Okay. Good afternoon. Welcome to the ADvTECH Results Presentation for the First Half Year Ending 30th June. One very quick admin point for everyone online. There is a question box that will be available through the presentation, so if you drop questions in there, we will handle them at the end. I think everyone will have seen our numbers, and we are happy to have delivered a strong set of interims. Reflecting on my nearly six months as CEO, I think the level of consistency that we've started to demonstrate is even more notable. That strength starts with the depth and experience of our people, some of whom I wanted to just pick out on the next slide.
I think after 20 years of distinguished service with the group, you all know Didier at the front here, but you might be less familiar with Yusuf Moosa, our group financial manager seen here top left. Yusuf is highly capable and has over 11 years of experience with ADvTECH. He tells me he already does all the hard parts of Didier's job for him. That should ease the path for our new CFO when Didier retires next year. Moving to the right, we have Barbara Willard, who's also here, who heads up internal audit for the group, also in Didier's team. Barbara is another ADvTECH veteran with 17 years of service, and her management of our strong control environment has been central to our success.
I want to introduce you to someone who will be taking a bigger role in investor relations going forward, Boipelo Mogamisi. Boipelo has been with us for two years and is quickly growing in experience. Moving to the right, we have the leaders of our two largest tertiary brands, Louise Wiseman and Dr. Linda Meyer. Louise is managing director of the Varsity College, Vega, and MSA brands, which span 13 campuses across South Africa. She's another ADvTECH veteran, having spent 28 years and most of her career in the group, starting out as a lecturer in economics and marketing at Varsity College in 1996. She did mention to me that she started working at the age of 12, however, which might explain her youthful looks. Moving to the right, talk about Linda.
She's the managing director of Rosebank College, which spans nine campuses across the country. She has two years of ADvTECH experience, so she's relatively new, but she's had a varied career spanning senior leadership roles in government departments, the trade union movement, and in education. Beyond excelling in her day job, Linda's links to an understanding of government are proving highly valuable to the group. Louise and Linda are focused on building competitive advantage for us in the tertiary sector, and that's clearly reflected in the strong commercial performance of both their businesses. They're also at the forefront of our push for university status. Then moving down a row to the left, we have Dr. Siza Majola, who's the managing director of Crawford. Siza's currently in her second stint with ADvTECH, having been corporate affairs director from 2010 to 2013.
She rejoined ADvTECH in 2016, initially as group HR director before moving to her current role three years later. The premium end of the private schooling market is almost certainly the most hotly contested. Siza and her team are growing enrollments at Crawford while working on further strengthening the brand. Next to Siza, we have Colin Northmore, the Executive Head of our Evolve Online School. Colin joined us as an Abbotts College principal in 2018 before moving to his current role two years later. Evolve is a very new business, accepting its first students in 2021. In three short years, Colin has built a truly world-class online school for the group, and it's grown to around 1,000 enrollments, and it should break into profit this year.
Moving to the right, we have the architects of our expansion into Africa, Horace Mpanza and Jaco Lotz. Both are ADvTECH veterans with 16 and 17 years of service respectively. Horace was general manager of Pinnacle, then managing director of our Niche School Brands before taking up his current role in 2016. Then we have Jaco. Jaco was CFO of our schools division before being appointed as managing director of Crawford in 2010. He's been in his current role for around the same time as Horace. Jaco and Horace have put us in a strong position to leverage our growing African scale and expertise for further growth. Moving down on left, we have the most recent addition to the team, Steve Miller.
Steve joined us in June this year as Group Executive, Brand, and Strategy. He has huge experience, having previously been chief marketing officer of both Tiger Brands and ABI. His knowledge and experience is already having a significant impact on our brand thinking and communication, an area that I believe will be critical to our future success. Moving to the right, we have Shevon Lurie, our Group Academic Director, and Desiree Hugo, who heads the Central Academic Team's Schools Division. Shevon used to run Vega and has been with the company for eight years. Moving to the right, Desiree has a CV packed with leadership positions in South Africa's top schools. She's been with the group for nearly five years.
If they ever create a South African Academic Hall of Fame, I'm sure Des will be the first person in. I deliberately put Shevon and Des at the bottom of this chart because their 160-strong central academic team is the underpin to so much of our competitive advantage as a company. Their sole purpose is to drive excellence in teaching, learning, and the quality and quantity of the qualifications that we offer. Our success is rooted in the depth and experience of our people, but as you might expect, our historic strategy has also served us well. Here's a summary of that. Over time, we've developed a strong portfolio of carefully positioned brands at key price points in the market.
As touched on a moment ago, we've also made significant investments in delivering superior teaching and learning, including a number of proprietary personalized learning AI systems. We've also worked hard to expand the qualifications we offer, as I'll come back to later. Our expansion into selected African markets has also been successful, giving us a strong platform for growth. We've also focused on maximizing enrollments through moderate fee increases, targeting inflation or slightly less. Our intent here has been to realize the scale efficiencies of full schools. Our careful focus on capital allocation and making sound investment decisions has also stood us in good stead, while significant cost savings have been realized through the centralization of shared services and our investment in tech. I think these are the key reasons for our consistently strong performance.
Whilst I see a number of exciting future opportunities for the group, these build on the excellent base I inherited from Roy Douglas in March. Before I get to the results slides, I want to quickly cover the structure of the group's revenue and operating profit. This slide shows the divisional breakdown of revenue contribution on the left and operating contribution on the right, comparing half year 2023 with 2024. Now, as you can see, the year-on-year movements are quite subtle, so let me focus on 2024. In terms of revenue contribution, tertiary delivers 40% and schools 41%. With that 41% split, 36% SA and 5% rest of Africa. Resourcing rest of Africa currently delivers 17% of revenue and resourcing South Africa 2%.
Sticking with 2024, but moving across to the operating profit breakdown on the right, tertiary gives us 50% and schools 44%, and that 44% split 37% SA and 7% rest of Africa. Resourcing rest of Africa delivers 6% of operating profit, with resourcing SA at the bottom of the cycle and coming out of the recent national elections here currently making a small negative contribution. 94% of our operating profit comes from education, and on the latest numbers, the balance comes from rest of Africa resourcing. With that context, let's move on to the results. I think, not too much to say on this one. Healthy enrollments, moderate fee increases, strong financial performance, continued margin improvement, and a sound balance sheet. The bedrock of our business is enrollments.
Schools in South Africa have shown strong growth, up 5%. The rest of Africa schools grew year-on-year by 4%. Our shifts from the local to Cambridge curriculums, along with the closure of a subscale rural school in Kenya, which is part of the Makini acquisition, is having a short-term effect on enrollment growth, but we expect that to unwind over time. Overall, schools grew at 4%. At tertiary, some very good numbers coming in and growing at 7%, and total enrollments for the group were up 6%. Moving into financial performance. Again, you'll all have seen these numbers, but revenue up 9%, operating profit up 15%, operating margin moving upwards with 100 basis points to 20.2%.
Headline earnings per share and normalized earnings per share are both up 16%, and our dividend moving up 27% to ZAR 0.38. In South Africa, schools up 11% on revenue, 12% on operating profits. Rest of Africa, 11% on revenue, 29% on operating profit with a big jump in margin. At tertiary, up 13% on revenue and 16% on operating profit. Resourcing down 3% on revenue, but still managing to grow 3% on operating profit across the two divisions. In terms of group revenue, up 9%, as I just covered. Taking a look at margins, this is a slide that just compares the education business with the resourcing division, so you can see that they are two very different models. I wanted to take you through a breakdown of education margins.
Schools division, increasing year-over-year from 20.6% to 21.3%. Tertiary going up from 25% to 25.8%. If we further break down schools South Africa moving up from 20.1% to 20.3%, and rest of Africa, big jump from 24.7% to 28.7%. This is the breakdown of group operating margin, the numbers I just shared. The improvement is due to operating leverage from enrollment growth, efficiency improvements, and that despite significant investment into systems and preparation for the move to university status. Group operating profit, this is how the move has gone, up 15%. Normalized earnings per share up 16%.
If you convert that into US dollars, we've seen a nice trend if you look at the compound annual growth rate at 12% and up 20%, in terms of year-on-year. Then moving into the schools division, we currently have 113 schools, and you can see the breakdown there. These obviously include our brands in Africa. Then looking at revenue in schools, South Africa up 13%, operating profit up 16%, and that shift in operating margin that I just covered. Rest of Africa, revenue up 21%. Twenty-one on the compound annual growth, up 11% on the year. Operating profit up 29%, and again, that big positive movement in operating margin. Then some of our investments that I just wanted to share.
Opening in January next year is a new Pinnacle College campus, adjacent to our existing Charterhouse pre-primary and prep schools in Ruimsig. The first phase will open with grades eight and nine. It's early days, but we've seen a positive start to enrollments for next year. That's how it will look. I think it's gonna be a stunning site. In Gaborone, the international school there continues to perform extremely well with strong enrollment growth and exceptional academic results. We've expanded the capacity to 3,250 students. Those two buildings at the front are both new. The one on the right completed in 2022, and the most recent one on the left in 2023. Each of those buildings has increased capacity by about 500 students.
We've added a huge number over the last two years. This school is doing extremely well. In Kenya, the next phase of development there begins in Q3. It's really building classrooms, and that will increase capacity from 900 to 1,300 in response to demand, driven by the exceptional academic performance that we're delivering. Pinnacle College Raslouw that opened in January of last year, and we've seen exceptional student demand there, and we're having to bring forward our expansion plan by several years, and we already have 915 students enrolled. We opened a second Bridge School in Morningside down the road here in Johannesburg in January of last year, and it's also doing well. Oh, sorry, January of this year. Just a slide on school capacity.
I mean, I think the critical numbers are existing build capacity utilized and ultimate capacity. We are knocking around 83%-84%, which is a great number in terms of efficiency for us in terms of full schools. That could be possibly slightly higher. If it gets above 86%-87%, it starts to get in the way of growth. 83% is a good number, and we also have plenty of capacity in terms of building opportunities on-site. The most efficient Capex that we spend is on extending existing sites. Then in terms of enrollment movement, this says total schools enrollment and then the break of positives and negatives. The non-matric leavers, you really can't do anything about matric leavers if they finish. Non-matric leavers, if you total those, add up to 5,809.
That's largely driven by the effect of strained economies. I think if we were in a more positive operating environment that possibly halve that number, then we'd be looking at a net enrollment growth of 12% instead of 4%. If the headwinds that we face in this market drop a little, then, you know, we might see an acceleration in growth. Moving on to tertiary. We have a strong portfolio across 33 campuses. This is the breakdown here. We also have a comprehensive range of qualifications all the way from skills development to a PhD. Tertiary enrollments up 7%, slightly ahead of the compound annual growth of 6%. An acceleration there that's very pleasing. If we look at the distance enrollments, they're growing by 17%, which is a very positive number.
Looking at revenue, we've already covered this, we're up 13%, operating profit up 16%, and a nice expansion in operating margin. We have been focusing on placing our students from Capsicum and the hotel school with international airlines and cruise companies, and that's beginning to bear fruit, and we have made 200 placements to date. This is one for the future, but going well. An update on the road to university status. Draft criteria were published by the government in August 2022. There was a short consultation period, finished in September. We had a long wait for a second draft in April of this year. Public comment has now also happened there. We are hoping that this will be gazetted by the end of this year, but it is in the hands of government.
In the meantime, we are very active in making sure that we are ready to comply with whatever criteria we're given as soon as they're available. I won't read all of this slide, but between 2022 and 2024, we've invested in a significant movement in the qualification level of our academic staff. Doctorate's up significantly, master's up significantly. We've had a four-fold increase in per capita research. We've established our own DHET-accredited journal. We're developing international partnerships. We're already ahead of the public universities on some key criteria. If we look at the box at the bottom there, and you look at where we were in 2022, where we got to in 2024, and new qualifications in the pipeline, you can see that we're aggressively developing the number and seniority of the courses that we offer.
On the tertiary side, looking at investments, Rosebank College, Pretoria. This is work in progress, but increasing our capacity by 5,200 to about 11,500. Obviously a big project, but again in line with market demand. The Rosebank College in Braamfontein, the mega campus there. We've purchased the adjacent building to our existing building to create a student precinct. We also have Capex approved to increase capacity and really change the quality of student experience that we deliver. We are hoping that we'll begin that this year, and student capacity will increase quite markedly from 11,500 to just short of 15,000. These are some renderings of how the interior will look.
This is a radical move from where we are now and something that we are very proud of. Rosebank College in Umhlanga. It opened in January of this year, and enrollments are currently ahead of target, and it's doing well. Rosebank College, Cape Town, our current campus has run out of capacity, and we are gonna move in 2025 to a new building and actually double the capacity of Rosebank, Cape Town. This is the scale of the move, so it's a short hop across a couple of city blocks, so it should be convenient for our existing students, and it's also nearer to the railway line, which is also a positive. Varsity College, Pretoria, that was upgraded last year. I think looking fantastic.
We have relocated Vega Pretoria to the same development in new premises. We also have a new university site that we are very keen to talk about but can't because it's subject to competition approval. These pictures make it look like a small house. I can assure you it is actually a very large, exciting campus. We intend to invest about ZAR 400 million over the next couple of years, and hopefully, we'll be able to share the detail of that very soon. Moving on to resourcing. In total, we've seen that slight decline in revenue, but operating profit has increased nicely, with margins improving. The South African business is the one that's under pressure.
It's a tough market, exacerbated by the national elections, and that led to a decline in revenue and a small operating loss. That does actually include an overhead allocation, and without that Resourcing SA would've made a small profit. I think we're all aware of how tough the South African market is. The flip of that is the continued success of our rest of Africa resourcing business, however. Revenue, pretty flat, driven by the timing of a number of lower margin contracts coming to an end, but being replaced by higher margin contracts. Margins have increased nicely, as has operating profit, up 24%. Then I'd like to hand over to Didier to run through some of the group analysis.
Okay. Good afternoon. I'm gonna deal with trade receivables, cash flow, return on funds employed and the dividend, and Capex as well. Let's start with the trade receivables or debtors. I mean, notwithstanding a marginal decline relative to revenue, where it grew by about 1% ahead of revenue. I think we're very pleased with the progress we're making on the debtors book. You know, we fully understand the reasons for this minor decline and we're very confident that we have it under control. Let me start with resourcing. Small number, but you saw that the revenue declined marginally, but yet the debtors went up.
That's largely our rest of Africa business, where we have big payrolls or contractor payrolls that we have to pay on behalf of our clients. Our normal payment terms are that they must pay us ahead of us making those payments to the clients. You get into this position where if there's a delay in the payment coming to us from the client, you don't wanna be in a position where you're now holding the payroll back and not necessarily you know, having a service delivery issue or a customer relation issue. On the other hand, you don't wanna take the risk. The team have been getting deposits in place that equates to about one month of the payroll.
We get the money in advance, but that then means we give them slightly longer payment terms. The net impact of this is that cash in the bank is better than it was before, even though the debtors is slightly pushed out. In fact, this business is now running a negative working capital cycle in the same way that our education business is. Tertiary, I think they're very pleasing result on their collections. You'll all recall the 2022 billing issue that we had, where we changed systems, and particularly for returning students, we had some challenges with getting our invoicing out on time and correct. That impacted us all the way through 2023 while we were recovering from that.
I think when we reported our results in December, we said that that was already largely behind us, and at that point in time, we reduced our loss allowance. In December last year, our loss allowance reduced quite significantly. Moving into this year, the revenue up 13%, but debtors only up 8%. Again, a 5% real improvement over there. I think we're now in a position where not only have we recovered from the billing issue we had in 2022, we are now starting to get the benefits of the efficiency of the new system. I mean, we had lots of compliments from parents and students at the beginning of this year of how easy it was to enroll and use our new system.
Getting the billing out so early just gives you a better chance of a good collection. I think going really well and happy with the benefits we're getting. Schools, it slipped out by approximately ZAR 10 million relative to the increase in revenue over last year. Again, we changed system in this period. In the month of May, schools cut over to the new system. I'm pleased to say the billing went very well. In fact, the new system has material advantages in that we do annuity billing as opposed to monthly billing. Instead of running 30,000 bills per month, we now just do it once and only make changes. If somebody takes after care or drops after care, you might add that.
Provided nothing changes, the billing is done once for the full year. We're now into a project where we're looking to automate it by integrating it to the student management system, which then means there'll be no human touch and a massive saving opportunity achieved in terms of admin. Nevertheless, while we were cutting over, we locked down our system for a month from about 20th of April to 20th of May, where we could not process because we had to freeze the data and then transfer it into the new system and ensure that it was, you know, do all our validations and that. We couldn't process the cash books, which then made it very difficult to chase parents that may have missed payments.
The team did a fantastic job once the system went live to catch up and process the statements as quickly as possible, and we can start collecting. Unfortunately, by June, we were still ZAR 10 million behind where we'd like to be. I can confirm, though, at the end of July, our debtors is up by 11% year-on-year for schools, which is exactly in line with the revenue increase. We have fully recovered that situation. In terms of the loss allowances, really the only meaningful adjustment there is on tertiary, where it reduced quite significantly. As I mentioned earlier, as the 2022 billing system worked out of the system during 2023. You can see the income statement impact is small.
That was really the benefit of that was taken into 2023, and it's not a fortuitous adjustment into these results. Credit losses overall 6% relative to the revenue. Good collections, and we're very pleased with where we are. Cash generation remains extremely strong. The cash generated from operations ahead of EBITDA again. We consistently convert more than 100% of our EBITDA into cash. The inflows from operating activities includes the very positive movement that we feel in the first half of the year from our working capital cycle, where we get a lot of fees in advance. To some extent, that does reverse in the second half of the year, but never fully.
We get quite a significant amount of, call it, free borrowings that assists us in funding our business. Moving on to our net borrowings. It's been continuously reducing consistently, notwithstanding a reasonable Capex program over the last couple of years, down to ZAR 189 million. It will push up again towards the year-end. We always have Capex is more weighted towards the second half of the year than the first half, and then also the partial unwinding of the working capital. Yes. We still believe that it will be below where borrowings ended at the end of 2023. In terms of our covenants and headroom on our facilities, we're well under our covenants and have significant headroom.
Any opportunities that may come our way, we feel comfortable if they make, you know, if they are feasible and fit in with our strategy, we are in a position to take advantage of. Moving on to the return on funds employed. Again, we had a significant investment program from about 2014 to 2019. You can see most of it's slipped off the slide now as we've moved on the years, but still a ZAR 1 billion investment in 2019 at a time when the profitability and cash flows of the group were a lot less than they currently are. I mean, those investments had to get through the J-curve and, you know, so the return on funds employed was quite muted for a period of time.
I think we were very confident that 2020 was gonna be the year that moved up dramatically, and then COVID came along. You know, once COVID got out of the way, I think you can see those investments are now starting to deliver really good returns. I think the profits and the cash flows that we're getting from those are significant. You know, ROFE's moved up strongly, and we foresee that continuing. You can see even, you know, notwithstanding the Capex program reducing, I think in 2020 and 2021, understandably it was lower. I mean, we have been going at about ZAR 700 million per annum since then. It's not an insignificant investment program. Okay, moving on to the Capex.
We've spent ZAR 278 million in the first half of the year. As I mentioned earlier, our Capex is generally back-end weighted, except for the Capex in the very right-hand column, furniture, fittings, and IT, which tends to be more front-end loaded. We do a lot of our replacement of aging equipment at the beginning of the year, ahead of the start of the academic year, and then also we add equipment and furniture and fittings to accommodate the enrollment growth. That tends to be a bit more front-end loaded, but the other three columns are generally back-end loaded. The new school, that's the Pinnacle Ridgeview. We started building in the first half of the year. The majority of that expenditure will come through in the second half of the year.
I think our estimate is it'll be about ZAR 75 odd million for the full year for that project. We continue to invest into systems, student finance and HR systems. Again, our continued drive to look for standardization, simplification and optimization, you know, so that we can get good savings and efficiencies there, which allows us to then invest into value-adding parts of our business, you know, which enhances the student experience. Those projects are currently rolling out. The additions to the existing sites are largely on the slides that you would have seen from Geoff earlier, those various tertiary sites and some school sites as well. I think we've previously given guidance of about ZAR 700 million-ZAR 750 million Capex for the full year.
I think generally, that remains true, but on the basis that the competition board approves the project, that Geoff mentioned around the university site, I think that'll be over and above. About half of that could still occur in the current year. Should that happen, I think our Capex will be higher in the current year. Okay, moving on to the dividend. Again, we're generating cash that's in excess of what we require at the moment to fund our investment program. You know, if a really huge opportunity arose, we have more than enough headroom to fund it in any event.
With that in mind, when the board considered the full year dividend earlier this year in relation to 2023, the decision was made to move from a 2.4 times cover to a two times cover, and thereby increasing the dividend. That flowed out in the final dividend, which was a significant increase. If I recall, it was 30% up on the prior year. In this period now, when considering the interim dividend, the board considered alignment in terms of a full year dividend cover of two. We saw roughly 40% interim dividend, 60% of the full year dividend in the second half. We've got to the 38%.
Again, if you're, you know, looking for the full year dividend, you should expect the board to declare a dividend at approximately two times the dividend cover. That resulted in a ZAR 0.38 dividend. A nice 27% increase. I think again, you know, as Geoff mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, consistency. I think we've managed to consistently deliver a strong dividend performance off the back of our strong results. 26%, it's a meaningful dividend that's growing at a meaningful rate. With that, I'm gonna hand back to Geoff to take us through the future focus.
Just talking about prospects, I'm not gonna go through all these blocks, but I would just highlight that the market demographic and supply and demand tailwinds continue, and we are very well-placed to make the most of them. In terms of forward vision and strategic direction, the vision that I've laid out for the business is that we will lead in every market segment in which we choose to operate and be the employer of choice in both the education and resourcing sectors. Within that, there are some very important focus areas. Growth synergies. I think the opportunity to look for opportunities within the schools group, within tertiary, and connecting schools and tertiary are significant. We also think that there is runway around cost synergies through shared services.
We've made some great gains, but there are still more to be had. I think our brand structures in South Africa and Africa, we could simplify those. That's work in progress. Optimization of brand propositions and strategies. I think we start in a good place, but we could move those forward. The elevation of marketing communications and CRM is another area that we're investing in. As I covered earlier, we've hired a very experienced guy in Steve Miller to come in and lead that for the group. Historically, we have entered a number of African countries. I think going forward, we would like to balance scaling in the countries we're in with new market entries. A little bit of a shift there. We also want to expand tertiary into other Africa. We have talked a lot about distance tertiary.
We have some good growth numbers there, but that is an area of focus. We'd like those to be even better. We continue to invest in the central academic team with a new program of teaching and learning innovation, which we're calling SIRIUS. These themes will be further explored at our Q4 corporate strategy day, but that's a flavor of the direction that we're taking. Then maybe just to close, this is our share price graph. Just a final thought. I think year-on-year, our share price has rerated by about 67%. We also had a bit of a benchmark for the company when we moved through a market capitalization of $1 billion on Friday for the first time. With that, we'll take any questions, and Didier wants to rejoin me.
We're gonna have questions online, if I may?
The first is gonna be: can you give some indication of the city in which the new campus is located?
Okay.
What is the philosophy on property in respect to the tertiary division, i.e., is there a view to own or rent the property?
Well, we would love to tell you more about the location of our new campus, but at this point we can't. We do have a view on renting and selling. I'll let Didier cover that.
Yeah. I think for us, we're agnostic between renting and owning. I think the first and most important thing is the location. I mean, we have to have the right location, and then I think we need to have the right terms. I think what's more important to us is securing tenure. Particularly on the school side, a lot of our assets are specialized, but even on the tertiary side, as we're building out our campuses to become more aspirational, they're not as easily just, you know, converted office parks. We're putting a lot of Capex into them. It's security of tenure and, you know, we run the models and the feasibilities and, as long as we can make it work, and it's a sound investment and a sound business case, we're agnostic.
Sorry, there's an in-the-room question.
Thanks, guys. Two questions. First, on the resources side, the original rationale for the inclusion of resources division within the group was the placement of students as they move out. But obviously in the last couple of years, the management there have done a wonderful job in pivoting the business towards Africa and, you know, full credit to them, it's very profitable. But I doubt you're placing lots of students into deepest, darkest Africa and therefore, does it still fit within the group despite being a profitable, you know, nice little business?
Okay.
The second question is around the schools rest of Africa, that operating margin has been lifting up steadily across years and is now currently above the domestic margin. What is the ceiling for that margin? At what point are you perhaps
Gonna push for more growth and less margin and the like, and where do you see that long-term margin lie?
Okay. In terms of the first question, in terms of placement of tertiary students, I think that was a theory when the business was brought into the group, and I mean, that was several management teams ago. I mean, it even predates me that the resourcing business came into the group. I think it was a theory that they would take, you know, from kindergarten, school, tertiary and then, you know, place them in jobs. I think, you know, Len, who's here, runs our recruitment business, will tell you that, and you probably know from yourselves, and that when you employ people straight out of a tertiary institution, you're generally not prepared to pay a fee. You know, you think of how most of us got our own jobs. Our first job, we knocked on doors.
Our second or third jobs, we might have had a recruitment agent. There isn't really that synergy. I mean, there is some, you know, the odd opportunity. It's never really been there and we don't see that it will be there. The businesses must operate on their own, and I think they must also justify themselves on their own value propositions as opposed to having, you know, a sort of easy advantage of a pull-through from the group. In fact, that's exactly the same with our schools and tertiary.
We, you know, we allow our tertiary divisions, and we encourage them to go and fish in our schools for students, but actually, they need to sell on their own value proposition as opposed to just say, "Oh, we'll take Crawford students into Varsity College, and it's easy." That's always been our philosophy and again, it's a very different business. I think, you know, this management team, we've inherited this business, the resourcing business. We managing it, and Len and his team are doing a great job in a tough environment in South Africa, finding strategic opportunities elsewhere. At some point the stars will probably align, and an opportunity will come to sort of tidy up the group.
We're not gonna do it just for the sake of tidying up the group and destroy shareholder value. We need to get the two to marry. In terms of the schools' margins in rest of Africa, I mean, I think they will go up a bit. It's hard to say exactly where. I mean, I don't think it's a, you know, it's not gonna, it's not a linear that'll continue going up. I think we probably believe it could get into the mid-60s%. I think the big difference there is teaching costs are generally cheaper than in South Africa. You actually also need a slightly higher margin to get the return on your capital investment.
you know, the return on investment if you had the same margin as in South Africa, you would get a lower return on investment and, you know, particularly when we put our risk premiums on top. We would need a bit more. They are performing well, and I think there is still a little bit of opportunity on the margins.
Do you want to carry on?
Yeah, the next one. Given your trends in Capex, pardon me, are you becoming more towards a tertiary education company like STADIO?
We see opportunity in tertiary distance, and as I just mentioned, that is an area that we're going after. The bulk of our business remains in face-to-face. We see a balance of the two. We're certainly not abandoning face-to-face to pursue distance.
Also on schools, we still see lots of opportunities. We're still investing significantly in schools. You know, you saw the Gaborone, that significant investment. We're putting in Crawford in Kenya. We're building a new school. We've recently opened a Bridge , and then significant Capex going onto existing sites as well, where they're not yet at built capacity. I mean, we look at all opportunities. We're in a fortunate position that we're not capital constrained and have to rationalize. We can do all projects which we believe are good and you know, we will continue investing in all parts of the business where the feasibility makes sense.
The next question on resourcing. Why does the rest of Africa resourcing do so much better than South Africa? Is it due to competition?
I'll let Didier comment. I think, the big difference is the economic environment.
Right.
South Africa's under huge pressure. There's much bigger economic growth and far stronger economic activity in many of the African countries that we operate in. I don't know if you wanna add to that.
Yeah, I think it's also a very different business model.
Yeah.
Our South African business model is largely a contingent-based. You make a placement, you get a fee. You don't make a placement, you don't get a fee. Your costs are the same other than maybe a little bit of commission to the consultant. In a very tough environment, you know, you can battle like we have now ahead of the elections and in the very tough economic environment. The rest of Africa resourcing business is more a contract type of business. You've got a lot more annuity income. I mean, the geographies that they're playing, you know, are generally performing a lot better than South Africa in terms of economic development.
They're playing to a lot of multinationals in particular that are putting contractors in these countries, but they don't want the you know the burden of having to open an office or being the registered employer in each of these countries. You know, pick a Microsoft or something. If they wanted to have engineers in 20 African countries, they don't wanna open an office necessarily in each of those 20, and they would then enter a long-term contract with us, and we would place them. We've seen good growth in lots of segments across Africa. You know, gas, mining, lots of NGOs, financial, education. A very broad spectrum of contractors across many industries and many countries. Sorry, we're gonna take one from in the room.
Hi. Still on your resourcing segment. You guys didn't really necessarily touch on how you plan on growing that segment. Could you maybe speak on that and how you particularly plan on turning around resourcing South Africa?
We have Wayne here.
Well, I think the first thing is the economy has been extremely tough for a number of years now, and probably even worse at the beginning of this year. I think, again, I'm not quite sure how many election cycles I've been through in my time with ADvTECH, but ahead of every single election, the business has underperformed. I think more so this time than previous elections because I think the level of uncertainty was not as great as it was at this stage. I mean, again, think of your own businesses and that. You know, the hire freezes, people don't employ in times of uncertainty.
The very tough economy, not knowing what's gonna happen with the election, that I think really put the business under a lot of pressure. The business is reporting that post the elections and a little bit of stability coming back into the market, activity is starting to pick up. I mean, they really do a good job in managing their costs and looking for opportunities. I mean, the fact that we got Africa HR is because they looked for opportunities. They said if they can't make placements here, where do we go to make placements? I mean, that's borne fruit over and over.
We're seeing South Africa, they're always looking at opportunities and streamlining the costs, making sure that where there is an opportunity, they go after it. I mean, really, we need a little bit of a tailwind from the economy to also assist the management team.
Okay.
Next one. Could you please clarify what average fee increases were going into 2024 for both the tertiary and the schools businesses? Are there any important mix effects to call out on average revenues per learner or student? What fee increases do you expect to put through in 2025 for both tertiary and for the schools business? Thank you.
Yeah. I mean, I think the increases are in line with inflation last year and this year, and that's also in line with the salary increases that we plan. I don't know if you wanna add to that.
No. I don't think there were any material mix factors.
Maybe in both tertiary and schools, slightly more at sort of the mid-fee. We had slightly higher enrollment growth at the mid-fee level than at the premium level, as you would expect. I mean, we still had good growth at the premium level, so it's a really minor, mix impact.
This is a question on the receivables and loss allowance. Are they seeing any significant differences among the different school brands in terms of the more premium schools versus the less expensive schools?
Again, you get minor differences. I think that the more premium the brand, the more upfront fees you tend to get. Where the more mid-fee schools, there are a lot more people paying monthly. On that basis, you're collecting a bigger book at the mid-fee level, and that's similar for tertiary and for schools where you have the same pattern. You often have a slightly higher level of default at the mid-fee level than you do at the premium level.
The next one. In terms of the competition in schools, in the last three years, how many schools have you opened, and are they Crawford or Pinnacle?
We've opened a Bridge at the beginning of this year. Yeah. We opened a Pinnacle Raslouw the year before. We opened a Trinityhouse, I think. Is it two or three years ago? So that's a premium school. I mean, we've definitely opened more mid-fee schools over the last three or four years than premium schools. I mean, as you would expect, the pyramid being narrower at the top, and I think we're also very well represented at premium school level. The fact that there's been maybe less new schools opening at the premium level does not indicate that we don't believe there are still opportunities.
We're still exploring opportunities where we believe premium schools are viable and would be successful.
A question: What is the building capacity in the tertiary division?
Again, we don't measure that because it's, I use a term, our walls are a little bit rubbery in the tertiary institutions in that you can schedule, you know, you can timetable in a lot of capacity. You know, you don't have to run from eight till four. Nothing stops you from running seven till seven or Saturday mornings. Where we do get full, we will use our timetabling to help accommodate, and then we will add capacity and you've seen a lot of the projects up on the slides earlier. I mean, that's a point in time. This has been ongoing, that every year we're adding capacity to the tertiary businesses, you know, as and when they require it.
We always trying to match our capacity as close as possible to our expected enrollments. In some cases, like in Cape Town now, we have to double our capacity. Again, we're pretty confident that we will fill that quite quickly, based on the track record of that campus. We, you know, I guess if you wanted to turn it around the other way, we are largely very close to our maximum capacity, but it's not a constraint because we're quite flexible and quite quick in being able to add additional capacity. As we've done in the years, you know, up to now and it doesn't have a material impact on profits. We do it in the normal course of business.
I've got one on rest of Africa schools, can they self-fund their growth Capex from their own cash generated by operations? Also, can you share a sense of existing capacity used relative to the ultimate capacity in Africa?
Their balance sheets are starting to get quite strong, and in fact, we've got about ZAR 300 million offshore at the moment between our African businesses. They are starting to generate meaningful cash, and they've been funding their own investment program for a number of years now. Again, Jaco's yeah, I think it was 2020 was the last time we moved a small amount of money from South Africa into the rest of Africa. Obviously, if there's a material opportunity, we may have to still support from South Africa. Financial institutions are also starting to see us as bankable and to extend reasonable lines of credit to us now that we've established a track record.
We are quite quickly moving to a position where they can grow off their own balance sheets.
Congratulations on a great set of results. May you please provide the outlook for the resourcing revenue growth?
Yoh. Okay. I mean, as I said earlier, this is a contingency business. You know, every day, the consultant comes in and starts at naught. It's not like they pull out the contracts and say, "Well, I've already got, you know, half my revenue for the day." I mean, it really is, you know, we could have a good day today, and we think we're ahead of the game, and then we make no placements tomorrow. It's really impossible to, you know, give a call on what that's gonna be. I mean, obviously in rest of Africa, we've got a little bit more visibility in terms of the contracts being generally, you know, at least a one-year contract at a time.
I think we're pretty confident that we're maintaining and increasing our number of contractors on the book. I think probably the best I can give you. I think in Africa, where revenue was pretty much flat, we've seen a significant increase in operating profit through margin, and that opportunity continues. We'd like to see revenue grow, but we are growing even on flat revenue.
There's one more. Can we get some color on the return on assets school building utilization work or rest of Africa, sorry. Can you get some-
Oh, sorry. That, yeah, the part two of the question. I think we've at Gaborone, we showed that we've built significant capacity. I mean, that has filled so quickly that we are close to full there. We are looking at opportunities if we can add a bit more capacity. I mean, realistically, we can only grow by a few more % as we stand at the moment. The team's looking at opportunities. Crawford International, we're putting in some significant capacity now to you know give them their next two or three years' worth of growth. They're full at the moment, but early next year, they will have capacity to accommodate growth. In Makini, we do have some capacity. I think it's quite close, probably about 90-odd%.
We do have some capacity, and we are also looking at several opportunities to increase the capacity further. You know, we don't believe we are constrained from growing further. We are just working through opportunities, notwithstanding the fact that we're quite close to full, as we stand today.
Then another question on the expansion into Africa in respect of Africa, are you more likely to expand in the countries where you currently operate than expand in new countries?
Well, new countries are market entry, so it's a different proposition. I think, as I said in the presentation, what we're looking for is a balance between building out the countries we're in and new country entries.
another question coming through. Do the results benefit from the Educor demise?
I think they've had an absolutely minimal effect.
Yeah
on our results.
Yeah. We've picked up very, very few students because of the timing of the year that the accreditation was pulled. Then the last one at the moment is, how easy is it to convert an IIE qualification to compete with STADIO offering in terms of giving distance learning to students?
A high proportion of our qualifications are already registered for distance. In fact, I think, again, maybe Shevon, you can confirm, but I think every program that we send for accreditation, we have it accredited for both distance and face-to-face. We're comfortable that we have product to compete.
With that, we've come to the end of the online questions.
Any more from the room?
Afternoon. Just a quick one on capital allocation. I mean, you characterize your balance sheet as being sound, but I think it's a quick step away from looking a bit lazy. Given your kind of cash generation at the moment, it might just become quite a bit lazy if you don't, you know, do anything. Just how you see the capital allocation stack, what your priorities are there?
P articularly related to, if you'd consider, share buybacks.
Not to get greedy or anything, but you've already moved the dividend cover down. Is there scope for that to, you know?
Yeah
Go further?
Okay. I mean, we obviously consider capital allocation, but also sort of to try and optimize our capital structure, and we look at both of those. I think certainly to optimize our capital structure informed the increase in the dividend payout. You did see that we did make some share buybacks. Again, it was to firstly remove the dilution effect of our management share scheme. Those shares were acquired rather than issuing and diluting. We did acquire a small amount of shares to cancel when the share price started moving strongly up. We will consider you know allocating capital towards share buybacks where when it makes sense.
Not just at any cost, you know, it's gotta be a proper capital allocation decision as opposed to a financial engineering decision. Yes, we are open to that. Yeah, we are, you know, away from our capital structure at the moment. We undergeared relative to the optimal capital structure. You know, in this environment, maybe it's not a bad thing to have been a bit on the low side. I think if the economy improves, and particularly if we find some good opportunities in the rest of Africa, we would deploy more capital and would be quite happy to gear up further.
I mean, clearly, if we don't find these opportunities, but I think we do believe there are still lots of investment opportunities. If we don't, I think the board would obviously consider, you know, what other tools do they have, which would include dividend payouts and whether we take a different view on share buybacks. We're very mindful of both, and we try and balance them, but not with a knee-jerk reaction. You know? It's a long-term, and you are going to be out of it depending on the cycle of the business. As long as you're always mindful of it and seeing, you know, striving to get back into that range over a long term.
You know, again, we didn't disclose it in the slides, but it was in the year-end results. Our Return on Equity is over 19%, so I think it's a pretty healthy return even with the suboptimal structure that we have at the moment. We'll look to continue driving that up.
Okay.
Great.
Are there any more questions from the room?
Okay. Well.
Thank you.
Thank you all. Appreciate you being here.