Good morning, everybody, and welcome to AYOKA's FY '26 results call. Thank you for your interest in the group.

We run a very diverse operation, and so to give you a good idea of what is in AYOKA, we've prepared a short video, which will hopefully aid your understanding of the group.

Every organization runs on something it cannot afford to lose: information, power, trust, people. As one of South Africa's leading technology services providers, AYOKA keeps those things working for more than 4,000 clients in 10 countries across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.

Our specialist teams deliver end-to-end digital transformation, IT, and operational technology, from strategy through to managed services. Our cloud team helps organizations modernize and run critical workloads across our own cloud platform, leading hyper-scale platforms, and hybrid environments.

For almost two decades, we've helped clients architect, migrate, manage, and optimize their cloud. Affinity AI brought utility data from 104 sites into one validated view of 212 million rand in spend.

Our software engineers build, modernize, and run the software that organizations depend on. For a leading automotive manufacturer, eight Agile squads and a 30-member service desk keep its sales, servicing, and finance platforms running and improving.

Those platforms serve nearly 300 dealerships across five countries. Our data and automation team helps organizations manage, automate, and make sense of their data.

For one large organization, reconciling supplier statements took 14 days every month. We automated the process, and it now takes two days, giving the finance team more time and control.

Our forensic, legal, and human capital team protects organizations from fraud and risk. Veritas, our own AI platform, scores every life insurance claim for risk when it's lodged, honest families are paid faster.

Veritas stops 244.6 million rand in fraudulent claims a year. Our managed services and networking team keeps networks and systems running and secure around the clock.

That risk is real. When ransomware locked one South African manufacturer out of its systems, losses were estimated at 50 million rand.

From our 24/7 Security Operations Center, we find weaknesses before attackers do and respond fast when it counts. AYOKA Enterprise implements and supports the business systems organizations run on.

A major metropolitan municipality is responsible for more than 461 billion rand of infrastructure. It is building one view of its assets on its existing platform and now processes invoices in half the time.

Our software team brings more than 30 years of enterprise and mainframe expertise. For a leading South African bank, we replaced manual disaster recovery runbooks with automated, auditable workflows.

Recovery time is down by more than 80% across the first 31 applications, with 227 still to come. Our people team helps organizations find, manage, and develop their people.

We also guide them through B-BBEE, employment equity, and skills development. When a retailer opening new stores needed staff fast, we built one workforce model, from community recruitment to attendance linked to payroll.

Headcount doubled across 11 stores, with roles filled in 48 hours. Our industrial team connects, powers, and automates operations.

Through our digital power platform, we protect more than 850 forecourts for a national fuel retailer. The power is centrally managed, it backs up and cleans the supply, and it is monitored 24/7.

When the lights go out, customers simply see a station that is still open and still keeping South Africa moving. Our new technology finance business brings technology, funding, and services together, businesses can stay current while helping preserve working capital.

Through our funding partners, we offer rental, payment plans, or technology as a service with the option of support and plan refresh. It starts inside our own business.

As a Level 1 B-BBEE contributor, we enrolled 3,037 learners in accredited training, moved 73 unemployed people with disabilities into permanent jobs, and empowered 35 Black-owned small businesses through enterprise development. In Kliptown and Khayelitsha, 208 high school learners now learn with AI-enabled devices.

Inside AYOKA, 141 learnerships are building new skills, and 21 bursaries are helping our employees' children study further. Our board masterclasses prepare leaders for executive leadership.

Everyone surveyed after Tech A-way feels more confident discussing technology. Most rewarding of all, our first adult education and training cohort is now on the road to their matric.

This is what the future of South African technology looks like. Our specialist teams are behind this year's results.

Their work delivered growth with impact. From new wins at home to a growing presence abroad, we are building a technology champion for South Africa and ensuring the digital economy remains accessible to all.

Good. We hope that helped in unpacking AYOKA.

With me today is Ashona Kooblall, our Chief Financial Officer. We'll get to the financial highlights shortly.

Before we do that, we just review our three-step strategy. Remember, the three steps were cost rationalization, the decentralized operating model, and capital and resource allocation.

We think that we've made continued progress off the 2025 year into 2026, which you can see on slide 3. Profit after tax increased by 39%.

We reached 357 million. Our return on equity reached over 30%, 35% in fact.

Our EBITDA on an adjusted basis reached 624 million, up 21%. In a difficult market, our revenue grew 3%, and IT services revenue grew 4%, indicating market share gains.

Going on to slide 4. Important part of this slide is to drive home the point on how diverse AYOKA really is.

There are 4,382 employees at AYOKA. It operates across 10 different countries, from Egypt, Mozambique, Kenya, the UK, into Europe, and, of course, the big contribution in South Africa, where most of the operations are held.

The question comes, how do you run a business as diverse as AYOKA? You'd remember on slide 5, we've introduced something called radical autonomy.

Last year, you would have seen on a similar slide to this one that we only had four business units. Those four business units really came from how AYOKA had evolved, rather than from careful planning.

It was almost what we inherited. What we did this year is we rethought what really makes sense.

What businesses make sense to sit together? Importantly, where do we find the best management in the group to run businesses?

Because really, the success of AYOKA is going to be driven by the quality of the managers running these businesses and the employees who make huge sacrifices to make AYOKA work. We've divided AYOKA into 12 divisions or business units.

You can see them on that slide 5. In addition to those 12, what's fitting quite nicely into them are two acquisitions that we'll discuss later, Astrea and MySky.

On slide 6, we indicate what makes up today's Exco. These are the business unit heads of each of the business units.

I must say, it's been refreshing to have 180 years of technology experience sit on the Exco. They make valuable contributions to the group.

It ensures that we are in very strong position to execute on the ever-changing landscape of tech services. Another result of moving to radical autonomy is that each business unit can focus on turning loss-making businesses within their business unit to being profitable.

What you see on slide 7 is that historically, AYOKA used to have loss-making units across the group. In 2025, we reduced that down to just one loss-making entity.

I'm happy to say in 2026, we have no loss-making businesses across the group. In fact, SBT, which was loss-making for the last three years, has now turned profitable.

That's a good segue into introducing Ashona, who will take us through the financial highlights.

Thank you, Rhys. Hi, everyone.

It's great to be back with you today as we present AYOKA's FY '26 financial results. The year represents another year of disciplined execution against a clear strategy.

The results of that approach are now increasingly evident in our financial performance. For the year, AYOKA delivered revenue growth, significant earnings expansion, strong cash generation, and further balance sheet strengthening.

Our EPS and HEPS improved to 57 cents per share, and so did return on equity to 35.6%. In addition, the group secured 2.1 billion of new multi-year contract wins during the period, providing visibility into our future earnings and cash profile.

Importantly, these results were achieved while continuing to invest in future growth initiatives, which we feel is critical to enabling our forward-looking value creation plan. We will now go on to explaining our headline numbers.

Revenue increased by 3% on a constant currency basis to 5.8 billion, supported by growth in IT services and our international operations. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 21% to 624 million, while operating profit increased by nearly 15% to 483 million.

Operating expenses reduced meaningfully, reflecting the benefits of a more focused operating model with improved cost discipline. Profit after tax increased by almost 39% to 357 million, while both earnings per share and headline earnings per share grew by 42%.

Importantly, these results required no restatements and no normalization of performance. What you see is the direct outcome of operational execution across the group of our various lines of business.

While revenue growth of 3% is encouraging, our focus remains on the quality and sustainability of that growth. Our largest segment, IT services, delivered growth of 4% during the year.

International operations grew by approximately 2%, despite the direct impact of the Middle East conflict on trading conditions for five months of the financial year. This performance is a testament to the strength and diversification of our international portfolio.

Operational technology was affected by softer industry spending in FY '26. However, the business demonstrated resilience and disciplined execution, delivering a strong underlying performance despite the challenging market environment.

Pleasingly, during FY '26, a number of our lines of business successfully developed and commercialized new solutions, expanding their markets and creating additional revenue streams. With these offerings now supported by robust go-to-market capabilities, we enter FY '27 with increased confidence in our growth outlook.

This slide best demonstrates the scale of the transformation achieved over the last six years. The group has moved from losses of more than 300 million in FY '21 to earnings of 357 million in FY '26.

At the same time, adjusted EBITDA has increased to 624 million. This improvement has not been driven by a single initiative.

It reflects the impact of the past two years, including disciplined restructuring, decentralized accountability, cost rationalization, improved capital allocation, and enhanced operational execution across our portfolio. More importantly, the outlook remains positive, with value creation top of mind.

Gross profit declined marginally during the year, and gross margin normalized to 28%. This was driven by infrastructure cost pressures felt globally within the technology industry, timing delays in the execution of certain contracts, and the roll-off of some higher-margin work.

However, this trend should be viewed in the context of our evolution. As we continue to scale technology-led and managed services offerings, we expect gross margins to stabilize around current levels while driving higher revenues and greater operating leverage.

Our goal is not to maximize gross margin percentage; our goal is to maximize sustainable gross profit and free cash flow, giving our customers the best possible price. On a H2 basis, what we have seen is the improvement of gross margin as we stabilize the margin profile across the business.

What is also important to note is that AYOKA continues to generate positive and consistent earnings on a monthly basis. Cash generation remains one of the strongest indicators of the quality of our earnings.

The group generated approximately 585 million of operating cash flow during the year, supporting debt reduction, share buybacks, investment into technology platforms, and continued growth initiatives while maintaining a closing balance of 417 million. Strong cash conversion remains priority, provides optionality, and continuous improvement in working capital remains key for the group going forward.

As explained above, working capital management remains a focus area. As a service-led and capital-light organization, our working capital profile is driven largely by receivables and payables rather than inventory.

We experienced a timing-related working capital impact as our financial year fell on a Friday. This resulted in a significant inflow of cash from debtors being received in the days immediately following year-end.

In addition, AYOKA continues to settle creditors on payment terms that are shorter than our debtors collection cycle. While this affected the year-end working capital position, it remains a focus for management and one where we expect to drive further improvement into FY '27.

Since FY '21, net interest-bearing debt has reduced by approximately 2 billion to 480 million, representing a reduction of around 77%. Finance costs have decreased by approximately 75% over the same period.

Importantly, the deleveraging over the past two years has been funded entirely through operational cash generation. During the year, the group repaid approximately 101 million in capital and interest from internally generated cash flows.

We also closed the year with no bank overdraft utilization while maintaining more than 600 million of available liquidity, in addition to the cash on hand. Today, the balance sheet is substantially stronger, the cost of capital is also lower, and we have significantly greater flexibility to pursue value-accretive opportunities.

The improvement in our financial profile is clearly reflected in the key performance ratios. Interest cover improved from 6.7 times to 11.1 times, reflecting both stronger operating earnings and lower finance costs.

Net bank debt to EBITDA improved from 1 times to 0.8 times, while net debt reduced as well. More importantly, return on equity increased to 35%.

At AYOKA, we view transformation, skills development, and economic inclusion as strategic priorities. Our investment goes beyond financial contributions.

We are actively investing in talent pipelines, technical capability development, enterprise development, and digital access initiatives designed to broaden participation in the digital economy. Technology has the power to create opportunity at scale.

Through our education, skills development, and community initiatives, we are helping ensure that the benefits of the digital economy are accessible to a broader segment of society while simultaneously strengthening South Africa's future technology talent pool. To conclude, FY '26 highlights the increasing earnings power of a disciplined and cash-generative AYOKA.

We have strengthened the balance sheet, expanded earnings, improved returns, reduced debt, and increased our capacity to allocate capital into growth opportunities. We believe we are still early in our value creation journey as we enter FY '27 with momentum and a growing range of opportunities ahead of us.

I will now hand back to Rhys to discuss our outlook and priorities for the year ahead.

Thanks, Ashona. I'm going to speak a little bit about the group outlook in the short term and into the longer term.

This is a good place to start is on the strategy update. What I've done here is shown you what we have delivered since July 2024.

From a cost rationalization point of view, we've cut costs by 480 million rand. That's been driven by head office costs picking up the bulk of that, the 400 million number, some central direct costs of 40 million, and business savings of 40.

That's an extremely well-done job, amazing achievement for what AYOKA has been through. Then on the decentralized operating model, I touched on this a bit earlier, but we've embedded radical autonomy and accountability into into the group.

We've introduced this owner-led mindset. Essentially, what we're doing is every business unit head runs his own business as though it were his his own.

Then on the capital and resource allocation, as Ashona mentioned, it's very well done on the balance sheet management. We've been able to reduce gearing down to 0.2 times net debt to EBITDA.

That gives us options on on on the future, which I'll touch on. We've had continued strong cash flow generation.

We've actually executed on buying shares back already in 2026, and we look forward to doing more of that in 2027. Very encouragingly, we've made two acquisitions in 2026.

We've returned staff to the office on a permanent basis, and that's resulted in productivity enhancement, and we've brought in new sales and business solutions specialists. That three-step strategy, I think we've we've largely done on that, and so the question's going to be, how do we take AYOKA forward?

What I did is I went back and looked at the history of AYOKA, or EOH, as it was called. If you go back and read the annual reports all the way back from 2000 onwards, what you find is that EOH used to be a very small little business.

Started off with maybe 11 million rand of profit after tax in 2000. As slide 24 shows you, by 2013 to 2014, that profit had grown to about 331 million to about 492 million rand.

Now what's interesting is that the profitability that AYOKA has just generated in 2026 would kind of fall between 2013 and 2014. Which is interesting because the way that EOH got to those numbers back in 2013, 2014, they really embarked on an acquisition strategy that accounted for about two-thirds of their growth.

To achieve that growth, they really made about 15 acquisitions, about one a year between 2000 to 2015. Now interestingly, if you look at the bottom of this table, you'll see that in 2013, the market rewarded AYOKA similar profits to what we earned in 2026, with a market cap of 7.9 billion rand.

With acquisitions, that number grew to 14 billion rand market cap by 2014. Today, AYOKA is generating similar level of profitability, more efficient than it was back then, and yet the market cap is only 2.4 billion, about one-third of where it was in 2013.

When you look at it on this basis, what what we reflect on is that historically, the success of EOH and AYOKA was really driven off an acquisition strategy, which started off very well and maybe didn't end so well. What we want to do is take the good parts of what EOH did historically and apply it to the business today.

On slide 25, what I'm showing here is the targeted acquisition pipeline of AYOKA today. What you'll notice on the bottom right-hand side of the slide is what we look for in acquisitions.

You're looking for companies that are founder-led, and that must be the mindset even when they become part of AYOKA. They must have high earnings and margin quality, and they must fit into our business where we have gaps currently.

One of the key the key points about technology companies is that technology moves so quickly that while you don't have very high depreciation or capex, you have to make reinvestments into new parts of the business, new parts of technology so that you can remain relevant to clients. That's where the opportunity to invest in acquisitions becomes a very real opportunity for AYOKA.

Now, as I said earlier, we've actually executed on two acquisitions in 2026 already. These are good examples of what we are looking for when it comes to finding growth opportunities.

I'll take you through both of them. MySky, it's a founder-led business.

We bought that in July 2026. It's got strong recurring revenue.

It strengthens AYOKA's OEM ecosystem through HPE and Fortinet partnerships. It unlocks the opportunities to cross-sell across AYOKA's broader customer base.

It generates approximately 80% of its revenue from nine key customers. Now, why is that important?

We have 3,000 customers at AYOKA. We we act as a platform for a company that has a very focused customer base to take its offering and export it across the whole of AYOKA's customer base.

When it comes to Astrea, we completed that acquisition in September 2026. It's a 90% recurring revenue business, asset-light model.

It generates approximately 80% of its revenue from 22 key customers. If you take that business and then you try and roll it out across a much broader footprint, both of these businesses can scale and grow far quicker than if they were left on their own.

A little bit more about the acquisition pipeline on slide 27. These are opportunities that we are actively pursuing.

You can see on the far right-hand side the deal size. We're looking for opportunities that fit very well with the cash generation of AYOKA.

What this means is that we can buy relatively small companies, which we do thorough due diligence on. They can then become part of AYOKA.

We leave them alone. We follow the radical autonomy approach, and they can run themselves.

They get the best of both worlds. They become part of the AYOKA platform, but they also get to be masters of their own destiny, but in a very safe home.

A little bit more about capital allocation on slide 28. The other opportunity that we have to deploy capital is through share buybacks.

Already this year, we've bought back about 16.8 million shares. We've taken the share count from 630 down to 620 million shares in issue.

Hopefully, in the next few slides, I'll show you why this makes sense. Slide 29, we've given fairly explicit cash flow guidance for the next two years.

I'll refer back to Ashona's slide about working capital. For FY '27, we think we'll generate about 650 million rand of free cash flow.

Now, that's broken up into two parts. One, the core business we think will generate about 650 sorry, 450 million rand of free cash flow, which is about 72 cents a share.

Then remember we have the working capital improvement or reversal from 2026, which should bring in another 200 million rand of free cash flow, so that's about 32 cents a share. Combined, that means for FY '27, we are looking at over 1 rand a share of free cash flow.

Rolling that forward into 2028, we expect the core business to generate about 500 million rand of free cash flow. You can see the improvement, we're going from 450 to 500 million rand.

Importantly, we expect and hope that the number of shares in issue through share buybacks will fall from 620 million shares that we have now, and hopefully we get close to about 500 million shares in issue. What that means is that by FY '28, we should generate another 1 rand per share of free cash.

Over the next two years, we see ourselves generating 2 rand a share cumulatively versus a share price of 4 rand. In two years, we'll be generating half our market cap.

A bit more on guidance. We think recurring revenue for the group will be over 60%, and we're already over that figure today.

That gives us confidence that we can forecast an improvement in EBITDA from 624 million this year to 680 million for FY '27. Thank you for your attention and your interest in AYOKA, and we open to questions.

Good. We have some questions that have come in.

We will we will go through them. You you're absolutely welcome to submit more questions as we answer the ones that we have already.

The first question is about EBITDA growth and margin expansion and revenue growth. It's a complicated answer.

The point I would make, from the presentation, you would have noticed that about a year or two years ago, we had this three-step strategy, and part of that was was cost rationalization. I think we've already cut back or or saved 480 million rand of cumulative costs over the last two years.

There is still more work to do on on cutting cutting back on costs. The opportunity isn't as is not obviously as big as it was two years ago.

The margin expansion part, I think running at 11% margin for the group, I think is is a very good performance. I think what we must do now is reinvest back into the business, so that you might even see that margin flatline or or or even deteriorate somewhat.

I think that's a good thing, because what we want to drive is revenue growth. The result will be that your absolute EBITDA number should grow, and that's if you look at the guidance that we've given, that that that's what it will show.

Take the take the case that EBITDA in absolute terms, you'll see growth. Not necessarily margin expansion, because most of the cost cutting is done.

That leaves revenue, and we grew revenue 3% to 4%. I think it was a it was a resilient performance.

What you find in a group as diverse as AYOKA is is that when one business is struggling, another business picks up the baton and continues to make the running. That's kind of a a latent strength in AYOKA.

The more acquisitions we put in, that's going to kind of create even more diversification, which means that we should be in a very strong position to get revenue growth going forward. We would hope that we reach a a double-digit revenue growth number.

That will be partly organic and partly inorganic going forward. Hopefully that covers your question, but if not, please give us more details and I I can cover that.

Next question, 'Has cost cutting reached its peak?' I think I've kind of covered that.

I don't think it's reached its peak. We've done 480 million, there's still more work to do.

There's not a lot left at head office to cut back on. Of the 480 million of cost cutting, 400 was at head office, there's really not much left there.

There are opportunities to be more efficient in some of the the businesses. I think AI is going to be a way that needs to be utilized more broadly and penetrate deeper into the business, and that's going to help us as well.

I'm I'm I think we're probably 80% to 85% through on the cost cutting part of the business, and that'll probably come as some relief to those that are working at AYOKA. Another question, 'Your international performance was disappointing.

What are the reasons? Is Egypt and Saudi still good prospects?'

International was impacted by what's happened in Iran and Saudi and the UAE, and that had that obviously filtered through across the region. We're a little bit behind where we thought we would be with Saudi, but that's, through no fault of of of of our own.

That is kind of just a a symptom of of the the broader region conflict. Payments have have slowed down.

Business has slowed overall, but we still pretty positive about that region. Certainly what what we looked at is is is anybody doing any better than what AYOKA is doing in penetrating that market?

We don't really see any evidence of that. We we fairly well positioned there.

I think the Egyptian business did did really well in a very difficult market, and we think that they will continue to deliver into 2027. Another question, 'How will AYOKA compete internationally versus global and local players in Europe?'

We don't really see ourselves competing with the the players in in Europe. We've got niches that we operate in.

I think the thrust of our international business is probably fostering relationships with our existing client base, continue to manage the existing work we have. It I don't think it'll ever be a a huge material part of AYOKA at this point, unless we find acquisitions there.

We have recently won some new work in the UK, which is is really playing to AYOKA's strengths, operating in a in a niche area, and and that that that is something we could utilize a bit more. Another question is acquisitions, 'How do they drive growth?'

I think that's a good point, a good question. We we make it's almost like a a process of finding acquisitions.

The business unit business units, they they need to find gaps in in their kind of product offering. They then feed through acquisition ideas.

Ashona and her team at the center, they they do great work doing due diligence and and following through on those acquisitions and and completing them. We've kind of got a process in place.

If you had to think about AYOKA 18 months ago, 2 years ago, you'd never think they'd be in a position to make acquisitions, but we've we've actually executed on two very nice businesses already. There's there's what what's important to me is that there's a pipeline of of companies out there.

That pipeline is really a function of, thousands of little tech companies have started in South Africa in the last six years, and there's not many other people that are in the position with strong cash generation, a big platform of like 3,000 customers that can offer people a home for their business. Like a founder, he obviously loves his business, he's passionate about it.

If he wants to find a a home for his business where we're going to leave him alone and let him run in this radical autonomy world, and and penetrate the AYOKA client base, there's like few opportunities, I think, as as attractive as what AYOKA is. How we drive value from that is in a couple of ways.

One, we don't overpay for acquisitions, we're very disciplined on on price. Two, we have earn-outs.

Three, we've also got tax losses that we've inherited at at AYOKA that we can utilize, and that makes the price we pay even more attractive. I think the success of AYOKA going forward, like to really get it back to what AYOKA what AYOKA used to be in the good times, I think it's going to be driven by this kind of serial acquisition model, which I'm I'm pretty excited about.

Right, let's go through some more questions. 'How does AI cost per task compare with similar employee cost per task, and does it allow for smaller teams?'

That that's a very good question. I think some of the preliminary work we've done, and and I would say that our Egyptian team is probably the most advanced when it comes to deploying and utilizing AI in their business, probably I think 77% of their engineers are are are using AI actively.

It's resulted in probably a 50% to 60% improvement in productivity, I think, from from the information that we have. It's something that I think we have to embrace, and it's a real opportunity.

If you think about tech services business, is AI a a a threat or an opportunity? I think I'm coming out on the side of of of an opportunity to be far more productive.

I think if we are 50% or 60% more productive now, I think that number will only accelerate and improve going forward. Then we have another question, 'Would you mind unpacking how the guided 11% EBITDA growth will be achieved?'

That that'll come in two parts. Obviously, we've got organic revenue growth, this year was a was a difficult year, tough year, and we grew revenue, 3% to 4%.

Now, I think we can do, much better than that on an organic basis. You can pencil in whatever number you want there.

Then on top of that, if you take let's say we're generating this next year we'll generate 650 million of free cash, but that includes the 200 million kind of working capital unwind. On a normalized basis, that's 450 million going to 500 million next year.

Now, that kind of free cash flow means that you're probably adding on you you could probably add on 250 million of of equity in acquisitions. What kind of revenue would that come with?

That could give you close on 500 to 700 million of of revenue, which is which is, over 10% of group revenue through acquisitions. From a revenue growth point of view, you could be growing, double digits plus on a combination of of organic and and revenue growth.

We don't expect massive margin deterioration from an EBITDA point of view, so that will easily give you the kind of guidance that we've we've provided. What what's required to reach that guidance is I think, far more than before, AYOKA is the master of its own destiny.

It needs to constantly focus on winning new business. As last year, AYOKA added 2.1 billion of of new revenue, which is a strong performance in a difficult market.

There's another question about cost cutting and how much cost cutting you believe is left in the business. I think, like I said, we're probably 80%, 85% through.

There's more opportunities to be efficiency gains rather than outright cost cutting, which will, as I said, come as some relief internally. Then we have another question, a couple of questions.

'Excluding acquisitions, what needs to happen for revenue growth to reaccelerate?' Some of the big businesses this last year didn't didn't generate the kind of performance that we were after, and they were helped out by smaller businesses doing incredibly well.

I think if the big businesses start firing again, we will and and and the group works together, I think we'll we will end up with that reacceleration in in revenue growth. I think there's some low-hanging fruit as well, some simple things that the business can get right, which we're working on.

We've brought in new sales people in some cases. We, effectively what we want to do is make sure that every seat in AYOKA that's client-facing is the best possible person we can have in that position.

That doesn't happen overnight, but we're starting to see very positive momentum coming through there. Then another question, 'Could you talk us through the tax losses are being utilized?'

Okay. We will if you if you look at our tax rate overall, our tax rate is is efficient.

We happy with where we are on on being being on the right side of SARS. We will continue to take a conservative view when it comes to utilizing our tax losses.

Another question, 'How do you intend to achieve revenue growth?' We've I think we've covered that.

'How do you intend funding acquisitions, shares or cash?' That's a very good question.

It really depends. We want to share the the the risk equally.

A founder is selling his business, obviously we don't want him to sell his business and walk away the next day. We want, kind of the we we follow a model of radical autonomy, but what that misses is that you don't have a team working together across the group.

What we hope to do is is that with being incentivized on a common share or equity means that everybody should be working together to make sure that the group is cohesive. We're not there yet, but certainly when it comes to acquisitions, we want to use earn-outs, deferred compensation, and and using using our shares.

Unfortunately, our shares are trading at like 25% free cash flow yield, maybe even more, and so issuing equity becomes quite a costly exercise. We'd rather be acquiring the shares, but there'll always be a mix to make sure that people are correctly incentivized and we share the risk equally.

'Then why did AYOKA stop buybacks during '26? Given the next two years you'll deliver 2 rand a share of free cash flow, I assume share buybacks will become your primary capital' It's a very good question.

Just to finish that question, it says, 'I assume share buybacks will become your primary capital allocation priority for FY '27 and '28 at these levels.' I think if I had to ask a question on this call, I would probably ask that one.

I'll I'll I'll tell you the the answer to it. Like I said, we we're probably generating 450 million plus the 200 million and then next year hopefully another 500 million.

The priority is is acquisitions, so that's like priority number one. There's no way that we'll be able to spend all that money from the acquisitions that we have.

What's quite interesting is if you go back at AYOKA's history when it was still EOH and you take the the period of time from 2000 to 2015, that's when like AYOKA was or EOH had this huge market cap and everybody loved it. Back then it only really did 15 acquisitions over that period, like 15 major acquisitions, which were like, one acquisition a year.

Now, in this last year, we've already done two acquisitions. They are smaller, but a smaller acquisition still requires a lot of due diligence, a lot of extra work.

It's a bit like like Charlie Munger said about marriage, you have to choose the best person that'll have you. It's a bit like that with acquisitions.

We we have to find the best acquisition that will want to be a part of of AYOKA. We don't want to, force anybody to be in AYOKA.

We want companies that actually like see the opportunity and want to be part of of this rebuild. We've looked at many, many acquisitions.

We've looked at some big companies, some smaller companies, and, to answer this question more directly, what you find is that you do due diligence on a company, and then you realize that what you have in AYOKA is actually a better quality business that you feel more comfortable with. Then, that kind of reinforces your decision about share buybacks.

You say, 'Well, I'd rather, instead of spending money on an acquisition, which is of like, maybe less certainty, at least you know what you're getting. We know the business in AYOKA, and so we can allocate capital towards that.'

I would say, I think in the presentation we used a a share count number target, which I'm not sure too many companies do, but we've kind of given this target of 500 million shares in issue. We've got 620 million at the moment.

We hope to get to 500 million shares, but clearly that'll be contingent on where the share price is. The lower the share price is, the better it is for buybacks quite clearly.

Right. 'Do you have a long-term capital structure in mind?

Is the growth funded by debt or should debt continue to be maintained at current lower levels?' We have minimal debt, it's like 0.2 times net debt to EBITDA.

There's opportunities for us to take on more gearing should an acquisition opportunity arise. I I would be very comfortable with AYOKA carrying, one to two times net debt to equity.

I, I'd even think AYOKA could take on, maybe 2.5 times, but with a plan to always reduce that that that debt. I I do like businesses to have some debt in them to keep expenses tight and the focus on on cash flow generation.

I do think there's there's there's an opportunity to increase the debt at this point. I'm just reviewing the questions.

'How do you see executive remuneration normalizing over the medium term to sustainable levels?' Good question.

I think I think we have a very low executive remuneration strategy at AYOKA, and I think if when when it normalizes, that might be very much in favor of of equity over cash. We want we want the executive management of AYOKA focused on, driving up the performance of the business, and that should be reflected in in capital allocation decisions, and ultimately, that'll be reflected in the the value that AYOKA is traded at on on the market.

I do expect that to, normalize. I don't think it it's normal yet, but it's certainly on the lower level, and shareholders get the benefit of that.

Then we have a a question. Just there's a question from just there's a question from, 'Share price of AYOKA is down 9% year-to-date.

What could the reason be?' I wouldn't know the answer to that.

I would say that, as I said earlier, the lower the share price is, the better it is for existing shareholders, because it allows us to buy shares back at a more attractive price. I wouldn't be too worried about short-term performance issues on on the share price.

AYOKA's market cap is only 2.4 billion, it's a small-cap company even in South African terms, I wouldn't worry too much about that. I think that brings to an end our questions.

Thank you very much for joining us. If you have any further questions, please contact AYOKA.

There should be the contact details on on the website. Thanks once again.