Hertz Rent-A-Car. We have 9,500 vehicles in our fleet, and we have the fleet recovery unit fitted in all our vehicles, which is the 590, which is the new units that we've been fitting to our vehicles, which gives us access to fleet data and also for our recovery of our vehicles. When we started looking at a new partner, it was more about technology. You know, there's many products out there in the market that is a recovery product that gives you some fleet data. But we really needed to partner with a technology company. We know that technology changes very quickly, and we need to stay abreast. And we felt that Netstar was in a growing phase, and they had some new innovation that was to follow.
And we're getting the benefits of it now. Thanks to Grant and his hands-on approach, where he got involved when things were difficult, and things became sticky. The changes that they've made in a short space of time has definitely assisted us. Our recoveries have been very, very good. You know, one looks at a sort of a tracking device, and that's not what it's about. It's more about the whole fleet process, the looking after the asset. So it's all these small, small value adds that Netstar has given us. The health check report that, you know, we used to get, hundreds of emails every day where vehicles were not responding. I mean, that's all been put on a dashboard through a BI process. It's much more accurate.
It's saved us a lot of hours in our depots, made it a lot easier for our staff. And also just giving us reassurance that the units are functioning properly, and if they're not, it's a seamless process to get it sorted out. The Global Fleet Bureau is extremely impressive. I didn't know what to expect, and I think, you know, with this, it just shows the commitment from Netstar to say that, you know, we are a technology partner. It's not just a tracking company.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are live. We are live. We are live. We are broadcasting live the Altron annual results here from Investec, and it is my pleasure to be your host this morning. I'm Bronwyn Nielsen. I'm joined in a moment by the CEO of the Altron Group, Werner Kapp, and the CFO, Carel Snyman, to present your results this morning, and we'll be following that with a Q&A. So if you do have questions, please reserve those for the Q&A. Of course, we do have online viewers this morning, and you can also post your questions in our chat box. As we are live, please make sure that your cell phones are also off at this juncture. Aligned with our values of inclusion, we will be in...
Our results will be interpreted at this stage on behalf of the deaf community, and that will be on our live stream this morning. As a reminder, we will be making forward-looking statements. Please look at the cautionary language in our presentation, and that's regarding the risks and uncertainties when it comes to those forward-looking statements. Unless otherwise noted, all growth comparisons relate to the corresponding period last year. On that note, Werner Kapp, the CEO of the Altron Group, to you, sir.
Thank you very much, Bronwyn. And thanks everybody for joining us here today. It's amazing to be able to do these results live, I think, for the first time since COVID. I'd really like to thank our board members for attending. There's a number of our group MDs here, and, of course, shareholders, and then particularly to Investec, our sponsor, for hosting us today to take you through our results for the year ending February 29, 2024. Now, Altron is the original South African technology brand. We've been around for 59 years.
We started on April 1, 1965, and since then, we've really been combining technology, South African ingenuity, and more recently, the advances in data and artificial intelligence, to really help solve real-world problems on behalf of our customers and make an impact on the economy. This really informs our purpose. This is what gets us up every day. It's what motivates our staff when they're in the trenches every day, and that is to use technology to transform today into a simpler, safer, and smarter tomorrow. We put this to use every day, helping South Africa's biggest brands to take on tomorrow. This is the results presentation. I hear you say, "That's great, Werner. How does that ultimately impact the numbers?" Let me take you through our financial highlights.
Just want to remind you, we look at the business from continuing operations, which is really the businesses that we're focusing on and investing our capital in, and then from a group perspective, where we've got our two discontinued operations in Altron Nexus and ADS. Also, just a reminder, on the first of July last year, we sold our ATM business. We generated ZAR 216 million worth of cash from that, and really, to be able to give you a good like for like comparison of how the business is doing, we've removed four months worth of contribution from that business from the numbers that I'm about to present to you....
So I'm really proud to say that our strategy execution is leading to some strong underlying performance by our core operations, evidenced by 18% revenue growth, 27% EBITDA growth, 33% growth in operating profit, resulting in a 36% growth in Headline Earnings Per Share and 46% growth in EPS. Especially pleasing for me is that cash generated from operations are up by 25% year-on-year. I'd like to take this opportunity to really, really thank the 4,400-odd people that work for Altron, along with the leadership and management team that work with me every day, for the results that you are seeing here.
If we then look at the group, you may recall at half year, we took some provisions to the tune of about ZAR 462 million relating to our Altron Nexus and Document Solutions business. ZAR 33 million of that was impairment at group for the Nexus goodwill, ZAR 334 million worth of provisions related to Altron Nexus, and ZAR 95 million worth of provisions related to the Altron Document Solutions business. So at a group level, that negatively results, that negatively impacts our results, and these numbers are tough for me to present, because some of the decisions that we've made there and the provisions that we've taken, to some extent, really offsets, you know, the fantastic work that I think we're doing in our continued operations. Revenue is up 3% year-on-year.
At a group perspective, EBITDA up by 1%, operating profit down by 30%, and negative EPS of 25 ZAR cents per share, and EPS of minus 43 ZAR cents per share. But as you can see, and I'll take you a little through some of our discontinued operations, because of the good work we've done, and the strengthening our balance sheet and really being able to drive our continued operations going forward and improving our cash by 25%, we decided in FY 2024, at half year to raise our dividend payout from 40% - 50%. And I'm very proud to declare a final dividend of 33 ZAR cents per share, which is up 74% year-on-year.
So let me just take one or two minutes just to take you a little bit through the strategy and the journey that we're on as a business. Our strategy is to become the leading platform and IT services business in our chosen markets, and that strategy really has three key growth levers for us. The first one is to grow revenue by maximizing the value that our customers get out of their digital spend. The second one is to improve operating leverage, and that's by managing our gross margins better and making sure we've got a good handle on our expenses. The last one really is to drive transformative growth.
That is by continuing to drive our continued operations, that is, to really leverage and continue to leverage the power of data and AI, both within our organization and for our customers. It is by to expand our platform ecosystem to get more network effects and through judicious capital allocation, to see if there are M&A opportunities in the market to bolster our capabilities or to expand geographically. This strategy is enabled through efficiently allocating our capital, differentiating through collaborating. So that's really about how we show up better as different businesses with our customers to make sure that we can able to do the kind of things that these case studies talk about, and developing a high-performance culture. And if we execute on this strategy, we make sure that we deliver our short, medium, and long-term goals.
What's also, of course, very important is that we remain obsessed with our customers at all times, and that everything we do, is not harmful to the environment, that we adhere to sustainable business practices, and that we hold ourselves to the highest levels of governance and ethical leadership. What's really pleasing is to see that this strategy execution is starting to drive performance. As you can see there, a five percentage point improvement in gross profit, from a year-on-year perspective, 11% growth in gross profit. We see that flowing through to expanding EBITDA margins.
You know, very pleased with an operating profit margin growing two percentage points year-on-year from 7%-9%, ultimately leading to us being able to grow our earnings over time, with headline earnings increasing 37% year-on-year, now growing by about 46% compound over the last four years. Also, a big focus on cash, and I mean, Carel is gonna take you through a lot of the detail around that later.
A 28% reduction in working capital, which is leading to improved group cash flow generation, about 25% improvement in our cash generated from operations on a year-on-year basis, and very pleasingly for us, a six percentage point improvement in ROIC as a result of that, to a point now where our ROIC is now comfortably above our weighted average cost of capital in the business, which is a big focus area for us. So let me just break down a little bit more detail than the operating performance in our different businesses, starting with our own platform segment. As you know, we embarked on a... And I was glad to see Julian, one of our key customers, referring to that.
We really made some changes in the Netstar business and refocused on our customers, on some key operational efficiencies, and also investing in our big data as a service, and you may have seen the launch of our Global Fleet Bureau recently. It's really great to see some of those numbers coming through. You know, growing market share by adding 370,000 net new subscribers this year. We're now at the 1.7 million subscribers, which is about 27% growth year-over-year, driven by 14% growth in our consumer business and 33% growth in our enterprise business.
You may recall that we spoke about some key operational efficiencies that we had to address in the business that was impacting profitability, notably our contract fulfillment ratio and then our pre-fit conversion rate, which is really around converting the devices that we fit on the dealer floor into revenue. That was a big drag on earnings in the past. And as you can see there, that we've managed to improve the contract fulfillment ratio from 72% - 94% and the pre-fit conversion ratio from 32% - 66%, while expanding our fitment center partnerships to be able to grow the business so we can turn that subscriber growth into revenue and profit, and of course, be able to deliver that service to our customer. While we're doing this, we've also launched five innovative new products in the market.
Our NB-IoT device, the 590 device that Julian referred to in the case, in the case study. StarTag, which is really quite an innovative device, which helps us to completely revolutionize the way we track mobile assets. We've done some specific tracking devices for the Australian municipality market, and of course, our CAS solution, which is really aimed at the mining segment. We are really proud about the launch of our Global Fleet Bureau. We believe that it is the most technologically advanced and largest of its kind on the African continent, which really leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to add value, not just to our enterprise customers, but also to be able to serve our consumer business better. I mean, here's a really good case study for you.
So Putco had a really large tragic accident that claimed a lot of lives. And then they started using our Netstar fleet management system, and more than just simple tracking of buses, they also use it to monitor safety, using particularly the advanced analytics that we've got around driver behavior. And by using this, they've been able to drastically reduce the accidents as well as the claims that have been recorded against them. So you can really see that profit momentum being powered through all of this. I mean, scaling our business through a number of key technology partnerships. You know, we've launched with Microsoft, an industry-defining architecture for telematics on Copilot. We've extended our strategic OEM partnership with Toyota further into the Southeast Asia market, and this has really driven some good revenue for us.
You know, really pleasing to hit the ZAR 2 billion revenue milestone, 12% revenue growth there and 27% EBITDA growth. And as you can see, there also a significant improvement in our EBITDA margin, about a four percentage point improvement in our EBITDA margin year-on-year. I'm really, really pleased, and I really wanna thank the Netstar team, for all the hard work that they've done, and I'm really pleased to see that's starting to yield some good early results for us. If I now turn to our FinTech business, this is our second, biggest business from an EBITDA perspective. I mean, really just to remind you that there's four business units within this business: the Credit Management Solutions business, the Payments and Collections business, the Integrated Transaction Solution business, and the Cards Personalization and Issuance business.
There, we've given you just an indication of the contribution that they make to the overall revenue of the business. What we try to do here in the next slide is also just to give you some insight into what really drives the numbers in these different businesses, and I'll take you through it now as I take you through to the results. If you look at the Credit Management business, 19% improvement there in revenue, and that, as you can see, is really driven at the top by a significant increase in credit inquiries, as well as an increase in the loans processed. 12% increase in our Collections and Payments revenue business. Debit orders, they're fairly flat year-on-year, but as you can see, a significant increase in value of the debit orders being processed.
Just to remind you about our Integrated Transaction Solutions and our Card and Personal Issuance business, I mean, we guided in FY 2023 that we've had some abnormally high hardware sales. So this business, like most businesses, has got a technology, hardware, and annuity component to it, and that can be quite cyclical. You know, it can be based either on key customers' CapEx cycles or also on industry-wide technology upgrade cycles. So our revenue in both businesses, as you can see, is down as we guided that it probably would. But what's really, really encouraging for us there is, as you can see, again, the annuity business, you know, growing. Devices being maintained up by 27%. As you can see, volumes are up, and again, the value is being processed being up in both of these businesses.
That's a key strategic driver for us. Because in the FinTech business, what we've managed to do is grow annuity revenue from 70% - 74% year-on-year. And I'm really delighted by this performance. 5% revenue growth, 22% EBITDA growth, and we've managed to expand our EBITDA margin by four percentage points from 26% - 30%. This is a highly specialized, highly cash generative, very high EBITDA margin-generating business. And I really wanna thank the FinTech team for all of the work that they've done to deliver these results during FY 2024. If I now turn to our HealthTech business, now, just to remind you, the HealthTech business really has three components to it. That is our private practice, our core private practice management system. We've expanded that system really into corporates.
I mean, occupational wellness and health has become a big issue for companies to manage, and then also our Switch business. We've made some significant investments, as you can see on the right there. Is it the right of your screen? Yeah, on the right of your screen, in that platform to not just future-fit the business, but to really expand into new areas of growth. And that is starting to pay off. We see the corporate business has grown 9% year-on-year, and our private practice business is up 6%. 25% logos were added in the corporate business, and as you can see, there are 2,500 net new practice management customers. And a key leading indicator for us in that business is the amount of customers that we add for every customer that we churn through.
So really pleasing to see that at 1.8 customers for every customer churn. Leading to revenue growth of 7% and EBITDA growth of 3%, just to note, which was impacted by a planned ZAR 22 million expensed investment to drive that platform going forward. Again, a really high EBITDA margin, highly cash generative, sticky business with about 95% of its revenue in annuity. And I'd like to really thank the HealthTech team and all of their people for a very good performance during FY 2024. You saw this case study on video. Just to give you an example of some of the stuff that the business is doing and some of the investments we've made. Our HealthOne Oncology solution, what it really does is it really supports the entire value chain.
You know, the cost of cancer treatment in South Africa can be up to ZAR 1 million per patient per year. Now, you can imagine the psychological, the physiological challenges the disease puts you through, the burden it puts on the family. And what this oncology solution really do is it helps to alleviate that burden of care and also help drive down the cost throughout the value chain. The next step for us in this process is also now to use more advanced data and artificial intelligence to actually just manage that whole journey that the patient goes through and develop a patient app, which kind of flips the system a little bit. Because the burden on the patient to manage these treatment protocols really is significant. All right, so let me turn to our digital transformation business.
Now, I just want to remind you, we made a decision to integrate our Altron Systems Integration, Karabina, and Managed Solutions. So for the past year, we're reporting on the old segments, but going forward in our IT services segment, we will be reporting on Altron Digital Business, which we launched on the 1st of March 2024, and Altron Security. The reason we did this is we really wanted focus and integrated sales. I mean, these are three good businesses with good solution sets, but we really have an opportunity to cross-sell, upsell, and drive annuity sales into our customer base. There's obviously opportunities for operating leverage and also for transformative growth to shift the revenue to higher margin annuity-based services. If I start with Altron Systems Integration, this is a business that went through some challenges. You may recall we put a profit improvement strategy in place.
Revenue growth is muted, but that was intentional, particularly because there were some non-profitable business that we exited. We managed to drive up gross profit by 16% on the back of a three percentage point improvement in our gross margins, and we reduced our operating expenses by 13%, leading to a 2% growth in revenue and a particularly pleasing growth in EBITDA, going from ZAR 5 million to ZAR 93 million, and I think you can see a significant curve there, and an uptake in the profitability of that business. So I'd, once again, also really like to thank that team. It took a significant amount of hard work to get us to this point and really position us for growth going forward.
If I turn to the Karabina business, I'd be lying if I told you that I wasn't slightly disappointed by the revenue growth in this business that really delivers high-value services to customers. I mean, there were some extenuating circumstances, but I think it also just supports our case to put this in as part of the digital business to be able to drive revenue going forward. Having said that, I think the team did a fantastic job by changing the margin mix. You saw there a nine percentage point improvement in gross profit margin, which led to about a 31% improvement in gross profit. So along with tight expense management on a 3% revenue growth, we managed to deliver 14% growth in EBITDA and expand the EBITDA margin from 12%-14% in the business.
Altron Security had a disappointing year. You know, for a business that really has high-value IP that we bring to bear for our customers in this key growth area of digital identity and encryption, this is a disappointing result that we're not happy with. Number of reasons: there were some CapEx cycles with some of our key customers, and we had some challenge in our project services, but that's not good enough. Those are not the standards we hold ourselves to. We've put some corrective actions in place to fix this with the team, which is really around a more focused sales approach, tighter management routines in our project services, and of course, tight expense management. It is probably worth calling out that in the project services in this business and in all IT services business, you can make two decisions.
If you see some constrained pipeline or, or deal conversion, you can let the people go. We decided intentionally not to do that. These are highly skilled people, and we are positive about the prospects of this business going forward, so we want to make sure that we hold on to those skills that differentiates us. As you can see, a high annuity business, so even though we had muted revenue growth and a disappointing 3% decline in EBIT, in EBITDA, we were still able to deliver ZAR 101 million worth of EBITDA at very high EBITDA margins for the year. From an Altron Digital Business perspective, here's a really good case study of how we were able to help Hungry Lion with our workforce management solution.
So what we were really able to do with this is to help them analyze and scale their workforce. I mean, it used to take them about four hours a day to be able to do this. We've driven that down by 75%. We've also driven down the overtime in their business, and they are able to continue with their expansion of stores with a 0% increase in payroll. Right, let's turn to managed services and other. The managed services business, again, you'll recall that's where the NCR business came out of and delivered a pleasing performance for us in FY 2024.
9% like-for-like revenue growth with a 6% growth in EBITDA, delivering ZAR 54 million EBITDA for us in FY 2024, and I really want to commend the managed solutions team and thank them for their hard work to deliver this type of performance, particularly during a transition time as you take out a part of the business. Lastly, turning to Arrow, yet another exceptional year by a really exceptional management team. As you can see, the record levels of revenue for us coming on the back of robust revenue growth. Previously, 18% revenue growth. We've had margin growth. We've had very strict cost controls in that business.
We've really improved our working capital management, and that has led to an exceptional performance of 33% EBITDA growth for us year-on-year, and as you can see, also a percentage point improvement in EBITDA. So really well done to the Arrow team and all of their people for an exceptional FY 2024 performance. Turning last to our operating performance in our discontinued operations. We took really decisive action in both of these businesses. You know, in the ADS business, as you know, that sale fell through. In the Nexus business, we lost significant, up to 50% of our revenue because of the loss of the Houghton Broadband contract. We hired new management, we've implemented target operating models, and we are making sure that we manage these businesses for value during this, the disposal process.
Altron Document Solutions, I think that turnaround is progressing well. The team is doing a significant amount of work. There's very strict working capital management in that, in that business. The business is now generating positive cash flow. It's actually started to pay back some of the group loan, and most importantly, it made a significant profit contribution for us in H2. So I'd like to thank the team again for the tireless work that they've put into turning around this business for us. Nexus, probably the most disappointing part of our FY 2024 performance.
On the back of some of the provisions we took, we also made a trading loss, really, as a result of, you know, losing 50% of your revenue, the time it then takes to take the necessary actions and restructure the business around that, which was slightly compounded by us on top of the restructuring costs, also by some delays brought, so we couldn't get some of our IT infrastructure out the door to build. Biggest challenge in that business is you go from a high annuity base to a low annuity base. Having said that, even though the turnaround is a bit later, the new management came in later in the financial year. They're leaving no stone unturned. There's a lot of focus in this business to turn it around.
I'd like to thank them for their efforts, and this business did not consume any group cash in H2. I think, Carel, now it's over to you to take the audience through a bit more detailed financials.
Thanks, Werner. Morning, everybody. So, just before we get stuck into this, I just want to make the point again so that everybody's aware about the ATM business that was only in our results for four months this year versus 12 months in the prior year. So what we've done here, we've given you the, the numbers as reported, and then we've given you the numbers excluding the ATM business on a like-for-like basis. Before we get into the detail, I'm very pleased with this set of results. I, I think it's a strong set of results. There's been a lot of work that's gone into this by the different management teams, and I just want to echo Werner and thank them for their hard work. So let's get into a bit more detail here.
I think overall, the improved performance, our increased cash generation, the strong balance sheet that we've got, has resulted in this dividend payout ratio that Werner mentioned earlier. We increased that payout to 50% of headline earnings from continuing operations. That was done at the half year, so our interim dividend increased 56% to ZAR 0.25, and the final dividend that we've declared of ZAR 0.33 is up 74% on the prior year. If we look at our revenue base, so we've highlighted this at interim. FY 2024 was a year for us of fixing this business, streamlining it, refocusing the base. We've closed and we've restructured some non-profitable businesses, so that we make sure that we have a core base now that's capable of growing both revenue and profit.
So if you consider this, and, you know, I think it's well aware that it's a tough trading condition or trading environment out there, I think the 8% revenue growth that we've achieved on a like-for-like basis is quite a pleasing result. This was led by Arrow, 18% revenue growth, and then Netstar, 12% revenue growth, respectively. What's even more pleasing for me is that we've managed to grow our annuity revenue across the group to 9%, and that now contributes 61% of group revenue. On a statutory basis, we've seen a 2% decline in revenue, and that is the effect of the ATM business being in for only four months versus 12 months in the prior year.
If we look at our operating expenses, these increased year-on-year, driven by planned investments that we've made in our people, our brand, sales. These are all focused investments to drive growth going forward. Some of these were once-off, and we've indicated them on the slide for you. If you exclude the once-off costs, our operating expenses increased in line with inflation. With regards to our real estate consolidation project, those targeted cost reductions, we will reinvest in growth going forward. The positive cash flow impact of that real estate project is that we're going to gain ZAR 500 million in cash over the next nine years until the end of that lease, which is obviously money that we can spend a lot better in other areas.
If we now move to operating profit, so in the operational review, Werner was focused on EBITDA, and that grew 27%, and that was really underpinned by that strong recovery in ASI and also on the Netstar side of the business. I'm going to focus on operating profit. Just to point out, this operating profit once again benefited from a fair value adjustment on our defined pension plan, ZAR 35 million. We had a similar adjustment in the prior year. We strip this out because we have no influence over this. So what we show you is the operating profit results of the businesses that we manage. So we've also taken out the ATM business here that I've discussed previously. So all of our segments recorded operating profit growth.
They delivered an increase of ZAR 174 million or 33% year-on-year. Digital transformation grew operating profit more than 100% to ZAR 195 million, and that's on the back of ASI's successful profit implementation strategy. That turned from a loss of ZAR 20 million in the prior year to a profit of ZAR 87 million in the current year. If we look at our own platforms, that generated operating profit of ZAR 613 million. That's up 18% on last year, and that was largely underpinned by Fintech. They grew operating profit 24%, and then Netstar delivered 16% operating profit growth. I just want to once again remind everybody on Netstar, we accelerate our depreciation of our tracking devices. We do this over a three-year period.
Most of our peers depreciate over a longer period, five to eight years. Then, in addition to that, Netstar is currently also in an investment cycle, particularly upgrading its systems to be able to manage this growth that the business is delivering, and that has also led to an increase in depreciation. Once again, if we exclude the ATM business, Managed Services grew its operating profit 36-36 million, and that's up 6% on the prior year. Then Arrow, on the back of its strong revenue performance, the strict cost controls, the margin expansion, that resulted in operating profit of ZAR 67 million, up 34%. I mean, I'm, I'm very pleased with the results of the core business.
This revenue growth out of our continuing operations, the profit improvement strategy taking effect, and the operating leverage, operating leverage coming through, has delivered this set of results that grew headline earnings and headline earnings per share from continuing operations, 36%, earnings per share up 46%. What's really pleasing for me is if you look at the business performance on the first half versus the second half, you can see the impact of these results coming through and growing now, and this is a pleasing result. If we look at our CapEx expenditure, so we invested ZAR 567 million in CapEx. Of that, ZAR 463 million relates to growth CapEx. So this is predominantly focused on capital rental devices in Netstar, ZAR 328 million, and then Altron FinTech, another ZAR 21 million.
On top of that, we invested ZAR 92 million in our systems and our platforms, and that's to support the growth and improve user experience across the business. As we continue to grow both Netstar and FinTech, this investment in capital rental devices will continue to increase to support the growth out of those businesses, and that, along with the increased returns as our infrastructure business grows our customer base. So what's important for me on this is we are investing behind growth, and that's, that's, for me, where the money should be going to. If we look at our group working capital, we've done a lot of work. The teams have worked very hard across the group to focus on our working capital and to really narrow it down to a base that we can now use going forward.
Just something I want to point out: So you'll note that we have now reconsidered the inclusion of contract liabilities, in our working capital. These contract liabilities have got a lifetime of more than 12 months, and what we want to do is we want to get to working capital that recycles in a 12-month period. So we have excluded it from the opening base to get to the right starting point. So you'll note that as reported, our working capital was ZAR 1.2 billion. We've excluded this, so our starting base for working capital is ZAR 2 billion. That decreased to ZAR 1.4 billion at the end of the year. ZAR 152 million in cash was released from working capital, and then another ZAR 400 million, which was attributed to the non-cash adjustments out of our discontinued operations.
That's overall led to the ZAR 552 million reduction in working capital. I think this new base now is a base that we can use to grow the business. It heightens the focus on our working capital, but we will continue to work on this with the business units to optimize this. If we look at our group cash flows, cash generated from operations up 25% - ZAR 1.6 billion. Our tax increased to ZAR 131 million. This was driven mainly by a change in tax legislation around the utilization of assessed losses that is now limited, that in the past, you could use all of it. Under lease and other payments, that increased to ZAR 743 million from ZAR 357 million in the previous year.
What is in there is a repayment on our revolving credit facilities of ZAR 425 million. So that, for me, has been a focus and, you know, if we have the capital, I would like to bring that debt down. Dividends during the year, ZAR 170 million, and I think if you look at this slide from an operational cash flow perspective and then towards our capital allocation, you will see that in our capital allocation, we talk about growth CapEx to support the growth and then the, the funds that we've returned to shareholders on the back of this performance. So this strong cash generation, the higher cash balances, that gave us the flexibility to reduce our group debt. That led to a 15% or ZAR 18 million reduction in net interest expense for the period.
Our debt decreased from ZAR 563 million - ZAR 313 million at the end of the year. Then for purposes of our covenants, we are using adjusted net debt calculation, and after that, it actually infers that we ended the year in a net cash position, which is the negative ratio that you see there of 0.09. These covenant ratios are well within terms, and it gives us the flexibility to execute on the strategy that Werner has laid out for you. So that's it from me. Werner, can I hand over to you for the outlook?
Thanks, Carel. I pushed the wrong button a lot yesterday, which turns the screen off, so I wanted to really focus and make sure that I pushed the right button. So as we close and we look forward, I just wanted to give you... Folks, I mean, you've seen our strategy and what we focus on. I just wanted to give you a bit of a sense of how we look at the business from a short, medium, and long-term perspective. We call it Horizon One, Horizon Two, and Horizon Three. Horizon One was really around foundational growth. So that really was around setting a clear strategy for the business. It was really about revitalizing our people, embedding this customer obsession, launching our purpose.
Then we invested significantly in core capabilities to drive the business, and as you saw, also adding to some of our leadership team that have got extensive experience in managing the business. We've also added some new people. You know, Carel coming in as CFO, Grant coming in as the MD of Netstar, Craig Stewart, who's running our Altron Digital Business, Marisa, who's doing our, who's doing our marketing, and of course, most recently, I'm trying to find him in the audience, Dr. Andy Mabaso, who's joined us as Chief Technology Officer, really to help drive that transformative growth. We then looked at all of our different businesses, did a deep dive, and established target operating models for all of those businesses.
Coming out of that, we saw the need to have to drive profit improvement strategies in the short term, particularly in our Netstar and in our ASI business. And we also had to take some strong corrective action, ADS and Nexus, and really manage those businesses for value during the disposal process. Now, as we stand here today, about 12 weeks into what we call Horizon 2 or accelerated growth. And now that really is about we've launched our Altron Digital Business. I hopefully you've seen that on the first of March, really revitalizing our brand. We've launched a long-term incentive scheme for our management that really drives and aligns them with these targets and with and with shareholders. And of course, we'll continue to value to manage ADS and Nexus for value during the disposal process.
So now for us, it's about executing, executing, executing. We've spoken quite a lot about some of the investments we've made in growth, in brand, and in people, and we now wanna make sure that that pays off and we get some accelerated growth. The way we look at our transformative growth, as I mentioned earlier on, that's really around our capital allocation and how that informs the continued growth investments we make, whether it's in our platforms, you know, whether it's in targeted M&A, and whether that is really just using data and AI more effectively. I think you saw a couple of examples today of how we do that.
And if we execute on all of this, you know, we are reaffirming our guidance here that we believe our platforms business segment should deliver about 19% operating profit margin with net profit improvement strategy. We're targeting an operating profit margin of 16% in the medium term. IT services, as you can see there, I mean, significant improvements in the profit margins in that business, and we are targeting a 6%-8% operating profit margin in the medium term. And overall, reaffirming our target of tripling our 2021 continuing operations profit of ZAR 371 million to ZAR 1.1 billion by 2026. Thank you very much for this first part of the presentation and for listening it. I think it's gonna be a short video playing right now, which I think is really exciting.
It's gonna tell you a little bit more about some of the stuff that our fintech business is doing, enabling Lefa Cash Loans, one of our, one of our customers. And then, I think Carel, myself, and Bronwyn will go to the galleys and be ready for you to ask us any questions. Thank you very much for listening so far.
Actually, it was my wish since growing up to be an entrepreneur. My name is Lefa Tsholwane. I registered this business 2020. Yes, then I started operating in this office in 2021. I'm offering small loans, not bigger amounts. I'm working with pensioners here and people with disability, or SASSA people.
NuPay provides a payment solution system. By this system, we just, you know, promoting all our customers to collect safely and also quickly.
NuPay is helping me with a lot of things. It makes my work very simple. It makes my business run smooth because everything is recorded on the system: debiting, doing, creating loans, checking people, doing an ITC.
Altron FinTech is big on small businesses and equipping them with the right tools to actually grow. We live in a country whereby it's still developing and people are unemployed. So when they do wanna grow the economy and start a business, that's also them trying to create, you know, jobs out there for the surrounding areas and their community that they're actually operating around. I'm talking about individuals, or merchants out there who have started by themselves, but now they have about six, seven employees. Before, they were unemployed, and they're utilizing this system because now the owner cannot only focus on one things, because you also want to expand or grow their business. And they're opening branches because it's growing massively.
It's out of this world, and they also get excited because they know that they are actually doing good and, you know, they are self-employed and, you know, self-made as well.
My wish is that even when I'm old, my company keeps operating.