What's up, Solvers? It's you, our incredible team, that makes days like these possible. We're not just your average company, but a squad that works hard, plays hard, and supports each other all the way. Absolutely, Stephen. You know what? We've got to stay focused on the next game too. There are always new challenges on the field of technology, and we're committed to tackling them head-on. That's right, Megan. We'll stay resilient, agile, and continue to tackle whatever comes our way. Our growth is like a Springbok rolling maul, unstoppable. Team, thank you for your dedication and phenomenal work over the past year. We are ready to take on the world. Just like our beloved Springboks, the best is yet to come. Before we go through the details of our annual results and in remembrance of the French rugby team, I'd just like to say thank you, Megan, for your selfless leadership and dedication to EOH's turnaround. I sincerely hope that our path cross again. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending the EOH Group annual results presentation. Although the South African economy has really struggled and the global situation has not improved either, EOH has managed another year of improved financial performance. As the legacy issues get significantly fewer and less material, the pure business performance is starting to reflect in our results. Key highlights for the year are significant and numerous. Most importantly, we have now created our main clusters, and they have operated for the first time semi-autonomously, very successfully. As a result, we will take the next big step in that direction in 2024, which will result in further operational improvements. Other than operational improvements, we are looking to realize at least ZAR 50 million of cost efficiencies through this decentralization process. Overall, operating profit was up 35% year-on-year, a herculean effort in these markets. This was largely as a result of the overall 3% growth in total revenue, but matched with slight reduction in operating costs as our efficiency measures continued to kick in. Our gross profit margins were maintained at 28%, which was very pleasing in this environment. However, looking at the various businesses, it is noteworthy that our iOCO South Africa grew revenue 6% despite the public sector headwinds. International grew revenue 23% as our growth strategy we invested in over a year ago bore fruit. EasyHQ, the revamped Nextec business process outsourcing business and people's business successfully concluded its turnaround. Although revenue was down as we closed out the non-profitable contracts, EBITDA was up a significant 33%, which is a real improvement year-on-year. This business houses our own group risk and compliance as a service IP that was created over the past four years and has already started generating new revenue from new customers. This is very exciting for us as the proof points are confirming the validity of the strategy. Our successful rights issue and renegotiation of our debt into a single lender facility has been key to our ability to accelerate our structural reorganization. Sadly, the rights issue was delayed by eight months, which cost us approximately ZAR 60 million in interest that we had not originally budgeted. To add to this, we had a ZAR 49 million IFRS two adjustment for the specific issue to Lebashe, which was essentially a book entry to recognize the discount between the market price prior to the offer and the rights offer price. Without these two unbudgeted items, we would have made an IFRS profit for the year. The economy deteriorated in the H2 for sure, and we have seen corporates, especially the smaller ones, struggling with cash flow. This has been evidenced in the increased working capital and something we are managing tightly. The biggest impact has been in the public sector delays in contracting and payment. The business remains resilient despite the difficult economy due to the nature and diverse split of our revenue. 75% of our revenue is services or own IP, and therefore very sticky so long as you execute well. This has been a big focus for us. Public sector revenue is now reduced to 13% as we expand our footprint into other markets and focus on deepening our wallet share with existing customers as well as onboarding new names. Our people have continued to deliver world-class solutions to our clients in the face of an uncertain economy and limited global resources. This is why the T for talent in our GET strategy is so important. Looking at our divisional performance, the international digital enablement business continues its strong trend. We see great potential in this business with Brian Harding now re-relocated overseas to manage and grow this business as his sole focus. Our Ocho South Africa, which includes IT infrastructure services, digital enablement, and operational technologies, had reasonable revenue growth considering the stall in the public sector technology investments. However, it took a significant ZAR 30 million hit in EBITDA due to the effect of public sector contracting delays and the reorganization of the enterprise business. There are always ups and downs in a portfolio, but we continue to monitor and adjust as required. EasyHQ has reduced revenue, but increased EBITDA by 33% as we closed the non-profitable business elements and completed the turnaround. Our biggest disappointment has been the Nextec infrastructure business that relies heavily on the public sector. ZAR 736 million or 12% of our revenue for a negative EBITDA of ZAR 51 million. This significantly affected our results overall and is an absolute focus for 2024. You will see as Megan goes through the numbers, removing this negative ZAR 51 million from normalized operating profit and the matching revenue, our normal operating profit margins are actually around 5%. This gives a much better view on the huge turnaround the team has managed on 88% of the business now. Operationally, it's been an exciting year for us. The restructuring of our business and executive alignments into separate business units has been successful and will have many benefits in 2024 and beyond. This structure provides more autonomy to operating units, allowing them to be the masters of their own destinies with a substantially reducing head office cost. They will also be able to grow at their optimum pace and invest according to their strategies. In a fast-paced, changing digital world, running at your own pace is key for the success of each business. As mentioned earlier, our international business, which focuses on digital enablement in Europe and the Middle East, had an excellent year with the investment over the past year paying off. Our international client base has increased by 30% with a total of 18 reaching the GBP 100,000 club in the U.K. We now have 46 clients, including picking up a few U.S. retailers, which is very encouraging as a result of a small acquisition called Hoverfly. That is an API visualization tool that speeds up dev time and improves quality. The most significant change was the pivot of infrastructure-as-a-service business into the mid-market space to provide a larger client base that will make the business more diversified and anti-fragile, also answers a growing need for consumers in this space. They have onboarded 12 new customers this year with their revised offering. This has driven their turnaround. The East West Africa rollout of the operational technology product suite continued its successful start and generated ZAR 51 million outside of South Africa, ameliorating the reduction of public sector work. Locally, this business struggled due to public sector spend not recovering. We had a few pockets of success, most notably our mesh networking business in the mining sector. Our enterprise application business had a difficult second six months and not continuing the trend in the first six months. This has necessitated strategic interventions, and they are undergoing change management processes. In total, we invested ZAR 94 million in growth initiatives across our businesses, which Megan will cover in more detail later. Our GET strategy has generated significant positive sentiment among our staff. We have scored well across the board in growth and efficiency, as you saw our significant leap in operating profit, driven by both revenue growth and cost efficiencies. This process will continue strongly into 2024 now that we have left the past behind and can operate more normally. A big focus will be to normalize the head office costs. Megan will show later the significant drop in these costs over the past three years as the legal and debt issues have been closed out. We will target a further annualized savings of at least ZAR 50 million. We have the last of our non-core business sales underway, which should generate a further ZAR 50 million-ZAR 75 million in gross proceeds. Our employee value proposition is based on the design of a fingerprint in order to acknowledge the unique identity of each of us Solvers. With the key pillars driving our employee value proposition being engage, grow, include, and care. This year, we had a 78% response rate to our annual survey, up from 49% the previous year. 92% of leavers said they would like to return to EOH for the right job. 85% said they loved working at EOH. A huge congrats to the people team, who also got EOH the International Top Employer certificate this year, which underlines our global best practices we have implemented. We also won the overall award and the two other subcategories at the Gender Mainstreaming Awards this year. I am very proud of the new culture at EOH that drives diversity and inclusion. This is reflected in our people stats with 44% female and 58% AIC. The team also did very well in upskilling unemployed people and providing significant educational support. All of this can be seen in detail in our integrated report. Without applying the multiplier effect, we impacted 28,000 citizens in our country through targeted interventions. Our employee volunteerism program saw us exceed our moonshot of 1,000 volunteer hours. We have targeted partnerships in place with key stakeholders to ensure we solve for scarce skills and youth unemployment in our country. Some noteworthy ones include our partnership with WeThinkCode, a pioneering initiative aimed at addressing the scarcity of developers in South Africa. This impacted 50 graduates. Through Orange Memo, which is a youth empowerment program initiative designed to equip young individuals with skills, resources, and guidance necessary to navigate their career paths successfully. Primestars, a green startup program focused on entrepreneurship and the green economy for youth. Being a positive contributor to our communities in South Africa is very important to EOH. There's a big focus on ICT and STEM skills development, as well as initiatives with wider impact on early education and reduction of unemployment. The ICT industry as a whole has an important role to play, and we believe our initiatives are making a significant impact on many lives in South Africa. Suffice to say, when you invest in EOH, you are part of making a difference. We invest in what matters. Our employees and people matter to us. I have spoken about our EVP earlier. Achieving Top Employer status was very important as it says we are globally relevant. Our communities matter to us. Our Period Poverty project is a transformative program dedicated to addressing period poverty and empowering women, and revolves around 40 young women who manufacture 2,250 reusable sanitary pads per day. This has been a huge success. Our women matter to us. EOH were finalists in five categories for the Accenture Gender Mainstreaming Awards. We won in the categories for women on boards and empowerment of women in our communities. EOH also won the accolade of Gender Mainstreaming Champion for Southern Africa, the main overall award, which is a huge accolade and something we are very proud of. Our country matters. We invested in 341 unemployed learners with an overall spend of ZAR 22 million, which includes differently abled people. Finally, Megan will show you that EOH paid ZAR 168 million in 2023 for legacy issues and interest on debt, which actually is also a legacy issue. From this slide, you will see EOH over the past four years generated ZAR 1.25 billion in cash flow, over ZAR 300 million per year. Granted, some of that cash flow was generated by businesses that have been sold, but it outlines the utility nature of this business. As legacy, including debt, gets paid down, that cash will be available for investment and dividends. The nearly ZAR 1 billion paid to financiers over this period shows why the rights issue was so important for investors. Once again, thank you for the overwhelming support. Interestingly, the SIU and interest payments for this year, if paid to shareholders, would have enabled a double-digit dividend yield. Thank you, and I will now hand over to Megan for the last time to un-IFRS the accounts, so you can see the true strength of the business. On a more personal note, as success only comes with a great team, thank you to Fatima, who has made such an enormous difference to the culture of EOH, and now will go on and monetize her and her team's IP they created in EasyHQ. A big thank you for Megan for walking this incredibly tough journey and for all her efforts and the value she has created. Good morning, everyone, and thank you, Stephen. To start on our income statement, this year is the first time it's starting to look relatively normal with immaterial discontinued operations. The only one being our network solutions business, which we disposed of early in the year. On a pure IFRS basis, we have seen top-line growth of 3% for continuing operations. Our GP margins have held strong at 28%. We have seen a 35% increase in operating profit and a halving of our continuing loss to ZAR 81 million. Over the next few slides, I will unpack the business performance so you can get a proper view of the operations. As you can see, the iOCO and international businesses are generally doing well as a whole. Our digital business saw growth of 7% after taking into consideration a business unit they disposed of during the year. This business unit continues to see demand for digitization from its client base. IT infrastructure services saw a great rebound on the back of improved new customer logo acquisitions. The operational technologies business includes our industrial technologies and mesh network business, as well as our manufacturer of commercial grade distribution boards and power components. We still have a dependency on South African public sector and SOE clients, but still managed to deliver good growth overall, including in East and West Africa on the back of our exclusive AVEVA rights for those regions. Our enterprise apps and software reseller business were disappointing this year. We continue to receive pressure from the OEMs, and our revenue pipeline in the enterprise application space has been muted, as well as losing a big client in January. We are working on turning around this business and have new management in place. Our international business had a fantastic year on the back of good growth in the Middle East. EasyHQ had reduced revenue, but on the next slide, you will see it has increased EBITDA as we closed non-profitable business elements and completed the turnaround. The Nextec infrastructure and consulting businesses, although recording over ZAR 700 million of revenue, delivered a loss as they still rely heavily on the public sector. Last year, we made a conscious effort to start investing in the business again, and this has both been done through OpEx and CapEx. Our digital business shows a decline in EBITDA, but taking into consideration that around ZAR 20 million was invested for growth in this business, this equates to an 8% growth in EBITDA. The IT infrastructure, services, and operational technologies business were both flat for the year at the EBITDA level. As discussed previously, the enterprise applications and software business had pressure at a top line and squeeze from OEMs and coupled with some difficult closeout on projects, saw a 22% drop in EBITDA. The turnaround in EasyHQ can be clearly demonstrated. While revenue has declined, there's been a 33% improvement in EBITDA. The international business' excellent top-line growth flowed through with a 41% increase in EBITDA. As mentioned in the previous slide, the Nextec infrastructure and consulting businesses had a very challenging year. With revenue and profitability challenges, having recorded a ZAR 50 million EBITDA loss, this division is a key focus area for 2024 and is the last remaining business to be addressed from a turnaround perspective. Our continuing adjusted EBITDA was ZAR 322 million. We did have some once-offs in our numbers related to movements on legacy provisions and the impairment on our legacy finance book in tech leasing related to casino debtors who were negatively impacted from COVID and have not recovered. After taking this into account, we get to ZAR 351 million of normalized EBITDA at a 6% margin. Once we add back the investment in OpEx of ZAR 60 million, we have a 7% margin and ZAR 411 million of EBITDA. Our normalized operating profit is ZAR 229 million, and includes an add back of the IFRS two share-based payment charge related to the specific share issue to Lebashe and EBITDA normalizations, and then also the add back of goodwill. This gives us ZAR 229 million of operating profit, which is a 25% increase on a like-for-like basis in the prior year and a 3.7% margin. We have also shown the effect of investments in growth, giving a normalized operating profit of ZAR 289 million, which is a 4.6% margin. From an investment perspective, we invested over ZAR 90 million into the business, with ZAR 60 million being in OpEx for our operating technology business and we invested ZAR 17 million as we grew out our East and West Africa business. Our infrastructure business, we invested ZAR 25 million as we invested in our own data centers, and then internally, we invested in our own systems going live in March with a single in the cloud ERP. This reduced our systems from 6 separate ERPs in the prior year. We have also invested in our data strategy, ultimately aimed at reducing the cost of storage and improving the insights we get from our data. We will continue to invest for growth in our business as we return to business as usual and implement our GET strategy. Overall, corporate costs have come down 44% from FY 2020. This continues to be a focus, and we would expect these costs to come down even further in FY 2024. In the past financial year, we spent ZAR 20 million on legal costs related to the refinance of our debt and costs related to legacy items. With our debt structure now finalized and legacy significantly reduced, we anticipate further reductions in corporate costs this year. Our balance sheet has strengthened significantly post the rights issue with a net asset value of ZAR 588 million. In terms of a strict interpretation of IAS one Paragraph 72, the refinance debt with Standard Bank of around ZAR 650 million is seen as current as at the July 31st, 2023, based on the interest cover ratio. With effect from the October 6th, 2023 this debt has been reclassified back to long term. An error was noted in the definition of finance costs, as included in the second amendment of the common terms agreement entered into on the March 31st, 2023. This had a significant impact on the calculation of the interest cover ratio, as interest on the old senior bridge loan prior to the refinance has been included in error. This error was rectified through an amendment on the October 6th, 2023. Standard Bank further agreed that there was never a default or an event of default that had occurred for the measurement date ending July 31, 2023, and as a result, no waiver was required. We have seen an increase in working capital investment. This has partly been due to top-line growth, particularly in our international business. We have seen certain bridge type debtors also push out their terms and are paying later and often after month end, as well as an increase in our book when we are servicing SOE in the public sector. The general tightening of liquidity in the economy has been a theme throughout this year with the current tough economic environment. The group continues to manage this tightly and on a weekly basis. Overall, we generated ZAR 430 million of cash flow, but did see a large portion being consumed into working capital for the reasons discussed earlier. We invested ZAR 90 million in our business through a combination of CapEx and operating expenses. After paying ZAR 49 million for legacy settlements and ZAR 119 million for interest, we had ZAR 213 million of cash before settling debt. Through a combination of the capital raise and disposal of assets, we repaid ZAR 664 million of debt and finished the year with ZAR 204 million of cash. Our legacy issues have decreased significantly. The DWS and DOD SIU investigations are settled, and we pay these on a monthly basis per the agreed settlements. DOD comes to an end in FY 2024, while DWS closes out in 2026. Meliortec is a rail business we put into liquidation after the sale of the business fell through and has historically been a contingent liability. We have now provided for it and are looking to close it out with the liquidator. We are very close to reaching an agreement with the liquidator. Our historical issue with SARS continues and disappointingly remains unresolved. We have tried numerous ways to close this out, including through the courts, but have not succeeded to date. We will continue to pursue a settlement in the best interests of shareholders. On Autospec, one of the three primary contracts was completed during the year. The conclusion of the remaining two projects has been impacted by challenges associated with Rand Water shutdown windows, and as a result, the timelines for completion have been extended. We remain committed to seeing these projects through to completion. On Pia Solar, we have made good progress in resolving functional issues on the primary Pia Solar projects and have substantial completion on both projects. We are solving remediation work on these projects with the expectations to close these works out in the coming year, thereby significantly reducing the risk, after which we will be left only with a limited warranty period to service. Looking at our debt, we now owe less than ZAR 700 million, which has been properly structured into long-term facilities. On average, our interest rate is now 11.5%, significantly down from our debt before the restructuring. Our finance charges are a far cry from where we started out in 2020, with over ZAR 300 million per annum and now down to ZAR 75 million forecasted for FY 2024. Stephen has spoken about how much we have paid lenders over the last four years, and with the right capital structure, the business is in a very different place to focus on the GET strategy. Well, with that, I would like to hand it to Stephen for the last time as I leave EOH at the end of the month. It has been a great privilege to be a part of the EOH journey and the turnaround story. Thank you to board for their wisdom, Stephen for his courageous leadership, and to Exco, the finance team, and all our employees. You have been an amazing team to be part of. The outlook is a little murky for sure. We have both global and local economic and political uncertainty, which is pushing inflation and interest rates up. However, tough times create both opportunities and threats. We will do what we did in COVID, stay close to our clients and OEM partners to ensure we can support them in solving their digital transformation strategies. We will continue to save on admin costs to become more agile and allow investment and growth. In short, we will continue our safe to invest trial. Our employee value proposition remains key in our GET strategy, ensuring we are the coolest place to work, to attract top talent, and maintain quality delivery to our clients. We are now six months post our rights issue, and we have made great progress in that short time. The ability to have a single bank has firstly reduced our interest rate and secondly allowed us to restructure the business to be way more efficient. The decentralization of the business is well underway and should be completed early in the new year following the consultation processes required. As I said, our aim is to save at least ZAR 50 million in admin costs and deduplication. Further savings will accrue now that the business is back to normal and not spending cash on large legal bills and debt restructuring. Our tax rate has also started normalizing with the legal entity restructuring. This has also reduced our exposure to EOH Mthombo significantly. There are a few businesses left to sell, and we are well into those processes and anticipate between ZAR 50 million-ZAR 75 million of proceeds in the next 12 months. In short, 2024 will be a year of consolidation and finishing what we started. It should be an exciting year. Investing in EOH makes a difference. Thank you. Welcome to the live staff Q&A here for EOH for the 12 months to the 31st of July 2023. Stephen and Megan here to answer any questions you may have, and you can enter them into the chat on the Zoom right now, and I'll feed them through to either Megan or Stephen. Before we get going, in terms of your announcement, I know you addressed the ELT last night, but any further words, given your interactions with team members after your announcement on the extension of your contract for another six months, Stephen? Yeah, just a few things, I suppose. One is, it's quite important that our three execs running the five businesses have agreed to carry on for the next four years. I think that's really important because, you know, as we decentralized at the beginning of the year, they've been running the business, and they've done a great job. You've seen the results. I'm pretty excited about them in this tough environment. I think the three of them done brilliantly. They'll be taking the businesses forward. There's no hiccup there. It's pretty smooth and everything. Me personally, I'd always promised my family I'd do it for five years, and it's really the timing around my family. My two kids are heading down. My last two kids are heading down to the Midlands for school, and I promised I'd be there, and so we're heading to the Midlands. I don't think I can do a full-time CEO job, commuting up and down. I don't think it's fair. Second thing is, obviously, there's been lots of very talented people who joined us five years ago and have been doing a great job, and I think, you know, it's their chance to shine and their chance to put their stamp on the business. I think they've done a brilliant job and, you know, it's just one of those things. I don't like being the glass ceiling and, we've got the business in great hands and in a great position, and so I think it's exciting times for everyone. Megan, your last results announcement for EOH, how are you feeling? It's a very bittersweet moment for me, Byron. Like, the journey has been amazing the last five years. It has been incredibly stressful. But what we've been able to achieve as a team, you know, from the beginning when we had to save jobs, get through the ENSafrica investigation, and then culminating in the capital raise in February this year. I think it's been nothing short of remarkable if you look at other corporates, as to where we've got. I do feel as if my job is done here, and it's also now time for new people to take over and take the company forward. I'm happy with what we've been able to achieve over this last four, five years. Stephen, in terms of the next six months, how involved are you going to be in the organization? I'm still very involved. I mean, the last year has really been helping the BU heads, Brian, Fatima, and Marius restructure, reorganize the business. I think they've done a great job, as I said. My focus has been largely on closing out legacy, doing some of the sales, making sure that we got the rights issue done and the single lender facility in place and there's a bit of that left to do. Most of it's done. The only real main thing that was disappointing is the SARS issue, and that's gonna take a bit of my time for sure. I'll still be there, still be, you know, very involved. I've had to with Megan leaving at the end of this month, I've picked up some of the responsibilities that she had around IT, people, legal, and so I need to you know focus on that as well, make sure we get that right. I'm not gonna be twiddling my thumbs if that's what you're asking, that's for sure. Well, there are lots of claps and heart emojis on the screen right now. There are no questions coming through, so I'm assuming you both did a very good job at ELT last night, and I'm not going to keep you here for any longer. Oh, here we go. Here. Are we getting bonuses this year? Anonymous. Wow, we had to end on a great crescendo. Yes, we are. I think we had to make ZAR 350 million normalized EBITDA to meet the hurdle. We did, if you had a look at the presentation. Obviously, different business units did differently, and there is pay for performance. Those of you who achieved at least your hurdle rate and above will definitely get paid. It will be done in two tranches again, 'cause it's part of the retention. But absolutely we will be getting bonuses. Congrats, everyone. It was a good year for most of you, and I hope we can repeat it in 2024. On that note, we are drawing to a close. Thank you so much for joining us for this live staff Q&A for the 12 months to the end of 31 July 2023.
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