Shoprite Holdings Ltd (SHP) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome to the results presentation for 2021 of the Shoprite Group. We are presenting today from the beautiful store here Checkers store in Brackenfell opposite our main offices. And I would be doing an introduction. I will hand over to our Chief Financial Officer, Anton de Bruyn, do a closing, and then we'll be ready for questions. 2021 has been quite a challenging year. And I want to say to you that at Shoprite, we truly love that saying of failure is not an option and hope is not a strategy. And it became quite evident recently with the unrest that we dealt with. And I'd like to quote Mr. Mandela in, "It's so easy to break down and destroy. The heroes are those who make peace and build." And that's exactly what we try to do this year. Very few of us will believe or can believe that it's now been 530 days or more since the lockdown, the first lockdown. But what we've -- we've always been good at opening stores, and what we had to learn recently is that we've become good at reopening stores. So in this week, we now have reopened 150 of the stores that was damaged by the unrest, leaving us with the odd 50 stores that was unfortunately burned as well. We believe that we must do what is right for our customers, not only what is right for us, but truly, in our unwavering commitment to our customers. And as an example of that, it's now 5 years that we are selling a loaf of bread for ZAR 5, and we've now added to that our 8-pack sanitary pads for ZAR 5. And at this point, I just want to stop before we go into the detail to thank each and every of the 140,000 Shoprite people that has once again delivered an amazing and incredible set of results in the last 12 months. And where we are today, there are no room for error, there are no room for a weak point. So I really -- my heartfelt gratitude to all my colleagues in this amazing company. Shoprite is by no means a small company, almost hitting ZAR 170 billion in sales this year, a growth of 8.1%. But one tends to not really grasp what 8% means. So if we look at the value of that, that's in excess of ZAR 12 billion of additional sales that was added to that this year. Gross profit. And I just want to remind us that gross profit is not mark up. There's a number of factors affecting gross profit. I will deal with it a little bit later as well in more detail. But just pointing it out at this junction. The gross margin has increased by 0.5% to 24.5% to ZAR 41 billion, world-class performance all around and, as I say, affected by quite a number of items which I will deal with. Trading profit now in excess of ZAR 10 billion, a meaningful number. Expenses was well controlled to below that of the revenue growth, resulting in a 20 -- over 20% growth in headline earnings per share. Sometimes memories are short. I want to just remind everybody that there was a change in dividend cover to 1.75, resulting in a 42% increase in the dividend, a record monetary dividend, which I hope our shareholders will appreciate. As we can understand from COVID, and I'm not going to mention anything around COVID related. I think we all had enough of that. But as a result of the curfew and protocols, visits is down, but basket sizes are up by about 13.6%. The importance of that is that one cannot default on your in-stock or your on-shelf availability. You cannot disappoint customers when they elect to come to you as a destination. And in there, I am very happy to say that we're running an all-time high in terms of our on-shelf availability. Very important together with that is the fact that we've managed to grow volume in excess of 3%. What makes that so relevant and important is the fact that that's almost the only tool that our manufacturers and suppliers has or have to offset their costs. And I -- the next slide, I'm going to show you the inflation. And you can see there was very little price increases. So suppliers really had to depend on the volume and the growth that we gave them, and we're happy that we contributed to their business as well. This all resulted in a market share gain of ZAR 4.5 billion on top of the ZAR 4.8 billion of last year. And critically or important for us is it wasn't a one swallow summer, it was 28 months of uninterrupted market share gains. So this African business grew by 9.3%. In years what I just referred to now is we did shield customers from price increases. And with the official food inflation at 5.4%, the year came out at 3.8%, first half 4.3% and actually, in the second half, went down to 3.4%. So without a doubt, Shoprite still retain the position as the lowest-priced supermarket in South Africa. Yes, as I just referred to now, it wasn't just a once-off or a single quarter that we benefited from. And here, we can see that the market share and the Shoprite group outgrowing the market in every single quarter of the last 8, gaining almost 1% in overall formal market share. What's very heartening about that is not purely the share gain, but the fact that the gain was across all brands. Usave, Shoprite, Checkers and Hypers, all gained market share. And in the second half, what's very heartening also is the fact that Shoprite brand have outgrown the market twofold. On the graph, it looks like Checkers got -- was reduced or reduced slightly in the second half, but that's purely to the high -- reference to the high base over the previous year. It's still 1.5x the rest of the market. Gross margin, as I mentioned earlier, is not purely -- it's not markup only. It's affected by quite a number of items. It's your supply chain. It's wastage. It's shrinkage. It's a [indiscernible]. So there's quite a number of items that goes in there. So in there, it is important to highlight that it comes with efficiencies in order to increase a gross margin. And in here, the quantifiable portion of that -- the efficiency in the supply chain was in excess of ZAR 500 million in the past year alone. And we do believe we can even achieve better results from there. Of course, a fantastic and much more precise promotion driven through the Xtra Savings Reward Program. Wastage and shrinkage was fantastically managed and continues to do so. And we still see benefits from the implementation of our SAP ERP system over a few years ago. LiquorShop. I've just put this on here. On a normalized 12-month year, that accounts for about 7% of revenue. And it's quite heartening to say that having lost 144 trading days, this segment still managed to grow positively by 4.4%. And as to be expected, the online sales have grown by more than 151%, opened 37 new stores, expect to open more in the year to come. Our Supermarkets Non-RSA segment, we still have some of the same problems that we've had in the past -- in the recent past in terms of currency devaluation and the fact that wage increases have really lagged the purchasing power from the consumer. So -- but all in all, the really call-out number here is that the profitability of that segment have grown fourfold and have met our short- to medium-term target of ZAR 300 million to ZAR 500 million, making ZAR 307 million for the year. We still managed to -- we still have the same, as we told you last time, very strict capital allocation in this segment, but I can still report that the core 10 countries that now remains in this portfolio is self-funding. And we do believe that this part or this segment of the market, and some of you refer to this as the rest of Africa, we sometime -- we talk about Non-RSA that we can maintain the profitability in this segment. Furniture, in terms of OK Furniture and House & Home, similar to other furniture retailers, we've had a very good year. There was really that once-off demand for home improvement coming out of lockdown last year and achieving very good sales growth of almost 25%. Still have 426 stores, closed net of 16 mostly in areas where we have duplicated stores in the same catchment, taking note of the fact that we still have to recover that book. We are now opening some new stores in this segment. So I think we're at the end of the store closures in the furniture side. The other business segment, what we call other operating segment. The 2 businesses that really were at the short end of the COVID was the food services -- Checkers Food Services, because of restaurants, hotels, sports clubs, et cetera closure and Computicket, goes without saying, very few large events taking place. Yet still this segment grew by 10%, very commendable, to ZAR 11.9 billion. OK Franchise, very good performance, growing 8.2%, now 536, up 513 stores and opening 36 during the last year. Transpharm and MediRite naturally have benefited, like others, customers buying more health food and health products as well as vitamins. Like any responsible corporate, sustainability is also on our agenda. So just a quick number of points to mention. Maybe you know, maybe you don't, all of our shopping bags are recycled and recyclable. We've got 146 sustainable community gardens. We've got 2,500 home gardens. Very importantly is we've got quite a strong small- and medium-sized development program, business development program, enterprise development, if you want to call it, and we now support and assist over 1,500 of such small businesses. We've got 29 mobile soup kitchens. They serve 6.5 million meals since lockdown last year. We've got 32 sites with solar panels, and we will continue to expand on that development. The growth is now in excess of 350%. We've donated ZAR 138 million of surplus foods in the last 12 months. And we've recycled more than 40,000 tons of cardboard and more than 4,300 tons of plastic. I think that just says that Shoprite is also a responsible corporate citizen. That will then now conclude my opening remarks. I'm going to hand over to Anton de Bruyn, our Chief Financial Officer, to point out some highlights from the detailed financial reporting.

Thank you, Pieter. As in the past, we've included additional information as part of the appendix. I will not deal with that information as part of my results presentation and it's there for your ease of reference. When comparing the 2021 results to that of 2020, one has to take into account 2 aspects, of which the first one is that we had a 53rd week in the current year. We follow the Julian calendar methodology of reporting, which implies that we have -- every 5 years, we have a 53rd week. We have included for your reference the sales as well as the trading profit effect of that 53rd week. And then secondly, we've discontinued some of our Non-RSA operations and had to restate our 2020 income statement. During our previous results presentation, we mentioned of our intention to exit the Nigeria. That transaction was concluded during the 23rd of May. Subsequently, we've also closed our 4 stores in Kenya. And our Ugandan operations and Madagascar operations, we've received binding offers for those 2 operations and has classified them as discontinued. We plan to exit our Uganda operations during the first half of the financial year. And then our Madagascar operations, we plan to exit around the second half of the financial year. If I therefore look at the impact of the discontinued operations on our June 2020 results, you will see that the movement in sales of merchandise that we've excluded from sales is around ZAR 1.46 billion. Our trading profit increases by ZAR 101 million. You will recall that in the previous financial year, we spoke about a ZAR 28 million loss in that segment. You will now see that the ZAR 73 million is a comparative number in our results. The full movement of this impact equates to a ZAR 414 million increase in our previous year results. If I then turn to the financial performance of the company. We managed to increase sales by 8.1% to ZAR 168 billion. I will unpack the sales according to the segments and the brands later in my presentation. Gross margin increased by 24% to 25% -- to 24.5%. Pieter has spent a lot of time in unpacking the gross margin. Other operating income increased by 13.6% to ZAR 2.6 billion, and that was really driven through our premiums income in our Furniture business, which increased sales of 24.6%. We also had our media services through our ShopriteX app that generated additional revenue streams and then the increase in our delivery recoveries through our Sixty60 operations as well as our Furniture business. Interest revenue decreased by ZAR 53 million, and that was really on the back of a reduction in -- or a decline in our interest from our government bonds that we have in Angola. During the year, we managed to reduce that exposure from ZAR 2.5 billion to ZAR 1.5 billion. Total expenses increased by 6.7% to ZAR 34 billion. And that was really driven by the 9.2% in the second half. The second half comes from a low base as a result of the lockdown we had in 2020 financial year, was really driven through the increase through our YES program, Youth Employment Scheme program, as well as our saving on advertising costs that we had during that period. Excluding the impact of COVID-related costs, our expense growth is 7.1%. Just comparing the COVID-related costs year-on-year. The previous year, we spent ZAR 327 million, and you will recall that we had ZAR 101 million of appreciation bonus to our staff included in that number. And then in 2021, we spent a net ZAR 234 million. Looking at employee benefits increased by 8.5% compared to the previous year 6.2%, and the main drivers there was obviously the increase in our staff members, where we created new jobs of 3,297 new staff members and we had also additional training during the year and then we're very proud with the new staff that we employed as part of that Youth Employment Scheme during the financial year. Depreciation and amortization increased by 7.3%, and that was really driven by the impact of the increase of 29% on our depreciation charge, on our right-of-use assets, and we had a decline of 7% in our depreciation from our normal PPE. Other operating expenses increased by 7%, mainly driven through our advertising costs that increased by 24%. Our maintenance expenses had increased by 5.7% as well as our increase in security costs. If I then look at trading profit increased by 24.9% to ZAR 10.3 billion at a trading margin of 6.1%. I will deal with that on a later slide. Exchange rate losses was ZAR 27 million in the year, coming from a high base of ZAR 566 million in the previous year. Our exchange rates closed at ZAR 14.50 in the current year. And if I look at where we were last year during the COVID period, our rand went at over -- we closed our financial year at over ZAR 17 to the rand. So our hedging strategy has really kicked in and gave rise to that profitability. The current year, we had exchange rate movements and losses in Zambia as a result of the devaluation of 32% in Angola. And in Zambia, we had that 48% currency devaluation. Our U.S. dollar-linked government bonds acts currently as a natural hedge and basically covers our ForEx exchange movements. Items of capital nature really stayed in line with previous year of ZAR 0.8 billion. We had impairments again of ZAR 1.1 billion. What's really driven by the ZAR 477 million that we saw from our hyperinflation adjustment, the loss of -- or the impairment of ZAR 1.1 billion was offset by the ZAR 160 million profit on our Aequitas transaction as well as the sale of other assets. If we then compare our effective tax rate, you will recall during our previous results presentation, we had an effective tax rate of 34%, currently showing at 31.4% after it's been restated. And that really shows the impact of our impairments as well as the impact on tax on these loss-making regions. I still believe that our effective tax rate should be between 30% to 31%, and I believe we should reach that next year. Diluted HEPS from continued operations increased by 20.1% to ZAR 9.525, and adjusted diluted HEPS to ZAR 8.838. I will deal with the unpacking of the adjusted HEPS in the next slide. Our dividend declared for the full year was ZAR 5.44, for the second half or final dividend of ZAR 3.53. As Pieter mentioned, we've had a change in our dividend policy, giving rise to that 42% increase. If I compare our return on invested capital to previous year, currently showing a 12.4% increase from the 9.7% in the previous year, and that was mainly driven by the settlement of our U.S. dollar debt. If I then turn to the unpacking of the diluted HEPS. Where we left you last time at our results presentation in June, we had a space of ZAR 7.658. But then look at the impact and the increase of that ZAR 440 million on the discontinued operations gave rise to ZAR 0.276 increase, giving us that ZAR 7.934 as a base price. Our discontinued operations had a loss in the previous year, profit in the current year, bringing ourselves to a diluted HEPS, including our discontinued operations at ZAR 9.732. If we then look at comparing year-on-year without any abnormalities, that's what we tried to do with the adjusted diluted HEPS. We take out our -- impact of our foreign exchange movements, the impact of hyperinflation, where we saw -- see that depreciation as well as the gross margin impact. And then something new we've added this year is the impact of IFRS 16 with lease modifications and terminations, where we've seen that movement as well. The related income tax effect on those movements needs to be taken into account, and that's why we sit with the adjusted diluted HEPS from continuing operations of ZAR 8.838. Turning then to sales growth per segment and brand. Our total sales for the year was 8.1%. And if I look at our 52-week comparison, it's 5.9%. Our Supermarkets RSA business for the full year grew at 9.3%; on a like-for-like 52% -- 52-week percentage was 6.9%. During the year, from a Supermarkets RSA point of view, we opened a net 87 stores and really saw a strong growth in the second half with 60 store openings. Excluding the impact of liquor, our Supermarkets RSA business would have grown at 9.7%, and we had space growth of 2.7%. Turning then to the various brands. We saw an increase of 10.9% in the Checkers and Checkers Hyper brand. Again, on a 52-week basis, that equates to 8.4%. Checkers grew at 10.8%, where the Checkers Hyper brand grew at 11.1%. The growth in these brands really was attributable to the growth we've seen from our fresh offering, where we now have 41 FreshX stores. We saw an increase in our on-demand Sixty60, where we now trade from 233 stores and also the 7.6 million sign-ups on our rewards program. If we look at Shoprite and Usave, that business grew at 8.8%. On a 52-week basis, it was 8.4%, with Shoprite really giving a strong performance of 8.9% and Usave 7.4%. Again the growth in Shoprite is also driven through our launch of our rewards program during October of 2020 where we now have more than 12.7 million in sign-ups. As Pieter referred to previously, I think somewhere we -- some -- we are very proud of our liquor business. When we presented last time in December, we were growing at minus 21.8%. And we ended the year on a full growth of 4.2%. I think what's also encouraging is that we plan to open another 47 stores in the next year. We then turn to Non-RSA, it's now restated. Last year, we had a minus 8.8%. This year, we show a decline of 7.5%; on a 52-week basis, 9.5%. In Angola, we had a 27% decline in sales, again, really driven through the decline in our exchange rates and really putting pressure on affordability in the customers. Zambia had a very strong performance from a local currency point of view, but that 48% currency devaluation had a negative impact on that growth. Looking at the other regions, we are really satisfied with that growth, and it supported that trading profit increase on the prior year. Furniture, 24.6% against a base where we had the lockdowns during the fourth quarter and on a 52-week basis, 22.1%. Our credit participation declined from 13.3% to 12.6%. Our South African business from a furniture point of view grew in excess of 27%, where we closed a net 15 nonprofitable stores. And then Non-RSA, we closed 1 store, and we had growth of around 14%. Other operating segments that consist of our franchise business, our MediRite and Transpharm business as well as our CFS and Computicket business grew revenue by 10% and on a 52-week basis, 9.2%. If I then turn to trading profit by segment. For the full year, we grew 24.9% to ZAR 10.3 billion. On a 52-week basis, that equates to 20.9% and I'll leave it -- that's a trading margin of 6.1%. Supermarkets RSA had a very strong performance, increasing on a 53-week basis by 17.2% and a trading margin of 7%, which compares very well to our first half result of 6.5% and also the prior year of 6.6%. That growth was really driven through the strong gross margin we spoke about earlier as well as the excellent expense management in the group. Restated Supermarkets Non-RSA, as I mentioned previously, we showed that loss of 28%. Now with the discontinued added back, it's a base of ZAR 73 million increased to ZAR 307 million. And what was also encouraging was our increase in gross margin through -- in our Non-RSA segment. Furniture, from a base of a loss of ZAR 15 million included an impairment last year in terms of IFRS 9 of ZAR 324 million. The provision last year, which we based our debtors book on, was around 50.5%. That improved this year to 45.9%, which helped us to also -- and part of the profit that we show there is a write-back on the debtors book. Other operating segments had a slight decline. Our franchise business had a strong growth, and it grew in line with our sales growth. And we had a softer MediRite trading profit for the year. Hyperinflation, we still sit with a ZAR 770 million hyperinflation asset and the ZAR 49 million is linked to the depreciation on that hyperinflation adjustment. So our trading profit from continuing operations are therefore ZAR 10.3 billion. If I look at net finance costs increased by 16.1% to ZAR 2.8 billion, and that was really driven by the increase in our IFRS 16 finance costs on lease liabilities, where we saw the Aequitas transaction in the current year, and that really gave rise to that increase of just over 29%. Our interest received on our bank balances reduced from ZAR 443 million to ZAR 268 million. And one has to take into account the reduction in interest rates where we saw between 2.5% to 3% impact. Finance cost on borrowings reduced from ZAR 966 million to ZAR 624 million. I would just like to remind you, we talked about it in the first half as well, there was a once-off cost of ZAR 178 million of breakage costs included in that ZAR 624 million relating to the settlement of our U.S. dollar debt during the first half. But from a borrowings point of view, we also benefited from the lower interest rates. If I then turn to the composition of the balance sheet. For ease of reference, we've compared the 2020 and the 2021 results as well as matching the assets with the liabilities. If I then start with property, plant and equipment, we saw a reduction of ZAR 3.9 billion during the current year. And that was really as a result of the sale of our 3 distribution centers and the Aequitas transaction in the retail logistics fund. We can see that there we also have that increase in our right-of-use asset. If I compare that to the lease liability, you will see that in line with the right of use, we increased by 19%. Comparing intangible assets remained in line. And then our cash and cash equivalents and loans receivable decreased from ZAR 14.3 billion to ZAR 9.9 billion. But what is more meaningful is that we managed to reduce our debt from ZAR 14.1 billion to ZAR 6.5 billion. That was a reduction of ZAR 433 million that was settled during the first half of the year. Inventories declined slightly, and our accounts are payable as well. But what we need to take into account is as a result of the closure after or before the 4th of July, we made an additional payment from a creditors point of view. And if you really want to compare like-for-like you need to increase that accounts payable by around ZAR 4.7 billion. Other assets remained in line with previous year, and that is a combination of our deferred tax assets, our investment now in Aequitas of around ZAR 2 billion as well as our trade and other receivables. If we then turn to capital expenditure. Our capital expenditure remained in line with previous year. And that was a combination of a conscious decision taken by management, not to incur additional expenditure during the year as well as landlords that couldn't finalize their projects as a result of COVID. We spent ZAR 3 billion of that ZAR 3.2 billion in RSA. And our capital expenditure as a percentage of sales is 2%. We did give guidance that we would spend ZAR 4.8 billion. But as I mentioned, certain aspects had to be taken into account and hence our ZAR 3.2 billion spending. We had a lagging effect of around ZAR 0.5 billion. And then if I look at our guidance for next year, it includes a POS upgrade -- a point-of-sale upgrade of close to ZAR 300 million. The project is or will be done over 2 years, and we will see additional expenditure also in our 2023 financial year. If we then look at how we spend our capital, this is really in line with our capital expenditure strategy. We've communicated in the past that we will expend less on investing in our own buildings and leasehold improvements and that we will focus more on investing in organic growth through new stores as well as our IT expenditure. And this picture really shows for us what we've achieved during the year. We've seen a decline in building and leasehold improvements from 18.7% to 9.3%. We saw organic growth through our new stores from 12.5% to 23.6% as well as our store refurbishment program to keep our stores relevant. IT expenditure, we said we will increase in years to come. If we look at our projects like the rewards program as well as our on-demand delivery that was implemented during the financial year. Inventory remains a huge focus area for the business. We managed to reduce our inventory levels by ZAR 400 million. And what is very satisfactory for us about this result is that we did not sacrifice on our in-stock levels to our customers, and we managed to increase our gross margin. For ease of reference, I've also referred or given you an analysis of our inventory to sales per segment. Our target or guidance that we gave you during our results presentation was a 12% target. We delivered 11.2% and that was really driven by our strong performance in sales during June. Our guidance for next year is around 11.5%. The slight increase from 11.2% to 11.5% is really driven by the strong sales store opening program that we have set ourselves for 2023 or 2022. Supermarkets RSA business, sitting at stock levels of around ZAR 14.4 billion. And as a percentage of inventory to sales, that's 11%. Our Supermarkets Non-RSA business reduced stock by or inventory by ZAR 1 billion. And that was really, as part of our strategy, to source more locally. And also what was satisfactory about this result was that we saw an increase in gross margin in our Supermarkets Non-RSA business. Furniture and the other segments remained in line with the previous year. We then turn to net gearing. We changed -- or we went from a net borrowings position of ZAR 1.9 billion to a net cash position of ZAR 1.45 billion. Our total cash at the end of the day was ZAR 6.7 billion. And one has to take into account I've mentioned the trade payables of ZAR 4.7 billion, but we must also take into account that there were additional tax payments already in the current or the preclosure. Taking that ZAR 5.9 billion into account would have left us with over ZAR 12 billion cash position if we had to compare that to the ZAR 10 billion of the previous year. I've mentioned the reduction in our U.S. dollar debt from $433 million to $68 million, and that $68 billion, we really see as working capital. We have, in the first half of the year, a ZAR 1 billion term facility that is maturing, and we will renew that. Currently, our borrowings as a ratio to equity is sitting at 24.9%. And that is very much in line with the range of 25% to 30% that we set ourselves as a target. The lease liabilities in terms of IFRS 16 increased to ZAR 27.7 billion, giving us a net debt position of ZAR 26.3 billion. If I then turn to the waterfall chart on our cash flows. We have, in the past, communicated and said that we are confident that the group can generate between ZAR 5 billion and ZAR 6 billion of cash every year. This year was no exception. Although we say -- although the cash flow shows that we had a net cash decrease of ZAR 2.4 billion, one has to take into account various once-off items. We talked about the settlement of the debt in U.S. dollar debt of ZAR 5.9 billion. I've referred you to the trade payable and tax cutoff, that was another ZAR 5.9 billion. Then we did underspend on CapEx, and we did have the proceeds on the disposals of our 3 distribution centers. So on a normalized reporting, we would have seen that we've got that 5.7% -- ZAR 5.7 billion of cash generation. Pieter has referred to the process action. Obviously, that will have a post balance sheet impact on our results. So I will deal with and give you some clarity of how that will impact our first half results of 2022. During the period, we had 231 stores impacted, of which 148 already opened by the 22nd of August. That leaves us with a delta of 83, of which 47 stores were burned and 36 stores were looted. That is not opened yet. Pieter referred to that 53 stores that were burned. There are 6 stores that we will not open again and the looted stores will open as we obviously can restock them. Just look at the relevance between -- of the burned stores. There were 15 Shoprite and 17 Usave as well as the 2 Checkers Hyper stores in Natal. And then from a looted store point of view, there were 16 liquor stores not opened yet. If I then look at the impact it will have on our H1 results. Pieter will refer to the impact on sales as part of his outlook statement. We have to distinguish between costs that we incurred as a result of having our precautionary measures. Those costs, we will not be able to claim from an insurance point of view. And then the stores that were burned and looted that we closed, those we will be able to claim from SASRIA. If I look at the additional costs we incurred was obviously security cost to protect our assets. We also had additional waste that we estimate around ZAR 50 million. And then we kept 3,500 staff employed during this period on the impacted stores. Just to give you an indication of our insurance claim. Obviously, our capital and stock losses are insured through SASRIA. The group is sufficiently insured for these losses. We have already submitted our initial claims. And to date, we have received one payment. From a loss of profits and loss of rental point of view, we have third-party insurance to cover that. And obviously, as and when we're in a position to submit those claims, we will then move over to settlement. If we then just reflect on the last 24 to 36 months on what we committed as a management team, our working capital improvements, we've seen that improvement in our inventory levels, the ratio to sales. We've also seen South Africa already sitting or the RSA Supermarket segment already at 11% ratio. Our borrowings, we've reduced our U.S. dollar debt borrowings to $68 million, which we see as trade funding. From a capital expenditure point of view, we've given you a target of ZAR 4.8 billion for the 2022 financial year. We will have to incur additional capital to rebuild our stores in KwaZulu-Natal and central Gauteng as a result of that protest action, but that will be offset by the insurance claim from a cash flow point of view. Then in closing, our capital allocation strategy. To improve our return on invested capital, from a Non-RSA review point of view, we've dealt with the discontinued operations, and we do not see further material changes in the short term. We have started with a share buyback program. In the current year, we've done around ZAR 500 million, which we continued into the new financial year. And then from an acquisition point of view, we've said to the market our intentions to buy those various businesses in Massmart. Thank you, Pieter. That is our analysis of our financial results and back to you.

Thank you, Anton. I hope you all understood that with hyperinflation and IFRS 16 accounting is not the same it used to be. In terms of business continuation, we've basically shown you these for the last 4 years. This same slide. The 2 that has changed are 8 and 9. The real need for future talent in terms of where we are in our journey now and the leverage of our existing business. So I will deal with it in the same order as that we have it there on the screen. So we continue to invest in a smarter Shoprite. We focus on optimizing our core retail capabilities in our existing markets. And we've got these 3 buckets. Firstly, there's a smarter Shoprite with those 3 priorities, closing the gap in the key segments and winning in the long term. And I will just very quickly unpack it, just to refresh your memory really what we're trying to achieve. So first here is our truly customer-first culture. It is #1 priority and very fortunate and happy to report that the Xtra Savings Reward Program by far the largest of its kind, and over 20 million customers now having saved ZAR 5.3 billion in the last year at till point, which is what customers expect, and we'll keep on delivering on what they expect us to do. By way of example, we have the graph there that says the customer heartbeat, that comes from basically information from 1,500 swipes a minute, powering this whole notion of the smarter Shoprite. And what you see there basically is frequency and value of shop. And it just helps us to deliver better what our customers expect us to deliver. Developing future channels. Also maybe one extra 1 here, but we're still focusing on driving the food theater typical to what we have in the store. Our target is still at the 80 of the FreshX as we call them. And we're definitely going to try and accelerate that program this year. Then we have the smaller formats, closer to home in there from franchise, the OK Express, the smallest Shoprite, the small Checkers. And then also, maybe we can add the Usave limited assortment. Then really, the eKasi container store is where we really take low prices to the people. We don't expect them to come to us. We take it to them. And what we can add now is another distribution channel, which is the online micro fulfillment, which I will share some detail now. And what the digital flows into is that we do believe and that plays to leveraging of our existing business. We have 81 million monthly customer visits to our stores, and that allows us to on-sell and give them additional services. And for us, it's what we -- where we used to be in terms of a race for space. We now call it a race for reach. And also good that we have over 15 million eyeballs digital -- on our digital real estate per month, giving us more speed in this race for reach. The Sixty60, as part of their development, I think a lot of you are quite knowledgeable on this already, it is the #1 on-demand 1-hour grocery delivery innovation in the country with more than 1.5 million app downloads. We're currently live in 233 sites. You might ask, but why not all. It's not necessary to be live in all stores to reach the same catchment. So it's a bit of that. And what is always very pleasing about new innovation is the fact that it allows one to create additional employment in the form of over 3,500 jobs for the Sixty60 innovation alone. But we are still very conscious of our traditional way of doing business and market. So we still do over 1,200 catalog promotions, but now is supplemented by personalized offers. And this year, in the Checkers market alone, there is over 750 million personalized as we call them snowflakes. And it's also attempt to us to reduce and avoid the marketing spillage that we have on traditional catalogs. Closing the gap in key segments, there's that middle part that I referred to. 4 years ago, we were at 14% participation with private labels. Now at 18.3%, and there's still headroom for that in the medium future or yes. In terms of Fresh, very happy to report that still gained some market share in the Fresh of over ZAR 204 million in the Checkers market. And the innovation around Simple Truth, very happy to say that, that recorded double-digit growth, and we also added to that our own developments around plant-based protein and products. To complement that, we have launched together with our Michelin star Chef Jan, there's a premium forage and feast range. Great acceptance from the market, have done really well. And we're still nourishing our partnerships also that you would see around me here where we believe that customers expect a different choice. And we're also truthful enough to acknowledge that we are not the best everything that we do. Therefore, we form these partnerships. And also, the time to market that we win by doing that. We've mentioned that before. I've had more examples before, but I'll stick to what was already delivered in terms of alternate -- alternative revenue streams, purely because we have the core business, and I have something just later to explain that, how we view that, but we've launched our virtual cellphone network. Our OUTsurance partnership is really, really performing well, and there is still a lot of runway for us in terms of more product, and then also very excited about the money market account, more of that towards the end of the year. We will definitely keep you informed of how that develops, but already a couple of hundred thousand account members on that platform. Then the latest is the creation of the digital innovation hub called ShopriteX, really driving and accelerating our digital transformation. In there, we want the best of data tech and talent to help create us a smarter Shoprite. It's really explaining really what it's all about. Currently, the focus is on e-commerce and the digital customer experience, the data science and customer insights and, of course, the one I mentioned now, personalization and the promotional effectiveness. The one that changed #8, future-fit talent. Now Shoprite is the largest private employer in the country, almost 140,000, as we call them, team members, and in the past year created almost 4,000 new jobs. What was pleasing is that Shoprite was voted the #1 Graduate Employer of Choice in the retail sector. And we hope to be able, with also the ShopriteX and some of the innovations and our technology platforms that we have invested on that we'll be able to attract some really seriously good talent. Maybe just worth mentioning also, it's not so high profile, but in terms of the YES program, Shoprite has also been selected as highest impact employment creator through the YES program. And here, over 12% of the people that have been trained in this program have received permanent employment within Shoprite, all with some of our SME development suppliers. When we refer to leveraging of our existing platform, firstly, by far the largest customer base over 1 billion transactions in a year. We've got 17 -- and that was the second slide that I started off with, 17 very powerful and trusted retail brands, almost 3,000 stores in physical locations, where 80% of the population live within 5 kilometers of one of our outlets. And a really strong unrivaled supply chain, the know-how around it. And what this just do is it creates enormous amount of opportunities, which we will explore. In terms of just how we see our landscape, it looks maybe a little bit busy, but most important here is to see that the core is still our traditional grocery retail business. That's what generates the cash, and that is what allow us to do all of these investment around it in what we call our ecosystem, where we -- our aim is to create more value for customers. That's all that it is. We can add a number of logos and partners in the -- it is just a principle to say to you, this is how we view it and that we have this, what we just call, an ecosystem, and we fit those in a block when we decide to invest. So what are we looking at is mostly in the short term. I preempt basically some questions that you're going to ask me anyway. So here's just some short-term measures that we think is going to be achieved. So firstly, in our Non-RSA or you say, Rest of Africa business, we expect to sustain that profitability that we've achieved now. That was the short-term goal. We achieved it, and we will now build further on that. The South African internal price inflation for July went up to 3.9% from the 6-month 3.4%. Despite the impact of the unrest, the momentum in the sales growth currently is in excess of that. For the unaffected stores, they're still maintaining very good momentum and volume growth. I did mention how important volume growth is and especially in an environment where the price increases is lower than what the official food inflation is. Furniture is a little bit different. Furniture has been impacted a little bit more. Firstly, with a high base of last year where I mentioned that out of lockdown that people did a lot of home improvement. So the base is high. And secondly, they were negatively affected with the unrest. So slightly slower momentum there. The MassCash transaction, that should add about -- roughly about ZAR 10 billion of revenue in a 12-month period -- in a full 12-month period. We are optimistic that we will be able to seamlessly integrate that business into ours. It's pretty much up our alley. The business is highly cash generative with a very strong balance sheet. So putting us in a very strong position to grow the business further. We are definitely actively assessing acquisitions in South Africa with that ecosystem that I just explained in mind to bring value to our customers. We are very optimistic about our opportunities in digital as well as on our customer momentum, while we have the focus to become Africa's #1 retailer in terms of accessibility, affordability and innovation. We'll now be showing you a short video of the ShopriteX, just to give you a glimpse of that. And then we'll be able to go into questions thereafter. Thank you. [Presentation]

Thank you very much for all your questions. Pieter, I think the first one we're going to go to is Gary from [indiscernible]. So I think it's just explaining the Massmart transaction and also talk about the rebranding and how do you see the brands?

Yes. I think the benefit that we have is that we have multiple formats, different sizes. And we can customize that to those specific catchments. It's not new to us. Those are catchments where we are used to trade. It is not a foreign concept for us. And I do believe that we'll be able to quite easily integrate that into the existing business.

Great. Thanks. We just had a question from Chris Gilmour around market share and how you think about market share and from whom we're taking market share.

We don't get individual market share from individual brands. So it is, firstly, former market that is important to note. And it's our second year with quite a substantial growth in market share last year, ZAR 4.8 billion; this year, 4.3 -- ZAR 4.5 billion, sorry. And we still see some headway there, definitely. If we look at the Checkers brand, in particular, there is still a lot of growth in there. I mean it's basically sub-15%. So I do believe we can add some substantial market share growth still to come. We're definitely not at the end of that. And we are also now trying new formats, different concepts, different market segments where we didn't play as hard as we did in the past. So I do expect some market shares to increase.

So I think that's been a good lead into the old question around rush or that we've got here across the road. So maybe just explain on that a little bit.

Yes. The more important thing about the innovation is that we just want to show that we are serious about innovation. We can do it. We understand technology. It's not to say that, that concept is now going to change the world. I mean we all know that's a very small segment of the market, but we need to work with technology. We need to deploy technology in various formats. It's not to say that it needs to end up in a cashier-less store. That's -- there's other applications for that same technology, which we're going to definitely deploy.

Okay. Thank you very much. There's been a few questions on the ROIC. There is a separate calculations in the appendix on how we look at ROIC and how we calculate. So I refer you to that. Then Chris had another question just on the Furniture. I think Pieter dealt with that as part of his outlook statement. Pieter, maybe also if you can look at or answer maybe how do we think about private label. And what do you see as future growth possibilities there?

Yes. As I -- I mean, from 14% to over 18% now, the next immediate target would be 20%. I just want to say again how we look at private labels. It's not -- we don't just look at what are the top items in terms of volume and then we put it in a private label. It's first and foremost important that we get category growth when you introduce the private label. So that's how we look at it, but there's definitely still room for an increased participation in there. We now have -- if my memory is serving me right, we have now over 8 private label brands in excess of ZAR 100 million value in a year. So there's definitely very good market acceptance in those Simple Truth [indiscernible] fees amongst a few.

Okay. Great. Then there was a question on the buyback. We've done around ZAR 800 million of the share buyback program. And if we look at the future of that, obviously, it's in line with our capital allocation model, and we will also look at the internal valuation or intrinsic value of the group. Our average price, we -- the mandate, we agreed with the Board was around the mid-150s. So that's currently what we did. So yes, obviously, we'll follow our capital allocation program. Then just, there was a question around acquisitions and how we look at acquisitions in the market, and is there a lot of opportunities. Maybe you can expand on that a little bit?

Yes. Twofold is the digital space. Of course, one has to judge the speed at which you do this because we need to grow as the market grow with us. The whole COVID notion have changed people's view around online. So there are 2 parts. That's the consumer part, and then there's also the -- call it, the Intel part around the personalization and customer trends, et cetera. So -- and I'm referring back again to the fact that we have this 81 million customers every month. We have the extra savings program that tells us a lot about customer behavior. And with the 2 of that, that helps us to look at the digital space. And on the other hand, there's also still traditional physical stores. And as I mentioned, the markets that we're now entering, where we didn't play as big or as hard as before, and there is definitely opportunity for some acquisitions.

Thank you. Then David from Investec. You spoke about debt or borrowings. You will recall that we've got those 4 ZAR 1 billion facilities. The one is up for renewal or in the first half of this financial year. As mentioned in my presentation, we will roll that. It's in line with our borrowings to equity ratio. It's currently still in line with that 25% to 30% target ratio. So we will renew that facility. I think, Pieter, then maybe if you can just -- there's quite a few questions on the Rest of Africa business. I think 1 or 2 questions around why did we exit Uganda or why are we planning to exit Uganda and Madagascar? And how do you think about the other regions?

Yes. I think we've reached now the 10 core countries that we -- that's now remaining in the Rest of Africa, we think it's enough of a segment to be meaningful and be profitable. I want to refer back again that profitability of return increased fourfold. And that's the primary reason is as we looked at the investments, and if we didn't think that we're going to achieve the required return on investment, we can't just keep on investing and use the African money to subsidize one of the non-RSA countries. So that's why we made the decisions to exit some of these. But I do think we're now at a fairly solid core and that they can sustain their profitability out of that core set of markets.

Then we just had a question also on the diluted HEPS calculation for the 52 weeks. We shared with you the trading profit impact for the 52 weeks. You're right for -- you can basically apply all the other ratios in terms of finance cost and ForEx. And we also share with you the average number of shares, so right, you can basically calculate it from that point of view. I think, Pieter, then the last question, I think it really is just around gross margin. We had that strong performance on gross margin. And how do you see the impact of the rewards program on our gross margin?

Okay. So -- yes, we always get that question, can gross margin go up even further. It's been a very, very good number. So firstly, I just want to remind everybody that because of the unrest and that the revenue is now not going to be in for the year, but the profit line is going to come in once we get the insurance payments. So the trading margin is probably going to be a little bit higher, but not gross profit. So I just want to separate the two. And then in terms of management of gross profit, that's where the personalization is actually one of the tools that we believe we can reduce unnecessary markdowns because it is so personalized and specific. And you will recall, I mentioned there in the past year, Checkers alone because they've now been 12 months in there running on that excess savings that more than ZAR 750 million personalized offer. So I do believe in time to come, that will actually support a more consistent gross margin.

Okay. Thanks. I think you did deal with the sales trends post our financial year-end. So I think maybe I'm going to leave you -- leave that question. If you can maybe just reiterate basically what you said in the outlook...

Yes. I mean sales momentum is good. The stores that have not been burned. I want to say again how impressed I have been with the Shoprite people in terms of executing, having been able to open stores that was completely destroyed in as short as 6 days. Those ones that we haven't opened are just purely because they are damaged to that level where we have to wait for landlords, et cetera, permits, permission to rebuild. You did mention that 6 is not going to open again. So barring those stores, the sales momentum is very good. And I -- yes, we hope that, that will pull through to the end of the year. Maybe I can just mention preempting that about the -- currently the world movement of containers and stock is a bit of a problem. It's general merchandise in our life. So it's less than 10% of revenue that gets affected. Fortunately, for us, 2 weeks ago, number of ports opened again, and I see that the odd 700 containers is almost here. So I was a little bit worried that we might run a bit short on Christmas stock, but so far so good. And the other one, in terms of we talk about gross margin is the fact that containers costs have gone from an odd $1,000 to as much as $20,000 per 20-foot container because of the shortage of containers currently globally. So that's a little bit also one that plays a bit on the gross margin. But yes, momentum is good.

I think we're more or less done then with -- so there are additional questions which we will answer, but I think that then concludes our session for today.

Great. Thanks, Anton. Thanks for everybody for attending. I hope we met with your expectations, and we will continue to try and do that. Thank you.