We've seen very positive growth. Now the online in this business is mostly from Incredible Connection and Hi-Fi Corp. And you can see, during the period, we had a 6.3% of our sales in those 2 businesses were done online, which I think is very positive in the South African environment and also very positive, if you look at the current environment where people prefer -- or a lot of people prefer to buy online. The credit mix has come down, and that obviously has played a role, but we -- with the recessionary environment that we were in, we basically managed that. We were conservative in terms of granting credit. And the credit mix came down from a percentage of about 28% down to 25%. Although we -- the conservatism might cost us a little bit of sales, we prefer that to risking ourselves too much in granting credit in this business. Number of stores, you can see 921. We added a few stores, but you'll see that the overall store numbers or store space had come down by 1.8%. And the reason for that is just some of the store -- some parts of the footprint that we have are just simply too big, not profitable space, not efficient space. And we've been reducing space in a lot of the brands. Incredible Connection, Hi-Fi Corp are 2 of those. But generally, in this division, we've been decreasing the size of our stores to make them more efficient, productive and profitable. JD Group's profitability for the period was good and still quite happy with the progress that we've made in this business over the years. Obviously, the JD Group was very much influenced by the lockdown that happened in March. And even in the run-up to the lockdown period, their sales were influenced, and that's partly due -- partly the reason why those sales numbers don't look so good. But very positive about the turnaround. They have some challenges going into the sort of new environment that we'll have after COVID because of the credit that they provide, and that might put a bit of a break on their current momentum. But generally, the business, as a whole, in a very positive space. And a good platform has been built for the future when the economy improves. The building materials business. There, you can see 5.1% negative on sales, which is not great. But of all the businesses that I've spoken about so far, this one was most affected by the initial COVID lockdown and the run-up to the COVID period starting in -- at the end of March. As you can imagine -- as you know, our business here is primarily to provide contractors with building materials. And obviously, with the contractors knowing that we were going into a lockdown period, nobody bought building materials anymore. So that seriously influenced our sales there. What we have managed to do, however, and that's an area where we battled the last 2 or 3x that we reported a year is we've been able to manage our margins much better. We've gone over to a much more centralized procurement system and management process. And that has helped us to maintain our margins to last year, which is a very positive sign. So if we hadn't lost as much sales as we did in March, I think we would have had a better performance here. The business is still profitable. We are very happy with the strategic objectives that we've set ourselves, the strategic direction that the business is taking. And I think we are in the process of -- we are laying -- have laid a very good platform again for this business to grow. But that will only happen once the economy recovers. And it will only happen once the construction sector recovers because those contractors that work in the construction interest -- industry is obviously our main customers here. But very positive movements in terms of strategic direction, company culture, et cetera. And I'm very happy with the direction the business is taking now. In the FinTech business, as Riaan also pointed out, you would have seen the good growth there. The good news is that FLASH is regarded -- was regarded as an essential business. So they traded right through the lockdown period, and that has helped the business as a whole. You will see that there's been a growth of 20% in virtual turnover. The number of traders have increased from 156,000 to 172,000. But I wanted to point out again that the number that we increased the traders by is not the only number that we should look at. What we continuously look to do in the FLASH business is to improve the quality of the traders. In other words, to take -- to keep the bigger traders. And it's not only about adding traders, but also to manage the trading base better than we did in the past. So that number of 9%, which is basically our device improvement or improvement per device, is quite positive. Besides that, I mean, FLASH has really become a household name in the informal market. They've built good tech from which to launch other businesses or other divisions within the FLASH business in the future and very positive predictions for this business going forward. The technological platform is just -- is really what the whole business is based on, and that is of outstanding caliber and continuously developing new products and new markets going into the future and to improve their business. Capfin, Riaan indicated, as you can see there, 333,000 active customers and the credit book up to ZAR 2.6 billion. This book has been quite profitable during the period as we grew the book into its sort of ideal size. We mentioned at the previous results announcement that we wanted to book to be between ZAR 2.5 billion and ZAR 2.8 billion, and that's exactly where it ended up. As Riaan mentioned, I foresee this book decreasing going into the future. At the moment, we're not granting credit in this division. We're first wanting to see how the economy plays out, how -- what the consumer behavior is in terms of paying back their current outstanding debt, before we continue expanding or granting new credit. So this is -- this business in a bit of a holding period until we've got a better idea as to the debtor's behavior. Talking about the outlook. The outlook, I'm going to refer to 2 parts. The first part, we'll look at the phases that we went through during the COVID -- or since COVID started and the lockdown started, and I'll talk you through those. And then maybe talk about our business and how we see our business going forward and -- in terms of what we think our strengths are in the new, if I can call it, new economy. The first phase, and again this is almost like -- almost forgotten already. The first phase of COVID was actually the risk of supply when it first broke out in China, and there was a problem of supplying to the rest of the world. As you know, in our business, quite a big portion of our business are imported or of the apparel merchandise is imported from China, and that was obviously affected when China went into lockdown. Now this feels like ages ago, but that was the case then. We then started running all over the world trying to source product from new sources, which we did successfully and later realized that it would have been better not to do that because then we were all affected by it, but that's how we secured product supply for the business for the current season and the one that we're going into. The next phase was now this -- what was initially a problem in China now became a worldwide pandemic. So all of us had to adjust and we had to look at new plans. So all that stock that we then procured in the first phase wasn't really necessary anymore because the new phase was we will be going into a lockdown, and we need less stock. Nevertheless, that's how things changed. And as Riaan said, the things changed almost on a weekly basis. And on a weekly basis, your plans and your forecast, et cetera, et cetera, can change. This phase was obviously characterized by guidelines and protocols. Guidelines in terms of safety, health, hygiene, et cetera. And those are the guidelines that we initially had to become used to, learn to live with, learn to apply in our offices and later, in our stores. And besides the ones that we adhere to from a sort of a central point of view or a government point of view, we've also had to create a lot of guidelines and protocols within our own businesses, be that in stores, be that at FLASH, be that at call centers or in our offices, that could guide our behavior as people. And obviously, to protect and looking after the well-being of the people in the business. We've also had to adapt to working from home. As most of us, most of you also had to. But initially, that was quite a change for us. Fortunately, again, we've got the IT infrastructure. We've got our own IT department, and they've managed the whole process very well. We've actually managed in certain aspects to become more productive than we were before, believe it or not, by working from home. I wouldn't say that's how I would want to work for the rest of my life, but we certainly managed to make that successful, as most people would have had to make. We've become used to words like Zoom and Hangouts and Teams and Houseparty, which is my personal favorite, but I haven't used it. But yes, we've become used to these new names, a new way of working, and we've had to make that as efficient as possible. The priority here, obviously, is to look after the well-being of our employees, our customers. And I mentioned suppliers there because, all of a sudden, when you buy merchandise from somebody that sits in China -- in the past, our buyers used to travel there. Now that's going to be done online. So we've really had to change fundamentally how we work. I'm not saying that will remain like that forever. But for the moment, we're doing it quite successfully. And hopefully, the result of the stock, we'll see the good results in the stock that flows in over time. The next phase was protection of the business. So how do we protect our business? We're now into lockdown and how do we address lockdown? How do we manage through this lockdown period? And how do we protect and secure the business and make the business safe to not only survive, but to progress and to thrive going into the future? The first, as I -- as most CEOs would tell you, the first priority was, how do we preserve liquidity and cash flow. And I've learned more about cash flow in the last month or 2 than I've learned before in my life altogether. So that was obviously -- had became the sort of thing that we looked at almost on a daily basis. We had ExCo meetings 3 times a week, and in most weeks, more than that, as we work through this very difficult period of lockdown. The first priority for us was to secure the salaries of our employees. And we've done -- we've managed to do that. We were fortunate that we could do that. And for the months of March and April, every person in the business received, with a few exceptions, but most people received their full salaries. And for the month of May, we're hoping that we'll be able to achieve, with exceptions, that most people in our businesses will achieve full salaries. So that's been a priority for us, and we were fortunate that we could do that. Riaan was very proactive and he started talking to the banks quite early on in the process, even before lockdown even started, to make sure that our facilities are secured, our bank facilities. And then that -- and that altogether with our total cash flow planning for the period that had to play ahead, fortunately, helped us -- helped carry us through this -- that difficult period of the lockdown. We had to do several scenarios. I mean the guys are now pros, as Riaan said, in scenario planning, but the scenario can literally change from week to week. But nevertheless, I mean, we've gotten used to that. Obviously, built some models that can help us do it more effectively. And we play out many scenarios, depending on what we think can happen. But in -- for 1 example, you can have 3 scenarios for 1 period. And then obviously, you see how that plays out and you've got to manage your risks within that scenario planning. We've reduced operating costs and CapEx during this period. CapEx, we reduced by about ZAR 390 million for the 6-months period. Remember, the first half was already spent. For the second half of the year, the period that we're in now, we reduced the CapEx by about ZAR 390 million. We believe that CapEx in the future, we can even save on some more. As far as operating expenses are concerned, for the second 6 months, we saved more than ZAR 1 billion on what we originally budgeted. So I think that was a considerable -- and, again, helping us to guide the business and navigate the business through a very difficult and almost -- and not almost, but a very uncertain time. A very difficult part of this period was, what do you do with your stock inflows, what do you order, what do you cancel, what do you postpone, et cetera, because of the uncertainty. We didn't know how long the lockdown was going to be. Initially, it was going to be for 3 weeks. We're already at 8 weeks. So it's been a big change, and we've had to manage our merchandise plans accordingly. So when you know that you've got a lot of stock that's already on the water or in your DCs and that's all for winter, I mean, obviously, you can't take more winter stock if you know you're going to be closed for a part of winter. And obviously -- so we've added to adapt our plans there. What is important here is that how we worked with our suppliers. Our suppliers are probably the most -- or some of the most important partners that we do have in the business. And it was important that we also keep them going and that we work with them in terms of forecasting for the future. We had to cancel some of our orders, but we only canceled orders that had not been in production yet. So anything that had come out of production or was on the water, we still accept it, because that is what we asked for, and we believe that's the way that you also sustain the businesses of your suppliers. What it did cause, unfortunately, is a lot of backup stock, initially. So there was a lot of stock on the water, and I'll speak to now when I talk about the logistical and supply chain influence of the stock. But generally, I think we managed it well. Stopped a lot, postponed a lot and, hopefully, if we can have a reasonably good winter period now, then we'll be able to work through that stock. Then it was time to restart the operations. Now initially, we started a little bit before the first of May by opening some of our stores and only selling the essential merchandise that we were allowed to sell at that point in time. That was baby products, 0 to 36 months. Things like blankets, we could sell; airtime, we could sell; financial services. There was no ways that we could run the businesses or the stores profitably during that period because you only had so much that you could sell. But there was such a plea from our customers, and if you looked at social media, would have seen thousands and thousands of messages from the core PEP, especially PEP and Ackermans customers, pleading with us to open our stores or pleading with government to have -- or to allow us to open our stores because they needed warm clothes for their babies, for their children, et cetera. And then for that reason, despite the fact that it would never have been profitable, we decided to open some of our stores before the -- before we could -- before the 1st of May. On the 1st of May, obviously, we had a much bigger portion of our products that was sellable, and then we really started the trading period. And I'll give you an indication of how we performed in this trading period, which has now been about 3 weeks -- 3.5 weeks long. I'll give you an indication of that performance after this slide. We're obviously going to work through the business now. We've got to sort of rebased the business, reset the business. We've got to prioritize our projects. What are we going to do? What are we not going to do? Because looking at the future, we've got to have -- to adapt the business to the uncertain future, and the future which -- where I think the economy will be very constrained. So we've got to have -- prioritize our projects. The credit book collections, very important during this period. As Riaan said, it's been quite positive. It's been above expectations. We've got 3 credit books, all of them have their own characteristics. But generally, we've been positive about the collections that we've seen so far. And hopefully, we'll -- that will continue. Obviously, we're not over our concerns yet because the longer the period of this lockdown continues, the more those books will be at risk, but certainly very positive at the moment. Some of those books were mainly driven by debit order facilities. There, we've seen a very good payment rates. And other were more driven by store payments, and obviously, during the lockdown, we couldn't accept those or the customers couldn't get to the stores. But since the stores have reopened, we've seen a huge influx of customers coming in to pay their accounts. And that's been very positive for us, too. But still a bit of risk there. We'll see how that plays out over the next few months. We've got to reforecast now for the business. We've got to replan. We've got to restructure in circumstances. We have to adapt our business to what we at this point seen, as I said earlier constrained economy levels, and rather do that proactively than waiting until we experience the tougher times. So we've got to consolidate. We've got to collaborate between businesses. We've got to look at more opportunities, where between the businesses in the group, we can work together to bring cost down, to bring duplication down and to combine efforts sort of onto central services that will benefit all the businesses in the group. We've now got to go into budget and 3-year plan territory, and that is quite a daunting environment, as you can imagine, with all the uncertainty that we have. But at some point in time, we'll just have to make the best with the information that we have. We've postponed our 3-year planning process so that we can have a little bit more information to base our plans on. But those plans and those budgets that I'm talking about here will be very important in -- from a strategic point as well as we work towards building a more variable business for the future and a more adaptable business and flexible business, so that we can adapt to the environment of the future which is very uncertain. So restart of operations have been very good. A lot of work has gone into all these points that I've just mentioned. Just to give you an indication of the sales performance for the first 3 weeks, and here are the numbers. I don't know if you can see it at the moment. We seem to have -- we can see it. Great. So there you can see that's the first 3 weeks since we've been able to trade again. So the first week will be the week commencing on the 3rd of May, 10th of May, 17th of May, et cetera. And there you can see the numbers per business or basically, per division. So the number on the left-hand side, the first one is PEP and Ackermans combined. Then you've got Speciality, the JD Group, building materials and FLASH. As you can see right through, the PEP and Ackermans businesses have performed exceptionally well. And I think, again, that points to the need that people have for the type of product and the type of prices that these businesses provide. As I said, there's been a big pent up -- I didn't say it, but there was a big pent-up demand. So that obviously contributes to these good numbers that you see. That is not necessarily going to be sustainable for too long. But I think it does indicate which type of business will do good -- do well going forward. And the type of business with a very basic product range that supplies to kids and children, there, the pent-up demand was just higher than in other businesses. And you can see it from the numbers there. Over 90% in that first week, over 40% and still high numbers going into the third week for PEP and Ackermans combined. As you know, that's the biggest part of our business and a very important part of our business. Even Speciality, very good. The JD Group, which is the red bar, that's a -- that number is -- looks -- doesn't look as good as it really is. One must remember that, that number that's in the slide there includes the furniture business. And remember, the furniture businesses are still closed. They opened about a week ago, but only selling online. But for the majority of that period, the furniture business were closed. So what we've achieved there and the numbers that we achieved was only in Incredible Connection and Hi-Fi Corp. So if you look at their performance in isolation, then they had performances for the 3 weeks of 44%, 23% and 25% growth on last year for the 3 weeks, which I think is very impressive. A lot of demand for work-from-home products, laptops, computers, printers, et cetera. As you can imagine, there was also a bit of a pent-up demand, people needing those products for the lockdown and for the work-from-home scenarios, and we're certainly providing a lot of that to our customers. Furniture, unfortunately, still, for all practical purposes, closed, but that -- hopefully, that will get going next week. Building materials, the stores have been open for quite a while but, unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, this business is mainly aimed at the contractors working on construction sites, building residential homes, et cetera. And those people have not been able to return to work. They will only be returning to work from the 1st of June, and I hope to see -- we hope to see a big spike in their sales then. And then as I mentioned earlier, FLASH had been performing throughout the period and still performing well. Very essential, very basic product that everybody needs, especially in that market. So we are very happy with the numbers that we've seen so far. And again, I think it points to the value of our business, the discount in value market is going to be very relevant in the new economy, if I can call it that. It's also important to look at how do we gear the business for growth of the future. There are some things that you must disinvest from, but then there are very important parts of the business that you must keep investing in. And that's one of the decisions and trade-offs that we continuously have to make to decide. But what are the things that's going to give us growth for the future? And what are the things that are not so essential and are not so essential and not so needed right now that we can postpone by a year or so? So there's been reductions in OpEx and CapEx. We believe that over the next year, next -- for the next financial year, we'll be able to take another ZAR 1 billion or so out of the OpEx budget. We believe that we can save another ZAR 1 billion on CapEx in the year that's to come. So yes, we -- there will be big cutbacks. For us, it's about getting the right balance and making the right trade-offs so that we don't harm the business and that we only postpone some of the important projects that we are looking at. But where it is essential and where it is still important for us to create growth for the future, we will continue with those costs, either -- whether it be from an OpEx or a CapEx point of view. I've mentioned before the curtailment of the credit extension. There will obviously be cutbacks there. That will continue. We've got to get a feel for the new credit market before we can open the gates again. So for the moment, very conservative and focusing on collections and our collections ability, and how can we get as much of those -- that money back over the next few months. Obviously, the longer the period, the more the risk, as I mentioned before, but we are managing that accordingly. Capital allocation just becomes very important again. I've already mentioned that at -- 6 months ago at the results presentation, so it wasn't anything new. But it's easy to invest in businesses like PEP and Ackermans where you get good growth, very robust business models and where you hardly have any but any unprofitable stores. Obviously, from a capital allocation point of view, we're not investing a lot in Africa at the moment. We'll probably be investing less in Speciality going forward as an example. We'll be investing less in building company. We will be investing less in the furniture business. So there are businesses that we still feel that we can invest in going forward. But then there are ones where we will have to be conservative again and first stabilize the business and get a more stable environment and then we can reconsider. But capital allocation, one of the biggest challenges that we have now, like most other businesses, I'm sure, and something that we spend a lot of time on prioritizing, et cetera. The current environment has shown that people, to a greater extent than in the past, move towards e-commerce. It's an easier way to shop, it's -- for them, for many people. It's also a safer way to shop. And we've seen trends, and I've seen a lot of other businesses report a big growth in e-commerce. We've seen it, obviously, in Incredible Connection and Hi-Fi Corp, which is our 2 businesses that are most advanced and have a very good platform to do e-commerce from and online sales. And as I said, 6.2% was the number of -- was the percentage of -- or contribution of the online sales in those 2 businesses, which is very high. Going into the future, we want to enable all our businesses to do online transactions. But it's not only about that. It's also about giving our customers the ability to go online and to look at what product we have, although they might still buy it in store. So we've got to create that for our customers. And I think COVID-19 has just -- from our point of view, we will just accelerate the whole movement towards e-commerce, and the changes that we've seen in customer behavior, so far, will support that. And then we've got to look again at our portfolio strategy. Now I spoke about capital allocation. So what are the businesses that you -- that we, as a group, invest in, that gives us the best return? What are the ones where we don't get a return? Or where we hardly see a return over the next few years, especially in the current circumstance? And we've got to look at our portfolio and see -- and decide whether we can streamline it more than we have. I have to say that we were busy with processes in rationalizing our portfolio up to when COVID happened. And unfortunately, that's been put on hold for obvious reasons. But we'll continue that after we get through the lockdown period and when business normalizes. But I still see a more streamlined, robust portfolio of businesses in the Pepkor Group going forward. Lastly, I would like to just maybe speak to you about our business and how we are thinking as a team and how I'm thinking about Pepkor going forward and especially considering the uncertain circumstances, the predicted economy that we'll be contracting for the next year or so. And how do we fit into that new market? And how resilient are we as a business to withstand the challenges that are being thrown at us by the market and by the environment? Firstly, I would rather be in our position rather than many other positions because we run in discount and value positions in the market, which I think is where a lot of people will be forced to shop in future, even if they didn't want to. I think we'll prove our value in terms of the different businesses that we have in that sector, that we can provide to a wide variety of customers that we're not providing to at the moment. So they will be shopping down by customers, I can almost assure you. When you talk about discount and value market position, you don't only talk about the lower -- the fact that you are in the lower sort of earning or income brackets and that you serve the people in those brackets. It's also about how you manage your stock, how do you manage your range, et cetera, because that also makes a big difference. So if you're in this discount and value market position, the influence that you get through markdowns, et cetera, are much less than in fashion businesses where your exposure to fashion trends, timing, et cetera, is much bigger. In our business, and again if I refer here, I refer to PEP and Ackermans mostly, about 60% of the products can be considered as basic or replenishment, and that's a huge help for us. You are serving the customers that -- at prices that they can afford. And I think affordability is going to become so much more important in the next year or so. So I think that's a huge benefit for us to have. You are serving children. Children grow out of clothing, as you all know, and that's why it's easier to buy more affordable products from a PEP and Ackermans, as an example. So we're servicing that market. And then markdowns, et cetera, become less of a risk and less of an exposure because you've got a much larger basic and replenishment product portfolio. So I really believe we're in a good position as far as that is concerned. I think the market will consolidate. In my opinion, we are quite dominant in the discount market. I think we are extremely strong in the value market. And I think this is going to -- we're going to become more dominant and stronger in the new economy, if I may call it that. So I'm very optimistic about our position. I think we will gain market share going forward. Our teams have already committed to making sure that we do the basics of the business as good as we possibly can. And there are certain categories that we've already identified in the market where I think we've -- there are great opportunities. The fact that there are other businesses in the market that are not doing so well, the fact that there will be consolidation of brands, the fact that all the retailers might not be with us for the next 6 months to a year, again points to the fact that there's market share for us to grab. And I'm very confident and -- to a sense, excited about the future and what we can achieve there. Because market share that you can grab now will count in your favor in 1 year or 2 or 3 from now. Our footprint is still a benefit. The fact that we are close to our customers, in most cases within walking distance of our customer, makes a huge difference. It might not seem such a big factor for many of us who are privileged, but people that have to pay expensive taxi fares to get to stores, for people that don't want to be exposed to the risk of contagion, being -- having the footprint that we have, I think, is a huge advantage going forward. We've seen how the sales after COVID has been a spread with a huge, huge positive sales and growth in the rural and peri-urban environments, whereas the bigger shopping centers are battling. And we are -- that's where our strength is. Our strength is out there in our footprint, smaller stores -- we have got the flexibility of having bigger and smaller stores. And that flexibility, I think, is going to stand us in good stead going forward. And then every business now will have to operate at -- try and operate at reduced costs. What counts in our favor here is the fact that we've always done it. We've always been the lowest operating at the lowest cost of doing business. And we're used to it. And it's not so easy getting used to. But we've done -- that's been part of our DNA. That's been part of our success in the past. And we'll continue doing that. Although we -- it becomes a bit more difficult to take cost out of your system if you're already at a very low cost base, we can still do that, and we will continue that. And I think that will help us adapt to the new environment and the new constrained economies. Our strong supplier base, I mentioned it before, one of the first stakeholders. Our first, most important stakeholders. Everybody is important, I want to say to the investor. But the first and most important, I believe, are our own people. And then we've got the suppliers and, obviously, then, the investors. But everybody is important, but I'll tell you what, having a strong supplier base is critically important during these times. And I think we've used this setback and challenges that we've had almost as an opportunity to strengthen those relationships because we've had to work together to plan and plot out the future. And what we've done in the process has made sure and -- try and make sure that our suppliers don't suffer in the process and that we work together in -- to get to a solution that is workable for both sides. And I'm sure that those suppliers, as they are now standing by us and helping us, that they will be there for us in the future and that we will also be there for them. And then lastly, everybody -- every company claims that they've got a great culture and great leadership, I really believe it. That has been what the Pepkor Group has been renowned for over many years. I think we've got a -- I don't think, I know we've got a great leadership team. We've got real, experienced leaders in each of our businesses running the businesses. And something that has helped us is that -- the fact that we've gone through a few crises in the last 3 to 5 years. So I always joke that we're getting crisis-fit, but there is a benefit to that. It's about the resilience that you build up. It's about the lessons that you learned in previous crises that you can apply now. And our leadership team have learned through the last 3 to 5 years, and we are certainly used to dealing with adversity, used to dealing with challenges, used to dealing with difficult circumstances. And just as in the past, we're -- from a Pepkor point of view, we will try and keep a lot of the corporate things away from our businesses so that they can -- they can focus on retail and providing the customers with the best products and services that they possibly can. We'll try and do -- continue to do that in the future. But we've got a great, resilient, tough retail team that know how to operate under tough circumstances. And those cultures in our businesses will really drive performance and help us manage this performance going forward. So despite all the negativity that I see in here in the market, I'm very optimistic about our position as a retailer in South Africa going forward. We know that there are going to be challenges. We know that it's going to be tough. Our first priority is to gain as much market share as we possibly can. And I'm very, very confident that we'll be able to do that. I think we are ideally positioned. I think we've got the right people in the business. I think we've got the right footprint. I think we've -- we're serving the right customers. And for once, we are really going to be -- again, the biggest pressure that we have on ourselves as a business is to make sure that we do even more than in the past, to give our customers the best that we can for the lowest price in the business. That is going to become more and more important, especially in an economy that is not going to be thriving. And hopefully, we'll eventually get to our vision. And for those that have -- of you that haven't seen our vision, it is to be a globally respected discount and value retailer by being the best place to shop, to work and invest. And if we can just get close to managing that, I think we'll be very, very successful on a relative basis in South Africa going forward. Thank you very much for your time. It is a bit of an awkward circumstance and a different circumstance. I hope the message -- we got the message across. I hope you can sense our optimism for the future despite the challenges that we face. So thank you for your time.