Spur Corporation Ltd (SUR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

A warm welcome to all our franchisees, international franchise partners, investors, business associates and shareholders. I would like to acknowledge our Board of Directors and our Spur Corp executives who have worked in unison to guide and inspire us to deliver the results you'll see today. In my fourth year with the group, I would like to personally thank Mike Bosman, our main Board Chair for his continued wisdom and direction. Mike, thanks for your astute and meaningful support on all the solutions we consider and the opportunities we explore, we are truly blessed to have you at the helm of Spur Corp. Welcome to our most valued lady, our RemCo Committee Chair, Dr. Shirley Zinn, who is also present this morning. I also welcome some newcomers to our leadership team. our recently appointed Chief Information Officer, Paul Casarin, welcome Paul, and our new business manager, Ervine Kekana. I would like to express my thanks to all the executives and leaders and the Spur Corp team members in all the regions who have demonstrated their commitment to our business and through their passion and hard work have worked closely with our network to deliver the results you are about to review. Finally, my acknowledgment goes to our valued customers who continue to vote for us by stepping entire restaurants daily, as our dedicated franchisees and their restaurant teams a way to offer them a great dining experience. This morning, it gives me great pleasure to officially open the presentation of our fiscal '24 half 1 results for the 6-month period from July to December 2023. Cristina Teixeira, our CFO, will present the financial and segmental reviews after market and trading overview. Cristina, welcome. We will end the presentation today with the opportunity to engage with our viewers and address any further questions. Fiscal '24, H1 represents the first 6 months of what we have termed our next 3-year growth life cycle, as outlined last year. At the start of this new growth cycle, we recognize the importance of a game-changing strategy to transition from a period of repair to a season of reinvention. Considering the sobering reality of our current economy, this new growth season required fresh ways of thinking, smart decision-making, and brave and resilient leadership. We are blessed to have that from our leaders and teams. Investec and Deloitte have reported that while South African's -- South Africa's GDP growth is forecast to double in the year ahead. This 1% growth is still inadequate to address our socioeconomic challenges. As a result, the high interest rate and the weakening rand are impacting consumer sentiment and economic prospects. The global arena shaped by geopolitical tensions, supply chain issues and political uncertainty is also placing pressure on the African countries in which we trade. Furthermore, many analysts have dubbed the 2024 year as the super election year with more than 60 nations globally holding their elections this year and the SA election date finally set for the 29th of May. Amid this difficult trading environment, we are over joy to report the results for the fiscal '24 H1 period, considering the high growth reported the previous year. Spur Corp's total group restaurant sales of ZAR 5.4 billion increased by 10.4% Group revenue increased by 15.2% and comparable profit before tax increased by 14.5%. Pleasingly comparable headline earnings per share increased by 17.7%. The Board has approved and declared a dividend for the fiscal '24 half 1 reporting period at ZAR 0.95 per share to shareholders. Effective first of December, following the Competition Commission's approval, we concluded the Doppio Collection deal. For this reporting period, the Doppio Collection brands only traded for 1 month, so restaurant sales included here over the month of December 2023. So if we look at the numbers, excluding the Doppio Collection, group sales increased by 9%. Group revenue increased by 13.5% and profit before tax increased by 12.9%. Numbers with the 1 month excluding the Doppio sales shown in the sand color. We now move on to the trading overview. Brands that lead the experience, a mission that is at the core of our business model through refinements, strategic thinking and innovation, we continue to assess all customer touch points so that our brands remain relevant and appealing. The group continues to offer a high standard of family dining experience for our customers, supported by robust marketing activity to ensure that our brands maximize awareness and engagement. Our clearly articulated strategic road map was outlined for the business in January '21. And as for the past 7 reporting cycles, delivered results while still gaining momentum, allowing us to trade successfully and win in this volatile market. Brand dominance and performance supported by best-in-class marketing activity ensured our customers remain loyal and return regularly. Supply chain efficiencies have been secured despite the challenges experienced such as the egg shortages and strain chicken supply due to the avian flu. Our supply chain teams have worked closely with our suppliers locally and internationally to secure strategic product lines and keep our franchisees in-stock always. Employee experience is evident in an improved communication channel now with internal online comms platforms, our own internal podcast and more. And our commitment to people first with leadership development and programs to prepare people for their ongoing careers with us. The transformation journey of leading for the greater good started with small steps, and now it's a reality in our organization, evident in real measures such as a shift to strong female leadership. We now have female leaders in regional operation position, corporate communications, we have female leaders as brand managers, creative heads, insight managers, environmental sustainability managers. We have females in executive roles such as the COO of Spur, the CMO for the group, and the CFO for the group. It is encouraging to see the drive for gender equality in the franchise network with the growth in portfolios of black female franchisees, particularly in the RocoMamas brand and Panarottis. We have demonstrated the strength and ability to build relationships and strategic partners with many of our stakeholders to work together for the co-creation of innovation and future possibilities. As we announce, performance measures of this past period, you will see further evidence of this business strategy unfolding for a sustainable future. We continue to lead as the largest casual dining restaurant group with 687 outlets trading across South Africa and across 14 other African countries as well as Mauritius and the Middle East. With the recent acquisition of Doppio Collection, the group now trades with 10 well-established and diverse brands, including one of South Africa's most iconic family restaurant brand Spur. The group's core competency in casual dining and hospitality remains its strategic competitive advantage in the restaurant industry on the African continent. At the close of the reporting period, we had 92 restaurants in the international market. The Spur brand is the foundation, brand and mother brand of the company represents 49% of the restaurant count and 69% of the group's South African restaurant sales. This was followed by Panarottis and RocoMamas, which each represent 17% and 6%, respectively, of the restaurant count. Our speciality portfolio now represents 11% of the restaurant count and 7% of restaurant sales. International restaurants remain at 10% of the group. The group's network development strategy introduced in 2021, the R8 model, focuses on restaurant revamped, relocation and revival strategies to evolve the brand networks into leading experiences for customers. This R8 model is now fully ingrained in our development process. In South Africa, 14 restaurants were opened during the reporting period the commitment of franchisees to keep brands updated was evident with 29 revamps and relocations undertaken during the year. The group's international growth strategy continues to gain momentum. Two new restaurants opened internationally in the first half of the financial year. And early in January this year, we opened 2 additional stores in Africa, 1 RocoMamas in Cork Corner, Harare, and 1 Spur in Highland Park, Harare. Last week, we opened Panarottis pizza in Ogudu, Nigeria, and Maseru, Lesotho, a beautiful Spur in the suburban area of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, opened this morning. Congratulations to the international team. Our franchisees, I acknowledge and thank all our franchisees for their continued investment and commitment to our brands. Our main brand teams work closely with our franchisee network via the Franchise Advisory Council I thank the outgoing council members for their service and congratulate the incoming council. The collaboration and co-creation of these forums has resulted in improved sales activation, menu development and continued innovation across all brands. Operating costs continue to place pressure on franchisee profitability with the cost of alternative power solutions now an everyday expense. Currently, the challenge is the continuous repair and replacement of generators, which fully support our network during load shedding. The need for emergency water supply is also a priority with 270 stores holding additional water that requires filtration and purification. The need to invest in additional water reserves at restaurants will be a key focus in the future. While the new national minimum wage effective tomorrow, in fact, will add further cost pressure, it will bolster the early power of our employees, less in the wealth divide in South Africa and expand our customer base. The impact of the higher minimum wage on the restaurant operating model has been assessed and strategies are being implemented to mitigate the impact on the restaurant profitability. In the latter part of 2023, a 6,000-plus kilometer CEO road trip of 101 restaurants took place in the Eastern, KZN, and inland, to visit the most remote areas in which our restaurants are present. The trip reaffirmed that our high standards are being met in large cities as well as the smallest towns in the country, such as Umtata, King William's Town, Beaufort West, Graaff-Reinet, Kuruman, and Bothaville, to name a few. These dedicated franchisees and restaurant teams are delighting our loyal customers in these regions showcasing our brands with pride. I thank the Spur COO, Amanda and Julian, and the ops team for the productive and safe journey. Despite the mounting pressure on disposable income, the group continues to attract customers to restaurants with its distinct and differentiated value propositions. Our Kantar Research Wave, which was published yesterday confirmed the health of our brands relative to the competitors. We also identified from the research that customers are gravitating towards brands they love and admire and trust, and also looking constantly for value and the cheapest option. Our strategic partnership division continues to build new reward relationships with nonfood brands such as Old Mutual Rewards, MyVodacom and Capitec. These strategic alliances have opened up new avenues to attract new users to the Spur brand. The group enjoys the support of its loyal customers evident in the continued increase in voucher redemption of 76% in the Spur family club. Sales generated by the family club members represent 49% of the Spur brand turnover. The family club was voted the best loyalty club, the largest base in the restaurant category at the 23 South African loyalty awards. We are pleased to report that the group has 2.5 million active loyal customers, and the base of the smaller brands is also growing. And this also includes our speciality brands, Doppio Zero and Piza e Vino who also run a loyalty program/ RocoMamas has recently launched its rewards program, and this has shown improved performance. The franchisee marketing fund has also invested in a new, more enhanced marketing automation system to offer brands an effective digital service as they prepare for a strategic shift in new generation CRM personalization and amplification of rewards and recognition. Internal creative infrastructure and a new digital asset hub has also been set up for to enable easy access and up-to-date tools for our franchisees to execute store-specific social media and communication to reach their local consumers with ease. Our loyal customers are like gold to us. We have to continue to prioritize their joy and satisfaction. We currently have 430 employees in our group, which includes our 18 operations, cadets. We can just move on. The majority -- sorry, our journey of leading for the greater good embodies our commitment to making a purposeful contribution to a better, more exclusive and sustainable world, leaving a meaningful legacy. Our values have been embraced by the team. And each year, we continuously engage via our values influencers, an annual employee engagement study monitors the sentiment of our people. This started at a level of 66% in 2021 and over the past 3 years, it has reached a 77% benchmark. We must remain diligent and improve our efforts to improve our approach to sustainable development and dial up our focus on maintaining low operational impact, minimizing resource consumption, reducing reliance on products that may cause environmental degradation and actively driving and participating in projects that consider a just transition Net-Zero emissions and circularity. 18 unemployed individuals are now in the 8-month with us in our operations cadets program, an initiative that is creating opportunity for individuals to embark on an operations career in our group or in our franchise network. The full year operations, training and development is a management NQF Level 5. Spent so far for the ops cadet debts has been ZAR 1.6 million, but a planned investment of $3.2 million for the full program. The second intake of our rising leaders on the UCT program will commence mid-2024, a further investment of ZAR 1 million. You can see other measures tabled here, and I highlight that our black franchisee percentage has shifted from 22% in 2021 to currently 31%. Our journey for the greater good is on a meaningful path for the group and our people. I now would like to take you through some highlights of our brand's trading performance. Economic growth is constrained and budgets for fiscal '24 were set with expectations to exceed inflation and menu increases. The first 3 months of half 1 exceeded budget and a good performance coming off a high base. In October, November, we experienced a slowdown in trading patterns. This, we believe, is because of the reduced load shedding in that period. Consumers are more prepared to deal with no power at home. The Rugby World Cup, and of course, consumers trade household income could have perhaps impacted our business at that time. If we take a look at the last 3 years, half 1 turnover trend, the graph that you see on the screen now, we recall a stellar record breaking performance in July 2022 and in July '23, we managed to further exceed this record-breaking season by 12.65%. Customer count steadily increased as did average spend per head. In December 2023, turnover thankfully picked up again and customer counts increased for the group to achieve yet another phenomenal December, setting a new turnover record in most of the network. The group achieved [ ZAR 1.1 billion ] sales in December 2023. High tourism numbers in the Western Cape enabled the group to deliver double-digit growth for the festive trading period. With the group benefiting from increased levels of tourism in high-traffic sites as well. Our brands performed well in KwaZulu-Natal in December despite the reported impact of roadworks heavy rain and ongoing beach closures. One of our high-volume top-performing restaurants in December achieved a gross sales of ZAR 10.7 million. Just some fast facts on our brands our Inland division with over 330 restaurants in the inland remains our biggest regional contributor. In the past period due to increased tourism South Africa our brands have benefited in regions such as Western KZN and Eastern Cape. The group continues to capitalize on consumer demand for convenience. Local takeaway sales now represents 14% of total sales with 55% as collect orders, and that's call-and-collect, click-and-collect or walk-in. The balance is delivered by Mr D and Uber Eats. And Uber Eats this past period showed a greater growth than its major competitor. Virtual kitchen brands are fully integrated into the brand offering with 322 restaurants participating. The VK offering continues to allow the group's full-service restaurants to leverage the existing infrastructure to enjoy the increased market share of online food business. Pizza Pug and Just Wingz are currently the top-performing VK brands. SA restaurant turnover. In the table, we can see the turnover per brand for half year versus prior year. The speciality segment has doubled in size, and once again, Doppio Zero -- Doppio Collection sales are included here for 1 month only. The speciality turnover, excluding Doppio Collection is ZAR 280 million, representing a great 12% growth on the prior period. Doppio Collection turnover for December was ZAR 66.7 million. International franchise restaurant sales increased by 8%. Mauritius represents 21.6% of these sales the Spur brand internationally represents 39.5% of international sales, followed by Panarottis at 32% and RocoMamas at 25.6%. The consumer response to our brands in Africa has been outstanding, and our franchisees are enjoying higher-than-average turnovers than the experience with the QSR turnover levels in Africa. Trading in Africa has required patience and resilience from our international franchisees required to take mitigating action for the regular and severe currency fluctuations experienced in countries such as Kenya, Zambia and Nigeria. Our imminent reentry into Tanzania and over 8 new restaurants scheduled to open in Africa before the end of June, confirms the amazing opportunity that exists on this continent, where the population is projected to nearly double in the next quarter to 2.5 billion people. Like-on-like performance exceeded that of our menu inflation and confirms that the brands are showing solid and steady growth. On a monthly basis, we review key metrics applied by our franchisees to ensure that the restaurants are delivering a profit and franchisees are achieving their return on investment. In this economically flat and turbulent trading environment, our brand COOs are placing emphasis on a small segment of our restaurants that are not trading optimally, providing franchisees with operational guidance, amplified customer experience attention and marketing support to ensure performance reaches the national average. The group continues to engage with its franchise network and considers requests for short-term financial support. Spur strength. The resilience and strength of the Spur brand were evident once again in the strong trading in December [ 2021 ]. This was reflected in 251 Spur restaurants in South Africa, exceeding their turnover records in December. In South Africa, volume growth was mainly driven by the Spur brand, which increased restaurants by 10%. The Spur brand has been well positioned to meet customer needs during load shedding, with grills always-on, offering a safe place for kids to eat and play, and for parents, when they are unable to feed their families at home. The brand has also delivered a high level of marketing activity this year, including amplified value-added campaigns, engaging in the Springbok rugby sponsorship and creating impressive outdoor advertising exposure. The highlight of this reporting period was the evolution of the 57-year-old Spur brand with a brand's corporate identity undergoing a creative transformation. The new contemporary brand icon has been designed in a more inclusive colorful and refreshed style with a bold new catapulting the brand to a new distinctiveness. This brand comes with a refreshed dining experience too. The Spur brand has commenced the evolution to the new Spur branding, which we have termed Pegasus. I'm now going to take you through some photos of the launch of the store. The first launch was the Amigo restaurant in the Vaal Mall, you can see this beautiful shape language that was designed a prominent word mark in Spur and the new revised chief very colorful and easy to apply in the digital sphere. This is just the front entrance. This is the picture of the date night area. So more for private for couples where kids aren't running around. If we look at a couple of other things, if we look at the signature Palomino benches, which are with comfort. You can see the store names will now appear on the sign language on the walls on the shape language, particularly designed for Spur. A taste for life, which is obviously a value proposition we've kept for years, and we've retained. So the first store was Amigo Spur in the Vaal mall. The second Pegasus store was Missouri Spur, which was a relocation in the Key West Center in Krugersdorp. You can see the beautiful ceiling lights and just a lovely contemporary refreshed look. Sibaya Spur, it's Sibaya casino was the first new build in the new Pegasus look. You can see the prominence of the shape language, which we will be producing internally. We currently value engineering the cost of the revamp. Yurok, Phalaborwa, was also a revamped store into the new look. You can see the team looking very happy there at the front entrance and the features that we saw earlier. I wanted to just show you a little bit of what we've done in terms of the transition. This is a transition that's happening in phases. It started off, obviously, with the revamped cycle. It started at the end of the year with all the digital transformation and changes. And by April, all our print collateral will convert to the new chief. Obviously, being a franchise business, it will be a gradual transition. These are just some of the dominant Spur outdoor boards that the marketing team have secured with the new branding. We all know the dominance of the breakfast tray that we have continue to keep our market share on a breakfast day apart. And despite the egg shortage, the group was able to continue trade uninterrupted. The really good thing that happened with the egg shortage was we got a huge upsurge of volumes of egg sold in terms of cage-free eggs sold from our central services. We sold over 1.6 million cage-free eggs. It was almost 107% up from previous year. So that's really great. And just a couple more examples of just the dominant boards. We've got over 60 boards throughout the country just to see how that transfers into staff uniform, they wear it with pride, the Cristina and I wearing our badges today. Just amazing packaging that is currently happening under development, really setting the brand onto a new platform and position it beautifully for a sustainable future. Even our ops managers, vehicles have been branded in the new look Spur so the brand is completely in touch at every touch point, conveying this new image for the business. However, we do know that kids remain our priority and we are looking at improving the kids areas by looking at new themes. This is the enchanted forest that appears in 1 or 2 of the new Pegasus stores with new collateral, new finishes, in our Kempton Park store, Chatoga Spur, we did a sort of animal sort of theme. You can't see a lot of the animals in this photo, but they look amazing. When you do go and experience the new environment. And then in Centurion, our Thunder Ridge Spur did a space center theme. It's got a sound effects and lights that really create a beautiful environment for the kids. In addition to the kids play worlds, I wanted to mention that at the moment, we have almost 99% of our stores that offer sensor tagging system, which is there to protect our children. The few stores that don't have it is because it has many entrances, like in the resort sites. And so this is really key. And I also wanted to mention that even our play world attendance have been trained now to handle special need children. So we're constantly looking to add value to our play world so that consumers see it as a big benefit. So if we look at the existing restaurant look, because remember it's a transition. In the past period, several restaurants, obviously, were still revamped in the current store design and 4 restaurants were revamped in the latest generation look, as I showed you earlier. But one of our top 3 restaurants, Lone Creek Spur in Mall of Africa will be revamped before the Easter long weekend. And we thank our largest multiple [ Brunsberg ] group for their continued commitment and investment in our brands. Spur operations teams have recently bolstered up the Inland division with a strong operational leader to extract more value in this region where our footprint is so well represented. The Spur franchisees continue to add value to local communities underprivileged children and support towns where meals are needed for emergency teams like the recent fires in Pringle Bay. Spur remains kids first choice for the birthday celebration. I just want to show you 2 new stores, per stores in Africa, -- we can just have a look at those quickly. Sorry, these are all the existing Spur's -- sorry, we're just falling behind with our slides. So these are some of the existing -- look stores. You can see some of the revamps, some new stores that have opened. This is just around the corner. Watashi in Bethlehem, and our Spur strength in Harare continues in Africa. This was our new Buffalo Ridge store that opened in Harare recently. And as I mentioned, Bulawayo opened today. Okay. If we just move on. These are some of the awards that Spur received. You saw some of them at August last year, but I think it just confirms the accolade that this brand gets at every intervention where consumers, this is the vote by the consumers, which confirms the strength of our Spur brand. Let's move on to Panarottis. So Panarottis, just over a year ago, we revealed the repositioning of Panarottis and the new restaurant design and experience. This brand continues to surprise us and please our franchisees as each revamp and new store simply continues to deliver a high turnover results. In the reporting period, Panarottis opened 5 new restaurants and revamped 6. In total, we now have 20 Panarottis in the new look in South Africa and new restaurants planned in Freiburg, Lydenburg and Thabazimbi, are a few of the smaller towns, which we're going to be opening in soon. Panarottis have launched a new brand campaign that articulates its position as the #1 pizza restaurant for sharing and togetherness. Panarottis with pizza as an ideal takeaway item, has approximately 32% of takeaways relative to its national turnover with click-and-collect as the most favorite option. For example, one of our key Panarottis in addition to the above average turnover of the sit-down restaurant generates over 0.5 million simply on collect and delivery kiosks adjacent to the restaurant. Panarottis was recently ranked third place in South Africa by ProVeg, a International Association, as the restaurant in South Africa that offers plant-based products, third in South Africa. Some of the Panarottis plant-based vegan menu items include vegan mozzarella cheese, plant based mince and almond milk. Panarottis for family supports and cares for the vulnerable and address families throughout South Africa with a focus of being inclusive, supporting families affected by disability. In addition, they will fund smaller projects and lives and futures of those in need. Panarottis continues to donate ZAR 1 from every top-up sold to the Panarottis family initiative. I also didn't mention that the Full Tummy Fund feeds 950 kids daily from the Spur contribution of every kids burger sold. Panarottis pizza continues to flourish in Africa. And internationally, we now have 36 Panarottis with the world's highest turnover Panarottis in [ Bogota ] or Mauritius. Additionally, 4 new Panarottis are planned in Africa in the next few months. We can just have a look at some of the restaurants, the revamped restaurants of Panarottis. Panarottis Eastgate performing really well in a very busy mall in the Inland division. Panarottis Galleria an absolute success, adding value and not affecting our Spur trade in the same center. West Coast Mall in Hermanus, a beautiful restaurant just opposite the spur. Panarottis Menlyn Park Center, a revamp. As we all know, Menlyn Park is a high-volume center. This new look is just beautiful. The Pavilion center in Durban Has a new Panarottis look. So also really attractive for that market. Panarottis Springs also performing well. And I think we've got maybe one more. Panarottis The Grove in Pretoria. A lot of people have commented how beautiful it looks. And then the 2 in the international market is Waddington in Zambia, Panarottis pizza. And of course, the one I mentioned earlier, which is the Maseru, Lesotho, this is not even about -- it's not even 50 square meters and just showing phenomenal results. It's not a sit down. It's simply takeaway order and collect. Panarottis also won quite a few awards and I think once again an accolade for a brand that is just going places. They're definitely super stars for us. We know that in December, they traded at 19.8% growth, just a phenomenal performance for this very gorgeous brand. We move on to RocoMamas. RocoMamas is trading in a competitive burger category is starting to show a good growth, like-on-like of 8% with higher turnover sites opening recently or late last year at Highveld Mall Witbank. In addition, the relocation of RocoMamas in Polokwane has resulted in more than 25% growth of on previous year. This emphasizes the importance of carefully selected sites for this brand. If we look at some of the outdoor marketing, RocoMamas with a relatively small media budget, as over the past year, invested in supersized out-of-home communication and secured strong influencer mileage and recent high exposure on TikTok with the RocoMamas firewings challenge. It's all about who can eat the hottest wings. The only problem is we didn't make it hot enough, and we were giving away too many free meals. This brand continues to differentiate in the burger segment with its freshly handmade smash burgers. The iconic chilli cheese Bomb Burger, and the saucy RocoMayo. The introduction of more comfortable seating and the rockstar CX continues to attract customers to eat in or deliver online. The high percentage of takeaway sales 41% and the reliance on high commission-based third-party aggregators remains a challenge for this brand. A newly appointed [ Rocco's ] lead team has been tasked to take the RocoMamas brand into its next life cycle. We can now have a look at some of the stores, The Greenery in Polokwane. Internationally, we can have a look at how it continues to rock in Africa. So this is Highveld Mall, I mentioned to you the high volume store in Witbank, and then we've got 23 RocoMamas outside of South Africa at the moment. In South Africa, we've got 85. This is the Highlands Park 1 in Zimbabwe, and I think we've got a photo of Cork Corner as well. We're now -- and let's not forget RocoMamas awards, especially if we look at Best of Joburg which is the biggest region, best shakes, best burger sit down, best burger takeaway. I mean, that is amazing. So well done to the RocoMamas team, and our franchise network. John Dory's, the John Dory's brand over the past year has improved its operating margin and invested in working closely with franchisees and landlords to secure strategic sites. This brand is facing a new dawn, a new cycle of growth that will be realized in half 2 as we witnessed the momentum and sales picking up for this brand with a high-quality seafood and sushi offering, the John Dory's supply chain strictly follows the SASSI code of sustainable seafood procurement. As an example, our recent deal of bringing in Norwegian salmon secured by our logistics partner, Vector, which has arrived safely through our ports and landed at probably 20% less than the current pricing. The JD's marketing communication and menu presentation is of a high standard, and this brand is about to launch a new look restaurant in 2 strategic sites. JD has opened 6 new sites and relocated one site and has recently secured strategic sites in high profile centers such as Cavendish Square, [indiscernible] in Capetown, and Sun City. This brand will follow the success of its sister brands as it prepares to catapult its growth cycle. We can take a look at some of the John Dory’s stores. This is Florida Road in Durban, you all know Florida Road, it's an interesting site. Fourways Mall, which has been challenged at the moment in terms of the development. Grand West Casino. This was a new format that we opened, which is a JD fish and sushi, a takeaway concept, a phenomenal little unit, I think it delivered almost 400,000 just from 50 square meters. Three Rivers in Vereeniging doing very well near the Vaal Triangle. Wilson's Wharf in Durban, a beautiful site with a magnificent view and also sits right next to the Spur there. Zevenwacht Mall right here in Capetown also doing very well where we trade well at Spur as well in that mall, mass middle consumer. And then Best of Ekurhuleni, a great start for our John Dory's brand but the year is -- the second half where we're going to see wonderful growth from this brand. I'm really encouraged by it. If we look at the speciality, we've called it speciality doubles up. Our speciality portfolio now consists of 75 speciality restaurants across 6 brands, each of which holds a unique position in the categories in which we operate. With a strong share in the evening daypart, we have 26 Hussar Grill, 6 Casa Bella and 7 Nikos, New Casa Bella is due to open in the high-traffic mall of Mainland [ Victoria ] before the Easter trading season. Our new business partners and portfolio of brands from the Doppio Collection are now part of the family, focusing strongly on daypart as well as dinner. We officially now welcome Paul Christie and Miki Milovanovic to Spur Corp. I know that these dedicated and talented entrepreneurs and our partners will make a significant contribution to growing the speciality portfolio of f Doppio Zero, Piza e Vino and Modern Tailors. As mentioned earlier, in this reporting period, we include only one month's trading for Doppio Collection, which achieved ZAR 81 million in the December 2023. Some highlights in the first month of our partnership was Piza e Vino Hartenbos. We can have a look at that picture of the store, which achieved ZAR 3.8 million net turnover. Doppio Zero in Rosebank were ZAR 3.4 million, and the New Doppio Zero in Knysna with over ZAR 2 million. The profit contribution for this portfolio in December was ZAR 3.1 million, a great start ensuring that we deliver our return on investment as planned, and Cristina will tell you more about that shortly. Our Hussar Grill portfolio coming off a high base of last year. Last year Hussar delivered a 41% growth and has performed extremely well, particularly in the East of the Western Cape benefiting from increased tourism. In this speciality portfolio, we now have 14 company-owned restaurants. And the total speciality segment without Doppio Collection has performed at a 12% growth. Hussar Grill also received Best of George and also a great Winelist. And also Casa Bella has received Best of Joburg, and I can't even see it, another award. Okay. So I'm going to now hand over to Cristina, who's going to take us through the financial review and the segmental review. Cristina, over to you. Thank you.

Thank you, Val. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As Val mentioned, the reported ZAR 5.4 billion turnover, which is sort of 10.4% higher than the prior reporting period. This increase in trading performance led to a continued growth in revenue. As you can see on the slide, group revenue increased by 15.2% to ZAR 1.8 billion, supported by this improved franchise restaurant turnover as mentioned, but also by the higher sales in the retail company stores, and in the manufacturing and distribution division. As Val mentioned, group revenue includes 1 month's trade from the Doppio Collection of 24.6. So the 66% was total turnover and the 24.6 is the revenue inclusion for the 1 month's trade. You'll see that the operating profit before interest is reported at 10.6%. Higher than the prior period, and at ZAR 175 million, with the increase in other expenses mainly as a result of increased marketing, i.e., the expenditure incurred by the marketing funds administered by the group on behalf of the franchisees and funded by the marketing fund contributions. The net interest line improved to 16.7%, not percent -- ZAR 16.7 million, due to improved interest rates and cash on hand. An improved taxation rate at 28.8% resulted in the overall profit increasing by 16.8% to ZAR 136.7 million and thus earnings per share increasing by 16.3%. As we move to the segmental overview on this slide, a rather busy slide, what the messaging to take out is that we see that the Spur brand remains the biggest contributor to franchise revenue at 70.6% of revenue and 69% of turnover. The Spur brand also reports the highest margin of this period at 88.3%, which is a great result. Thank you, Spur. But we'll unpack the segmental financials on the coming slides. If we look at the half reported over a period and we look at the total franchise business relative to Spur, as we said, Spur drives 70% of that franchise revenue and then profitability. The increase in South African turnover of 10.6% translates to an increase in South African franchise revenue of 9.8% that you can see on the top left. And this is mainly as a result of the performance of the Spur brand increasing by 9.4% directly reflected on that slide as well on the left. On the bottom left of the slide, we disclose that the contribution to franchise fees from the 1 month's trade of the 26 franchise Doppio Collection restaurants amounted to ZAR 2.4 million. So of the ZAR 24.6 million total revenue, ZAR 2.4 million was franchise income on the Doppio stores which then would impact total revenue. Similarly, on the right-hand side, profit before tax for franchise operations increased by 12.3%, driven again by Spur, increasing by 10.9%, with the consolidated franchise business reaching an 84.2% margin on the right-hand side red block. The contribution to profit by Doppio for the franchise operations was ZAR 1.5 million for the month of December. If we look at the rest of our franchise business, excluding Spur, you see the 4 sort of main segments that we report. The remaining 30% of the franchise business is reflected here. We see on the revenue side, level performance in revenue from John Dory's. It's at 0.3%, negative 0.3% to the comparable prior period, albeit that John Dory's have opened 6 new stores. These restaurants were opened in the latter part of the trading period with benefits expected to be realized going forward. Profit on the right-hand side is slightly better with revenue -- sorry, better than revenue with a good control in costs. Back to RocoMamas on the left-hand side grew by 3% in revenue and Panarottis by 9.5%. Again, on the right, both brands managing expenditure to allow for a growth in profit ahead of revenue. speciality, which is reflected, shows a large increase in revenue, 43.9% and profit at 41.9%. with the inclusion of Doppio Collection for the month of December 23. Excluding the Doppio Collection contribution, the revenue for speciality brands would still have increased by 18% and 23% in profit. So a great performance by underlying speciality brands. If we look at the company stores, as Val mentioned, we've now -- we now report 14 company-owned stores. 4 Hussar Grills as well as the 7 Doppio Zeros owned, 2 Piza e Vinos owned, and the 1 Modern Tailors stores. The Doppio Collection in terms of revenue, company stores contributed ZAR 19.6 million to revenue and ZAR 1.6 million to profit for the year. And so the revenue increase of 47.4% in [ your slide ] decreases to 0.3% excluding the Doppio Collection as the 4 Hussar Grill trade off a high base from the prior period. However, profit percentage growth, excluding Doppio Collection remains strong at 70.7% following the focus on the group's RocoMamas store. If we move to the South African manufacturing and distribution segment, this segment, revenue and the mix, the performance in turnover for the period -- the blended margin of the contributors in the segment reports, is reported at 3.9%, and to confirm that the contribution for the Doppio collections foods business for the month of December is marginal, so it does not impact these numbers. Looking at the marketing funds. The slide reflects the advertising contributions to the funds. The impact on the income statement is marginal, as you can see, minus ZAR 2.3 million. The most important indicator, I believe, is to look at the bottom number, the deferred marketing contributions, because that reflects the collected but unspent and hence, deferred onto the balance sheet contributions of ZAR 53.8 million compared to ZAR 69.7 million in the prior year. If I stop there for a second, that ZAR 53.8 million reflects cash collected still to be spent available to the marketing team and 38 of the 53 represents Spur. So there's a healthy collection of marketing funds that can be used to supplement and grow on our brands. If we move to the shared services environment. On the left, the table that -- let's call it either really reflects the support services directly related to the franchise operations. So departments like export, decor and training. If you look at the profitability, it's equally attributed to the first 2 departments with the training department still running as a cost center. On the right-hand side, we display the corporate and shared services performance. And you can see income has increased, and overheads at the second last line is reflected at 92.9, which we're saying is 14% up, but we'll explain this in further slides. Comparable overhead. So we started again with that 92.9 of the previous slide and the 14% up on cost. We back out a few or we disclosed, back out is probably not the right word, to disclose a couple of line items, which are items incurred in this period and not in the past. So for example, the Doppio acquisition due diligence and legal costs as well as some additional litigation costs and the ZAR 92 million then becomes an underlying comparable overhead of ZAR 84.5 million, which then represents an 8% increase in costs. If I move on to the next slide, sorry, I'm actually just going to backtrack to say. On that percentage of 8.3% up. Note that when you look at the appendix, you'll see that the reason for that increase is an increase in the IFRS 2 charge for the share-based payments and also an increase in the development department. Val announced the appointment of a couple of resources that were appointed in order to expand the group's footprint. So the appendix will show you the breakdown by department. Now we're on to international. So turnover in international increased by 8%, as you can see and this translated to the increased revenue. The group now reports ZAR 10 million in profit for the 6 months and the international business represents 10% of turnover. If I move on to the comparable profit analysis, which stakeholders often like to look at. Our profit before income tax, I mentioned, up by 13%. We adjust for marketing, because that's not for the benefit of the group. And then we list these items incurred in the current period, not in the prior period. And we disclosed to you a comparable profit before tax of just short of ZAR 200 million, which is a 14.5% up on the prior year. If we move to the balance sheet, the most material change to the balance sheet is, of course, the introduction of the Doppio Collection balances at 1 December, the effective date, which I'll discuss later in the presentation and fully disclosed in Note 2 to the group's results. Other than the Doppio balance has added moments relate really only to limited fixed asset additions of ZAR 2 million. And then an increase in inventory, which has a corresponding increase in trade payables due to the volume of stock carried required to support the festive period trade. Cash is reported at ZAR 288 million at period year-end. We've added some additional comments on the cash flow this time around with in the hope of additional clarity. But the difference between profit before tax and operating profit that's listed there at the top is ZAR 17 million, mainly due to the add-back of depreciation of [indiscernible] and the IFRS 2 noncash charge of ZAR 9 million. The deduction and as well as the reduction in the movement in employee-related accruals of ZAR 17 million and the removal of interest income of ZAR 19 million, which is then added back later in the cash flow, as you know, under operating activities. A note on this slide has been added specifically regarding to working capital movements. You can see a total outflow of ZAR 74.7 million, as mentioned below -- I'm sorry, in the previous slide, the movement in inventories offsets the inflow in accounts payable directly, as is the additional balances carried at period end that I mentioned, to support the additional volumes for the festive season. So an outflow of inventory is a matter of the inflow in accounts payable, they set each other off. The accounts receivable balance, however, is higher than the prior period by about ZAR 20 million. And it reflects the increased revenue earned in the December trade which is recorded in December as accrued income and then invoiced and collected by the 15th of January the next year. So that money has been banked and has been received. The increase over the prior year, the ZAR 20 million I mentioned, is due to the introduction of the Doppio Collection, trade and other balances for December, which was not there in the prior year. On the remaining part of our cash flow, we can see the interest, the tax paid and the dividends paid for the period. If you look at the investing activities, outflow of ZAR 69.6 million. The bulk of that, ZAR 67.4 million is the payment made on the Doppio transaction. The ZAR 7 million of the ZAR 13 million under financing activities related to the purchase of treasury shares, resulting, as I said earlier, earned ZAR 288 million unrestricted cash on hand. Our last slide, the acquisition of Doppio Collection. This is Note 2. It's the IFRS 3 addition of Doppio Collection. I think just to draw your attention to sort of middle to bottom of the slide, what would be key for shareholders to see is that the total purchase consideration was valued at ZAR 122 million. With 60% of that, the group's Spur Group share equating to ZAR 73 million as mentioned, ZAR 67.4 million has already been paid before 31st of December and ZAR 5.6 million is outstanding as the PPA is finalized to be paid. Importantly, I think to note as well, we've provided as much disclosure as we feel we can, and we mentioned that the enterprise value of 121, and hence, the purchase consideration was based on a 4.5x EBITDA multiple. Finally, although not indicated on the slide, an update on the GPS legal claim. As mentioned at the last presentation, the matter was being considered to be heard by arbitration. It did, it commenced on the 23rd of October, and we have just completed the second phase, which ended yesterday. The arbitration recommences in July 2024. As the matter been heard in the Western Cape Court, it would only [indiscernible] in March '24. So we are on track with the arbitration engagement. And the claim remains disclosed as a contingent liability. I'll now hand back to Val.

Great. Let's move on to the future outlook. Thank you, Cristina, for that. Am I hear the rain coming down in Cape Town, which is great, get our customers into the malls. The group is preparing for an unpredictable short- and medium-term future, and our supply chain teams have outlined strategies to ensure that we have a pipeline of alternative product options and supply chain to mitigate any potential strength in the supply chain, which we envisage will remain a challenge. Our leadership team know the need to remain resilient and nimble with their daily business plans and activities to ensure we respond promptly to consumers' changing needs and market dynamics. The group is on track to deliver the fiscal '24 strategic initiatives and plans to open 41 new restaurants in South Africa and 12 internationally by the end of the financial year. If we look at our focus, and you saw the previous slide, which showed all the initiatives we showed you in August, that remains the focus. But we all know that currently, consumer spend is limited. There is no additional money in South Africa. It's all going to be about conquest. So we've identified 4 amazing drivers that the team are going to back to support our business model. The first one is just robust sales activation, a tech-led CRM. So tech-led customer relationship management of a new level restaurant and product innovation because we're all about the dine-in experience, and best-in-class customer experience. Just recently, we chatted about the role that we all play. We all play a part and it's an amazing chain that all works towards 1 purpose only, and that's improving the dine-in experience for the consumer. So we're very clear about where we're heading as an organization. We know that market share will be grown by exceptional customer service, fanatical attention to product quality and added value to captivate customers to ensure our sustainable growth. I have confidence in our brands, in our people, our franchisees, and I just thank you for your time this morning. We're now going to switch to take some questions.

Val, there are no questions on the webcast. So clearly, everything has been covered in the presentation.

Thank you.