Welcome to our Q&A webcast session for Sun International's interim results to 30th of June 2026. We trust that you have had the opportunity to view our presentation and other results material, which are on our website.

Ulrik will give a short overview, and thereafter we will take questions from the people online. Please use the question tab on the left-hand side of your screen to type in your questions.

Now we will have an overview from our CEO, Ulrik Bengtsson.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Nwabisa. Thank you for tuning in for this live Q&A.

We are very encouraged by the trajectory the company is on, and of course seeing our land-based casinos growing for the first time in 3 years is a stand-out event for us in this results. Also another strong performance from SunBet growing over 35%, and then our adjusted earnings per share growing almost 8%.

All of this is the result of very intentional investments in accordance with our capital allocation framework to grow our business organically. We can now see tangible results of those investments paying off.

With that, I will hand over to questions.

We have our first question from Charles Bowles from Titanium Capital. His question is, on the results presentation, on slide 20, it refers to proceeds from the disposal of Sibaya.

Historically, the strategy has been to buy out minorities. Please can you clarify reasons for reducing holding in Sibaya?

Thanks.

Thank you for that question, and good morning, everyone. This was really a long-standing regulatory requirement that we had.

As part of our gaming license, we had to dispose of at least 10% of the company to a local empowerment shareholder. We did spend a fair amount of time making sure that we got the right valuation for that disposal, and hence that transaction was concluded, thereby fulfilling the requirements of our regulatory obligation.

Thank you very much. I'm trying to see who the next question is from, but it's, how should we be looking at the sustainability of your land-based casinos?

The sustainability in the operational improvements and in our market share gains are clearly there. Those are real and they're happening right now.

Our ambition, as we outlined in March, has always been to change the trajectory of our land-based business, which I think we now have done, and our ambition is now to continue to take market share in the land-based casinos.

This question has been fully typed. It's from Warren Riley at Perpetua.

Warren's question is, with the large erosion in the land-based casino margins in the first half due to upfront investment, do you expect margins to improve sequentially into the second half as you benefit from seasonality and larger second-half revenue base?

Exactly that, right? We invest in order for our revenue to show that we can affect the revenue line, which we have done.

As revenue compound, we will see better leverage coming through that business.

Are the cost-saving initiatives additive to Capital Markets Day guidance or built into the 5-year plan?

All of those initiatives were under one of strategic initiatives we presented at the Capital Markets Day, and they are built into the plan under operational efficiency and finding solutions for our land-based casinos. We have started those things and they will play out and most likely have effect in 2027.

Okay. We move on to SunBet now.

Sportsbook growth remains below that of online gaming. Can you talk to strategies to accelerate this?

Yeah. The strategy is really all about product, and I've spoken to many times that product need to improve.

We've done a lot of work on the front end and we launched a new SunBet front end, which is a significant improvement to the user experience. We also done a lot of stuff on our sportsbook business.

We have new search, we have a new campaign offering in the 100-to-1 offering, and we have plenty of new content on that side. That work is ongoing.

We had a very strong World Cup, which shows that our sportsbook can have the capacity to handle larger volumes. We're very encouraged with the trajectory of that, but we're still not where we want to be.

Some of the work has been done and we have a lot more planned for the rest of the year. Bear with us, it is happening.

All right. Before I complete Warren's questions, there's one from David Fraser, just continuing on that theme.

On Norman's slide 10, he asks, we have a graph of the split between the sports betting and casino games. If David's ruler is correct, it appears to be a 10%-90% split favoring casino games.

Can you confirm that the ruler is correct for David, please?

I think we have always said that we're under-indexing on sportsbook and it's in that vicinity. We see that as an opportunity.

We think the market overall is probably somewhere around 35% to 40% sportsbook. That is the delta we have to close by delivering a better product and better operational intensity in our sports business.

Thank you. Moving on to share buybacks.

We have completed 2% of buybacks already, and Warren would like to know if we look to increase this opportunistically or will we retain a buyback capacity for FY 2027?

Thank you. At the Capital Markets Day, as part of the broader capital allocation framework, we did indicate that we are going to embark on a 3-year share buyback program.

We've reported at our interim results that we did complete our 2% allocated for this year, and that's been done in specific guardrails, pricing, volumes, etc. Our capital allocation framework is agile and we deploy capital where it's accretive in value to and creates value for shareholders.

As much as we've gone through that program, we remain alive to the opportunities that these various capital allocation opportunities present themselves.

All right, thank you. On land-based casinos, Wallace Barnes at Steyn wants to know, casino GGR grew 4.4% in the period, but net gaming win and revenue only grew 1.5%.

Could we reconcile that, please, for

him? The difference is really bonusing and incentives.

We have thrown a lot of things on the wall during this period to make sure we truly understand what sticks and what doesn't. We're now moving into a phase where we know very, very well how we can affect the top line.

I would anticipate for the next sort of 6 to 9 months that the conversion between GGR and NGW would improve.

Thank you. Then from Charles Bowles, Titanium Capital, we hear different views from the impact of the potential relocation of Tsogo's Western Cape license.

Your application to court seeks to delay license implementation. This suggests concerns about impact on GrandWest.

Can you give us some guidance as to how significantly a relocation would impact on GrandWest?

My view is that these are things that largely is out of our control. We, of course, have objected and we have our views on what needs to happen if this are to happen.

However, having said all of that, our job is to focus on our product, our customer, and the experience at GrandWest. As we're spending, together with our partners, 600 million in building the mall adjacent to GrandWest to make sure that that precinct is attractive and continues to generate traffic in all various scenarios.

Thank you. Olwethu at Coronation wants to know, well done on a good set of results, could you expand on Sun Slots' challenges in the Western Cape in the period?

Sure. We take this on the chin.

We haven't executed as well as we possibly could have, in particular in Western Cape. We run a vast business.

Sometimes parts of the business you lose a little bit of attention on. I think that's the case for the Western Cape Sun Slots business.

We're on it. We have addressed the challenges and we're moving forward.

Thank you. Then just on SunBet, Blessing would like to know from Vunani, SunBet continues to outgrow the broader market, could management comment on whether growth is currently being driven more on customer acquisition or by increased activity from the existing customer base?

As you can see in the numbers, the active customer base is up roughly 35%, which is in line with top-line growth. At the moment, it is a combination, but we are overindexing on sort of managing our customer ecosystem and monetizing our existing base.

Paul Whitburn actually expands on that question and asks about the views on Philippines' largest online gaming company, DigiPlus, entering SA online.

There are companies entering SA online all the time. Again, our focus is to provide a state-of-the-art experience, the best product available, make sure it's powered by a technology stack that is agile, allows us to evolve our product over time, do the best we can with our customer ecosystem and omnichannel approach bringing customers from land-based to online and the other way around, and execute on that strategy.

If we do that well, we will deliver on what we have set out to do.

Thank you very much. I hope this will be clear now.

From Richard Cheesman, he's written, congratulations for good results, please can you expand on the inorganic opportunities you reference? Would these be local or offshore?

Any change in your thinking around the investment in Grand Parade?

We think there are plenty of inorganic opportunities around our business. We've said that many times before.

I think it consists of multiple aspects. We are still open to and keen on consolidating minorities if there is opportunities that is being presented.

In terms of the SunBet business, there might be opportunities to consolidate locally, but it might also be opportunities outside of South Africa. We're looking at all of it, but we have a very, very high bar for what we deem to be good investments.

Thank you very much. For Norman, David would like to know if there's any further potential payouts expected from the sale of the South American business or are these all done now?

Yeah. There's about 174 million net in that region that's due and payable this year.

We'll receive a tranche of that in September and the balance in November. Then there is a further final tranche of about 50 million net in May of next year, and that will bring the conclusion of those contingent payments to an end.

Thank you very much. Again from David, he just wants to know an indication of overlap between land-based and online customer base, particularly on the online casino segment.

Yeah. We look increasingly at our business as one customer ecosystem or one customer platform, if you will.

I keep saying that SunBet probably wouldn't be where it is today without our land-based business, and our land-based business probably wouldn't be where it is today without SunBet. We continuously leverage off one each other.

Now, having said that, we know that the vast majority of our land-based customers are playing online, but not all of them are playing with SunBet. We see that bit as the opportunity.

Thank you. As a follow-up on SunBet, Wallace Barnes wants to know, you mentioned strong SunBet trading through the World Cup period, have you seen better momentum continuing after the end of the tournament?

The World Cup, as is largely a customer acquisition opportunity and it was also combined with a good turnover period for us. Yes, that has continued.

Now, having said that, we also been in a low sportsbook activity environment during July when most football leagues has been closed, but we have that underlying improvement in momentum and we continue that now throughout the rest of the year.

Thank you. Mdu at M&G wants to know, GrandWest and Sibaya EBITDA seem to be under quite some pressure with EBITDA declining significantly over the period.

Please will you speak to some of the pressures being experienced here and the outlook for these two casinos for the remainder of the year?

I think there's a couple of items that impact it. I think we have been making fair amount of investments in our marketing initiatives, and that has been to support the top line.

Again, a fair amount of investment in marketing initiatives. As we've indicated in our book, we've been building capabilities, various capabilities exercise to make sure that we can deliver on our value creation plan.

Capabilities, and then a big investment that we've been making in our properties is around technology. That's all to support the value creation plan and to kind of build that momentum for our future EBITDA.

Thank you very much. Charles Bowles, Titanium, asks, in your presentation you refer to 150 management changes.

This is significant. Can you give us some insights as to what drove this?

Were these legacy issues not addressed?

I don't think we said management change, I think we said 150 new hires or appointments across the line. We have embarked on arguably the largest capability and upskilling project in the company's history, as I mentioned in the book.

We have strengthened capabilities across the line, not only management, also across the company. Priority has been technology, data, but also operational execution functions, whether it's customer acquisition, marketing, etc.

It's across all those functions and all those areas where we are upskilling and improving our capabilities in order to be delivering on our plan.

Thank you. Some years ago, from Charles still, Sun spoke to value not reflected.

This included a number of land holdings. It seems very few of these land holdings have been sold.

Does Sun still believe that there are significant land holdings that could be sold? If so, how significant are these?

We've in the past spoken about value that remained unlocked. One of those items was our equity interest in Swaziland, our Swazi Spa, Swazi Spa was in liquidation, and as you would see in our results, we've actually now unlocked that.

We disposed of those shares in liquidation for 50 million rand. Part of the discussion was also around the land that we had that we've contributed to the mall at GrandWest, so that we've unlocked.

Other parts of land and assets that we've had that we are currently working on was in our Carousel land, where we had our Carousel casino, that's taken a long time. We continue working with various partners to see how best we can realize the value inherent in that land.

That's in flight. We've got excess land at Time Square adjacent to our property.

We are working with partners there and in the final throes of finalization of the arrangements in that, so that will take care of that land. It's still in flight.

To get things done from a regulatory perspective, the local municipalities takes a long time to get the various approvals, but we are working on those.

Thank you very much. Alessandro would like to know, the presentation shows a cash flow summary seemingly strained by large capex commitments, share buybacks, and dividends for shareholders.

Why has the company forecasted continued heightened capex commitments? Is the current dividend trajectory sustainable given a return to borrowing this half year and could the dividend policy face a tightening to assist cash availability?

All right. Quite a few questions there,

hopefully

I'll get all of them. Firstly, I think we've got to split the investment in the company in terms of capex and the return of capital to shareholders.

In terms of capex and continuous investment into the business, all of those capex are basically invested on a returns-led basis. We evaluate all of our capex from a returns basis and make sure that it generates the returns that we set ourselves up for to ensure that it creates value.

From a capex perspective, certainly we are continuing investing, as we've indicated, in capabilities and technologies. In terms of returning capital to shareholders, as I've indicated, our capital allocation framework we've put that out and we are compliant with that.

In terms of returns to shareholder, we've been consistent with our dividend guidance at 75% of our earnings, and that we've stayed true for the last couple of years. We did have excess capital where we felt in the last year we returned a special dividend to shareholders of 100 cents, and that was done within our capital needs and requirements and how we deploy capital.

In terms of making sure that our balance sheet is robust, we currently at the end of June at 1.6 times debt to EBITDA. Not a demanding level of debt.

We've stated that our long-term debt to EBITDA through the cycle will be at 2 times, well within that. At this point of time, we don't see any reason to adjust our dividend guidance.

Thank you very much, Norman. Wallace, maybe on the same trajectory, would like to know if we're able to expand on the various productivity initiatives underway, including any potential one-off costs and run-rate savings.

Yeah. As we've indicated, there's a number of initiatives within the organization at the moment.

Ulrik just indicated we are in the process of building capability, there's investment in building of capability, really redefining and reshaping the capabilities within the organization, both from a getting the right capabilities and talent within the organization, at the same time reshaping and optimizing what currently there is. At this point in time, I think it would be remiss for me to start giving guidance on the costs and the savings, but that certainly will come through.

I might just add to that that we flagged very clearly at the Capital Markets Day that we were looking at finding solutions for our smaller properties or underperforming properties. That's absolutely one of them.

We're also looking at Thank you

very much. Rowan Williams at Nitrogen Fund Managers would like to know that, you mentioned a large upskilling initiative in the business.

Can you provide some detail on how you are implementing AI into your business given the large amount of customer data that you have access to?

Yeah. Obviously, as any well-managed business, we deploy AI in numerous ways in numerous places.

As an example, you have seen the SunBet front end, completely new in-house, proprietary-built platform for SunBet being launched in what I would refer to almost record time. That would not have been possible 2 years ago, and the use of AI tools for testing, etc., has been incredibly helpful in making this happen.

Another area, of course, we roll out a new data platform with Databricks, which allows us for natural language querying of reports, etc., which completely democratize data across the group and allows us to run the business with much better visibility.

Thank you. Richard Cheesman has some questions on the smoking bill.

Please update us on the current status of the smoking bill. What would the group's response plan be if the bill was to pass in its current form?

I think generally speaking, our feeling is that that has stalled quite a bit. We don't see a lot of movement on that.

Having said that, and I've said this many times, this is largely a one-off effect. We've seen from other territories that once you're through that one-off effect, you will get back to basically normal business.

It is a thing that is largely out of our control. When we get there, we will manage it, but I'm reasonably confident that once we're through that, we will work our way back to business as usual.

Thanks. Again from Richard Cheesman, would you consider revisiting Peermont at a more reasonable valuation?

I've learned after many, many years in this business never to say never, but the answer now is no.

Thank you. David Fraser has a regulatory question.

Any further progress with the DTI in regard to online gaming regulation framework?

Sorry, can you repeat that?

Further progress with the DTI with regards to online gaming regulation framework?

There's been very little movement on the actual discussion paper, but we have had indication from DTI that we're looking into, or coming into a consultation process with the industry on a future regulatory framework somewhere in October timeframe. We're looking forward to that to be able to give our inputs and contribute.

Thank you very much. I think we've come to the end of the questions.

I have no further questions from the panel.

I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in and also, one more time, thank Norman for his incredible service to this company over 13 years. Thank you, Norman.

Thank you, Ulrik.