Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us this morning for our interim results presentation, H1 2026.

You can see from our results that it's been a disappointing trading period for us. In our update at our full-year presentation last year, we hinted at some uncertainty in the advertising spending market and in the government spending on education, and both of those items, to a greater or lesser degree, did realize in the current financial period.

If you look at the results of the group, you can see our print publishing and distribution segment did very well compared to the prior period. Some of that performance is related to earlier orders from the DBE in the first six months compared to the prior period, and we expect that our full-year performance will be slightly below last year's full-year performance as a result of lower volumes that we think we will sell into the DBE into the workbook market.

The balance of the print business has improved, and we continue to restructure that business and focus on providing value to our clients. As you see at the end of the presentation, essentially our print business is a business that has to deliver good value for brand owners.

That focus and analysis of our products to deliver that is continuing. We expect that the margin improvements that we've seen in that business will continue to be realized and sustained for the full-year period.

On the education side, you can see that it was a loss-making period compared to a substantial profit in the prior year. In essence, that is the result of late orders coming through from provincial departments.

If you recall, in our education business, the government announced a while ago that they were planning to update the curriculum, and we expended probably 35 million in the prior period on the development of new material, which we did submit for the early phases of the curriculum in Grade R phases to three. Those submissions were accepted, and we're waiting the final catalog.

As we expect that the government's got a budgetary problem in education. Not only does it not have the funds to roll out the new curriculum, extensive, it's also facing significant pressure just to continue with its current procurement program.

We've seen a number of provincial departments either delay procurement or delay payment of outstanding balances, and some of the provinces, such as KZN, have been placed under administration by the Treasury. We've seen a recovery in orders following the September close, and we've got a very positive and substantial order book, and that business is profitable.

We still expect that the volume of orders which we will receive for the full year will probably be 20% to 25% lower than the orders which we received in the prior year. The business would still be pretty profitable, but will produce substantially less EBITDA than the prior period.

We've continued to invest in that business in our technology strategy, which we expense, not capitalizing those costs, because we think that is an essential part of the future of that business, is our ability to deliver learning outcomes through technology. Disappointing first six months for education, but a portion of that is timing-related and came through in the October and now in the November months.

You should see that portion returning to approximately 75% of the prior year. On the packaging side, we're slightly down compared to the prior period, mainly as a result of a decision to retain margins and walk away from marginal business.

The economy is difficult, but our strategy there is to focus on our large, profitable clients and walk away from marginal business. The business is performing very well, exceptional customer focus, and we're continuing to see the benefits of that in the second six months.

If I talk specifically about print and publishing, we can see the delta compared to the prior year, which was mainly timing-related, as I indicated, but we managed to improve margins substantially in our print business. We continue to invest in technology processes, and we've streamlined the management structure in Print now, where we've got a single management structure responsible for all plants, and we're driving efficiencies, making sure that not only are we efficient in terms of our production processes, but our procurement processes, our staffing levels, our customer service levels, our quote success rates, etc.

All of those are continuing to be improved, and I expect this business to continue on that trend going forward. In general, I think that print in itself, especially on the retail side, has stabilized, but we still see pressure from digital advertising taking away insert revenue on retail.

That's a trend which we're talking to our clients, and we still have faith that print advertising is a very cost-effective medium, and it's about educating the people that continue to be employed in marketing and advertising departments that there is a place for print, and that print is actually a very successful and essential part of the brand communication process in South Africa. I mentioned the third bullet point, the DBE contract is a timing-related issue, and we will have a slightly lower profit from that segment in the full-year results, mainly as a result of slightly lower volumes, and that's also reflective of the pressure that the education departments are under at the moment.

Education, I think I've commented on that. I think going forward, it'd be interesting to see how the national and local education departments navigate the proposed changes.

In many provinces, there are still gaps in textbooks, not only are they planning to roll out a new curriculum, but we don't even have full compliance with respect to everybody receiving textbooks. The procurement budgets are under pressure because stationery takes a big portion of the budgets, and all provincial departments and national departments are under pressure, and we can see that generally in the economy.

That pressure is filtering through to the education budgets, and a big portion of the education budget is going to salaries, the balancing factor typically is materials. The process for government to navigate a curriculum change plus spending constraints is going to be very interesting.

You can see from the National Minister of Education that she has asked for more money, but general government budgets are tight. What the spending profile looks like going forward would be interesting.

It's clear that a child cannot study without a textbook, there's a point where there just aren't enough textbooks and money will have to be appropriated for that. How we are impacted through a curriculum change process would be interesting.

The thing with a curriculum change is you have to replace all textbooks, where our current process is really a top-up process. To move from a model where you move from topping up textbooks depending on what the percentage is every year to replacing all textbooks has a substantial impact on spending.

Plus you've got the concomitant training requirement for teachers. There's a training spend and a training budget, which also has to accommodate it.

To indicate in our full-year results, you've got an additional subject, Coding and Robotics, which government wants to make compulsory from Grade R. That requires a completely new way of thinking and classroom materials.

Coding and Robotics will require additional material, support materials in order to teach that properly. We've got a lot of questions in that process.

In the meantime, we continue to supply our material outside of the foundation phase, and we are strong in the mid and upper phases, anything from Grade 4 and up, we've got a large portion of the catalog. As the top-up orders come in, we should benefit from that, but it does require budget in the education department.

You can see that the fifth and the fourth bullet points there, our strategy in education is not to be a textbook provider, but to be a business that delivers learning outcomes. In the past, I think there was a tendency by education departments to deliver electronic textbooks.

We think that is a solution, but I don't think it's applicable necessarily across Africa in a broad sense. The use of technology in a different format, whether it's used on a phone, etc., or video format, I think is going to become more important.

Our focus is to continue to invest in products which enables the delivery of learning outcomes using a textbook and other methods in order to really improve education. We've got a very good team focused on that.

Our Maskew product is rolled out. We've got about 100,000 students on the platform, and they continue to use it.

We see extensive use during exam times and times when children are forced to study, mainly in Grade 11 and 12 grades, and we want to extend that to other grades. The focus of that team is to really do a lot of user research now to make sure that the usability of that product improves substantially.

We see increasing use of the product, and our active users is growing. We expect that spend and that investment to continue, and hopefully we reach a point where the product is adopted widely.

It's a very difficult problem to solve. On the face of it, doing something digitally is quite easy, but for anybody that's used a tool to teach themselves over their phone or online, the initial phase is easy, but the continued use and continued delivery of value is quite difficult.

It's a problem which many companies in many industries are struggling with, and we're not unique in that instance. Many people are trying to do something in education, but I don't think there's a clear success for blueprint, especially in a country such as South Africa, where you've got varying demographics, technology challenges all over the country, lack of support, lack of funding for devices, etc.

It's an interesting challenge, but if we do solve that challenge, I think we'll have a unique value proposition in education. On the packaging side, as I said, we made a decision to retain margins.

The business is very healthy. Our sales to our top 10, 20 clients is increasing.

Those are the large users of packaging material. We continue to invest in equipment and unique packaging solutions so that we don't compete in the run-of-the-mill market and offer unique solutions.

While we're down compared to the prior year, I think the business is in a very healthy position, and got a settled management team, look forward to their contribution going forward. I'm going to hand over to Craig and the team to take you through the numbers, and then I'll wrap up with the outlook at the end.

Thanks, André. Morning, all.

If you look at the revenue, it ended up 1% up, but as André noted, a lot of DBE in H1 in terms of timing with Novus Print, and on the MML side, their timing is leaning towards H2. DBE on the print side partially offsetting the drop in MML, or the timing on MML.

We already saw the orders flowing through now in October and November, MML already catching up on the provincial orders on the revenue side. On the GP, a pleasing percentage there.

We finished 2025 on 31.4%, very much in line with that, but up on September last year. You'll remember that we were a bit squeezed on paper pricing in the prior year, so that has at least recovered in the current year.

Overheads up, but that is largely because of the introduction of On the Dot, Novus Media, Novus Sport. They make up about 109 million of that difference on the overheads, or 25 of the 28%.

The rest only up 3%, and that includes the digital costs at MML that we've been expensing. The net result with the additional overheads coming through, but the top line fairly static, is that we are down on last year in terms of EBITDA, operating profit, earnings per share.

We will see a recovery in H2 as we see the orders flowing through from MML. Nothing surprising on the cash flow, a pleasing result to finish at 742.

Last year we finished on 310, but you would remember that we had the Volume 1 DBE receipt was received on the 1st of October, received on the 1st of October last year, so that did make a big difference. If I just focus on the outflows in the turquoise, you will see that we had a 70 outflow in working capital, that is from March until September.

That is expected, as we ramping up not just on DBE, but on other core printing products, as well as packaging side. We do ramp up from March to September.

Then taxation paid, the acquisition of PPE, that's a combination of expansion across the businesses of 18 million, maintenance assets of 23 million, and intangibles of 13. Then the external dividend, of course, that we paid to shareholders in July, that is reflecting there.

Then the acquisition of associates or investments, that 39, the biggest portion of that was an increase in our stake in Mustek, we up to 39.95% holding in Mustek at the moment. Then just that little blue block there as well, just noting we've already successfully delivered Volume 2 of DBE, that will go into the schools for the 2026 calendar year, so that over 400 million will be flowing in now in the first two weeks of December on top of that 742 cash balance that we've got.

Similar story with working capital. You can see September 2024 that almost 600 million was sitting in there that came in just after half-year, very favorable if we compare September to September last year as well as to March.

Happy with where the working capital is given the cycle that we're in, and this is in our peak season with the order book very full for November.

On the outlook side here, I think it's well-known that we acquired a substantial stake in Mustek, and we're in a period where we have to and have made a mandatory offer. Frustratingly, we're still waiting for the TRP to issue a compliance certificate, and we haven't appointed ourselves or asked to be appointed to the board of Mustek, we really haven't been involved in that business.

We still think it's a very good acquisition for the group, and we're very positive about the actions which management are taking to reduce the working capital and improve profitability of that business. We do look forward to getting involved in more detail once this process is completed, and hopefully that happens soon.

We don't really at this stage have a clear indication from the TRP what the timing is on that process, and it is very frustrating, to say the least. Under the second item there, as I alluded to in the intro, our business is really focused on meeting our customers' advertising and promotional needs.

It touches many of our businesses. It touches our print business, but also now with our media assets.

What we are delivering is content in order to brand communicate with customers. Across the group, we've got to focus on understanding what that value proposition is, communicating that value proposition more clearly to advertising agencies, brand owners, marketing people, etc., and then reinvesting in technology to make that more measurable.

We do have a distribution business through On the Dot, where we touch a lot of distribution points. More than 3,000 independent outlets, we deliver magazines and other products to a number of houses and home addresses, we deliver newspapers and pamphlets to.

We think that if we're smart about the use of technology and the ability to give feedback to our customers, that will enable our customers to see the value and also track the value that they receive from the products which we do. We also think that we can do some things very smart with technology and actually create different businesses.

In On the Dot specifically, I think that they have got a number of initiatives, maybe too many initiatives at the moment, in order to leverage the distribution platform and base, and to provide a value-added service to the people that we deliver products to. Not only do we deliver the products, but we should help our customers sell more: more magazines, more newspapers, more content, more advertising.

We can't continue to see ourselves just as a facilitator or logistics function. We really need to drive business intelligence.

I think that is the future of the On the Dot business. Yes, we do distribution, but the intelligence and other services will determine whether that business becomes a substantial business or whether it remains a marginal business in our group.

Our media business, the newspaper business, I think, didn't have a great first six months. Advertising spend on a national basis is under pressure, but the team's focused on that.

We're opening up new publications and acquiring new publications in niche sectors. We do that carefully and with a lot of thought.

We understand the concerns of expanding into print media, but we do think that print media has got a place. As books have shown us with the increased sales of books, we think there's a point in time where printed media will stabilize, and where it'll still be seen as a valuable product, not only to customers, but to brand owners.

We're working on that in our media and newspaper business, and I think that team is very energized and focused. We look forward to a larger contribution from them in future.

Then we own an AI business or a share of an AI business, Byte Fuse. There's probably two big focus areas for, or three big focus areas for Byte Fuse.

One, to assist MML to build Maskew, which is our AI tutor for education, and there's a team that does that. Secondly, there's a team that is focused on driving efficiencies.

A lot of effort going into the process which we follow to produce content, books, etc., and to automate and improve and add value to that process. Thirdly, across the group and externally, to provide services to implement AI on an enterprise basis.

All three of those initiatives has got teams focused on them. It's easy to develop an AI product using open-source tools, but to really industrialize a product, I think requires a unique team, and I think that team has demonstrated their ability to do that very well in certain niche sectors.

I look forward to seeing their contribution going forward. Then the green block, I've talked a lot about that.

Not enough certainty from provincial education departments and budgets for us to have a real, clear outlook in our education business. We're looking at the cost base, making sure that we're efficient in terms of the number of people that we employ and what they do.

Secondly, the processes that we use to produce and manage content, and to remain nimble, so that when we are required to develop products for the next submission, we can do that very cost-effectively and smartly. Then finally, we are investing in additional print technologies.

Part of the evolution in print is that the new technology which is available to us provides us to be fast, flexible, and provide unique products to our clients with great turnaround times. We've got a very good business plan around that, and in the new year we'll be installing some new print equipment, which changes the capability which we've got in the group.

On an overall basis, it's been a disappointing first six months. We were frustrated and disappointed in what we were able to deliver.

We're looking to see to improvement in the second half of the financial year. Fortunately, our NAV, which has just kind of underpinned, increased by 5%, and that's edging closer to the 6 rand level.

Our ability to manage our cash resources, I think, is shown to be good. We've restructured our debt, and we're busy restructuring our debt package at the moment to enable us to even have more flexibility to pursue opportunistic acquisitions.

We're sitting with a cash balance, as Craig indicated, will be more than a billion in December. We've also worked with our bankers to put together a really flexible debt package to enable us, if we want to, at short notice, to execute opportunistic transactions and acquisitions to the extent that they come available.

I think it's important to have that flexibility in the balance sheet. Part of I think what's made us successful in the past is our ability to react quickly in terms of opportunities.

We've got the ability now with our funding package to do that, but there's nothing on the horizon. We just wanted to make sure that we've got that facility available.

Then for the second six months, clearly our main job will be to get the Mustek acquisition implemented, hopefully, and work with that team to embed that transaction. Let me leave it there, and open for any questions.

Andre, there's a— Sorry, it's on the screen there. The question from Nicholas Hops regarding Mustek: "Do you worry that if too much time passes without the TRP compliance certificate, that opportunity to create or extract value from Mustek will diminish?"

I don't think so. That business has got a substantial net asset value.

I think it's a stable business, been around for many, many years. I think the management team there is on track and is focused on the right things to do there, which is focus on the working capital, improve the margins in their business, and make sure that the trading volume which they require in order to support that group, that increases.

They've already reduced working capital a bit, and the benefit of that comes through their interest cost line, which is reduced. The big, broad strokes, I think they will continue to execute.

What we're keen to do is to sit down with management and understand the longer-term plans in that business. They've got a substantial customer base, which is a credit to them, got a footprint across South Africa.

What the product suite is that they deliver and where they go to with their services businesses is an interesting conversation which we'd like to have over time. For now, the main focus is to get the excess inventory down and make sure that they execute on the margins and the volume of business which is out there.

I don't think our non-involvement makes any difference to that process, but obviously as a large shareholder, we'd like to work with management and give them the support that they require in order to really create more momentum. I don't think so, Nicholas.

Any other questions? Someone likes to ask a verbal question?

Barry. Thank you very much.

Barry, you can go ahead. Hi, everyone.

Thanks for all the information. Sorry, can you just go through the details you were talking about the Foundation to the Grade 3?

Is that the only part that's been out for tender? I half heard it.

Get some clarity, and you're saying Grade 4 onwards stays the same, of which you'll hopefully get top-ups, and you'll find out on the Foundation to Grade 3 by the end of the year, is that right? There was a general statement, Barry, that the government is revising the curriculum.

I've previously expressed my concern about curriculum revisions. I don't think we've got a problem with the curriculum in South Africa.

Countries like Norway and Finland, their curriculum's stayed the same for many years, but there is a Look, I think there is a desire by, let's say, academically focused people to continually tweak things because that's what people and academics do. They study things and propose recommendations.

Unfortunately, I think that the academic voice in government, especially in education, is very, very strong, and the practical voice is not so strong. There's always things which you can do to improve a curriculum, but I don't think the problem in South Africa is the curriculum.

I think the problem in South Africa is we need to make sure that our teachers are adequately equipped to teach children, and that's not my opinion, I think that's borne out by empirical evidence. Nonetheless, there was a statement, a broad statement made that the curriculum change will be happening, and we complied with that and submitted materials for Grade R to three.

The intention is to roll out the curriculum change across all grades, up to Grade 12. The actual practical implication of doing this, I think, became, I don't know, more apparent at a point in time, which is why you saw that the submissions made, there was an initial acceptance of material, but the final catalog had not been announced.

You can only start procuring if there's a final catalog. The first procurement cycle government has said for Grades R to three will happen in 2026.

The issue with that curriculum is now includes Coding and Robotics from Grade R. You've now got a new compulsory subject.

Now, teaching Coding and Robotics is substantially different to anything that's been done, and the teachers out there in the field, they would have never had exposure to Coding and Robotics when they went through their studies. You've got a compulsory subject which is different to teach compared to any other subject, and the teachers in the system have not been taught how to teach that subject.

There's a cost which you have to incur in order to do that, plus there's a cost which you have to incur in order to update the teachers on the effect and implications of the new curriculum. While the intention is to roll it out across all grades, I think that this cost machine that's starting to build is creating second thoughts in terms of the timing.

Now there's been various engagements between interested parties as to what is the timing, but we've got no idea what the timing is. We're ready to do the next submission, we're ready to supply to the curriculum when it is released, but there's just a lack of clarity.

Secondly, the trend of government trying to develop their own materials, or free materials, or donor-funded materials, that threat and that trend is also out there. Part of their strategy might be to have more donor-funded/free material on the catalog.

Whether that's the right or the wrong thing to do, everybody's got their opinions, but we think that there will still be a place for paid-for textbooks in the curriculum. All of that, I think, is in the air at the moment.

Until such time as those things are announced, children need textbooks, you need top-up orders to go through to the schools. There's no choice, otherwise the children can't be taught.

We think that there's still runway left for the current curriculum and current catalog, but the extent of orders is really determined by needs. As soon as there's a priority to roll out Grade R to three, then the procurement goes to Grade R to three, because it's a new curriculum, you don't have a choice, you have to buy those books.

Then there's no money left for the top-ups books for Grade 4 through to 12. There's a practical problem is that children don't have textbooks.

You've got this issue which I think that I don't think the education departments and provincial education know how to deal with clearly. There's just a lot of uncertainty.

I would be surprised if they roll out or start the next phase of the submission next year, because it's just got such cost implications. I think there are noises from government that they've indicated that maybe it should happen over a longer period, but you don't know anything more than I know at the moment, Barry.

Thank you very much, André. Morning Anthony, I see your hand is up.

Good morning from my building site. Firstly, thanks for the presentation.

I note the cash on hand of 742, with the additional 400 rand million coming in, and the ring-fenced amount that you have to hold for Mustek. Two parts to this question, please.

An earlier question indicated you're still interested in Mustek, but I've had some conversations with you in the past regarding the current progress from those slow bunch of bastards at the TRP. How is it currently going, and what stage are you currently at, my first part.

The second part, given the cash that you have and that is building up, what's the current strategic intent of the board to look at perhaps acquisitions in new areas or perhaps in packaging or related areas to effectively utilize the cash, which is clearly building up at a rapid pace? Thank you.

Let me deal with the first issue, the TRP. We continue to receive questions from the TRP.

I have no idea when they're going to be finished. It's a mystery.

It's incredibly frustrating, and the fact that a regulator can take such a long, long time in what's a completed transaction is a concern. We continue to respond to the questions and continue to give them reams and reams of information, and hopefully that process resolves itself very quickly.

The indications each time in the correspondence is like, "This is the last," or, "We're nearly there," or, "We're about to finalize," and then the next round comes. Our legal advisors, they haven't seen this before, they're also baffled, hopefully closes soon.

Then on the excess cash in the balance sheet, as we said in the past, our preference is to deploy the cash in good acquisition opportunities. We've paid a dividend, and we'll continue to look at paying dividends, but our preference is to find good investment opportunities.

We've looked at acquisition opportunities in packaging and all sorts of areas which are not related to our core business at the moment, but we are cautious not to overpay. We're not in a rush to deploy the cash, I don't think there's any need for us to rush to deploy the cash.

If the right opportunities becomes available, Anthony, we'll do it. We've structured our balance sheet and our debt facilities at the moment to enable us to even do larger acquisitions.

We've been targeting a small set of companies in the past, but if something more substantial comes across which generates EBITDA, which also supports the acquisition, we'll definitely look at that. The only thing is we don't want to overpay, and the conundrum which we see and which everybody sees is that transactions in the private market are substantially more expensive than the public market.

We are not going to pay somebody a six times EBITDA multiple for a business, it's just not going to happen in our world. As I said in the past, private equity companies have to unload their portfolios, but the prices are too high, and they will remain sitting with those assets unless people with too much money come along and buy those assets.

I think between myself and Adrian and the board, we're very focused on not overpaying and rather say no to an acquisition than sit with something which is marginal. We don't need to do marginal transactions at the moment.

That's why we wanted to restructure our balance sheet, and we've actually had a good discussion with our bankers to enable us to do transactions and have covenants which reflect the transactions rather than sticking with gearing and/or EBITDA covenants that could trip us up. The thing which we didn't want to do is burden our balance sheet with a debt structure which suddenly places a lot of pressure on us because you've got a debt service covenant or an EBITDA covenant which doesn't give you the flexibility to not extract cash or do something in the underlying business.

We think we've got a good financing structure to enable us to do that, but we need to find the right deals, and I think staying patient is probably the right thing to do more than anything else at the moment. Just to ask further, given that you mentioned you would look at considerably larger transactions going forward, over the 2.2 billion rand market value, what sort of scale optimally would you be looking at?

I know I can't hold you to it, but what size checkbook would you be allowed to spend?

The function of the check, I think, will be determined by the underlying EBITDA which you acquire and whether you acquire 100% or a non-controlling stake. If you control 100% of the business, then you've got full access to the cash flows in order to support a debt package.

You can do a fairly large deal if it's a 100% deal and you've got a stable EBITDA which comes from that at 100% acquisition. I wouldn't be able to tell you now what the size of the deal is, but I'd say that you could do something larger than our current group if you bought 100% of a business which is cash-flow generated and has got the ability to support the debt package in itself.

If it's a stable business, then even more so, because you don't need such a big equity underpin in order to support the transaction. It's not that that's what we're chasing, but we need to open up that opportunity to be able to do that.

If it's a partial acquisition such as Mustek, then you're really looking to the asset, the share price, to support any debt packages, and there you need to be much more cautious because if the share price falls, you sort of look all sort of covenant issues. Those acquisitions are potentially less attractive to us because you don't have direct access to the cash flow.

In the case of Mustek, because the discount to NAV was so so big, we said there definitely is a good acquisition for us to use our excess cash on, even though we can't gear that. We haven't geared that per se, we've used our current balance sheet against our current assets and their cash flows to gear the acquisition, but we haven't used the Mustek cash flow to support the transaction.

Depending on the asset which we acquire, that's what you look at. The thing with 100% acquisitions is that you're probably looking at the private market.

Again, as I say, the private market has got stupid EBITDA multiples, and you've got a founder that's built a business over 50 years, they've done the cash flow calculations at a six times EBITDA multiple and that's what they want, and that's kind of embedded in their minds, but that's not where the market is. Until such time as the pressure really really happens, and what fortunately is the private equity market or the buyers has really disappeared there.

You don't really have the pressure anymore from the private equity market that has to deploy a fund which they've raised in order to do the transactions. The pressure probably will come from listed companies who seek to bolt on acquisitions in a particular vertical or segment.

At least there, we're seeing people are also paying reasonable prices. It's not a great answer, but it gives you a framework in the way with which I think Adrian and I are thinking.

Great, thanks, André. Right, I think that's it.

Thank you. Thanks to everybody.

Thank you.