Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to STADIO Holdings' interim results presentation for the period ended 30 June 2026. Today, we're going to do things a bit different than usual.

We are coming live to you from our Durbanville campus here in the Western Cape, and we are broadcasting from our architecture room at the campus. To all those who are joining us in person, special word of welcome to all of you, and welcome back to university.

Ladies and gentlemen, our presentation today, I will start us off with a brief introduction and setting the scene. Thereafter, I will hand over to our Group CFO, who's joining me with this presentation this morning, Ishak Gouws, who will unpack the numbers for us in detail.

Thereafter, I'll give everybody a blink into the future of STADIO and some of our plans for going forward. After that, there will be a question and answer session.

Then for the people joining us live here at the venue, some drinks and refreshments, as well as a campus tour of the new facilities for those of you who would be interested. Again, welcome.

Every day is a hustle. Working while doing my degree?

Now that's hustling, thanks to STADIO. I got my Master's degree, and shares in STADIO.

Thanks to STADIO, I can balance daycare and my diploma. Getting my degree with all the campus life?

That's STADIO. STADIO gives access, options, world-class degrees, on campus, at home, employability, opportunity.

STADIO: Empowering the nation through higher education.

Ladies and gentlemen, the first six months, we've seen a very good, strong first six months for the STADIO Holdings group. Just to get clarity again, the Holdings group, three distinct brands.

The first one being STADIO Higher Education. During the presentation, we'll talk about the different brands.

The first one being STADIO Higher Education, our comprehensive brand offering both distance and contact learning. Our second brand in the group is Milpark Education, Milpark being a immersive online institution and still the biggest providers of CAs in the country.

Then thirdly, our multi-award-winning film school, AFDA, and AFDA is a contact learning institution. Just for clarity, when we talk about the three brands, these are independent brands with their own strategy and specific market segment that they target.

We started the year off with the opening of the Durbanville campus, which has been a strategic milestone for us in the group. It's been a long journey to get here where we are today.

I'm also very happy to see that we are joined by Dr. Chris van der Merwe, our previous CEO for STADIO.

It was Chris's vision to obtain this land many years ago. Chris, I'm sure it must be very special for you also to step onto this premises and to see what we have actually put down at this stage.

Again, thank you so much for your vision in identifying this land when you did. This Durbanville campus, ladies and gentlemen, we set ourselves the target to open the campus with 1,000 students.

We thought that would be very ambitious. At the close of registration, we registered 1,250 students on our first go on this campus.

That obviously let us or got us to the point to pull the trigger on the second phase. When you do the campus tour today, you would see there's still a lot of development taking place on the campus.

That is Phase 2, and that phase should be completed by November this year. That includes additional engineering labs, a moot court, sport facilities, as well as cafeteria and our new hall, which is actually completed already.

Talking about the three brands, STADIO Higher Education, the comprehensive brand, has seen a stellar year thus far. We've really seen fantastic growth in that institution.

18% growth in total student numbers. If we unpack it, 33% of that growth comes from contact learning, and then 16% coming from our very big distance learning.

Looking forward, maybe just a quick quick appetizer. We're very excited about applications already for next year, but I'll talk more to that later in the presentation.

STADIO Higher Education obtained BAC, that's British Accreditation Council, accreditation this year, as well as becoming a full member of the International Council for Distance Education. We didn't just open this campus in 2026, we also opened a new campus for AFDA in Hatfield, Pretoria.

Very excited about that. We've also exceeded our targeted numbers at that campus.

We believe that's a good market for our AFDA brand, especially the Pretoria area. It hasn't been all plain sailing, ladies and gentlemen.

We had some headwinds in our AFDA and Milpark brand. AFDA being affected by the crisis in in the film industry especially, what is happening in Canal+, the close down of Showmax.

Dianne is here, I think she can tell you more about everything that happened to the industry. We see it as a temporary and short-term glitch.

We already see nice green shoots coming from AFDA for the future. At Milpark as well, a lot of new initiatives in our Milpark business, new programs coming in for next year, and we super excited about the growth prospects also in our Milpark business.

2026 is a deliberate year of investment. I'll talk more to it after Isak's unpacking of the results, showing our focus in this investment year.

Even with the investment year, we are very excited about our EBITDA margins that we are still producing. All in all, a good start to the year.

We have a solid foundation, a very strong balance sheet, and we are ready for growth opportunities. Promises made is promises keep.

What did we promise? We promised in our pre-listing statement that we will get to 56,000 students by 2026.

We've done that with 56,171 registered students by the end of June. We can tick that box.

I can then also say, as we stand here today, we're busy with our second-semester intake, and we have already surpassed the 59,000 student mark. STADIO has delivered consistent growth over the years, not just in student numbers, but also in revenue and core headline earnings.

Let's look at the group's interim results in the summary. I'll just touch on it high level, and then Ishak will unpack the results for us in detail.

Firstly, student numbers for the group up 10% to 56,171 students. This is at the end of June.

Revenue up 13%, normalized EBITDA up 31%, profit after tax up 14%, earnings per share up 15%, core headline earnings per share up 18%. Then cash generated from operations up 13%.

Then our return on equity up from last year's 15.4% up to 17.2%. We are well on our way to reach our long-term goal of 20% return on equity.

I will now hand over, ladies and gentlemen, to our Group CFO, Ishak Gouws, who will unpack these numbers for us in more detail.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

It's good to see you all here this morning. I could see Dr.

Chris van der Merwe smile when he saw the 56,000 student number that just that Chris just put up on screen. It's again a big milestone for us as a group.

I know a promise that was made at the back end of 2017, 2018, Dr. Chris van der Merwe.

Done. It's a big milestone for us.

Allow me the opportunity to take you through the results for the half year. I'd like to go through it systematically and perhaps highlight some of the key changes and some of the highlights that you can see.

I think, as Chris alluded to, I think it's a year dubbed as a year of deliberate investment, but with sustained growth. I think that's important.

Although we embarked on this year, we always promised our shareholders that we will continue to generate good results, and I think the numbers will speak for themselves as we go through the slides. I think first and foremost, STADIO achieved its pre-listing statement and highlight of 56,000 students for the half year.

That's underpinned by a 13% revenue growth, I think for the for the half year, really driven by the 10% overall student number growth that we've seen. As Chris alluded to, we've opened two new campuses: the STADIO Durbanville campus, which we're all on today for those that are here in person, where we exceeded our target with 1,250 students in total; and we also opened our AFDA Hatfield campus.

Our loss allowance margin is consistent and flat with the prior period at 8.7% of revenue. Then going to our normalized margins for the period, 31.3% for the half year, up from the 30.6% we saw in the comparative period.

Importantly, to the earlier point, which we'll unpack a bit later, in a year of investment, we believe that's a very good and healthy margin, and can be sustained in the long term. I think financial performance, it's good to have good financial performance, but it's also really backed up by good cash generation, with our cash generated from operations also up by 13%.

Then on the theme of a deliberate investment for the year, some capital expense highlights, and I'll unpack that a bit more. Our big CapEx for the year in total in total accumulated to 247 million rand.

That was invested 79 million rand into the Durbanville facility, with a bit more to come in the remainder of the year. We've also expanded in Curro in our STADIO Higher Education brand.

We acquired the Curro Waterfall building for 18 million rand earlier in the year, as part of our expansion journey in the Waterfall region. We've also invested 38 million rand on other campus enhancements across the STADIO Holdings group.

Again, to support our IT strategy and and and curriculum enhancements, we invested another 12 million rand in that in that sphere. Then moving on to shareholders' returns.

I think for the period, we returned 217 million rand to our shareholders, comprised of 156 million rand of dividends to our ordinary shareholders, as well as 11.3 million rand to our minority shareholders. In the period, as a stated strategy, we've embarked on a journey to acquire all of the long-term incentive share long-term incentive scheme as those shares vest under the scheme.

Our strategy was to ensure that our shareholders aren't diluted. In the period, we purchased and cancelled 3 million shares up to 30 June, which cost us 36.3 million rand.

Subsequent to 30 June, we've bought another 1.87 million shares for 24.6 million rand. Further, we also issued 2.4 million shares under our long-term incentive scheme to those individuals that are entitled to the long-term incentive.

We'll continue to do this in our strategy going forward. As Chris alluded to, I think importantly, although we've got a good a massive year of investment and more to come, we've managed to maintain our debt levels at a fairly low low levels, with half-year debt amounting to 120 million rand, with that substantially paid off post the half year.

Then what does it mean in student numbers? I'll take you through the total student numbers and break it down into contact learning and distance learning.

I think some of the highlights there, as we've alluded to earlier, we've grown our student numbers by 10% in total, with student numbers going from 51,197 to 56,171 at the half-year mark, exceeding our pre-listing statement of 56,000 students. I think important to note there, our student numbers continue be to be impacted by the B2B component in our Milpark Education business.

If we exclude the cyclical nature of that, our student number growth would have been 14%. Then looking at our contact learning student numbers, breaking that down, I think for the period growing by 15% year on year, we continue to see incredibly good momentum, student numbers up from 7,018 to 8,082 students.

I think probably three key components to highlight from that story is in STADIO Higher Education, we've achieved 43% new student growth in the first semester. We've opened two new campuses: STADIO Durbanville and AFDA Hatfield.

To Chris's earlier point, we've also taken some strain in our higher price point qualifications, particularly in AFDA. Then moving on to our distance learning student numbers and how that performed.

Distance learning student numbers overall up 9% for the period, from 44,179 to 48,089 students. Again, three highlights here.

We remain the leaders in the private higher education distance learning space. This is the core component of our group.

Whilst we see good contact learning momentum, continue to see accelerated and good growth in distance learning and remain the leaders in that space. I think what is exciting and encouraging for us, although we've got a tremendously big base already in distance learning, we still saw 14% growth in new students in the distance learning space in STADIO Higher Education.

Overall, our distance learning numbers would have also grown by 14% if it wasn't impacted by the B2B component in our Milpark business. On the revenue side, we've crossed the billion rand mark for the half year.

Our revenue increased from 957 million to just over 1 billion, 1.080 billion. That 13% growth is made up of two components: our contact learning revenue growth grew by 10% from up to 333 million, while our distance learning revenue grew by 14% with to 743 million rand.

Important to note, given the fact that we have taken some strain in our high price point qualifications, that has played an impact in our student mix and our average revenue per student. You can see that in the contact learning growth with student numbers up 15%, but revenue up in the contact learning space only by 10%.

Then if we look at our EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, I think importantly want to highlight the the fact that we've we in a year of investment, we've continued to achieve over the 30% mark, which was our stated objective, with our normalized EBITDA margins at 31.3%. The key difference I wanted to highlight there between normalized EBITDA or normal EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA in the period, when we acquired the Curro building in in Waterfall, we had historically had a sublease with Curro there.

Because we had acquired the building, we had to derecognize a component of our sublease receivable, which led to a once-off adjustment in our income statement, a loss of 6 million rand, which we've added back for EBITDA purposes because it's not normal trading results. That's the differential between adjusted EBITDA and normal EBITDA.

I think on the back of that, despite all of the two investments or the the number of investments, we still managed to achieve a very strong EBITDA margin. Just breaking the margins down a little bit more into our employee cost base, operating cost base, and loss allowance margins.

I think for the period, our employee cost base margin, with the growth that we've seen, has actually improved. If you look at our employee cost base as a percentage of revenue, that's improved from 38.3% in June 2025 to now 37.3% at the half-year mark, with overall growth in employee cost of 10%.

If we look at our operating expenses, that in total pre-normalization has grown by 17% off the back of the various investments, which I'll also highlight to you in the slides that come. If we add back the once-off partial derecognition of that sublease receivable, operating expenses as a percent of of revenue has slightly increased from 22.9% to 23.9% at the half year.

Loss allowance, which I'll cover a bit more in detail, that is flat at the half year year on year. If we look at trade receivables and loss allowance holistically, I think the picture is we've achieved 8.7% year on year, it's flat year on year despite I think still challenging macroeconomic conditions.

We believe it's a good outcome. We continue to innovate in this space.

I think it's exciting to see that we are seeing our recovery rates of debt that we've written off in historic years. We see an acceleration of collections in that space.

It's showing us that our initiatives in in terms of how we go about collecting is improving. Unfortunately, we've also seen some strain in high point high price point qualifications.

That all played out that the loss allowance at the half year is flat year on year. Again, just an operational matter, I think we've highlighted it previously, but importantly particularly in our distance learning space, students moving from Semester 1 to Semester 2, if they carry significant amount of debt, we will not allow them to reregister in the second semester.

Of course, it's our intention, our stated objective, because we want to widen access, which is one of our core pillars in our organization, we'll try and assist students as far as we practically can to to help them, guide them through the year where it's possible. Then just giving you a breakdown of how the debtors balance moved at the half year year on year.

The overall book grew by 9%, whilst revenue grew by 13%. The current-year book grew by 12% with revenue 13%, you can see those collections in the current period was well well-managed.

I think also holistically, if you look at our prior-year debt component, which we believe is the highest risk category in our organization, last year 2024 to 2025, our prior-year debt book grew by 21%, when the current period it only grew by 5%. To my earlier comment, we've seen good recoveries on our older book, which allowed us to keep our loss allowance coverage within an acceptable range, but to release some of those provisions.

The profit or loss for the period, I think profit up 14% for the half year year on year, with profit increasing from 183 million to 209 million, up 14%, really supported by good underlying organic growth in our organization, despite all of the investments, which I'll unpack a little bit more. I and I particularly want to highlight this point, our investment into people, processes, infrastructure, and brand, you can see in our in our half-year results.

Despite all those investments, we continue to deliver good results. As Chris always said, our stated objective is we will become a household name over time.

Then looking at our earnings per share and headline earnings per share movements for the period, from left to right, earnings per share increasing by 15% from 20.8 cents to 24 cents, with our headline earnings per share increasing by 16% from 20.7 cents per share to 24 cents. Then looking at our core headline earnings, that's this is our stated metric that we use as a management team.

This exclude that partial derecognition of that sublease, we normalize for that, which is a once-off adjustment. This is this is where we believe if you look at the growth of 18%, still incredibly healthy in a year of investment, that up 18% from June 2025 from of 176 million rand to 207 million rand, and core headline earnings per share up from 20.7 cents to 24.5 cents.

Then I'd like to take a moment and pause here. We talk a lot about our investment investment year, what does it mean from an earnings perspective and what sits in our income statement?

This is a slide that effectively rolls our June 2025 core headline earnings to our June 2026 core headline earnings. You can see the underlying organic growth in our institution net of our loss allowance, that moved and increased by 26%.

Then that is set off by our strategic investments, which is inclusive of the incremental costs in opening all of our the two new campuses we cited earlier, as well as our investment in brand, people, infrastructure. That that reduced our organic growth of 26% by 8%, and that's how we roll to 18% at the half year.

Then on the statement of financial position, I think I highlighted the CapEx investments. I think the message here is we remain lowly geared.

We've got an incredibly strong balance sheet, and we are ready to pounce on opportunities, with with lots of headroom in all of our facilities that we've got available. Then looking at our cash flow from operations, our free cash flow and cash from operations.

If you look at the middle section there, our cash generated from operations, we generated 123% cash when we compare that to our normalized EBITDA, in line with historic levels. We still continue to generate a healthy amount of cash, with our free cash flow moving from 291 million rand to 332 million rand.

Capital invested for the period, the 147 million rand can be broken up into two components: our infrastructure development and capital assets of 139 million rand, and an 8 million rand into program development specifically at AFDA, taking our total cumulative investment from 2021 or from inception to present to 2.9 billion rand. If we look at how we spend our cash for the half year, we started with an opening cash balance of 156 million rand.

Our operating activities generated 353 million rand for the period. We then spend 79 million rand on our Durbanville campus.

We spent 18 million rand as part of our Waterfall expansion in contact learning as well. We spent another 16 million on various other enhancement and and growth opportunities, with 12 million rand in software and curriculum development.

Our recurring CapEx number for the group is 22 million rand we spent at the half year. We paid 12 million rand down for all of our lease liabilities across the group.

Then we paid a dividend of 156 million rand in the period to ordinary shareholders and 11 million rand to our minority shareholders, and our net repurchases of 33 million rand for the period. That's how we rolled our cash balance from 156 million rand to 150 million rand at the half year.

Then total CapEx projects for the year, this is give you gives you an indication of our what we've earmarked for the year, a total of 301 million rand. 42 million rand in in curriculum and intangibles development, our Durban Durbanville property is circa 110 million rand for the full year, and then other campus expansions, 113 million earmarked for for the year, with recurring CapEx for the full year at 36 million rand.

That's how we roll to 301 million rand for the full year. Ladies and gentlemen, in a six-year financial overview, I think the message is clear.

We remain optimistic. We think the future is bright.

We've got a solid track record with consistently good growth. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Ishak. I think yes, those set of results deserve a handclap, hey?

Ladies and gentlemen, just to expand on what Ishak has said and to give you a little bit of a blink into the future and what we are busy with at STADIO. We have, as I said, reached the 59,000 mark in student numbers in August.

We are actually still in a registration period, we can expect those numbers still to grow. The next target that we've set ourselves as a group is that of 80,000 students by 2030.

To get there, we need to grow at a rate of about 7% per annum. We really believe that is achievable, and we actually believe we can do better, actually much better.

Our growth strategy is effective. It's been serving us well over the last few years.

The growth strategy focus on those five pillars. For the last few years, we've really spent the majority of our attention on the first four.

That includes accrediting new in-demand programs, where we have more than 100 accredited programs in the group currently; taking programs to new sites of delivery and to new modes, I'll talk more to modes as we believe there is still a fantastic opportunity for us; opening new faculties and schools; opening comprehensive campuses; optimizing current campuses. Then the last pillar has come into play since May this year.

After restructuring the STADIO Higher Education institution, the executive team now have space and capacity to actively explore new opportunities and new markets. Let me say this at this stage, there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes, and we are very excited about a lot of potential projects that we will launch soon.

As Ishak said, we are investing for growth. This year especially, we have targeted this year to up our investment.

The focus there on people, technology and systems, infrastructure, brand, and university status. Just a few examples.

If we look at people, we've launched a new academic model in the beginning of this year, a model that we are very excited about and believe we will see even better improvement in our academic quality with scale. That has been the challenge.

We think that we've cracked that nut. We're very excited about it, and it is now to capacitate our new academic model.

Also a lot of capacity in our Chief Information Officer's office, with the appointment of software developers, engineers, as well as IT specialists. Looking at technology and systems, this would be a continuous development for us and it will require investment on a year-to-year basis, as we see technology as a enabler for us to deal with the growing student numbers in our group.

There is also currently a big focus on AI, not just for our staff and students, but also in our operations. It is a non-negotiable for us at STADIO that all our STADIO graduates would be AI-literate.

Not just being AI-literate, they will also get the necessary skills to make a difference in their specific industries that they will move into after they have graduated. Infrastructure, I will come back to that when we talk more about contact learning.

Then brand building, as Ishak said, we identified our sponsorship with the Springboks as the vehicle for us to become a household name in South Africa. We believe there's a lot of synergy between the two brands.

Both of these brands are very proudly South African. As we said, I've mentioned it at all our previous meetings, for STADIO, it's all about becoming the first-choice higher education institution in the country.

Then a further investment priority for us is on university status. That require investment in curriculum, expanding our offerings and our faculties, improving our teaching and learning at all our campuses, research outputs, as well as community engagement.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we will become a university as soon as the regulations will allow us to apply. We've visited the department in late July, myself and Professor Divya Singh, to just go and clarify the timelines to give proper feedback to our investors and all our stakeholders.

I can report back that there is still not a clear timeline on when regulations will become available. The department is working on it.

There's a lot of complexities in this regard. We know it is coming, but we don't know when.

We keep on preparing as if we can become a university tomorrow. We believe that we are ready.

Should the regulations become available, our plan is to apply for university status in STADIO Higher Education; university college status for our Milpark Education, we believe that there is also potential to actually apply for university status in Milpark in the closer future; and then lastly, AFDA, we will register as a higher education college, not because that they are inferior in offering, it's just due to the nature of their programs. It's a very practical program, and therefore that category will suit them best.

For those of you watching from online, there are just a few pictures of the facilities here at our Durbanville campus. As I've said, we're extremely excited, and there's a lot of interest in this campus.

Very exciting news to share with you, on the land, if you look outside the window on our right-hand side, it's earmarked for our indoor high performance centre that we will start construction with late next year. This would be a indoor center that will meet international standards.

We are in discussions with SA Netball, as well as other sports codes, that it would host international events in this indoor arena. Looking at our sports strategy, a lot of inquiries about what is STADIO's vision for sport going forward.

Our sports strategy focus on three levels. Firstly, our social level, that is on-campus sport.

You will see on all our campuses, we have multipurpose sport courts for mass participation and intercampus events. Competitive sport, for those students who want to take the sport at a competitive level, we have sports clubs, and we are also partnering with clubs in the area for those codes that we do not offer at our different campuses.

Then the third level is a varsity sport level. We participate in the Universities of South Africa sporting events in the codes of rugby, netball, chess, esports, and soon we will add soccer to it.

This campus in Durbanville will have a focus on netball especially, as I've already indicated the international facility that we will put down. We will focus our rugby program in Pretoria, and then our soccer program in our Musgrave campus in Durban.

Nice to share this with our investors. We've participated this year in USSA, and both our netball and rugby won their respective divisions.

Let's get back to the growth story. As Ishak already indicated, we have a stellar of a year, especially our contact learning that is doing very well in the group, and especially in STADIO Higher Education.

43% new student growth in STADIO Higher Education, 33% total student growth in contact learning, and then very good demand already for next year. Obviously with this growing demand, we have decided to look at our capacity and to expand our capacity in contact learning.

We've done quite a lot in this regard at Durbanville. As I already indicated, we've pulled the trigger with Phase 2, which you can see is currently in development.

The indoor arena that is coming next year. At Centurion, we've converted our big hall into lecturing facilities, and we are starting soon to develop our new 1,500-seater hall there at our Centurion campus.

Waterfall, very exciting. We've acquired the Curro building that's on the same site.

That will increase our capacity there. There is still potential to acquire a second Curro building on that site, there's a lot of prospects for growth at our Waterfall campus.

At Musgrave, we also acquired or rented extra space in that area to also cover growth that we expect coming in the Musgrave area. Ladies and gentlemen, we said that we're not going to put down a campus in every town in the country when we started this contact learning project of ours in 2020.

However, the demand is so big, and we see especially demand in cities outside of the metropolitan areas. That is really something that we believe we want to test, and hopefully soon we will then also open a new campus in a province that we are not currently actually operating in.

Moving on to our distance learning business. Without a doubt, STADIO is the leader in distance learning in the private higher education sector, with more than 50,000 students currently studying by way of distance learning.

Just to put it in perspective, during this first semester in STADIO Higher Education institution on its own, we've registered 13,400 new distance learning students. We believe that we are very well-positioned in that regard.

We remain the leader in distance learning. We also see a lot of runway still there, with a lot of new programs coming, and a lot of new technology that we will phase in to make the offering even better going forward.

Currently in the group, we offer two modes of delivery. We have contact learning and we have distance learning, each one of them coming at a specific price point.

Obviously your contact learning is at a higher price point, and your distance learning at a lower price point due to the lack of infrastructure needed. We've done a lot of research, ladies and gentlemen, over the last few years, and we looked at the higher education market.

What we have seen is a definite need for something in between contact and distance learning, an offering that will come at a lower price point than what we are currently offering at contact learning level. With that being said, we will soon launch our blended learning campaign.

What will this mean? It would be an offering that will give more people access to classroom education, but at a lower price point.

Meaning it will still be the same curriculum, the same academic quality, but we will be able to offer it at a reduced price point and offer it to students at a reduced price point. If you look at the market, it is evident that the big demand for higher education or the growth in demand for higher education predominantly comes from quintile 3, 4, and 5 schools.

These are lower-fee-paying schools. We believe by bringing in this mode of delivery, we will then widen access to more South Africans to access quality higher education.

We are very excited as a group on this, and we believe this is going to open a total new market for us. If you look at the group currently, we operate in the high premium price point, we offer programs in the middle price point level, and now with this new mode of delivery, we will also be able to offer a contact learning equivalent for a lower price point.

In summary, we say that we are well-positioned to accelerate growth. As we've said to our shareholders, our distance learning is well-established.

We see a lot of runway still in distance learning. We are only playing in a few markets.

There's a lot of market expansion potential for us by bringing in blended learning. We have no offerings in the FET and skills training market, and we haven't touched the rest of Africa yet.

Although we believe we have still a lot of runway in South Africa, we already start looking at potential outside of the boundaries of the country. We also realized that we need more expertise and experience in doing business in Africa, and that's also something that we are focusing on in building that capacity.

A wider range of price points, as I've just indicated, we are playing only in the two brackets. We've got nothing in the lower price point bracket for contact learning or equivalent contact learning.

We see that as a very exciting new step for us at STADIO. Then the quality of our programs.

We are very confident that STADIO is producing quality graduates. Our employment surveys prove that.

Our graduates are highly in demand. We are well-positioned as a business with a very strong balance sheet.

We can act on all these opportunities, and I think one will see a lot of things happening over the next few months towards the end of the year. Then lastly, ladies and gentlemen, we're very excited, and I can say that we believe we're a university in waiting, and that we will meet the criteria that would be set by the department when we can apply for university status.

Yes, we've laid the foundation, as Ishak also alluded to. We're very excited about the second half of this year, and we believe that STADIO will really accelerate our growth over the next few months.

Thank you very much. We will now open for a question and answer session.

Kay, you will read us the questions from the online people, and we'll have a roaming mic for questions in the room. Any questions?

Thank you for the opportunity. I'm just interested in the format of the blended offering.

You mentioned it, but what will it look like?

Again, I'm not going to unpack it in detail. What makes us very excited about the blended offering is, as I've indicated, there is a big demand for equivalent contact learning at a lower price point, and that blended model will focus on exactly that.

Not having these big campuses with all the campus life on it, but to look at a premises that can offer a quality environment, but without having to spend all the CapEx in offering that class-based education.

Chris and Ishak, well done. I am incredibly inquisitive in terms of how big this market is.

Those three questions: Is there a market? How big is the market?

Will the product be a lasting product, if we take a view for over 10 years? Now the growth has been sterling, my question is if our Parliament adopts Starlink, considering the power of AI, how big do you think is our market, considering that we can also expand to the SADC countries?

Chris, let me start off by saying we really believe in the market, in the size of the market. I think over the last few years especially, we've seen a shift in South Africa where in the past private school education was seen as a premium product, however private higher education has the reputation of being inferior to our public universities.

That has changed tremendously over the last few years. I strongly believe that what is happening currently in this private higher education space is contributing to that.

I think the quality of the offering of not just STADIO, but also a lot of our bigger competitors, have really increased the quality of higher education in the space. We believe that the market is very big.

It's also if you look at the profile of South Africa and its schools, a lot of our lower-fee schools in the past didn't get access into higher education programs. The main reason for that's been affordability.

If you add up all the cost associated with enrolling at a university, it is actually astronomical. Your tuition fees are normally not the biggest part of your cost.

It's the accommodation, traveling, and your life expenses moving into a town where your university campus is. I think by taking education into those areas where there are not university campuses even increase the size of the market.

Thank you, Chris and Ishak, for a really good presentation and great results. Just to follow on from Dr.

Chris's question regarding blended. As I was driving in this morning from town in this foggy day, I was listening to SAFM and the crisis going on in the NSFAS funding scheme.

A gentleman on the call said 97%, if I'm right, of the NSFAS funding goes to accommodation, which means if you can do away with that, and actually provide that funding from government into educational purposes, that could be a huge market for this company going forward once you get university status. Any comment on that, please?

Yes, no, 100%. It is, as I've said, we have identified exactly that.

Just in our research the last few months, people responsible in sponsoring and assisting students to go to university have said exactly that. With this blended mode of delivery that we are planning to roll out, we have worked out that you can accommodate five students for the same price as one student going to university and having to pay for accommodation and traveling costs.

Yes, definitely, that's all part of our ethos and our DNA is to make higher education accessible to more South Africans.

There we go. Sorry.

Chris, Ishak, just a question on affordability. It seems like the thing that's coming through a lot here is around just consumer pressure.

That's kind of the biggest learning for me of the morning. If I look at that debtor book, it looks like the longer duration piece of it has grown disproportionately with the total debtor book, which is interesting.

That talks to affordability, I guess. The higher-priced qualifications taking strain.

Just is it pockets of issues? Is it like the AFDA issue potentially?

Is it a broader story? Then I guess the university status, does that give you more pricing power long-term?

You've got blended learning coming in, which is a great volume play and ROE, but is there some pricing power that comes with that as well, maybe for in-person?

Isak, I'll hand over to you to talk about the debtors. Let's say it's a tough environment for a lot of our students.

Even if you look at our debtors book, I think generally, we see it takes longer for students to settle their tuition fees, especially if we look at our distance learning behavior. These are typical adult learners, they have other life priorities as well, and sometimes education gets paid last in the priority list.

However, we do see these students come back. Even if it takes longer, they do come back, pay their school fees, and then continue.

We do see pressure on the premium price point offerings that we have currently, but there is also a strong and definite market that want to operate in those specific qualifications that we offer at that high price point. I don't know if you want to talk about the debtors book, Ishak?

Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Rob, for the question.

Exactly right. To your earlier point, I think to answer your first component, we are definitely seeing it isolated to higher price point qualifications.

Where I think the payment behavior does take longer, there is certainly a bit more pressure in that system. I think likewise, we've responded commensurately as a business by introducing various initiatives to try and curb that.

I think quite interestingly to articulate and to substantiate the point, in the STADIO Higher Education example in contact learning, we've actually seen improvement in collections year on year. I think that's also remarkable.

I think the initiatives and the drive there has shown that although the consumer remains under pressure, we're still seeing good collections, particularly in that space. The high price point ones definitely taking some strain.

Then I think the point I just want to raise, the growth in the prior-year book is still less, if you look at the gross book, than the prior years. It's grown by 5% only comparatively to 20% I think in the prior year.

Because we're seeing enhanced recoveries of things we've written off, we've been able to reduce the coverage a little bit there to compensate for that enhanced recoveries.

Thanks, everyone. There is just a question from our side.

Just given some of the growth initiatives currently underway, is there any thought given to increasing leverage in the business, or would you still look to keep leverage at the same level, the same targeted level?

Yes, I think there is a lot of projects that we are currently considering. It's at a very sensitive point.

I don't know really how to say more in that regard, but definitely we look at a lot of new potential projects coming in very soon. That would really address the leveraging of the total business going forward.

Chris, if I may add to that. I think just to maybe give it some color in terms of numbers.

At the half year, our debt levels was 120. We repaid majority of that post the half year.

I think our strategy, pending sort of further acquisitions or other opportunities and expansion, is of course to keep that as low as we practically can because the business is healthy and generating a significant amount of cash. If we look at our debt-carrying capacity, I'll cite 20 December 2025 numbers, of course, before I give you forecast information, I think we generated EBITDA of just over 500 million at December 2025.

We've got debt-carrying capacity of circa just over a billion rand. I think there's headroom there.

Of course, we'll look at the optimal debt levels when we will embark on a growth opportunity to make sure that the shareholders' returns are optimal. You can definitely expect some increased gearing capacity, but it will always be within acceptable parameters.

Thanks very much. At Milpark, can you maybe just speak a bit more about the headwinds that you're experiencing there, and then you also mentioned some green shoots and new initiatives, just to touch a bit on those?

We have the CEO of Milpark here, I will also give him an opportunity. I think the big issue there is still the decline in the B2B business.

I think we've been seeing that for the last 2 years. It's still the corporate business that is not showing any growth.

Actually, we see more and more of the corporate entities cutting down on this type of formal education, maybe looking more at skills training. I think for Milpark especially, we haven't introduced a lot of new programs over the last few years, but we have a few very exciting programs in the pipeline for next year already.

A minimum of three new programs that we will launch there, if I'm right, Andrew, and then a whole lot of exciting other programs that will come to offer round about the end of 2027 and 2028.

Chris, if I may, I know there's been a question too on the B2B piece. I think maybe if we look at total student numbers, it's sort of between the 4% and 8% of our total student numbers, and it ranges between that level depending on the corporates and the number of students they enroll on the programs.

Therefore you could see the impact, I think that we cited in our total students, the impacts about 4% at the half-year mark. In saying that, I think we like to believe that it's hopefully reached its bottom, of course, but you can never say with a great degree of certainty.

I think to Chris's point, therefore we've seen in the banking and financial services space that many of the corporates opt for QCTO-type qualifications. As a consequence, I think, led by Andrew and his team, there's a number of initiatives in that space to try and not only curb, I think, the B2B impact, but hopefully over time even grow it.

Online questions?

Thank you, Chris. Next, I think Ishak has just spoken to your B2B question.

Talia has asked three questions. First one: It's difficult to ascertain the effectiveness of marketing, but have you seen the rugby campaign helping student growth?

I put my head on the block here in the sense of partnering with the Springbok brand. I can say that the numbers are not yet in, it's our first year of doing it.

I think there is a general feedback that we get that the campaign is working very well for STADIO. We get a lot of exposure in this regard.

Just for example, the past Saturday, we had three Springboks on the field studying with STADIO, being Damian Willemse, Paul de Villiers, who had a blinder of a match, and then also Zachary Porthen, the young tighthead prop. If I can say, our involvement with the Springboks at under-20 level, there we had 30 boys that participated in the World Cup in Georgia, and 16 of those 30-man squad are studying with STADIO.

We see all of these boys being ambassadors for the brand. We strongly believe when the numbers are in at the end of the year, we will reap the benefits of the partnership with SA Rugby.

The second question: I see you give students shares in STADIO. How is this sustainable as you have a large student base, and is it dilutive to shareholders?

This has been a decision from the STADIO management a few years ago already is to really partner with our students. We talk about the STADIO family.

We strongly believe it is sustainable. Let me just quantify it.

These shares are not for all STADIO students. These are for postgraduate students.

It is a smaller percentage of our graduates, only for students obtaining honors, master's, and doctorate studies. It is not in numbers so many students that do qualify.

We ring-fenced it for postgraduate students.

Can I maybe just add if I may, Chris? I think to that point, just in terms of is it dilutive and sustainable, firstly, that money, we don't issue shares for those, we actually make the money available, and those shares are bought in the market, they're not dilutive.

We actually look at it strategically as to why we do it. It actually just allows us also to market to our alumni and give them the opportunity, obviously sell the STADIO brand further and further that.

Also I think in many instances just allows the students, as part of our investment into them, giving them the opportunity to learn more about finances. I think that's probably two critical components as to why we do it as well.

I think Dianne is also in the room from AFDA. Just every year when we do award these shares to students or to postgraduate students, it comes with great excitement.

It's, as Ishak indicated, a new thing for so many people in our country. That absolute joy and absolutely pride of being part of a listed entity is very, very rewarding.

Then

her final question is: How would the margins sit for the mixed learning offering?

We've done our homework and our research. We think we can run very healthy margins with the blended mode.

Obviously, you see margins of 30% currently, and we believe with this new blended mode, we can get very close, if not maybe a bit higher than the 30% margins. We're excited, we're upbeat about it.

A lot of work is going in behind the scenes in launching this properly. Yes, from a margin perspective, I think it is well within our aim of a 30% EBITDA margin.

Done on achieving pre-listing student target. Looking forward, what are the capital requirements to reach and support the 100,000 students, and what are the ROEs and ROICs you would expect at that scale?

Can you paint the path to achieve this scale and the challenges you need to overcome to be successful?

We've indicated that there is great potential in our contact learning business. On this new blended mode, it won't be as CapEx-heavy as a normal comprehensive campus as what we have here.

I think the capital required to launch the blended mode will not be as high as a normal contact learning campus. Then one must remember, we already created the infrastructure in our distance learning business.

We are very well-positioned. As I've indicated, we already service more than 50,000 students on the distance learning mode.

To expand those numbers comes with very, very little further CapEx investment. Obviously, technology will always be there, and we will always look at using technology to improve our offering.

The foundation, the infrastructure to grow and accelerate our numbers in distance learning comes with very, very low CapEx additions. I don't know if you want to add to that, Ishak?

No, I think that's spot on, Chris. I think to the point around the ROEs, I think we've always had a stated objective of reaching 20% over time.

We believe this will by no way detract from that, and if anything, it might enhance that growth trajectory.

There's one more question.

Chris, thank you very much for this presentation. Very exciting, and we're looking forward to the developments that you envisage to do in future.

The one thing that I would like to ask you about is that where does all this money come from? Is all the revenue coming from student fees, or do you have other avenues of income also?

Yes. Obviously, the majority of our income comes from our students, without a doubt.

We also look at other options for our long-term expansion plans. At this stage, the majority comes from student income, and then also having access to our revolving credit facility.

Yes, now in view of these options that you're considering, I thought that STADIO should also think of considering other avenues, say for instance a second avenue of income through perhaps grants from industry, private persons. I've just read yesterday about the one great South African entrepreneur who donates his millions that he is getting from his business now to two different schools in Cape Town, I don't know which schools.

Anyway, there are people who are willing to make donations, especially if you can present to them a good plan which is to the benefit of our country and its people. A second avenue could also be private donations and from industry, but also one must think of research outcomes.

I think at the moment STADIO perhaps under considered by the National Research Foundation with fees from research publications. One should also think of patents, developing patents, and especially where we are in a sensitive situation waiting for university status.

STADIO should not wait and say, "Well, we must tackle universities in their domain of developing a patent through our especially postgraduate studies and staff who are appointed at STADIO who are able to develop these things." That could be eventually, in a few years' time, could make a difference of millions of rands extra for the revenue of STADIO.

No, spot on. These are really things that we look at at the moment.

As I've indicated, up to now, STADIO is still a very young business. The focus of the executive team was more in establishing a higher education institution of quality, making sure that we invest in systems and in our curriculum.

We've now reached the point to look in all these additional activities that can bring in additional income to the business. I must say, we already have donors supporting the institution, as well as corporates making bursaries available to our students.

These things are already in place. Yes, there's a lot of potential still to grow in that area, and it is definitely something that we are focusing on and working on.

Just on our research, with Professor Singh being here in the room, I think we've done a lot of work in that regard. We are super proud of all our research outputs.

If I compare it with some of the South African public universities, I think we are really on par.

With regards to the blended learning, and in terms of how currently it's been predominantly distance, how big do you expect the blended learning to become in the mix? Then what kind of offering are you targeting towards the blended learning market in terms of faculty and postgrad, undergrad?

As I've indicated, if we look at the higher education demand currently in our country, a lot of that demand comes from your quintile 3, 4, and 5 schools. It's a very clear, distinct market.

If we look at what is happening in the space at the moment, we see the biggest growth, I think, in higher education numbers coming exactly from that lower price point offerings. The sooner we start, the faster I think that will become a significant part of our business.

There are options there not to start at zero. We look at a kick-start in launching our blended learning.

We foresee it in the future to become a material big part of our business, maybe even bigger than our current contact learning.

Harry? Just to follow through on that blended learning question.

Do you see it as being under STADIO, a totally new brand, first question, and will it be isolated to new campuses and new catchment areas and no use of existing contact learning infrastructure to deliver it? Do you think that the market that you're going for is sufficiently different to not cannibalize your existing contact learning business?

Yes, it is definitely a different market. Let me start there.

We will not offer the blended offering at a campus such as this, at our comprehensive campuses. It would be a different look and feel on those campuses, not necessarily having to build them.

These are more spaces that I think we look at the lease market. Will it be in the same brand as STADIO Higher Education?

Not 100% comfortable to say that yet. We look at different options.

We are very far down the line on pulling the trigger on this one. It might be one or the other.

Long term, I think STADIO will work towards when we receive university status to try and keep as much of our business under the university brand, and maybe even consolidate some of our brands going down the line into the university and have the one STADIO university brand. For the short term, it might even be an additional brand that we can bring in to the business.

I think the long-term goal under university status would be more of a consolidation. Any more questions, ladies and gentlemen?

Yes.

Hi. I just wanted to know, how does the 80/20 distance learning/contact learning split change with this new blended opportunity?

Distance learning is still the core of STADIO. It's, without a doubt, our biggest focus.

The new blended learning is actually a little bit of a combination of distance learning and face-to-face learning. We do not really see it as a total separate market.

It's actually an enhancement of the distance learning offering with some classes. We believe there's great potential.

As I've said, there's a big market for it, especially school leavers, if I can share this with you. Our studies have shown it's very tough for young school leavers to go straight into distance learning.

Distance learning is a lot of independent learning. They used to the schooling system of a teacher standing in front of the classroom teaching, and then to go all of a sudden having to do independent learning is tough for a lot of our school leavers.

This blended learning is something in between, a distance learning offering and a full campus experience like this. It's difficult and maybe a bit vague in our explanation due to the sensitivity of what we are busy with.

Yes, we really believe it's a market on its own. I think that's all the questions.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for the opportunity, and we look forward to seeing you soon again. Thank you.