Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Brait Investor Results Presentation. All participants are in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions when prompted. If you should need assistance during the call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now hand you over to Mr. Peter Hayward-Butt. Please come ahead, sir.
Thanks, Judith. Thanks very much to all the stakeholders for dialing in today. Before we begin the presentation, I'd just like to extend our thanks firstly to the board. Brait, you've played a significant role over the last 12 months in restructuring the business and supporting us in getting there. Also to all the stakeholders, the exchangeable bond, the convertible bond holders, and the shareholders in particular, Tyson, who were instrumental in helping us restructure the business over the last year or so. We've done this with all of the stakeholders, and we are massively appreciative of all the support that you've had. Finally, and probably most importantly, to the management teams of the three underlying entities, New Look, Virgin Active, and Premier.
Again, without them and the fantastic job that they've done over the last 12 months, and to be honest, over the last five years also in pretty trying circumstances, we are massively appreciative for the support that they've provided. Today, we have and from Virgin Active, who will go through the presentation on the Virgin Active slides, and Ralph Hartmann from Premier, who will take you through the update on the Premier performance. Talking a bit about the business for the year, I mean, it's been a significant year for Brait, and to recap on what has happened over the last 12 months or so, from a capital raising and balance sheet restructuring perspective, there was a capital raise of around ZAR 1.5 billion, which completed around November 2024.
The capital was raised to restructure the balance sheet, which included a fair extension to the convertible bonds and the exchangeable bonds, a small increase to the interest coupons on both of those bonds respectively, and a reduction in the principal of both of those bonds, a ZAR 150 million reduction in the exchangeable bond principal, and ZAR 150 million of the convertible bond was repaid at the time. We managed to extend the Brait revolving credit facility to 2028 and extend the Virgin Active gate facilities as part of that process till 2027. All of that gave the business the runway it needed to effectively see through the continued improvement in Virgin Active, which Dean and Mark will touch on later in the presentation, and also the continued improvement and great results that we've seen out of Premier over the last three or four years.
In terms of Premier, we sold down as Brait's 445 million Premier shares at a very narrow discount, 1% or 2%, I think it was at the time, to the prevailing share price. We used those proceeds to do a tender offer and to buy back the exchangeable bonds. We offered to buy back bonds at par. There was very little take-up in terms of the exchangeable bonds. We had acceptances of 130, which broadly was bought at a slight discount to par because we bought some of the bonds prior to the tender offer. We effectively moved that cash to the U.K., where it could be used to repay the convertible bonds. Again, we made a bilateral offer to one of the convertible bond holders of GBP 10 million. That happened after year-end, so you do not see it in the numbers. Sabelo will touch on that.
We again bought back GBP 10 million worth of the convertible bond, again at a slight discount to par, which effectively bought buying back the bonds at about a 10.5% yield in pounds, which we thought was a good position to do. Overall, there has been a roundabout reduction of ZAR 1.4 billion that is pre the year-end. Obviously, you need to include the GBP 10 million repurchase over and above that number. About a ZAR 1.4 billion reduction in debt and a reduction in the exchangeable bond share price. The reason that is important is it reduced from GBP 4.35 pre the restructuring to GBP 2.81, which is about where the current share price is. For those who do not remember, the exchangeable bond was effectively exchanged into Brait shares.
Whilst we see it as a debt component on the balance sheet to date, with a share price where it currently is, obviously that's a reliability to convert into equity as opposed to be treated as a debt instrument. Overall, a pretty significant reduction in the overall debt of the business. From a portfolio perspective, and we'll go into a bit of detail on each of them, I think it talks to the continued investments, and we've made this point over the last couple of years. You've got to continue to invest behind your businesses. From a Premier perspective, that's been a five-year journey where we've invested into the business. Well, Premier's invested into the business, upgraded their millbag facilities, and it really has resulted in operating efficiencies in the business, which Ralph can touch on.
We have continued to see the benefit of that in the operating performance of the business. Similarly, with Virgin Active, but probably more recently over the last year and a half, maybe two years, Dean and his team have continued to invest pretty significantly into the club upgrades and new clubs. That has resulted in the ability to enhance the member proposition, ensure we have better membership engagement, and then obviously, as part of that, be able to increase the yields on those clubs to reflect the fact that we have a better product offering. Dean and Mark will talk a bit about that and the strategic shift into the wellness strategy, which really is starting to pay dividends. On New Look, New Look undertook a GBP 30 million capital raise in early March. Brait did not participate in that, but it retained all its key shareholder rights.
I'll talk a bit about New Look. It is about 3% of our NAV, so it's not a huge component, but we'll talk a bit about the transaction and what unfolded. In particular there, the GBP 30 million will be used to reset the business and strategically reposition it really around the digital part of its business for an exit. All of this has resulted in a relatively positive share price performance. I think the share price up from, I think the rights issue from recollection was at GBP 0.59 to around GBP 2.20 odd. That is the benefit of having shareholder support, for which we are massively grateful to all stakeholders who played a role as part of this transaction. Just touching on the underlying assets, and I'll just give you a very high-level view. Dean and Mark and Ralph will take you into much more detail later on.
Virgin Active's continued strong operational performance has been fantastic. 13% increase in revenue, and that's been driven by membership growth of around 2% and yield improvements of around 8% across the portfolio. All territories have contributed to this growth, which has been very pleasing. The U.K., which as we all know, it's in a tough space from a consumer perspective, has been one of our better performers, to be honest. Revenue up 10% is at a very good start to the year. South Africa up 16%, Italy up 11%, and even the Asia-Pacific business, despite the relatively tough performance from the Australian operation, managed a 16% increase in revenue on a year-on-year basis. What we're seeing now is the benefit of the strategic leverage in the business. We had the opposite of that during COVID.
Obviously, we think somewhere between 70-75% of your incremental revenue falling to the EBITDA line, you start to see the benefit of operating leverage as you continue to grow the top line. Again, Mark will run you through some of those numbers. We have seen a very material increase in EBITDA margins. Probably most pleasing for me is we have been talking for a long time about this 120 million, and there have been a lot of skeptics out there as to whether we would ever arrive there. Very importantly, I think we can mention that as of April, if you annualize the April run rate, we get to GBP 121 million. That does not mean we are there yet, but it certainly shows dramatic improvement that Dean, Mark, and the whole team at Virgin Active have made with the business.
A 45% increase year-on-year in EBITDA is also a very good result in pretty difficult circumstances. It's not like the underlying economies that we're talking about there have been on an upward trajectory. This has come through significant investments in the existing estate. We'll talk about the CapEx, the amount of CapEx we have spent and continue to spend on the business. A bit like Premier, where we spent money in advance to get the benefits. We think it's the same at Virgin Active. You need to continue to enhance your product offering and your membership engagement. One of the key leverage points to do that is capital expenditure in the business. Again, a great result, and Dean and Mark will touch on that later. Premier. Again, I can't speak more highly of the business.
Ralph will talk a bit about it later, but Kowarski and the team there have done a fantastic job. 7% revenue growth year-on-year, driven both by volume and price. Most importantly, an EBITDA growth of 15% year-on-year, showing that gross margins continue to tick up, costs are under control, and the benefit of CapEx that we have spent on this business over many years, and the operational efficiencies that we can extract from that are starting to pay dividends. Again, Millbake was a star performer, EBITDA growth in that business unit increasing 15%, with a very significant 100 basis point increase in EBITDA margin. That is a massive increase when you look at it year-on-year, and again, massive credit to the team from the efficiencies that they have managed to extract from the current operations. The groceries and international business increased by 9%, which again was a relatively pleasing performance.
Probably outside of confectionery, all of the business units performed well, and we've started to see a recovery in the Mozambique business SIM. Again, Ralph can focus more on that later. Investment has continued. We haven't stopped investing in the business. ZAR 726 million was spent this year predominantly on bakery upgrades. We think that's important to continue to extract operating efficiencies in the business. The free cash flow from the business continued very strongly, with gearing now down below 0.7 times. You'll remember it was at two times, I think, at listing. There was a focus on getting it below one times, and credit again to the team there. It's currently sitting at 0.7 times EBITDA. From a New Look perspective, obviously the difficult trading conditions have continued in that market in the U.K..
We've continued to see significant discounting and promotional activities, and this has resulted in a 4% decrease in sales and a 3% decrease year-on-year in gross profit. We have, as I mentioned, recapitalized the business. Brait did not participate, but GBP 30 million was injected by one of the stakeholders into the business, and that is really to fund the transformation or continued growth and transformation of the New Look digital growth strategy. You have got the bricks and mortar business. The business that has continued to perform fantastically over the last four years is our digital business, and we continue to invest behind that and hope to see the benefits of that in a future exit. Cost cutting has been undertaken already. We will see the benefit of that in the 2026 numbers, and this is to align with a more focused digital operating model.
Finally, as we say at the bottom, exit options are being explored. We are very aligned with our other fellow shareholder in that business to see what we can extract from this business, and the transformation of the online business will play a big role in that. Moving over to Brait's NAV and liquidity, I'll hand over to Sabelo.
Thanks, Peter, and good morning all. Starting with slide eight, Brait's audited net per share of GBP 3.06 represents an increase of 6% compared to March 2024 on a like-for-like basis after adjusting for the recapitalization. Total assets of GBP 6.6 billion at reporting date is weighted 62% Virgin Active, 32% Premier, 3% New Look, and 3% in cash and receivables.
Total liabilities of ZAR 4.7 billion comprise ZAR 2.9 billion on the convertible bonds, ZAR 1.7 billion on the BIH exchangeable bonds, which will be equity settled if the share price is at least ZAR 2.21, and accounts payable of ZAR 175 million, which largely comprises the coupon accrual on these two bond instruments. The resultant NAV was ZAR 11.8 billion, which equates to ZAR 3.06 per share. Slide nine sets out movements in balance sheet positions for the financial year. Virgin Active's rent carrying value remains ZAR 10 billion despite a 1% increase in its pound carrying values. Virgin Active is valued on a maintainable EBITDA of GBP 120 million. The forward valuation multiple of nine times remains unchanged and represents a 12% discount to the peers. Net third-party debt of GBP 387 million includes a GBP 8 million normalization adjustment for deferred costs. Premier's carrying value increased by ZAR 2.6 billion.
It is valued at its closing JSE price of ZAR 129.10 per share, which equates to an implied EV/LTM EBITDA multiple of 7.8 times. Brait's shareholding in Premier is 32.3% compared to 35.4% in FY 2024. The reduction in shareholding is a result of the sale of 4 million shares during FY 2025, raising total proceeds of ZAR 444 million. New Look's carrying value reflects a maintainable earnings number of GBP 30 million based on LTM EBITDA. The unchanged spot multiple of 6.5 times represents a 31% discount to its peers. There were no normalization adjustments that were considered in net third-party debt of GBP 51 million. Brait's equity participation in New Look remains 17.2%, which will be diluted to 8% once the recently announced capital raise is concluded.
The decrease in cash and receivables of ZAR 1.3 billion was largely due to the repayment of the BML RCF in September 2024, shareholder capital injections into Virgin Active, and the repurchase of 172,607 exchangeable bonds through market purchases and the tender offer for ZAR 126 million. Turning to page 10, the liability movements were driven by the BML RCF, which reflects a decrease of ZAR 109 million for the year, consisting of repayments amounting to ZAR 454 million, offset by drawdowns and accrued interest of ZAR 345 million. ZAR 172 million on the exchangeable and convertible bonds, including IFRS accounting charges, repurchases, partial repayments, and adjustments for the term extension pursuant to the recapitalization. Slide 11 analyzes Brait's liquidity and debt and is set out on a consolidated basis. As of 31 March 2025, the BML RCF was undrawn, resulting in available liquidity at reporting date, including cash balances amounting to ZAR 1.1 billion.
Available liquidity reduced to GBP 838 million post-balance sheet date, following the GBP 10 million repurchase of convertible bonds in April 2025. Brait is in compliance with all debt covenants at reporting date. Thank you, and back to you, Peter.
Thanks, Bert. Just on the side, I mean, as Sabelo mentioned, if you look at the March 2025 number, that ZAR 1.7 billion that you see for the convertible bonds, as Sabelo said, that has a strike price of ZAR 2.21, is highly likely therefore to convert into equity. Therefore, the only real cash component of the debt is the ZAR 2.81 billion that we see there for the convertible bonds. With that, I will hand over to Dean and to Mark to talk to Virgin Active.
Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everybody.
Just as I thought I'd start, having a look at the industry as a whole and focus on the wellness industry, I think in the past we spoke about Virgin Active as being a gym, and today we speak about it as being a wellness business and a wellness company. Just as a start, is why address and why focus on wellness as opposed to just a gym? You can see on the slides on page 13 that the fitness industry and nutrition industry are worth GBP 1 trillion, but if we look at the current global wellness industry, it's ZAR 4.5 trillion and also significant growth as we look into 2027. The total addressable market, the size of the market in wellness, is significantly larger than our pure fitness and nutrition plays.
The industry as a whole, the wellness industry, remains attractively and structurally strong, with the underlying growth drivers still intact. Those growth drivers largely being an aging population and this aging population looking for ways to live longer, what we call lifespan, but also to live better, the health span. This buzzword at the moment that everyone's speaking about is around longevity, and wellness plays into that longevity theme. We have the aging population looking at longevity. We have midlifers continuing to look into ways to be more active, to be healthier, and then the younger generation who are increasingly more health conscious, and they understand that a holistic approach to health is better than one single vertical by itself. Fitness, nutrition, longevity, wellness, they're no longer trends. They've become entrenched ways of lives, and that is fueling the growth in this wellness industry.
In terms of the industry, in terms of the trends that we used to see that are now no longer trends, but are ways of what has catalyzed and what has changed in the industry. Certainly, consumers today are much more knowledgeable and conscious and focused on their personal well-being and longevity. We see consumers prepared to spend a much larger proportion of their disposable income on wellness. They're prioritizing wellness spend over various other spends around some of the more toxic behaviors, etc., that they used to spend on in the past. We've seen, particularly in the younger generation, this prioritization of wellness spend. We also see a focus from consumers, but not only consumers, from governments, insurers, corporates, on preventative wellness rather than treatment.
There is this understanding today that we need to take control and empower ourselves when it comes to our own health and wellness, and prevention is certainly better than cure. There is also a realization that for wellness to be truly effective and achieve results, it has to be integrated. We cannot just focus on one vertical. We cannot just look at fitness alone or nutrition. We need an integrated approach to wellness that focuses across all the different verticals from fitness, nutrition, recovery, social, the loneliness aspect, sleep, all of those aspects, because what that ultimately drives is results. What results drive is further engagement. It drives motivation, and ultimately higher engagement leads to better levels of or lower levels of churn. The industry has changed quite considerably. This greater knowledge, the shift towards spending, much greater realization on what the benefits of preventative wellness are.
If we go to the next slide, 14. From an investment proposition, what makes Virgin Active attractive as an investment proposition? I've just spoken about the industry, this very significant total addressable market. I'm not going to revisit from an industry point of view why the wellness industry is so attractive, fast growing, significant size of the market. I'd rather focus specifically on what differentiates Virgin Active from our competitors. What makes Virgin Active unique from an investment proposition? If we look at the brand, the Virgin Active brand, Virgin is a globally recognized brand. It resonates, and it's known with consumers in our existing territories, but also in all new territories. It's far easier for Virgin Active as a wellness business to reach new territories than a new brand in those territories because of how recognized the brand is.
This plays equally out in terms of landlords and developers. Our ability to secure premium sites and strategic sites in new cities is facilitated by the recognition of our brand. We also, just to remind everyone, we are a truly global business. We currently operate in iconic cities from Singapore, Bangkok, Sydney, Rome, Milan, London, Cape Town, Johannesburg. We currently operate in iconic cities, and we also have some of the most flagship locations in those cities. The moat we have around our business is strong, and it's really difficult and particularly costly and expensive for a competitor to replicate that global model that we have in the various territories. Just to remind everyone, we have 224 social wellness clubs across eight countries, soon to be nine countries. In addition to the 224 clubs we have, we also operate 260 health food restaurants. A substantial global business.
Obviously, the growth of this global business has also delivered hard currency earnings for us and reduced our reliance on South Africa from an investment proposition, less reliance on South Africa. Mark will take you through how that split of revenue has changed from a South African pre-COVID focus business to a much more global hard currency business. As we mentioned, we're not just a gym. We already have a holistic wellness offering, what we call a social wellness club, as opposed to just a gym. There are a whole lot of commercial reasons why a social wellness club, why a wellness business outperforms a traditional gym. We are able to charge significantly higher yields. The value for money as a wellness club with multiple type offerings and products within our clubs is significantly enhanced in that social wellness model.
Retention engagement improves when we have a social wellness club as opposed to just the traditional gym model. Our ability to capture a greater share of our members' wallets through ancillary revenue is also improved and enhanced through the social wellness club model. We've also implemented a new centralized operating model. This model is highly scalable and allows us to grow in a very cost-efficient way in existing territories with new clubs, but also into brand new territories using our existing centralized operating model. The restructured cost base that we've done over the last year and a half to significantly restructure the cost base, the centralized operating model together with our social wellness strategy delivers very strong financial metrics. Effectively, we are a wellness subscription business with very strong recurring revenue and significant opportunities for future growth, very different to just a traditional gym business.
We have a very strong management team in place, which includes a really strong combination of industry veterans, people that understand the industry, been in the industry for a very long time, as well as a whole lot of new talent that we brought into the business from outside the industry, from digital businesses, from subscription businesses, from hospitality businesses. A really good mix between industry knowledge and new non-gym, non-wellness experience in the business. That team is extremely well aligned with shareholders. We do not see ourselves, and we're not incentivized as purely professional managers. There is a very, very strong alignment from myself and the team with shareholders. The profitability drivers, what can drive future growth in our business? We spoke around the integrated social wellness model that delivers a much higher, much larger total addressable market.
is improved yields, better retention, and greater share of wallets. Ultimately, the customer lifetime value in our social wellness clubs is very different to what we see in the gym model. Just to be clear, the social wellness club is not just about the physical facilities. It is not just about investing and upgrading our facilities. Part of the move and the journey to becoming a social wellness club includes some of the softer elements around operational excellence, service levels, hospitality, the actual product offering, the different types of classes we offer. All of that goes towards the social wellness concept.
In addition, in the social wellness concept, in the social wellness club, the use of how we use technology, digital data, and even AI today to enhance and personalize the member experience, create improved operating efficiencies, and digitally transform the acquisition process, the engagement process, and retention process is very different in our business today and will help us drive profitability. As with the last call we spoke, we spoke about the app and loyalty program that we had rolled out into South Africa. That program is now in the United Kingdom and Italy, and before the end of the year, will be in Australia. Just out of interest, that app won the best global loyalty program within the leisure and entertainment sector at the International Loyalty Awards, which is the preeminent loyalty global awards, international awards.
That was a great achievement for the app and the reward program that Virgin Active has. As I mentioned, in addition to those hospitality, those softer elements of social wellness clubs, it is important that we continue to reinvest in our existing estate. We have to have, on top of hospitality, on top of operational excellence, we have to continue to reinvest into our existing facilities. We continue to do that to create new studios, reformer Pilates, different types of groups, exercise studios, spa spaces, recovery spaces, cold plunge. There is a significant reinvestment process into our existing clubs to reposition the business. In addition to our existing facilities and our existing clubs, we are also investing into new territories in major cities.
We are focused on delivering a greater portion of our revenue and earnings from hard currency earnings outside of South Africa, and Mark will take you through those specific numbers on how the earnings split across the territory has evolved. In addition to the investment into our existing facilities, growth opportunities will also come from new clubs in new territories. Just to give you a flavor of what's on the table at the moment, within Italy, an existing territory, this year alone, we'll open three, possibly four new clubs, seven new clubs over the next two years, and there's a strong pipeline in addition to those seven clubs. We have a new club opening in Bondi in Sydney, Australia, in July, also a beautiful social wellness club. Our club in Qatar, in Doha in Qatar, opens in September.
That is a capital light model where we have a management agreement, so that's not our own. We do not fund that. That is through partners, and we take a management fee on that model. We have new sites confirmed in Vienna and in Switzerland in Lugano. As I said, new sites, new clubs in existing territories, but also growth in new territories across Europe using that centralized model that we have. In addition, we have expanded Kauai and new offering into our clubs across the U.K. and also into clubs in Italy and Australia and Thailand today. We do see a further opportunity to expand New Look and Kauai, the two food brands, outside of the clubs and into retail locations, malls, and high streets.
Our priority at the moment is first to open within our Virgin Active clubs, prove the model, grow the brand, and then enter into the high street. From an investment proposition, I have focused on the industry, what differentiates ourselves. Probably it is important to look at the strategy, what are we achieving, has the strategy delivered? Mark is going to take you through the numbers in detail. Just to remind everyone, we are really about two years into the strategy of evolving from a gym to a social wellness club. If we look at what has been achieved in that two years, it is very significant, but I do highlight it is a journey. It does not happen overnight. We have to invest in people. We have to invest in technology. We have to invest in our club upgrades.
Despite this only being a two-year journey, we are seeing significant financial results of that new strategy. If we look at our yields in the first year to date, April, the first four months of 2025 versus 2024, we've seen an 8% increase in our yields, which has delivered revenue growth of 11% versus the first four months of 2024. Just to highlight, 2024 had significant growth over 2023. It is not on the back of a soft year. The 11% revenue growth we've seen year to date, April 2025, is on the back of strong growth that we achieved in 2024.
From an engagement point of view with the social wellness clubs, what we see with the clubs that we've revamped, where we've implemented hospitality, where we've got our data strategy right, we see significantly higher levels of engagement in those clubs where we have completed the journey to a social wellness club. What engagement means is a direct correlation between engagement, and what I mean by engagement is how frequently people use our club, what do the access numbers look like, and there's a direct correlation between engagement and churn and revenue. Higher levels of access, higher levels of engagement, reduced churn drive revenue. We see a significant difference between the clubs where we have invested CapEx, where we have implemented the social wellness clubs versus the cohort of clubs we haven't yet implemented the social wellness clubs.
Overall, if we look at our EBITDA growth, and as I say, Mark will take you, we had significant growth 2023 to 2024, from ZAR 23 million to approximately ZAR 80 million of EBITDA. That was 2023 to 2024, and our run rate today sits at ZAR 121 million. Over the last 2023 to 2024, we've moved from ZAR 23 million to ZAR 80 million to a current run rate of 121 million. If I look at year to date, April EBITDA versus 2024, we now show another 45% growth in EBITDA. I think ultimately the proof points in terms of the strategy are the numbers, and we see strong growth in revenue across all territories. We see very strong growth in EBITDA across all territories and on track in terms of the run rate that we've shared with you.
I'm going to hand over now to Mark, and Mark will take you through some of the detailed numbers.
Thanks, Dean, and good morning to all participants on the call. I'm going to start off on slide 15 with an overview of the territory trading for the last 12 months ending April 2025. Starting with South Africa, which makes up 35% of our Virgin Active's global revenues. Revenue grew 16% year on year. The makeup of that was a 2% increase in membership, a 10% increase in yield, and a one percent point improvement in our retention rates. To provide some context to the South African performance, 2022, 2023, coming out of COVID, our focus was on volume growth, where we saw a strong uptake in young adult products and off-peak products when people were working from home.
There were lower yielding memberships for us, but they helped us drive the volume. In 2024 and into 2025, we shifted that focus. We're looking to rebalance our membership mix, focusing on quality sales, higher yielding membership options, which have higher retention rates for us. That means we increased the pricing on our youth products and off-peak products, and we've increased pricing where we've reinvested. We have seen a slightly lower volume growth, but we've seen a very strong 10% yield growth with today's relatively small or normal impact in terms of churn. Moving on to Italy, which makes up 27% of our global revenue. Italy had an 11% increase in year-on-year revenue. A balanced performance in Italy. Membership grew by 3%. Yield grew by 4%, and we saw a 1 percentage point deterioration in our churn rate. Now, Italy's strategy has been around premiumization of the clubs.
We've invested in the clubs, and we've increased yield, and that's had a slight adverse impact on churn, but a strong overall impact in terms of volume and yield. Moving on to the U.K., the U.K. makes up 24% of our revenue. U.K. has seen a 10% increase in year-on-year revenue and a good mix of a 5% increase in membership, an 8% increase in yield, and a 7 percentage point improvement in churn, which is significant. Now, the U.K. has seen a number of factors driving that performance. Firstly, we've been reinvesting in our U.K. estate. Secondly, we've implemented a recommitment strategy in the U.K. business where we incentivize our members who are out of contract to recommit onto 12-month contracts. And we implemented our app and loyalty program in the U.K. in June 2024.
All those together have allowed us to drive volume growth, improve our churn despite increasing in pricing. That demonstrates that where we get the investment, the product proposition right, where we get the investment right, we can drive both yield and volume in the clubs. Finally, moving on to APAC, that's Singapore, Thailand, and Australia, which make up 14% of our revenue. Revenue has grown 16% year on year. Within that, there's been sort of mixed results. We've seen strong performance in Singapore with 27% year-on-year improvement in revenue, and Thailand with 18% year-on-year increase. Australia was 9%, so lower than the other two. Australia is a very competitive market, but it's been impacted by firstly price increases that we put into the estate.
It's also been impacted by the closure of one club, which has been closed on a temporary basis due to a redevelopment of the center in which it's positioned for reopening in mid-2026. Those factors together have been a drag on the Australian membership. Overall, for our APAC, we are down 1% in terms of membership, but yield is up 7% due to those price increases. We've seen an adverse four percentage point impact on churn as a result of that club closure and the price increases. In terms of overall for the group, that leaves us 13% up on revenue year on year, excluding Kauai.
Just touching on some of the drivers of growth, both over the past 12 months and going forward, Dean's touched on a number of these points, but we continue to focus on deployment of best practice across the group in terms of product innovation and customer service excellence that drive our yield and retention strategies. We are also looking at common data and technology strategies, including AI that can support growth in terms of customer insights, engagement, support, and then importantly, in terms of our reinvestment strategy. Looking at growth opportunities both in terms of reinvesting in our existing estate, adding new clubs in existing territories, and expanding into new territories. Moving on to slide 16, I'll just expand on the membership growth from the previous slide. The slide covers the membership over the past 12 months. Just to highlight that membership in our business is seasonal.
We typically get a Q1 and a Q3 high and a Q2 and a Q4 low around the mid-year and year-end holiday period. All territories have been showing positive seasonally adjusted trends, except for the Australian business, for reasons that I alluded to on the previous slide. South Africa has ended up with 640,000 members, which is 2% growth. U.K. has ended up with 143,000 members, which is 5% growth. Italy ended up with 195,000 members, a 3% growth, and finally APAC, 60,000 members, which was a 1% reduction. Moving on to slide 17, where we focus on the key KPI trends for the business. This data is for the four months ending April 2025. We continue to see strong revenue growth with all territories EBITDA positive, and we continue to focus on quality sales in order to drive new retention and membership growth.
Focusing on our six KPIs of sales, attrition, membership, yield, revenue, EBITDA, starting with sales. Sales for the first four months of the year were 181,400 members, which was 3% down year-on-year and 4% adverse to budget. Attrition was 46%, which was 3 percentage points adverse to prior year and four percentage points adverse to budget. Those adverse performances were driven by the Australian and the South African businesses, and they relate to our focus on quality sales, where we've increased pricing. That's adversely impacted some of the sales around the lower-yielding young adult propositions. It's also triggered some terminations as a result of the price increases. Price increases happen in January and February. They will normally trigger terminations in the first quarter, and then we see them normalize and stabilize through the balance of the year.
Membership ended April at 1,038,000 members, which is 2% up year-on-year and 2% behind budget for the reasons I stated around sales and attrition above. Yields, however, our average yield has been GBP 40.9 as a monthly yield, and that is 8% up year-on-year, 1% better than budget. That 2% growth in membership, 8% growth in yield year-on-year has allowed us to grow our revenue by 11% to GBP 199.5 million. That has translated into an EBITDA number, excluding Kauai, of GBP 34.4 million, which is a 45% growth year-on-year and 4% positive to budget. Our EBITDA margin has increased from 13% in the prior year to 17%, a 400 basis points improvement. In terms of the geographic mix, from a revenue perspective, South Africa is 35%, and our international territory is 65% of our revenue.
On an EBITDA basis, South Africa makes up 54%, and our international business is 46% of EBITDA. Moving on to slide 18, which provides a group segmental performance, including the Kauai business, once again for the four months to April 2025. These are at constant currency exchange rates, which are detailed at the bottom of the page, around EUR 23, AUD 120 to SGD 1.7, and a THB 43 to GBP 1. The year-to-date revenue for the group is GBP 212.5 million, and that's in line with budget and 13% up year-on-year. We've seen all operating units growing year-on-year. A strong performance from Kauai, which I'll pull out, 37%. That includes 18 new Kauai stores in the U.K., which added about GBP 2.4 million to the performance. 20% out of 37% has been driven by the growth of the U.K. business.
From an EBITDA perspective, year-to-date EBITDA is GBP 35.8 million, which is 4% ahead of budget and 44% up year-on-year. Once again, all territories EBITDA positive. The U.K. Kauai performance will not yet be reflected in the Kauai EBITDA because those stores are still in their ramp-up phase and have not reached maturity. These are overall for the business at an EBITDA run rate of GBP 121 million, taking the April EBITDA multiplied by 12. Moving on to slide 19. This is just reflecting on the annual trends in our revenue and our EBITDA and our cash conversion. From a revenue perspective, and this is taking April month times by 12, comparing it to prior years, so our run rate. From a run rate perspective, we are now ahead of where we were in pre-COVID in terms of FY 2019.
On an EBITDA level, our run rate of ZAR 121 million is still behind our pre-COVID level. That is mainly because we have not fully recovered the yields that we had if one adjusts for inflation, but yield remains a core part of our growth strategy. I think looking at operating cash flow, the business is now starting to generate positive free cash flow, pre-interest and growth CapEx, with an annual run rate of ZAR 74 million. The business is now moving into a position where it can start to fund growth and de-gear the business on an annualized basis going forward. Moving on to slide 20, which is looking at our capital expenditure outlook. We have seen a significant increase in growth CapEx, which I will touch on.
When we look at our CapEx, our maintenance CapEx is stable at about GBP 45 million per annum, which is about 7% of revenue, which is what we target to be able to maintain our estate on an ongoing basis. In addition to this maintenance CapEx, we have planned significant reinvestment in the estate in line with our social wellness club concept, which Dean has touched upon. We are also investing in new clubs. We have 11 new clubs in our plan for openings in 2026 and 2027. All this investment is targeting a minimum IRR of 20%. Typically, we look to outperform that, and this investment will boost our medium-term earnings. Finally, moving on to slide 21. This is providing an indication of what management are focusing on in terms of our medium-term targets for the business.
When I say medium-term, I'm talking two to three years out, caveating that the natural uncertainties in forecasting out that period. Looking at the drivers or the building blocks of our growth in our EBITDA, the first is our yield growth. We're looking for mid-single-digit growth in our yields, driven by, firstly, inflationary increases. Secondly, the reinvestment in our estate, where we can premiumize and yield up. Thirdly, in our sales mix, where we focus on high-yielding membership products. In terms of volume, we're looking at low to mid-single-digit growth. That could be driven by continued focus on the quality of sales and retention, the reinvestment in our estate, as well as the product, service, and technology investment that we're making in the business to improve our customer experience. The next building block will be our new club rollout.
As I mentioned, we currently have 11 clubs in the pipeline. There are more coming into the pipeline as we continue to chase our growth targets. These clubs will not be mature in the medium-term outlook. In addition to what we've shown in these numbers, there will be further embedded EBITDA to the benefit of the business. From an ancillary growth perspective, we will look to improve them slightly in terms of ancillary revenue % of membership revenue, but that is largely a natural progression as we grow volume and yield, so we get the increasing ancillary revenue out of their growing base. Finally, we expect Kauai to continue to grow its contribution to the overall group. The final block there will be our overhead costs. We are forecasting a mid-single-digit increase in operating costs.
That could be, firstly, driven by inflation across the business, which varies by territory. There'll be normal volume-related increase in costs. The final piece will be there will be some costs around product investment. Overall, mid-single-digit growth in our overhead costs. Putting that all together, what we're targeting is to grow from our current run rate of ZAR 121 million EBITDA to a range of ZAR 180-200 million EBITDA. That concludes the virtual activity element, and I'll hand back over to Peter.
Thanks, Dean, and thanks, Mark, for a very comprehensive overview. Again, congratulations to you and the team. I think it's a fantastic result. We've been talking about it for a while, and it's great to see the results actually start to bear fruit in the numbers. Congratulations, and thanks very much to you and the team.
With that, I will hand over to Ralph to go to Premier, which has got an equally positive story to tell. Ralph.
Thanks, Pete. Morning, all. Yeah, I think on reflection and looking at the number, Premier's had a very strong year with a very good performance from its business units. We're, I think, very proud of being able to achieve a number of our objectives and goals for the year. I think this slide sets out quite clearly what we've been able to achieve again for the year, which is to convert, I guess, moderate revenue growth of about 7% for the year into a much higher level of operating profit growth at EBITDA level of 15%. And then because our depreciation amortization charges is growing at a much lower rate, you can see a higher EBIT growth of 17%.
Due to our focus on reducing our gearing, which you can see has dropped to 0.7 times leverage at year-end, we were able to show a higher growth rate at headline earnings level, which was up by 27% for the year. That is not to say that we did not face any challenges in this year. There were some, and I will go through them in a bit more detail in the business units. Certainly, the record high maize raw material prices were a complication we had to deal with. We are still dealing with quite a complicated and expensive bread supply chain at the moment as we eagerly await our new Eritan bakery to be brought online later in this financial year. Mozambique, which has been a challenging environment for a number of years, unfortunately regressed from that in this last year.
I think the good news, and I'll touch on it at the end, and perhaps an outlook view, is that I think despite all those challenges, we've achieved these good results. Most, if not all of those challenges, we expect to be resolved in the next financial year, no doubt replaced by a few others. I think we've demonstrated an ability to handle what comes our way. I think just another point to make on this is this is now our third set of results as a listed entity, having listed in March of 2023. I think if you look over a slightly longer time frame, we're very pleased that we've been able to deliver an EBITDA growth of about 16% a year over those periods and a hedge growth of 28% a year over those two years.
As to how that's been achieved, I think two things to call out. You can see on this slide our return on invested capital has increased since up at just shy of 25%. I think that's both an input and an output of our operating model. I mean, clearly, those returns have led to an improvement in the ROIC, but it's really due to the CapEx expenditure that we've invested over a number of years, which I think if you go back over a five-year horizon, including FY2025's CapEx totals, ZAR 2.8 billion of CapEx that's been invested into our business, all where we're targeting returns between 20-30% IRR. I think the continued improvement in our earnings has been driven by these investments. Next slide, please.
I think just diving into detail in our business units, we operate through two units with Millbake being by far the largest and the engine of growth. I think if one looks at the split of revenue where we're showing that revenue grew 6%, 4% of that came from volume with 2% from price. If you hold that metric in mind and then also look at the 100 basis point improvements in EBITDA margin from 12.7% to 13.7%, you can see this has been earned or made by efficiencies as opposed to discounting. We are singularly focused on margin management in our business, and it's been very pleasing to see that we've been able to grow volumes whilst focused on margins.
If you look at where that growth comes from, I think, as I mentioned earlier, the maize industry in South Africa has had a pretty torrid year with profitability being significantly reduced. That is as the maize prices reached all-time record highs, one has seen a level of demand destruction as well as margin degradation. In our other businesses, we've seen both market share gains, and I must stress this is just formal measured market share gains in both bread and wheat. I think that has contributed to the strong performance. I think maybe just to talk a little bit more about our bakery strategy. Our Eritan Mega Bakery has been a long time coming. It is a combination of a three-year project, which has had to deal with all the complications of building and getting plans approved and various other things and weather delays. It is a complicated process.
Nonetheless, we are reaching the commissioning date, and it is two lines, each producing 8,000 loaves an hour. We expect to bring the first one up in October of this year, followed by the second line early in 2026 and ahead of the closure of our financial year. This is about a ZAR 700 million investment or project, and a significant portion of that CapEx will be carried in this financial year. Just as a final reminder, this investment of ours is predicated on efficiencies. Once the two lines are up and running, that will give us a capacity of 16,000 loaves an hour and will enable us to shut down three older generation bakeries that we operate in the inland region that currently supply about 14,000 loaves an hour.
You can see a small capacity increase, but really the benefits come from an improved quality, improved consistent quality of the loaf that will be produced on latest technology, and then consolidating the site costs and all the logistic costs that go with it down into one site. I think whilst we wait for this, and I think what's encouraging for us is this project's been built, but at the same time, we've worked hard on our bread brands, particularly Blue Ribbon's bread brand. The brand power score that we've shown there, in our view, is a leading indicator in the consumer's mind of our brand health. I think once we're able to fully supply that market efficiently, I think this will be a further driver to our performance. Turning now to look at groceries and international. If you just flip the slide, please. Thank you.
On this, we do not show a more granular view of the three units that make up this section, but suffice it to say that SIM, which contributes a significant amount of that revenue, more than a third of the revenue, again, this year produced a marginal level of EBITDA. I think that is what is distorting what one might expect to see in terms of higher margin categories in our HPC and sugar confectionery, both of which are traditionally high margin categories. Just perhaps focusing a little bit on SIM, as I said in the intro slide, I think it has been a tough operating environment for a number of years now. We have remained committed to the business. We are committed to the business. The facilities are fully invested. We have expanded the facilities, brought on new capability.
I think we're very proud of our people there and how they've conducted themselves and handled quite a difficult macro environment. Specifically in this year, what we saw was following the general elections in October, unfortunately, the country, and specifically Maputo, where we operate, erupted into quite a high degree of civil unrest. Fortunately, none of our sites or people were harmed, but there was a major disruption into the market. How that's played out then is the political settlement was reached early this year. From January onwards, this business performed very strongly as we've seen people, trade, and consumers needing to restock their supply chain. That's continued through to June. There was another mini challenge in that access to foreign exchange in the country has become increasingly hard.
It actually put us in a position where we scaled back our wheat milling operations on the basis that we could not get currency to continue with imports. I am glad to say that situation has resolved itself in the last month. For a couple of months, we were not producing wheat products for sale to other bakeries. We just focused on our own wheat requirements. I think we threw all that. That has all meant that the currency shortage has meant that there tend to be fewer imports flowing into the country, which again has probably benefited our business. I think looking at a longer term, we remain optimistic for the longer-term prospects of the country. I think that will be determined by the on and off-again LNG gas discovery in the country. We will wait to see how that plays out.
In the other two units, just to move quickly, I think HPC, particularly in South Africa, our Lets brand, our Dove brand of cotton wool, had a very strong year, increased their market shares, and performed very strongly. On sugar confectionery, a lot of focus on our business is we have been awarded a number of SKUs to produce for Woolworths on a private label basis. This is significant for the sugar confectionery business, and a lot of focus has gone in the last 12 months of meeting their standards for new product development and launching these products. A good example of how that fits with our business is the new licorice line, which we put in and commissioned in December of this year.
It was about a ZAR 70 million investment, so not all that material in the context of the whole business, but certainly in sugar confectionery, it was a big business, a big investment. The thinking behind that is to supply the Woolworths licorice range as well as product in our own brands. The justification and how we've justified that CapEx is, A, from the new Woolworths volumes, but also using the new machine significantly reduces scrap and seconds material. There is a significant efficiency gain. I think it's a good example as to how we've kind of fit private label in with our own brands and how we search to find investments that we can make that continue to drive the profitability in our business. I think one moves over the page just to the income statement.
I think the key here is it just does highlight that operating leverage or earnings algorithm that I spoke about, where you can see 7% growth at a revenue line translating into a 31% growth at a net income line. I think the callout that I have not specifically mentioned at the net income line is we have benefited from the focus on reducing the gearing as well as falling interest rates. Also, for the first time this year, we have brought in some associate income following two investments that we made during the course of the financial year. Again, relatively small in the context of Premier, but we are quite excited about the two investments which have led to our entry into the rice category. Rice for us is an important business because it is a consumer staple and fits well with the rest of our product set. Thank you.
Just looking at the cash flow slide. Again, I think the callouts here to make are you can see that despite the upheavals in our raw material markets and the fluctuations in the commodity prices, notably maize, you can see our working capital movement has been pretty benign in this year and actually a small release. This highlights again the CapEx that we've invested as well as the acquisitions that we have made, which come in underneath free cash flow. As called out on the slide there, we've invested about ZAR 317 million in the two investments as well as made debt reductions. I think that's driven a strong free cash flow conversion and enabled us to get our leverage ratio to where we wanted at 0.7 times. Before I hand over, I think I'd just like to just talk about two other points.
One is what's very important to us at Premier is our ESG program, which we call earning the right to operate in our communities, and there has been continued focus on that. Our products as staple foods are supplied into many of the poorest communities in South Africa and the other countries that we operate in. To give you some metrics this year, we have donated around ZAR 67 million of products, provided 33 million meals, and 1 million pads have been donated to women in need. We have also focused, one of our other core ESG strategies is to focus on education. Here we have upgraded just over 300 creches or early learning centers. I think we have been able to do all that whilst also achieving the results we have, and I think that bodes well for looking forward.
In terms of outlook, I would say at a higher level, we're not really expecting significant macroeconomic support or tailwinds for our consumers. What we found is that we didn't see a significant uplift in our business from the cash release from the two-pot system. Similarly, interest rate relief doesn't necessarily filter through directly to our consumers. I think what we are optimistic about is with the falling soft commodity prices, particularly rice and maize, that should lead to significant release of expenditure for staple foods consumers. We estimate that to be as much as ZAR 16 billion of extra cash that consumers might have if they buy the same quantity of rice and maize that they bought last year, but at much lower on-shelf prices.
We're hopeful that that translates into more people buying our brands, which tend to be the premium brands in the staple categories, and even trading up to bread, which is a higher margin product for us. Looking forward, I think from our earnings, we would like to achieve the same that we saw in 2025 in terms of our earnings algorithm, converting revenue to a much higher level of operating profit and higher level of earnings per share. As I said, we expect a number of the challenges we face this year to be resolved. We remain active in terms of looking for both organic investment opportunities within our business.
We have quite a comprehensive pipeline of potential CapEx that we could spend, and we're continually assessing that and making sure that we're on the right side of the demand and supply curve, as well as corporate acquisitions where we're actively looking for other acquisitions where we think we could be a good owner of the business and bolt it onto our operating platform in South Africa and benefit from synergies and cost savings that come with that. I'll leave it there, Pete. Back to you.
Yeah, look, thanks, Ralph. And again, congratulations on a fantastic set of results. You, Kobus, and the whole team there. We are very appreciative. Thanks very much. That just leaves me to run through New Look, which is probably not the same positive story necessarily, although I think the management team has done a very good job in trying circumstances.
As I mentioned at the beginning, if you look year on year in terms of the performance, revenue was down just over 4%. With gross profit, we're down about 3% or 2.8% year on year. Relatively pleasing, if there's something to look at, is the fact that they managed to retain gross profit margins slightly higher year on year. There wasn't mass discounting, although they do some of that in the third quarter. As the year progressed, they managed to hold those gross margins. EBITDA year on year was down at 12.4%. That excludes the impact of the cost cutting that's already happened, which we will see the benefit of in 2026.
When we talk about a maintainable number there, that effectively adds back some of the cost cutting that has happened this year to get back to a maintainable number, which is more likely a budget number for the business of around GBP 30 million for this financial year. In terms of the transformation to digital, we have seen a lot of that. That has been happening over the last three years. I think the traction on that and the strengthening of the online business has happened and really is starting to pay dividends. That business actually did perform well year on year, which was actually the retail or the bricks and mortar business that actually went backwards. The capital raising that we talked about of GBP 30 million, which I said I did not participate in, but did not lose any of its shareholder rights, is there to help grow the digital platform.
In terms of the market share, it has retained its position as the number one business across most of dresses, jeans, and footwear and women's wear. Pleasingly, although it is early in the new year, this year has actually started well and is slightly above budget. Part of that is about the efficiencies that management has driven over the past 12 months or so. Just touching briefly on the numbers. Again, as I mentioned, revenue down 4%. Most of that was attributable to the retail segment, which fell 7% year on year. You can see out of that, if you take out the New Look Ireland businesses, which were closed and put into liquidation, I think just around February, the New Look business actually delivered growth year on year of 3.5%.
Above the market, which was pleasing, and which is why the digital strategy is what the company is investing behind. In terms of the gross profit, as we said, it's a massively competitive and very promotional time for the U.K. fashion space. We don't see that changing necessarily over the course of this year, although the year has started better than we had expected. I think this has overall been driven by low fall and reduced customer traffic. A lot of that is unpreventable, I suppose. There are exogenous factors in the U.K. market. We would hope that those don't repeat themselves. Clearly, weather plays a key role in this. I would say weather wasn't great on our side last year. The start of this year has been better, and we look forward to a good summer, hopefully in the U.K..
If you talk about the digital transformation strategy, which I think is important when we start to talk about an exit for the business, the U.K. has an online women's wear. Just for women's wear is about GBP 4.3 billion. I mean, just to contextualize, that's a massive number to go after if you look at what we currently command of that GBP 4.3 billion. We have a number one, we're number one in most of the categories in women's wear, and we have 10 million engaged customers. If you think about the number of football stadiums you need to fill to get to 10 million people, it's very, very significant. And seven million of those are currently people who already engage with us on our social media community. We would hope to be able to transfer the other three to becoming active online participants in our business.
If we can do that, we really do believe that the digital growth is very significant for our business, and the profitability in that is significantly higher than the bricks and mortar business. If you look at the GBP 30 million that is being invested, what will it go towards? The first part of that is data-driven innovation. Everyone talks about AI, and the retail space plays a huge role. We are a long way down the line in that already. The technology investments, which is number two, which is optimizing the app and the online journey, that goes hand in hand with AI. We need to be able to tell those members what is likely to be appealing to them and at what cost points or price points. That really drives also loyalty and engagement.
We continue to look at how we can engage better with our members and our customers and enhance loyalty as part of the ZAR 30 million capital investment. Finally, the fourth part of that is what I mentioned about migrating customers, those that are specifically retail only, our bricks and mortar customers, being able to migrate them seamlessly across to the online platform really will be a key determinant of how well the business does. Now, in terms of the outlook for the business, we have agreed with our partners to start to run a sales process for the business. Clearly, it is dependent on the U.K. consumer market, but we are aligned on running a process there. As we know, this business is 3% of the NAV, so it does not move the needle materially.
If we can get that right, it will significantly help us reduce our debt in the business. Just touching briefly on valuations, and in the interest of time, I won't dwell on the Virgin Active peer group, but you can see there the various peers that we use to compare ourselves against, the various margins, the growth rates. I think the thing that stands out to me the most is the fact that, as Dean said, our growth rates in EBITDA are significantly above the peer group. Maybe that is a reflection of the fact that we take a long time to recover from COVID, but on an outlook basis, I would suggest that there's significantly more growth in our business than there is in some of the peer group businesses. From a valuation perspective for Virgin Active, to be consistent, we kept maintainable EBITDA at 120.
The main difference between the 123.9 and the 120, just to make everyone aware, is really the exchange rate. As Mark alluded to, I think we ran the budget at ZAR 23 to the pound. Everyone knows that it is no longer ZAR 23 to the pound. The major difference between the ZAR 123 and getting down to the ZAR 120 is a reflection of the exchange rate. We have used 120 as our best estimate of maintainable EBITDA. I continue to stress that is not necessarily a 31st of December number. It may be close to that number, but this is a number that we have talked about for a long time. 120 million is a maintainable number. We have kept the multiple the same over the last five years in this business. It is currently a circa 10% discount or 12%, I think, to the peer group.
That gives you an enterprise value of 108. You will see that net debt in the business actually reduced by GBP 50 million. Largely, that was driven by capital injection over the course of the year. The debt adjustments have continued to fall. Really, those are COVID deferrals of royalties, which we are getting to the end of and will be finished by the end of this year. It will just be a clean third-party net debt number. If you look at the shareholder funding, the slight increase that you see year on year from 24 to 25 in the convertible preference shares, again, was the capital that went into the business. Most of that still sits in cash in the business and has been used as part of the capital investment in the group to drive growth.
Overall, the valuation in GBP and actually in ZAR is relatively flat year on year, despite obviously some increases in the capital injection into the business. Similar to last time, what we have showed on the right-hand side is what's the current market valuation of Brait based on a Brait share price of ZAR 22.20. The business is currently, therefore, valued, if you value Premier at its current market price as of the 31st of March, and you look at our NAV, the market's currently valuing Virgin Active at GBP 300 million at a 7.3 times multiple. Obviously, to the extent that you can get, for example, a 10 times multiple on the 120, that would be a very significant nearly doubling of the value in the business to ZAR 513 million. That ZAR 513 million would equate to an implied Brait NAV, call it share price of ZAR 3.56.
What we show in the sensitivity table below is, depending on where the Virgin Active EBITDA gets to, 120, 140, 160, pick a number, whatever you want to put in your models, and you apply whatever multiple along the top that you want, that effectively gives you an implied Brait share price. You can see that to the extent Dean and Mark and his team get it right, there is significant value upside to the Brait share price from continuing to see the improvement in EBITDA in this business. Just turning over the page to the second last page on New Look. Again, on New Look, you will see the maintainable EBITDA we have reduced to ZAR 50 million.
That is effectively the GBP 12 million that you would have seen for March 2025, and then adjusted for the cost cutting and the costs that have already been taken out of the business. It is a normalized number. We have kept the multiple the same. You will see an increase as of March of third-party debt. That was an increase in working capital facilities. We pushed out some of the creditors. A lot of that has now been repaid post year-end. It was a peak of the working capital cycle there. You can see under the new PIK facility, the senior PIK facility, that ZAR 32 million you see there, that was the new capital that went in. At the current valuation we have, you can see that for the original PIK facility, we are effectively valuing that at 50% of par.
The senior shareholder funding of $40 million, we've evaluated zero. I think we talked earlier about the dilution. There won't be any dilution to the 18% that we own of the existing debt instruments. The only dilution we would see is to the extent that the business is worth that covers all of the debt, which is called at two-thirds above where the valuation is today. At that point, we will then have an 8% shareholder in the business as opposed to a 15% equity shareholding. I'll just repeat, we don't suffer any dilution in our shareholder loans and shareholder funding. What we will suffer is to the extent that the valuation somewhat doubles from where we are today, then we will have a slightly smaller share of the residual equity. That will be 8% and not 17%.
Clearly, if we can get to those levels in an exit process, I think we will all be happy that the valuation of the business is more than doubled. In the last page, I'll just talk to you very quickly is the strategic outlook for the business. I don't think this has changed. What we talk about in the top end of the page is the value realizations to date. Call it nearly ZAR 9.6 billion or ZAR 10 billion has been returned in terms of sale of the underlying assets that we've had over the last five years. The average exit times money back is nearly 1.5 times with an average exit IRR of 23.5%. So far on the exited assets, not a bad result. Obviously, what we need to look out for here is New Look, the strategic repositioning of the business around the digital platform.
This process in the medium term is something we're looking to drive over the course of the next 12 months. From a Virgin Active perspective, we continue to believe in Dean and the team. Continued investment in the product and the membership experience should catalyze further growth. We see growth opportunities there in many forms, not just yield increases, but obviously new clubs as well. We look forward to seeing the benefit of that and the invested capital over the medium term. Similarly with Premier. Premier has continued its performance. It's been fantastic. We've invested heavily behind that business over the last five years. We continue to see the benefits of operating efficiency, and we remain very strong and very happy longer-term shareholders in that business. Thanks very much for that. I know we've sort of run on slightly.
I think there are a couple of questions which I'll try and get to now. Should we go to the line first and see if there's any other questions online? Judith?
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting the question and answer session. If you would like to pose a verbal question, please dial in on the audio line and press star and then one on your telephone keypad. For the benefit of the participants who have connected via the webcast, you're welcome to pose your written questions in the question box provided on your screen. At this stage, we don't have any questions from the telephone lines. I will hand over for questions from the webcast. Thank you.
Okay, thanks very much.
Let me deal with some of the ones, the New Look ones first, or the New Look one first, and then I'll hand over to obviously Dean and Ralph to handle the specific ones around Virgin Active and Premier. First question from Charles Bowles, New Look. How does the valuation of the capital raise compare to the Brait's carrying value? Why did Brait choose not to participate?
Charles, obviously, we are in a different phase as Brait. We've said to investors that we're in a wind-down phase. We're not in an investment phase, particularly around our peripheral assets. And New Look is a 3% NAV contributor to us.
In terms of the valuation, it was done, I mean, as you can see, it needs to cover all of our debt, all of the debt in the business, which is nearly two-thirds, call it 75% above the current valuation you see for us to suffer any dilution. When we looked at it, we said, what is the chance of it being worth 75% more than we currently have it? And then only at that level will we be diluted further. We took a view, we can be right or wrong, that we were not going to participate at that level. We retained all of our shareholder rights. I think we will all be very happy if the valuation is, call it 100% above what we currently have it in the books, and we dilute slightly from an equity perspective.
I think we would still be very happy with the outcome there. There are a whole lot of questions on Virgin Active here. So I'm going to read these out, and then I'll hand it over to each of them to Dean and Mark. From David Abriol, thank you for the detailed Virgin Active presentation. If the 120 EBITDA run rate continues from here, the CapEx guidance is consuming roughly half of EBITDA, and then you still need to service rent and interest. Rent is already out of that number, to be fair. Could you just talk about those numbers and what they look like over the next two to three years? Mark, over to you.
Yeah, Peter, happy to answer that. As you mentioned, that EBITDA is pre-IFRS 16, so it includes rent.
If you just take the 120, you reduce that for 45 million of maintenance CapEx, reduce that for ZAR 45 million of interest. You're looking at about ZAR 30 million of cash left over for reinvestment. Bear in mind, as we sit today, the group's got a cash balance of about GBP 77 million. The plan that's presented here is funded with the existing resources of the group. As a business, we've got the ability to manage that reinvestment according to our cash and accelerate it if we raise further funding or decelerate it as we feel free. If we sort of roll that forward to our medium-term forecast, let's take the lower end of the range of ZAR 180 million EBITDA. By that stage, we're paying tax of about 16, so you get 164 post-tax. Interest will reduce to 37, CapEx all at 45.
At that point in time, we've got ZAR 82 million free cash for reinvestment projects, which is more than we need. That gives you, so hopefully that gives you a range of what we're working with. From our perspective, as we go past this ZAR 120 million EBITDA run rate, the business now starts to generate the cash that they can service debt, invest in maintenance CapEx, and start to reinvest in the estate and pursue new investment projects.
Thanks, Mark. Next question also around Virgin Active from Paul Whitburn. Presentation slide 21 on Virgin Active, the yield growth is the largest driver over the next two to three years. What specifically would this entail, and what regions have the highest possibility for yield growth? What is the implied like-for-like volume growth you assume, and how is this different to the run rate achieved over the last two years?
Mark?
Okay, so the like-for-like volume growth at the sort of, call it, the lower end of the range of the 180 would be around 3%, which would be lower than what we've achieved. It's slightly higher than what we've achieved year-on-year over the last 12 months. Bear in mind that's when we've been putting the pricing up. It's lower than what we've been achieving over the last three or four years, but there's an element of COVID recovery in the prior year numbers. That's what probably, if you normalize the sort of 2023, 2024, 2025 period with inflation rate increases, that's about what we would have achieved. What's driving that increase is not just this underlying inflation, which will vary by territory, but in addition to that, there's the reinvestment that we're making in the estate, which is a big driver of the yield upside.
There's also the mix. There's been a trend of selling a higher membership mix. When you look at the results that we've achieved in our yields, I think it was slide 15, that shows that we're selling less off-peaks, less used products, more Premier products, all club access, etc. Those are the main drivers that are sitting in the main drivers of the yield growth. The one other item to touch on in that is in answer to the question of which territories are going to drive that. Probably the biggest territory driving that is going to be the U.K. because that's where we've seen a sniffing of reinvestment opportunity in the estate. It also has a number, a big portion of its base that are sitting below current retail or headline pricing.
We have got a strategy to move that pricing up to the headline price over a three-year period. That will allow the U.K. to lead in terms of yield growth. Following that, it will be Italy and less so the APAC territories in terms of the yield above inflation. SA will still play a significant role because SA has got higher underlying inflation rates. I think the simple answer is U.K. led by Italy will drive the yield upside.
Peter, if I can just add there, just to understand that it is not necessarily price increases to the headline price. Our yield growth, as Mark highlighted, also comes from product mix within the existing portfolio of members.
Yeah, exactly. Okay, next question. I will deal with the first one. It is also from Paul Whitburn.
The Virgin Active peer group planned its fitness as a different business model, capitalized with higher multiples, pulling out the averages. Should it be included? Look, we've put them all there, to be honest, Paul. In reality, it is a franchise model, so it is slightly different. Clearly, there's other businesses in there, like The Gym Group, for example, which is a low-cost operator, 100% churn year on year, low margin. It's also not a particularly comparable business. It's a law of averages. We've kept the nine times the same for five years. We haven't moved it depending on where Planet Fitness is or isn't. The reality, though, is Planet Fitness, if you look at their growth year on year for the next three years of 12%, it's nearly 10% of the growth that we're looking at in Virgin Active.
One thing I would say is from a growth perspective, it's actually likely to, we should potentially trade at a premium, I would say. I'm joking, obviously. That's with respect to the model. The next question, which I'll hand over to Dean, is what is the ability and management's view of having more clubs like Qatar where you get paid a management fee and not spend expensive CapEx? Clearly, the market pays up for the capital-light model. Dean, do you want to talk about that?
Yes. I mean, certainly regions, we have identified the whole of the GCC, including Saudi, as potential growth regions. Those regions lend themselves to the capital-light management contract model.
Certainly, non-priority regions where we do not have a central structure or it is more difficult to service those regions with the existing structure, we would look to do via the capital-light management fee model. If a major European city is where we can service them out of our other army land or our London or U.K. office, it would be done initially as we have done the rest of the portfolio, which is company-owned. You will see territories that are non-core to us in terms of owning those territories being rolled out with partners with a capital-light model. I think you will see a combination going forward depending on the territory, depending where we have a presence in terms of how we roll out new clubs.
Perfect. A question from Andrew Bishop, also in Virgin Active.
Could you explain the reduced sustainable EBITDA from 123 to 120 for the valuation? I mean, I'll touch briefly on that. As I mentioned on the call, Andrew, predominantly that is due to using a slightly different exchange rate to convert whatever it is, 60% of your profits into pounds, right? So that's, I would say, 85% of that difference, but Mark can touch on that as well. The next part of the question is, could you discuss why attrition improved in financial year 2024 but appeared to deteriorate in 2025 for Virgin Active?
I mean, there are a couple of, in terms of 2025, I think we're looking at the first four months year to date, April 2025 versus 2024. There were a couple of contributing factors.
As Mark said, in Australia, we have temporarily closed the club there, and the closure of a club, even on a temporary basis, does accelerate or result in aggravated churn. That was as a result of a redevelopment that we are doing in Australia. The U.K., we have had a significant, what we call a recommitment strategy, which is approaching our members that are out of contract to get them to recommit. That does not result in aggravated churn, but certainly in this period can result in accelerated churn. Bringing some of that churn forward, we do see that normalizing through the rest of the year. A big factor would be the significant price increases that we have put through in the first quarter of 2025, which has had an impact on churn, but has had a bigger net impact on our yields and our mix.
We're able to replace some of the low-yielding members who didn't want to absorb the price increase with new members. We've overall achieved net growth that are prepared to pay for the new proposition. Thanks, Dean. I think one of the last ones on. Yeah. What % of Virgin Active gyms have been fully converted into wellness clubs in your key regions? What is your timeline to move the rest of the portfolio to a similar standard? The second question is, do you expect to close any or many clubs in the next two to three years? As I said, the social wellness club is one part of it. It is the CapEx and the upgrade of the clubs. There are other factors that don't require necessary significant amounts of CapEx.
Our service levels, hospitality, the product offering in terms of new types of products from LiftCum to Reformer Pilates, etc. Different territories are at different stages. Even if we have not done the reinvestment into converting the facilities, the physical estate into social wellness clubs, we would have started with how we use data, the loyalty program, hospitality, and service levels. If you purely focus, also just to remember, this is a journey we started two years ago. We were relatively new into the journey of these softer issues around hospitality and service and data and AR and certainly club reinvestment. If we purely focus on club reinvestment, this is where the significant opportunity is, is that we are probably less than 50% of the estate that we have converted over the last two years into social wellness clubs.
That is where the big opportunity lies as we convert, particularly the U.K. estate and some of the South African clubs, our ability to change the yields with the existing membership base, push those clubs up to different club categories that combine a different price point and earn additional ancillary revenue is increased as we do that conversion. From a pure physical point of view, it is less than 50% of our estate. If you overlay the hospitality, the product offering, etc., a lot of those elements are further advanced than the physical conversion of the estate. In terms of closing gyms? It is insignificant. We would only, there is potentially in South Africa, I am talking less than a handful of clubs. There are no other territories at the moment that we are considering closing clubs.
There would only, I'm talking between two and five clubs potentially in South Africa over the next couple of years that we may look to close depending on renegotiations of rentals. The underperforming clubs or clubs that do not contribute in the South African state is less than 1%. Yeah. Just last question on VA. I'm just conscious of time. Again from Charles. Dean makes a strong case of greater interest by consumers in wellness. However, most gym groups have struggled to recover memberships back to pre-COVID levels, and most have relied on yield uplift to recover revenue. Do Virgin Active have a view on why membership levels in many countries have lagged and a view going forward? Look, they are different. In that membership base pre-COVID, we are a whole lot of sleepers, people that were not using the club.
COVID did take out those people that were paying for a gym membership that no longer were using the gym membership, and COVID forced them out or did not force them, but they effectively canceled their gym membership. In the base today, as I highlighted, we have a much more engaged base. We have a base from an access point of view that use our clubs far more. I do think in pure engagement, access numbers, etc., we are in a better position than we were pre-COVID, but we have not been able to recover those sleepers, those members who did not use the clubs.
I think over time, though, as we convert our clubs to social wellness clubs, as we move from just a gym, which is rarely seen to a large big group of people as a chore, quite a difficult thing to do, and we create a more social environment, a coworking environment, an environment where people can actually enjoy themselves, I think you'll see a different group of people coming back into the gym space that over time will accelerate the membership growth from pre-COVID times.
Thanks, Dean. Last question, actually that's for Premier for you, Ralph, if you're still there. The debt levels in Premier seem to be very manageable and free cash flow conversion is healthy. Are you thinking about returning capital to shareholders? Is there scope to repurchase shares or increase dividends significantly?
Peter has had a question from you. May as well.
Thank you. Look, we are mindful. I think we've always said we wanted to keep our leverage below one. We have started a dividend policy, an ordinary dividend policy last year, and we are paying due to pay out another dividend this year as a return to shareholders. I think, as I mentioned on the call, we do have quite an exciting pipeline of potential investments still to make. In terms of the way we think of our capital allocation model here, that would take precedence, in our mind at least, in terms of driving share and creating future shareholder value over returning cash to shareholders at this point. However, I think we certainly are keeping an eye on opportunity for buybacks should the market dislocate.
Of course, there are a couple of things to think about in that context, which we do think about, not least of which is sucking up liquidity in our share. We're quite conscious of that. I wouldn't expect, I wouldn't want to create the expectation of a changed cash outflow to shareholders at this point whilst we've still got a number of internal investments to make and who knows, potentially some acquisition activity to close out in the medium term.
Thanks, Rolf. Thanks very much to Dean and Mark and to Rolf for being here today and answering all those questions. Those are the only questions that we've seen come through on the, I think I'm just conscious of time. We did schedule it to close at 11:30.
With that, I just want to thank all the stakeholders for participating today and for your continued support over the phone post. It's still a journey to go here. As we can see on some of those pages, if we get it half right, I think there's definitely something to focus on the upside here. We look forward to working that journey with you. Thanks very much.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's event. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your line.