Shoprite Holdings Ltd (SHP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. I'm Wendy Lucas-Bull, the Non-Executive Independent Chairman of the Shoprite Group. As this is my first results presentation with the group in this role, I wanted to take the time to welcome you all personally or as personally as I could, given the fact that you're on a webcast and I'm reporting this from my home office. It's not customary for me as Chair to form part of the results presentations, but I did feel it's appropriate that I recognize and confirm the seamless handover that took place at the end of last year as I succeeded the group's Chair of 40 years, Dr. Christo Wiese. Christo's was a remarkable tenure as Chair that saw the group grow from 8 to over 2,300 corporate stores and, along the way, become what is today South Africa's largest private sector employer and the African continent's largest retailer, providing more than 142,000 people with jobs. And whilst I know Pieter always acknowledges the role of every single employee, I would also like to thank all the Shoprite people who, in no small part, have come together to serve the group's customers and, in so doing, produced these results. You will have seen the numbers released earlier this morning. And while I don't want to steal from the proceedings, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the 4.7% sales growth and the 17.8% trading profit growth achieved in circumstances which are far from normal. This period has really tested management, and it's demonstrated the resilience of this group, which is a tribute both to the leadership and the people of Shoprite. Food retail, as you know, has played a vital role throughout the COVID pandemic with the Shoprite Group forming a significant part of that. In terms of the Board, our focus remains on supporting the management team in their pursuit of growth and operational excellence. And in conclusion, I would like to thank all of you. Please stay safe in these crazy times. Thank you. Pieter, over to you.

Thank you, Wendy. I can certainly echo those words. And I would like to take the opportunity to extend a sincere thank you to all the people of Shoprite whose results we will be presenting today. I'll take us through an overview of the last 6 months. Anton will take us through the detailed financials. He'll tell you a little bit of what we're busy with, and then there will be time for questions. So if we look at the first half, if we exclude the liquor, which is a significant portion of our business, the group managed to grow sales by 6.3%, almost hitting ZAR 84 billion. Gross profit hit the ZAR 20 billion mark, a combination of improved shrinkage and improved wastage; also some very smart pricing from the data that we now get out of our rewards program, providing us with increasing better information; and lastly, also the change in the sales mix towards Checkers also contributed to that. Trading profit grew by 18.3%. Important here or a number to note is that the trading margin improved from 5% last year to 5.6% this year. Adjusted headline earnings per share grew by 17.1%. That's now excluding the hyperinflation and also exchange rate differences. The dividend per share increased by 22.4%, partially as a decision from the Board to change from the 2x dividend cover to 1.75, having due regard of the implications of the IFRS 16 implementation. I'm very proud of the team's ability to have adapted to the current trading environment and all the adjustments that had to be made. And particularly for our international investors, I want to call out that of the challenges, the most significant probably was the liquor and not so much only the liquor trading restriction in the hours, but the practical implications around that, security open up close, secure of expensive stock, expiry of stock and, on top of that, the inability to be able to move stock during the ban. So it was not only limited to the direct loss in trade. And as I mentioned, liquor does form a significant part of the group's business. Not unlike the global trends, we have also seen less visits from customers. In our case, 16.7% customer -- less visits from customers to store, handsomely made up by the increase in the basket size of 24.9%. At this point, I cannot stress more the importance of a high level of in-stock in a scenario like this when customers are less frequently in your store and then pick up that additional item. The group has been very fortunate in a way that over time, that we are able to leverage our risks and customers' economic conditions and situations over our multiple brands. In that, the Shoprite brand was, by far, the hardest hit in terms of unemployment, closing of the hospitality where people have ability to create income, high dependency on the government grants where low prices has now been more important than ever before, hence why we accelerated the launch of our Xtra Savings Reward Programme. Usave has been -- has benefited because of the close proximity to home, that people could save their transport money and spend it on essential food products. Checkers is gaining market share in the more affluent section of the market. And in there, it's been assisted by us being able to open more FreshX stores and definitely also with the advent of the on-demand delivery service. The Hyper stores have got a new lease on life, so to speak, as customers prefer to have a one-stop shop that gives them a value offering. The graph on my right shows that all the brands have over-indexed the market, although not all of the brands as high and as much as the Checkers brand where our customers are less hearted by the current economic climate. Supermarkets RSA had a very strong growth. If we exclude the liquor, sales grew by 7.8% and like-for-like, 5.7%. Of note here and I think an accolade of what has been done over the last couple of years, the group had an uninterrupted market share gain for over 22 months, amounting to a value of ZAR 1.3 billion in market share gains in half 1. We all, retailers, talk about internal inflation. We benchmark ourselves to the national inflation. And just for clarity, we thought we'd just explain how we, at Shoprite, calculate our internal inflation. So the dotted graph you will see there is the national inflation according to Stats SA. The red line is that of our internal inflation. As you can see, we mostly track below that with a widened gap in the month of December -- November, December. And just quickly, the difference, Stats SA measures 124 static products, which they review every 4 to 5 years. And we, at Shoprite, measure over 60,000 products based on the current year and then looking towards what the inflation was on those products the previous year. In other words, they're weighted against the sales of the current year because that takes into consideration people's differences in buying patterns from pack sizes to multi-buys, combos, different brands. We do believe that is a very accurate way of measure. We've measured in our internal inflation at 4.3% with a national inflation at 4.9%, food inflation. And just to analyze it a little bit further is, if one look at the 15 most price-sensitive products, in other words, if the price changed on that item, people actually still buying or they move out of that product set, the inflation was almost flat. Just indicating to you that it's very difficult to have a static set of products and measuring inflation in that way. So we do believe we have a very accurate measure of our internal inflation. Then in our lives, cheap and affordable is not the same. We have an obsession about affordability. One of those examples I want to call out here is that we've maintained our bread price at ZAR 5 for the last 5 years. And as you can see, we are moving to about 270 million loaves of bread that we have subsidized like that over the last 5 years. Now that, for our international audience, that equates to about USD 0.50 just to give you some context. And then we'll make you privy to what will be our latest, as I call it, consumer communication to stress that point, how much obsessed we are about affordability and that cheap doesn't mean affordable. [Presentation]

So in a sense, just putting our money where our mouths are. And as much as things change, they stay the same. I think the customers have voted, and Shoprite was awarded the supermarket brand of the decade, still living up to its promise year after year. I mentioned earlier the significance of LiquorShop in the overall performance of the group. In there, there's the number. Liquor down 21.8%. You can see almost 80 out of 182 days, we were not able to trade. And apart from that restricted trade, the silver lining in here is that online sales grew by 80%. Good news is we're back to normal trade now. The Supermarkets Non-RSA, sales declined by 8.4%. Zambia and Ghana showed very good sales in local currency. Namibia held its own. Angola sales declined by almost 40% due to currency devaluation, also a very high inflation in the country currently. And the Non-RSA remains a tale of devaluing currencies. In terms of our Non-RSA position, it is still our long-term strategy to retain a core set of Non-RSA profitable countries. That is still our aim and part of our long-term vision. There was a short-term strategy shift. And in that, you are all aware of the Nigeria sale that we are waiting now final approval and the closure of the Kenya business. Business as normal for us is to maintain, managing our cost or control costs and limit our capital allocation to that segment. The store base had remained the same in half 1. And we're still on a drive to de-dollarize as many of the cost elements as we can. We greatly increased our local procurement twofold because of the currency risk due to the lead times; and secondly, the fact that, that does assist the countries to be self-funding because of the local currency availability. Angola did manage to repatriate $58.8 million in the last 12 months. And currently, our government bills and bonds sits at ZAR 1.6 billion opposed to last year's ZAR 2.5 billion. OK Furniture and House & Home, since reopening and allowing to trade, have had a fairly good run with sales growth of 15.7%. Interestingly, or a bit of a surprise almost, is the decline in credit sales from 13.7% to 11.8%. We also closed another 10 loss-making stores, leaving the real estate at 432 stores trading. In the other segments, especially Computicket and Checkers Food Services have been affected by the depressed demand in travel, hospitality and no live events. And as can be expected, Transpharm and MediRite was performing quite -- or did perform quite well with sales up almost 20%. OK Franchise held its own with a growth of 8.1%, partially also the efficiencies created by that we now support them through our Shoprite distribution centers and have collapsed their individual units. Store base now currently consists of 505 stores. Then as a business, it's important that we balance our financial performance with that of our social responsibility, and we pride ourselves that we're a business with heart. Examples of that would be, we've got a -- we support 130 sustainable community gardens, 578 home gardens. We served more than 4 million meals since lockdown, donated ZAR 90 million in surplus food and then also playing our part in the green economy, extended our dependency on solar panel and PV installations. We continue to do that. So in a nutshell, that's a roundup of the 6 months. I'm now going to hand you over into the capable hands of CFO, Anton de Bruyn, to take you through some of the detail in the financials, which I know you're all looking forward to. So Anton, thank you.

Thank you very much, Pieter. For ease of reference, we've included again additional slides in the appendix that deals with some of the financial matters in the first half. Part of that will include the sale of the distribution centers and the equities transaction. We've highlighted the impact on the income statement, the balance sheet and then also the cash flow statement. We also included the calculation of the return on invested capital and also the discontinued operations on Nigeria. We've given you further details. You will see that the Nigeria operation actually showed a profit, but that was as a result of the depreciation. There was no depreciation for the 6 months as well as a profit from lease adjustments or amendments made in terms of IFRS 16. I'm not going to deal with these slides in more detail. If you have any questions, you are very welcome to contact me afterwards. If we then look at the comparability of our results for the first 6 months, we had to restate our December 2019 results as an impact of our discontinued operations in Nigeria. During June, we've already restated the full year results, but as well, we had to do that adjustment as well for the December 2019 numbers, and that's why you'll see that impact. And then secondly, there was a SAICA circular with regards to how we need to look at lease modifications in terms of IFRS 16. In the past, we show that as part of our items of capital nature. But in the future, we will show that as part of our trading profit. So we actually increased our base of our diluted HEPS by ZAR 0.091 or ZAR 72 million. So for the rest of the presentation, I will talk about continuing operations, except for the CapEx slide and also the cash flow slide that includes the Nigeria results. So if we then turn to sale of merchandise, we increased by 4.7% to ZAR 83.4 billion, and I will unpack that a little bit later. Gross profit increased by 7.3% to ZAR 20 billion. That represents an increase of 60 basis points to 24%. Pieter alluded to already the contribution of Checkers. But if we also look at the additional benefits realized through our implementation of the SAP ERP system, the maturity that we now have with regards to KPI dashboard reporting as well as our data analytics, from a supply chain point of view, we've seen that improvement and focus from our procurement department as well as our operational teams on our in-stock levels as well as a reduction in our stock levels, which had a positive impact on our shrinkage and wastage. Total expenses increased by 4.2%. If we exclude the impact of the COVID cost, that was around 3.7%. Some of the main drivers in our cost growth was our employee benefits that increased by 5.8%. What is important to note is the impact that the currency devaluations had on obviously our performance or the results from our Nigeria, Angola and Zambia operations. So from a Non-RSA point of view, we actually saw a 9.2% decline. And if we then take out or focus on the RSA piece, that was a 7.6% increase. Depreciation increased by 3.7%. If we then unpack it with regards to -- we saw a 9.8% decline in our depreciation on property, plant and equipment to ZAR 1.1 billion. Our increase in our right-of-use depreciation was around 24.8% to ZAR 1.5 billion. And then we saw the decline in the depreciation of that hyperinflation asset from ZAR 48 million in the first 6 months to ZAR 35 million in this half of the financial year. That reduction in depreciation is driven by the impairments that we've done to date. You will recall that when we initially adopted hyperinflation, we recognized the asset of ZAR 2.2 billion through depreciation and impairments. That asset is now at ZAR 694 million in our current accounts. If we look at other operating expenses, increased by 3.4%. The majority of that was through electricity and water at 2.2%. Then if we only look at the RSA portion, that was just over 4%, well below 10% by -- increases by NERSA in the previous year. We achieved that excellent growth or cost savings through our projects implemented through our LED light program in our stores as well as our solar panels that we implemented in our operations as well. Our trading profit increased by 18.3% to ZAR 4.7 billion, now at a very healthy 5.6% trading margin. EBITDA increased by 6.3% to ZAR 7 billion, and it's now 8.4% of sales. And if I look at our effective tax rate, we've now reduced it from 31.1% to 29.2% on the back of the sale of our distribution centers that gave a -- realized a 2% reduction in our effective tax rate for the first half, and then also the additional benefits through the ETI allowances that we got as part of our COVID relief. Diluted HEPS increased by 10.4% to ZAR 4.18, and our adjusted diluted HEPS increased by 17.1% to ZAR 4.162. As Pieter mentioned, our adjusted diluted HEPS calculation excludes the exchange rates and hyperinflation just for comparability. If we then just unpack the detailed calculation of adjusted HEPS and also the restatements. The last time we saw you, we had -- for the first 6 months, we had a diluted HEPS of ZAR 3.72; that ZAR 0.091 adjustment in terms of that SAICA circular, that was ZAR 72 million adjustment; and then the restatement of the discontinued operations gave rise to that 10.4%; and then there's the ForEx and the hyperinflation impact with the related income tax, brings us back to that 17.1% increase. If we then go into more detail with regards to the sales growth, Supermarkets RSA increased sales by 5.6% to ZAR 65.1 billion on the back of a like-for-like sales growth of 4.8% and internal food inflation of 4.3%. During the period, we opened a net new stores of 45, and we plan to open 58 stores in the second half of the year. The strong Supermarkets RSA growth was driven by the Checkers and Checkers Hyper brand that outperformed the rest of the brands at 11.1%. That was on the back of the 10 additional FreshX stores that we opened as well as our online delivery, Sixty60 app, that's now in 157 stores. Shoprite and Usave increased sales by 5.6% with Shoprite at 4.9% and Usave at 9.1%. And then our LiquorShop had a decline of 21.8% on the back of the lockdown regulations. Prior to the lockdown of March last year, we've grown -- still growing in that 20% mark, and we also opened a store a week. During the 12 -- last 12 months, we've managed to open 26 stores, of which the majority actually occurred in the second half. So we're back to that one store a week opening. And obviously, the relaxation of the regulations -- or lockdown regulations bodes well for our trade in the next 4 months. If I then turn to Supermarkets Non-RSA, minus 8.4% decline, driven by that currency devaluations, as Pieter referred to. On like-for-like, we were minus 8.9%, but internal food inflation of 9.1%. Angola, that 39.5%; but then Zambia, positive return with that constant currency growth of just over 15.8%. Furniture had an increase of 15.7% and getting a strong comeback through the form of the lockdowns that we had up until the end of June. The RSA portion of the Furniture business grew at 16.9%, and the Non-RSA piece or portion of the segment grew at 11.1%. I think one must look at the context of this Non-RSA Furniture business that gave a very strong growth with these currency devaluations. Other operating segments increased by 10%, driven by that Franchise business of just over 8.1% and the Transpharm and MediRite business. If we then turn to other operating income, increased by 4.5% to ZAR 1.3 billion. We've spoken about the decline in the commissions received with regards to Computicket that was impacted by the events and travels. Operating lease income reduced by 3.1% on the back of property disposals we had during the last 12 to 18 months as well as some of the rental reliefs we gave during the pandemic. Premiums driven through our Furniture business. We saw that credit participation in that business reducing from that 13.7% to 11.7%. And then our franchise fees increased in the same ratio as our sales. If I turn to Sundry income, our delivery recoveries through our Furniture business as well now our Sixty60 business forms the majority of that the Sundry income line, but it's also insurance claims and initiation fees included. Interest revenue reduced by 5.4%, and the majority of that was the interest received on our government bills and bonds that reduced by ZAR 26 million. We've sold -- or some of the bonds matured during the period, and we also reduced our exposure to these bonds. In total, we had ZAR 2.5 billion of investments in these bonds, and we now reduced it to ZAR 1.6 billion. And part of that reduction was also as effect of the currency devaluations that we experienced in Angola. The government have stopped issuing these U.S. dollar-linked government bonds. And so when we get to the ForEx, I will give you more detail with regards to our strategy on hedging ourselves. If I then look in summary of the performances of the various segments with regards to trading profit, Supermarkets RSA, very strong growth of 12.6% to ZAR 4.2 billion, very healthy trading margin of 6.5%, and that's really driven through that improvement in our gross margin and also in our excellent expense management. If I look at Non-RSA, you will recall, at the end of June, that segment was loss-making. We've turned it back into profitability, which is very pleasing to management. But there are, however, 3 aspects that we have to take into account. The one is, obviously, the reduction in the interest revenue of ZAR 26 million that's included in there. But also in there is a ZAR 64 million loss on our Kenyan operation, which in the future or at the end of June, we will also disclose as discontinued operations. We must take that into account. And then the last one was a reversal on some of the impairments we had to take on government bonds in the past of ZAR 59 million. Because of those maturity of the government bonds and because we received all our funds, we could reverse that impairment provision. Furniture growth of 56.8% on a 17% sales growth, very strong performance. Again, just something to take into account that during the period, we reduced our provision for bad debt that we had at the end of June from a 50% provision to a 47.2% provision, purely on the back of better collections that we had within that segment. Other operating segments increased by 11.9%, very much in line with the sales growth. There is the hyperinflation and depreciation on hyperinflation effect, as I explained earlier, giving rise to that 18.3% growth to ZAR 4.7 billion. Foreign exchange movements, we had a loss for the first 6 months versus a profit in the previous year, driven by improvement in the exchange rate, the rand-dollar exchange rate. At the end of June last year, we were sitting at a ZAR 17.14 to the dollar. And at the end of December, that rate was now ZAR 14.60. So obviously, hedging strategy doesn't always provide for a strengthening rand, which happened in the first 6 months. Secondly, we've also reduced our exposure or our investment in U.S. dollar-linked bonds from ZAR 2.2 billion to ZAR 529 million as a result of they matured. We are, however, investing now in treasury bills that gives us a higher yield and also investing in U.S. dollar-linked bonds that is available on the secondary market. So I do expect to see a better result in the second half as we get hold and as we buy and invest in these U.S. dollar-linked bonds on the secondary market. During the period, we impaired an additional ZAR 687 million on nonfinancial assets. That was predominantly driven through our impairment of property, plant and equipment of ZAR 610 million. And that was driven predominantly by our Supermarkets Non-RSA segment where we accounted for impairment of ZAR 306 million; and then, as I mentioned earlier, further impairment on our hyperinflation asset of ZAR 404 million. The sale of the distribution centers gave rise to ZAR 160 million profit. That's giving us a net result of items of capital nature loss of ZAR 327 million. Our net finance cost increased by 13.5%, and that was driven by a once-off breakage cost that we had to settle as part of the settlement of the U.S. dollar debt in Mauritius. If we had to exclude that ZAR 178 million, we would have seen a slight decline in our net finance cost, which I do expect to see in the second half of the financial year as well. If I, therefore, break it down and look at the various components of net finance cost, we would have seen that we had a decline in our interest received, although we've seen that strong cash flow in the business from ZAR 10 billion to ZAR 13 billion. But as you can see, our rates at which we earn our interest have reduced from around 7.5% last year to 4.4% in the current year. Our borrowings and other finance costs reduced by 2.6%. But if we had to add back that ZAR 178 million, we would have seen that our finance costs would actually have reduced by 38.3%, and that again was driven by the settlement of that U.S. dollar debt. Our lease and liability finance charges on the IFRS 16 assets or liabilities increased by 15.2%. Now that was on the back of those 74 new leases and adjustments we had during the 6 months. The incremental borrowing rate on our lease liability is around 9%. If we then turn to the balance sheet, again, for ease of reference, we've given you the balance sheet or the assets and compare that to the liability side. The significant events that one has to take into account that, of course, there's restructuring of the balance sheet, but predominantly that sale of the distribution centers that gave -- that reduced our property and plant equipment by ZAR 1.9 billion and gave rise to ZAR 1.2 billion in cash flow. The working capital, we've seen that ZAR 2.9 billion reduction in inventories, and we saw an increase in our trade and other payables. Our U.S. dollar borrowings, the $350 million that we've settled caused a close to ZAR 7 billion reduction in our borrowings for the period. And then as I mentioned before, some of the government bonds matured, and that's why now we're now at ZAR 1.6 billion exposure at the end of December, which is very pleasing is our return on invested capital has improved from 9.6% to 11.2% during the period. And there is a detailed calculation at the back in the appendix. If we look at inventory, a reduction of ZAR 2.9 billion to ZAR 19.6 billion. We're now sitting at a 12.2% ratio of inventory to sales. At the end of December 2019, that was sitting at around 14.7%. So that was predominantly driven through our improvements in our Supermarkets RSA, which is very pleasing to see that on a like-for-like basis, in the last 8 quarters, we have managed to reduce our food stockholding by more than ZAR 2 billion. And the other pleasing fact is that we managed to do that without sacrificing gross margin. If I look at Supermarkets Non-RSA, also a ZAR 1.4 billion reduction in inventory. We've changed our source of supply predominantly to a local source of supply. And our exports from South Africa has reduced. If I look at Furniture and the other segments, they're very much in line with the previous year. Our guidance for June is a 12% ratio of inventory to sales. Our capital spend for the 6 months was ZAR 1.6 billion, now representing 1.9% of sales. There is improvement from the previous year where we spent ZAR 2 billion at 2.4%. If we look at the way we spend our capital, you can see that we are still spending a huge amount or the lion's share on new stores as well as our refurbishment of current stores. And then information technology will start playing a bigger role. I think the implementation of that SAP ERP system and the benefits that we are realizing has just shown again where we need to invest in the future, especially with the data analytics that we can get to improve our business. On property, plant and equipment, we spent another 9.8%. We've kept our strategy investing in strategic land, and we also have currently 3 to 4 developments on the go. The portion in the previous year relates to the 3 buildings that we completed in Angola. I think what's also important to note is that our capital spend, the majority of that was spent in South Africa, where we spent ZAR 1.5 billion of the ZAR 1.6 billion. If we look at leverage, strong net cash position improvement from ZAR 8 billion to ZAR 12 billion. And then our net cash after borrowings improved from a borrowings position of ZAR 3.3 billion to a net cash position of ZAR 6.6 billion, mostly driven through that settlement of that U.S. dollar debt. At the end of June, we said that we -- our target was to reach around $80 million. That $78 million that we currently have, we see as working capital, and that will continue in the future. We've now reached our short- to medium-term debt-to-equity target of 30%. And if we look at our lease liabilities, increased from 23.8% to 26.6% (sic) [ ZAR 23.8 million to ZAR 26.6 million ] on the back of those new leases. Just unpacking the cash flow, and this is the cash flow for the last 6 months. So in the 6 reporting months, we've managed to improve our net cash position by ZAR 2.7 billion. Majority of that obviously was the generation through our operations of ZAR 7 billion. We did get a benefit from our changes in working capital. We had that ZAR 2.9 billion reduction in inventory as well as the cutoff on our creditors and trade payables that gave rise to a ZAR 2.6 billion benefit. All of that together gave us a cash generation from our operating activities of around ZAR 10 billion. The proceeds from the PPE relates to the ZAR 1.2 billion from the equities transaction as well as another ZAR 400 million from properties that we sold during the reporting period and then that ZAR 500 million through the reduction and maturity of some of those government bonds. The positive for me on that is that we were possible -- it was possible for us to repatriate those funds from Non-RSA and especially in Angola. And our investment in the rest of Non-RSA was also minimized. If I, therefore, look at cash flow before the settlement of our debt, it was an increase of ZAR 10.4 billion. Taking into account the settlement of the debt gave rise to that strong ZAR 2.7 billion cash flow generation. So in summary, if I then, therefore, just look at our capital structures and how we do our capital allocation, we focused on various areas here in the last 12 to 24 months, of which working capital was one. We've spoken about the reduction of that inventory-to-sales ratio. We believe that there's further benefits that we can realize within that region. And that's why we say from financial year '22 to '25, we believe that we can even lower it to an 11.5% ratio. The borrowings we spoke about for short to medium term, we've now reached our debt-to-equity target ratios. If we look at our investment in Non-RSA, the Nigeria transaction is now with the competition commission. We do believe that we will be able to complete this transaction in the second half of the financial year. We will still have -- we will still support that operation through a franchise and a services and admin agreement. Our last Kenya store closed during February. And we, as I mentioned earlier, we will treat now Kenya also as a discontinued operation at the end of June. If I then look over to future projects with regards to Non-RSA, we do not see any -- foresee any significant disposals in the short term. On property, plant and equipment, we've done the transaction with Retail Logistics Fund. And our CapEx guidance going forward, we estimate to be around 2.3% of sales. Our capital structure strategy, Pieter has spoke about the first steps that we've taken with regards to our dividend policy and our change in our payout ratio. We've always looked at organic growth. We're looking at 58 stores. And obviously, all these organic growth and acquisitions, we always compare that to our internal return on invested capital. And if we look at our surplus cash, we will also look and consider share buybacks going into the future. Thank you very much, Pieter. That then concludes my financial part of the presentation.

Thanks, Anton. It's a mouthful. I understand it, but such an esteemed audience. I know you will understand all of it. We're still finding the resources to understand IFRS 16, quite scarce. But be that as it may, thanks for that, Anton. There's a lot of detail that is put in the appendixes. And as we carry on, there's a lot of you that will have one-on-ones with us later, where we will unpack more of it. But it will help you, we believe, to prepare you -- your questions with that regard. First and foremost, I just want to say that these results would not have been possible if we, over the last few years, did not invest in digital and our information technology system. Anton said earlier the benefits that we're starting to derive from the ERP system. And if you were privy to one of our Monday meetings, you will understand what we mean. Things like inventory margin, waste shrinkage, the level that one can manage it now compared to a couple of years ago has really been a game-changer for us. So I want to start by saying the results has been greatly assisted by that investment, although it was painful at the time. We've put this slide up, I think, now for the fourth time, maybe the fifth time, just to show to you that we've not deviated from our plan. Shoprite definitely is now a more customer-centric and digitally fit company than what we were before. We've made investments to really create what we believe is a smarter Shoprite. And our focus remains to optimizing our core retail capabilities in our existing markets. And I'm not going to go through all of those 9, but just calling out what those 3 blocks mean is the smarter Shoprite, similar terminology that we've been using. And I hope to also today help you to understand what we mean by that. It's our own terminology. So I hope I can put a little bit -- shed a little bit of light on what it is, what we mean by closing the gap, that's that middle section, closing the gap in areas where we see more opportunity and then, what we say, how we're going to win in the long run. So first, customer-first culture. One of the things that made it possible for us to launch at such an incredible pace and speed the Shoprite rewards program was because of the way that the Checkers reward program was built. And we could leverage on top of that platform, didn't have to start all over. Therefore, at a record time, under 12 months, the Shoprite Xtra Savings Rewards Programme was launched, totally virtual in 825 stores with exceptional response from customers, 2 million sign-ups in the first week, equating to 450 sign-ups per minute at launch. And we had to accelerate this because as I started out with the Shoprite brand customer -- our core customer, in particularly being hit very hard with the COVID restrictions and unemployment, with low prices is what they need, savings is what they need. And we have recorded ZAR 2.1 billion in savings that we could give back to our customers in half 1 through 9,000 grocery deals every month. We now have, combined between Checkers and Shoprite, over 17 million members in our rewards program, making it by far the largest program of its nature in South Africa. And again, just going back to if we didn't invest in the systems at the time and did it in such a way that it's scalable, this would not have been possible. And last point here maybe is that all of these sign-ups have been done digitally. Memories are short. There was COVID. There was restrictions. And I don't know if all of you saw this. I would like to just show you the commercial that we did at the launch, just to show you the excitement that's there in Shoprite. It's still a big portion of our -- a major portion of our business, and we give it the attention that we think it requires. [Presentation]

Customer-first culture is not only your experience in store. It most definitely also includes the digital and data science that power personalization to help customers save more. That's what is in our blood is the low prices, the savings we give our customers. I did reference earlier the ZAR 2.1 billion that we already gave back to customers since the event of this program. So first, just by illustration is 53 -- over 53 million unique personalized offer combinations were sent to customers since March. There's a terminology for it now called Snowflakes, just illustrating that we're communicating to customers with their personal preferences. First enhancement on that is that to make it real time. So customers can now subscribe to real-time alerts on products that they prefer and at prices that they're prepared to pay for. And just another enhancement on that is now the digital till slips where customers can follow their saving and also keep their till slips electronically for guaranteed purposes of products that they've bought. In that -- over and above that, we've used our last-mover advantage in the digital space to go straight to on-demand execution with the launch of the Sixty60 1-hour, on-demand fulfillment, where we've now increased the products on offer from 5,000 to 15,000. I know that our South African audience definitely doesn't need any introduction to Sixty60. But for the preference or for our international audience, just a little bit of it. It's mobile-only. It's a 1-hour delivery service. We all know that the most difficult part in e-commerce is your last-mile delivery, it's very expensive, and also to get fresh right. So with the lockdown rules that came, we had to greatly accelerate this program. And I think of all the accolades that this have achieved and the acceptance from consumers in this, the most important for me is that it didn't come at the exorbitant cost, capital cost, and it is profitable. I think that is the best accolade I can give to the team in the way that they've executed on this. Also, just for your reference, this was the creative that supported it and mostly for our international audience that haven't seen it before. [Presentation]

So with that, it goes without saying that this program won quite a lot of awards. Why it's relevant to actually mention that is that it's not one-dimensional. It covers quite a wide variety of disciplines. And it's quite unique for a supermarket to win innovation awards. This usually goes to start-up tech companies. So I just put there for reference that it is really something that came at a time when I think nobody expected it. So well done on that. So in the past, I've used this as -- I think 5 years ago, roughly, I started to use this word precision retail. I do not think everybody grasped exactly what it is that we're after. So we've put this together, connecting the dots, basically, where we illustrate our customer data ecosystem and how we're trying to unlock new value both operationally and commercially. So if one just look at that picture, we start with it, we serve 25 million customers every month. Of them, 17 million are reward members. We sell product, physical product to them, about 7 billion products with the associated behavior and pricing that goes with that through almost 3,000 physical store outlets, combined with almost 350 million financial services transactions, which we can cross-link to other behavior in 1 billion transactions annually. We have 20 owned digital channels and currently have 7.5 million digital visitors to a non-sale digital experience. And if we put that into that data lake, if we can call it that, of 6 petabyte of information, our job at the moment is to create that data into usable information, as I referenced earlier, to help us with precision pricing, precision marketing on the individual level in real time. And you can also -- I think you will understand that the drive in this will also open additional avenues of revenue. So I thought we just put this picture together to give an illustration of what it is that modern business is driving towards. And I don't think it's unique. It's certainly a question of who does it best and most cost efficient. Just to add to that, as an example, it goes without saying that we will very soon launch our own virtual network, so in order to enhance that customer data even further. And I know you all see what the networks are doing and the quality of data that they can derive and that we add to all of those transactions, it goes without saying that we will be doing this next. In the second column that I showed on the first slide, areas where we can -- where we see opportunity to improve on is our private labels. We started 4 years ago at around about a 14% participation, now up to 17.7% participation in our private labels. Our exclusive brands, 29 of them, are now worth more than ZAR 100 million in annual sales. And sometimes, one most just put context to percentages. Private and exclusive labels in the Shoprite business is in excess of ZAR 20 billion. So one mustn't just look at the percentages. It is a sizable piece of business. In the different brands, they perform differently. The Ubrand and Usave outgrows the store 3x the Shoprite Ritebrand. There's a Ritebrand in one out of every fifth basket. And in Checkers Housebrand, 1.5x volume growth to the total store. We do believe we are winning in the fresh and premium food game, what we set ourselves out to do. The Checkers and the Hypers are still leading our growth with almost 3x ahead of the rest of the market. And what we are after is accessibility to quality and value to everybody. And that is paid for us in that we have managed to gain over ZAR 400 million of market share in the fresh and perishable in H1. There's still more opportunity, we think, in the share of stomach as people are still doing in-home dining. And we've managed to launch 191 new fresh and premium products in the last 6 months, and we will continue to do so. The innovation in this area is definitely not going to stop. And how do we achieve this? In other, we've opened 2 more of our FreshX flagship stores, Rosebank and Brackenfell. We're now at 38 out of the 80 that we target initially. And the fresh in those stores outgrows the store significantly. So then, just quickly, a little bit on the outlook, what do we see in the next 6 months, basically, and also some reference of what has happened. So firstly, I'm very happy to say that the liquor trade is back fully and according to our license agreements and conditions. Supermarkets RSA for the first 8 weeks of the second half is pretty much in line with H1. For your own reference, you know what that means. The internal inflation almost, a little bit surprisingly, have come down from 4.3% to 3.8%. Hopefully, it will assist the customers to be able to afford their necessities. We do know, and we're just alerting you to that again, that Checkers, in particular, is up against a very high base in March last year with the pantry loading. We also are noticing some green shoots in the economy, some employment, restaurants opening again. So very positive about that. We still have 39 new stores to open by June. And then I'm saying this, in particular like this, is that in addition to our organic market share growth, we still see other opportunities for Checkers in the upmarket suburbs where we're underrepresented. We have a smaller Shoprite format that is more light in capital, which we can deploy in smaller catchment areas where we are not represented. And then definitely, I've said a bit about, if one look at that ecosystem little graph, we will be leveraging our customer data in terms of product and pricing and individual offers to support our margin and give the most relevant product to our customers. We will continue to look at value-added and digital products, also through partnerships as we do realize we just cannot do everything ourselves. And we will continue to invest into our digital transformation for our customers as we know also the high penetration of smartphones in the South African market. And then above all, we will maintain our low price leadership position. That's basically on the outlook. I'm looking forward to the next 6 months working with what I believe is the finest retail management team in the country. And therefore, I'm very bullish and positive that we will be able to maintain the road that we have embarked upon. So before we go into questions, we would have loved to host you at our Brackenfell store next to our home office here. That couldn't happen. So we thought we'll just show you a little run through, very short, while you're preparing your questions. Thereafter, we'll go into the questions and answers. And I also thought, instead of me guiding you through the store, we've actually asked the actual store staff to take you through. So if you think our English is not great here in Brackenfell, bear with us. Those staff are very dedicated, love their store and would love to show you what they have to offer. So thank you. Thank you very much. [Presentation]

I hope you got a little bit of a glimpse, hopefully not too long, and that you had time to prepare your questions. Just before we start, we've decided to just compile a short list for you about what happened regarding COVID, just to assist you in terms of your model, once-off events. So if Anton can just quickly take you through that, and then we'll go straight into the questions.

Yes. Pieter, you will recall that during the third quarter, especially around the end of March, we went into that hard lockdown. So obviously, Checkers and Checkers Hyper, we saw that shift in home dining. And we also saw that benefit, especially in the Usave. You will recall that at the end of June, we showed that sales growth was around 16.9%. And then that was also supported by government grants as well as corporate and public aid. If we look at savings and with regards to especially our cost, we saw a reduction in spend, especially on our marketing and travel. We did not have any class from training during that period. That is now back on track. And we also got a benefit on that ETI of around ZAR 100 million. Furniture, we saw that working-from-home benefit also that retail sector got. If we look at tailwinds, obviously, our LiquorShops are now back to trading 7 days a week. So we'll get that benefit during the 4 remaining months. We also had that ZAR 327 million spend on COVID-related costs as well as that ZAR 324 million impairment that we took on the debtors book for Furniture. So yes, I think that's more or less what we have in the second base.

Yes. Thank you.

So Anton, if you've got some...

Yes, Pieter, I think the -- we just need to clarify the statement we made with regards to the sales and the sales growth that we see in the first 2 months of the year.

Yes. So I just said that it's in line with H1. And basically...

It's a growth rate. Yes, so I think the sentence, we just didn't clarify. It's the growth rate that we saw in the first 6 months.

Yes. The growth rate.

Yes. And then can you maybe just expand a little bit on the extra savings and the benefit it had in Shoprite?

Yes. As I mentioned, the savings that we could give back to customers amounted to ZAR 2.1 billion. Without that level of information and that precision pricing, it would not be possible to have a combination of 9,000 grocery deals a month to different customers. So I've used this terminology quite often before. A lot of people questioned me around what does it really mean when we say precision retail. And that is exactly what it means, is we understand our customer behavior, we understand when they buy, when they have money to buy. An incredible information that we're getting these days, not to scare anybody. I mean it's all protected and confidential. And it's just purely to derive the correct pricing at the correct time for what customers really want to buy. And we are just in the infancy of this. Really, this is our first year for Shoprite. We're now year 2 in Checkers. And day by day, we're actually improving the level of that information that we will continue to use to the benefit of our customers.

Okay. Then there was just a question on IT CapEx allocation. I think from the slides, we show that our capital spend is around 2.3% of sales, of which we spend around 22% on IT. So that should give you indication. And then I think the last question, Pieter, is just around when do we see that virtual network being launched.

By the end of the month. Yes.

Okay. I think the rest, we've dealt with during the presentation. Also, obviously, some of these questions came through as you were and as we were presenting. So I think we've dealt with everything.

Shall we give it another second?

Yes, we can. No.

Well, thank you all. Thanks for your attendance. We always appreciate the interest that you show in our company. We certainly hope that we have not disappointed you, and we will continue to do our best to make this a truly great company. Thank you very much.