Welcome to Cashbuild Limited's interim results presentation for the six months ended 28 December 2025. We are joined today by Werner de Jager, Chief Executive Officer, Hanré Bester, Chief Financial Officer, and Shane Thoresson, Chief Operating Officer, who will be taking you through the presentation. A special welcome is extended to our board and Exco members who are joining us on this digital platform. Should you have any questions during the session, please make use of the question tab top left on your screen. I will direct your questions to Werner, Hanré, and Shane at the conclusion of the presentation. I would also like to draw your attention to the disclaimer at the end of the presentation. Please note that this version contains industry sensitive information and therefore differs from the presentation available on our website. It is now my pleasure to hand over to Werner.
Thank you, Marliesse, and welcome to everybody. Thank you for joining us for this online presentation. I appreciate your interest in Cashbuild. As per usual, I'll start off with a few high-level slides. I'll hand over to Hanré, who will cover some of the financial information. Over to Shane, who will cover the products information. I'll end up with some store development and some closing comments. Overall, a solid set of results for Cashbuild for this half year that management is pleased about. On that basis, if we go into the nature of our business, nothing's changed. Still a mass retailer of building materials and related products. In the home improvement space, we offer a quality range of products. I must reiterate the quality products at competitive prices. We're very proud of our quality offering.
We're still selling predominantly for cash. Although, as I mentioned previously, the definition of cash has changed over years, but we unashamedly sell for cash. 322 stores at half year end, and I'll deal with a bit more detail on that at the end. If we then look at the highlights of the results for the six months, just a few graphs on my side. First up is sales, ZAR 6.3 billion, up 3%. Decent trend following from HY 2023. For a two-year period, a 4% compound growth and on the five-year basis, 1% down for that five-year comparative basis. Operating profit, ZAR 191 million, 10% up.
I must just point out here, we've excluded the ZAR 35 million loss that was made on the Malawi subsidiary in this graph just for comparable purposes. Therefore, on a two-year basis, 1% up. For a five-year, on the back of that post-COVID half year, 20% down. Over to headline earnings per share, ZAR 6.75, 18% up. Again, a decent trend for the last three years. 11% up on a two-year comparable basis. Again, on that post-COVID exceptional year, 15% down if you look at the five-year compound growth basis. Last but not least, the net asset value per share at ZAR 79.25. Flat on the prior year.
This is mostly due to a future liability that we had to create on the put and call option that was part of the Allbuildco transaction. Hanré will probably deal with that a bit later as well. At this stage, that's it from my side, and I will now hand over to Hanré.
Thank you, Werner, and good morning, everyone. Starting off with the income statement, and as Werner mentioned, a ZAR 6.3 billion turnover number that increased year-on-year by 3%. This yielded a increase at gross profit level of 7% at a gross profit percentage of 25%. Operating expenses at just under ZAR 1.4 billion increased by 6%, yielding a 10% increase at operating profit level. The operating profit, as Werner mentioned, excluded the loss on disposal of a subsidiary that we've disclosed separately for purposes of this presentation. Cashbuild has decided to exit Malawi due to exchange control limitations as well as other onerous trading conditions that is in Malawi. To highlight as part of our operating income is ZAR 10 million of other income that relates to refundable customer accounts.
Cashbuild started to recognize income on this category towards the end of last year. This relates to accounts that customers hold with Cashbuild that is not expected to be utilized with future purchases. At every reporting period, we will reevaluate the trends, and we will update our numbers accordingly. Our net financing costs increased slightly to ZAR 16 million, affected by the reducing profile of our IFRS 16 leases, as well as reduction in interest income in the lower interest environment. Our profit for the period and earnings per share negatively affected by the loss on disposal of our Malawi subsidiary. At headline earnings level, as Werner mentioned, we've been able to grow by 18% to ZAR 6.75. Dividend per share is up 21% at ZAR 3.93.
Looking at our gross profit and operating profit margins, we are pleased to show an increase in our gross margin from 24.3% to 25% in the current period. The 24.3% base was affected by one less settlement discount run in that period and also included some of our P&L closure stores, that at low margins and that we closed during the previous financial year towards the end of that financial year. The current year was impacted by P&L conversions that was converted into Cashbuild, and we've seen a pleasing increase in both rand margin as well as percentage margin, in these 14 converted stores. We further embarked on a number of margin improvement initiatives that's worked well, and we've also seen a slight change in the mix towards higher margin product.
Amper Alles, that was consolidated for one month in this period, also had a marginal effect on the gross margin. Our operating profit margin at 3% at similar levels to the prior two years, and it's getting the appropriate attention from us as executives. Our focus is to improve as well as our operating profit margin on the back of strong revenue growth, and strong but also responsible revenue growth. Our operating expenses at just under ZAR 1.4 billion increased by 6%, and on an existing store basis by 4%. We are comfortable with the increase in our operating expenses for the reasons that I will mention just now and is within our defined parameters. Our people cost, being our largest cost item, increased by 5% and 3% on the existing store basis.
We provide increases to our staff that's above inflationary and the increase provided to staff was 4.5% for the past year. Executives received a 3.7% increase. To note, if you exclude the Amper Alles and Malawi transactions, we had a slight reduction in our headcount that has been affected by new stores as well as our P&L closures. Property costs only increased by 1% and -2% on an existing store basis. There's an anomaly in the prior year in that there were 14 refits that was carried out compared to the current year, 8 refits. We've also been able to contain our cost regarding repairs and maintenance and rates and taxes. The impact of our P&L closure stores are also in the property line.
Advertising increased by 4% and on existing store bases by 1%. We've been able to reduce our cost significantly by using more digital platforms. We've also had more focused and localized approach to our marketing in our new stores as well as our strategic stores. IT costs increased by the expected 19%. This is due to the migration from our current SAP ECC 6.0 platform onto a new SAP S/4HANA platform. This result was necessitated by the discontinuation of the old SAP ECC 6.0 instance. We look forward to complete this migration in 2027. Our delivery cost increased by 3% at similar levels to our sales increases.
What contributed further to our 6% increase in operating expenses was our transaction costs and once-off costs to do with Amper Alles and Malawi transactions, as well as foreign exchange losses incurred in Botswana due to the liquidity crisis experienced in that country. Looking at our customer transactions, that increased by 4%, slightly higher than our sales increase, and this is on the back of various marketing activities to attract new customers as well as our aggressive pricing strategy. Our average basket size has remained at similar levels to the prior year at ZAR 742. Turning to our segmental disclosures, we are pleased to show an increase in all segments of our gross profit value increase, but also our GP percentage increases. Cashbuild South Africa showed a respectable result with operating profit at similar levels to the prior year.
The All Other South Africa segment now includes Amper Alles, although that's only a result for one month, yielding a ZAR 1 million profit for this transaction. P&L, that contributed the majority to this segment, had a pleasing turnaround at gross profit and gross profit percentage level, although one can see the reduction in revenue due to the closure of the 11 stores. The operating profit for P&L at ZAR 1 million also includes some closure costs as well as impairment costs, which would have created normalized operating profit of ZAR 6 million. A very pleasing result indeed. Cashbuild in the other African countries, specifically Namibia, Lesotho, and Eswatini, showed a respectable result, but unfortunately went backwards on the operating profit level, albeit very slightly.
Cashbuild in Botswana showed a slight reduction in revenue and operating profit, while Malawi showed a large turnaround, mostly due to a prior year foreign exchange loss that was included in the prior year base. We've also seen a significant increase in revenue and cost, mostly driven by inflationary pressures. What further drove up revenue is the shortfall in the availability of product in Malawi. We still decided to exit Malawi for the various reasons that we mentioned earlier. Capital expenditure at ZAR 139 million, up 28%, showing Cashbuild's intention to grow our store base.
If we turn now to headline earnings per share and dividend per share, our headline earnings per share increased by 18% at ZAR 6.75, while dividend per share increased by 21% at ZAR 3.93. We are pleased to show the last 3 years of continuous improvement, and we're just short of our 2023 results. We've been able to maintain our dividend cover at 1.5 times and have paid to date ZAR 378 million to our Cashbuild Empowerment Trust. Looking at our statement of financial position, we've got a strong balance sheet with cash and short-term funds at just under ZAR 2.1 billion. Included in this number is refundable customer accounts of just under ZAR 1.3 billion.
Inventories, to highlight, increased by 8%, mostly due to the Amper Alles transaction that contributed just under 4%. We've also an increase in new stores and slight inflationary increases. We're also pleased with the use of our new inventory modeling tool that is starting to yield good results. Our shareholders' equity at ZAR 1.9 billion, at similar levels to the prior year, as well as our net asset value per share at ZAR 79.25, also at similar levels. Our cash flow shows cash generated from operations at ZAR 413 million. This is excluding working capital adjustments and an increase of 4%. Working capital inflow of ZAR 179 million shows good working capital management. To note, this also includes amounts from refundable customer accounts.
To highlight, in the rest of the cash flow items depicted on the slide is fixed asset investments of ZAR 279 million, which includes the CapEx mentioned in the segmental disclosures, showing our store growth as well as the Amper Alles acquisition of ZAR 96 million. We funded the acquisition with a ZAR 100 million term debt facility. That's the ZAR 100 million depicted on the cash flow. Taking all these cash flow items into account, we ended up at a healthy cash balance of just under ZAR 2.1 billion. This also includes any short-term funds that we have in money market accounts. I now hand over to Shane Thoresson, our Chief Operating Officer, that will take you through the product categories. Thank you, Shane.
Thank you, Hanré. As Werner mentioned, I'm going to take you through some slides indicating the performance of some of our major categories. Starting firstly with the group sales per week, and we can see pleasing or reasonable growth in the first quarter of 6%. A disappointing 1% growth in the second quarter, albeit on the back of some reasonable growth in the prior year for the same period. Also, selling price inflation of only 0.8%, year-on-year. We look at the volumes, they're around ZAR 240 million a week, and very positive growth going into the first couple of weeks of the third quarter at 8%.
Relative to the market, if we look at some of the retail numbers being reported recently, specifically in the hardware sector that Cashbuild obviously trades, the likes of Build It and Italtile, it's pleasing to note that we still appear to be growing some market share. Moving on to the cement sales by product, and effectively what we're looking at year-over-year is growth of 10% in the first quarter, which was very encouraging. 5% in the second quarter. Mix of 23.3% and 20.8% in the second quarter.
This on the back of purchase inflation, again, a negative of 2.6, and we've seen this for a number of reporting periods, as the market remains volatile, very competitive, various suppliers trying to gain market share and prices fluctuating weekly at this stage. Volumes around 600,000 pockets a week, and going into the first couple of weeks of quarter three, a 6% growth. Again, relative to the market, our estimation is that the market is fairly flat at best. Although I can say I recently, as early as this week, attended a budget review seminar with Dr. Azar Jammine from Econometrix, and his numbers indicate that the market has declined again further by 1.6% over the last 12 months.
Volumes are around 14-odd million tons in terms of demand. Capacity at around 20-odd million tons. We, you know, demand is at around 70-odd% of capacity. Notwithstanding that, imports have again increased to record levels in excess of 1 million, 1.5 million tons, I beg your pardon, and that's a 30% growth on the prior year. Some positive feedback from him, however, is that he believes that for the 2026 financial year, the cement industry should see growth of around 3.3%, and that's on the promise of some infrastructure development, which hasn't been forthcoming over the last couple of years, so we'll have to wait and see what happens as far as that's concerned.
If that development does happen, he believes that compound growth of 2.5% over the next 3-5 years should be achieved. We haven't seen that for a number of years in the cement industry. This slide shows us the cement unit sales per supplier, or effectively, each supplier's mix of the Cashbuild business. We've seen some significant change in this slide, specifically with regards to Mamba Cement. We've seen them grow their share of the Cashbuild business from 27% twelve months ago to 31% now, and firmly entrenched as our primary supplier of cement in the Cashbuild group. That on the back of a steady decline over the period from PPC, 13% down to 11%, and more specifically Sephaku from 30% down to 23% in December 2025.
We've seen AfriSam remain fairly consistent at 9% over the period, and then a steady growth from Afrimat, 2%, 3%, 4%, and the others remaining fairly consistent. Total timber sales, first quarter at 8% growth, second quarter 4%, 7.6% and 7.1% mix in the two respective quarters. Purchase inflation above average at 4.7%, and I can say this is the first time in a number of years that we've actually seen some positive inflation growth in the timber market. Volumes around 18 million a week and, going into quarter three, very encouraging 14% growth. The only market related figures that we track here is reported by a company called Crickmay and they report on the timber market, specifically, building lumber in terms of cubic meter growth.
We see they are reporting numbers of around 0.3% over the 12-month period. Then obviously a listed company like York, their last reporting figures indicated a 1% growth of timber volume. In total brick sales, the makeup here is both the cement and clay-related products. We've seen growth of 4% and 2% in quarters one and two. A mix of 6.9 and 6.3 on the back of price inflation, slightly above average at 2.1%, really driven by input costs related to transport and electricity, and specifically coming out of the clay products. Volumes of around ZAR 16 million a week and growth of 6% in the first couple of weeks of quarter three.
Moving on to total roofing sales, and really we're looking at concrete roof tiles here, as well as steel roof sheeting and Harvey Tiles, etc. 6% growth in quarter one. A disappointing 2% decline in quarter two. 8.8% and 8.3% mix in the two respective quarters. Again, purchase inflation decline of 1.2%, driven largely by what's happening in the steel industry. Volumes of around 22 odd million rand a week. Going into the third quarter, a positive growth of 9%. The total opening sales and the makeup here is really the doors and window frames, as well as the doors and windows themselves, sliding doors, etc. The performance here continues to be driven mainly by the aluminum category. 3% growth in quarter one. Again, 2% decline in quarter two, similar to the roofing products.
Fairly consistent mix over the two quarters at 7.3% and 7.4%. Purchase inflation of only 0.8%. Volumes around 17,000 per week. Again, 6% growth for the first couple of weeks of quarter three. The last slide is total decorative products, and the makeup here is the paint and related accessories, and then specifically the flooring products, ceramic and porcelain flooring. We've seen growth here very similar to what we've seen for the total group. 6% in quarter one. Only 1% in quarter two. Sales mix of 13.1% in the first quarter, increasing over the second quarter, the peak trading period, to 16.7%. It's fairly normal in terms of our business. Purchase inflation, again, slightly above average at 1.2%. Volumes around ZAR 33 million a week.
The only real numbers that we track here from a market perspective is the paint market. Our estimation is that paint sales in terms of liters have increased by about 2% over the twelve-month period. Then obviously in terms of ceramic floor tiles, we track the likes of the reporting of Italtile, more specifically their CTM and TopT business, which trades in similar markets to Cashbuild. We saw earlier on this week that CTM reported negative 3% growth in their business. Again, an indication that we continue to grow some market share. That's all the slides, and I'll be happy to take some questions at the end.
Thank you, Shane. I'll end up with some store developments, and some summary at the end. If we look at our sales by province, and again, a quick reminder of the slide, the bubbles at the top is the percentage growth year-on-year in revenue. Then the numbers at the bottom of the bar charts is the number of stores in that area this year and the prior year on the gray bar chart. Positive, most of the territories were trading positive for this half year. The best performing one being KwaZulu-Natal at 8.2%, closely followed by the Eastern Cape at 7.8%. Both of them having one extra store for this half year.
On the negative side, when we look at North West, the worst performer there, down 3.9%, mostly due to some big projects that came to an end that were in the base that were not repeated this year. As for similar reasons in the Northern Cape, a slight decline there of 0.2%. If we then look at our stores by location, again, the number of stores this year and last year, the growth for sales growth for the total area, and then the existing growth at the bottom of the numbers there. A good performance from the Metro stores and from the town stores. Metro stores coming off a low base of the prior year, a good recovery on that side.
Country stores also performing solid at 4.5%. Then maybe the exception this time around is rural stores, growing at 1.8%, and on the existing basis, actually down 1.5%. This is influenced mostly by, as Hanré has been mentioning, about the closure of the P&L stores. Most of them were actually located in rural areas, hence the negative there on the existing growth. On store development, overall, a movement of 4 new stores, net growth from 318 to 322. If we look at other projects other than new and closure stores, refits, relocations or conversions, we did 17 this half year compared to the 20 of the previous half year, so 3 less this year.
If I maybe spend a bit of time on actually what happened during the six months, there were, as mentioned, the 4 new stores. 1 Cashbuild store, 2 Cashbuild SMS stores, and 1 Cabifit. There were 9 refits and relocations, 5 P&L Hardware conversions into Cashbuild SMS format, and then 3 Cashbuild stores into Cashbuild Xtra format. We acquired the 3 Amper Alles stores. We closed another P&L Hardware store in terms of our strategy. Albeit shown on the closures, the disposal of the 2 Cashbuild Malawi stores has left us at the 322 stores at the end of the half year. If I then look at the store format representation, it shows you the evolution of the different formats. Cashbuild, firstly, fairly stable over the years.
As mentioned, finding it more and more difficult to open standard Cashbuild stores, albeit that there's quite a few that's been approved, that's waiting for the developments to start. The Cashbuild SMS stores growing nicely, both opening of new ones and then the conversions of the P&L stores. On the P&L Hardware side, the decline in line with our approach and communicated strategy of reducing the number of P&L Hardware stores by converting and closing them. Strategy on track, and we're quite pleased with where we are at the moment. The 3 Amper Alles stores, on the left there at the bottom. The Cashbuild Xtra stores, 5 of them trading as at the end of this half year. Currently some more in the process of being converted as we speak.
Cabifit stores, 4 in total, 2 in-store format. Those two store-in-store formats are not calculated into the total number of the 322 stores. Again, as we sit here, some more Cabifits being constructed at the moment. This slide just shows you where those new stores or additional stores were opened and added. You can see there, one in Eastern Cape, two in Limpopo. Cabifit there was in Gauteng. Two Amper Alles stores in Gauteng and the one in Groblersdal being in Limpopo, where we added those new stores. The competitor landscape slide, I'm always just leaving in for reference purposes. Not too much to add for this at this stage. In summary, the DIY market under pressure due to the weak consumer sentiment out there.
Shane mentioned some of the market stats. It is very fair to say that our industry remains under pressure at the moment. The growth for the first seven weeks at 8% was quite pleasing and showing that our top-line initiatives is working and that the temporary difficulty we had in Q3 with some external factors as well is hopefully something of the past. Further than that, the South African economy is expected to remain low growth environment, modest growth in this year and for the years to come. Also supported by a much lower inflation going forward.
Our new store formats are being very well received in the market and we are continuing to invest in that and we will focus on delivering more of them in the next six months that's left and then also for the next financial year. Lastly but not least, Amper Alles acquisition was effective 1 December. We are very excited not only what this can deliver for the group from the current base, but also the growth opportunities that there are in terms of that format for the group. Maybe then as a closing comment, we're focusing heavily on delivering our strategy. It's well in progress. We're driving top line, growing profitable market share and still continuously looking to improve efficiencies in the business. That's it from our side.
Thank you for attending the presentation, and I'll hand you back to Marliesse.
Thank you, Werner. Just a kind reminder that you can post your questions by using the Question tab, top left on your screen. The first two questions is from Lwando Ngwane from All Weather Capital. What is the company's stance on a share buyback at these levels?
Thanks, Marliesse. We've been buying back shares this first half. We've bought back 200,000-odd shares and canceled them, and we'll continue now that the closed period is finished. We'll continue with a controlled manner buying back shares at these levels.
The second question, could you please share what the different value proposition for the Amper Alles acquisition are brought to you to your business? You only added 3 stores, but it appears that they have made a substantial difference in your performance.
The value proposition is, as we disclosed in our SENS announcement when we announced the transaction, it's really an opportunity for Cashbuild to participate in a business that's got more contact with contractors, building contractors, and then secondly, focusing on a bit of a higher LSM than Cashbuild currently serves in the market. That's really the value proposition. It's a new area for growth for the business. In terms of the substantial difference for the business, I don't think it's made any substantial difference yet. About ZAR 24 million of turnover as we disclosed. They were only in for one month. Actually a small half a million ZAR loss for that month due to implementation costs and that.
At the operating level, adding a ZAR 1 million profit. For this period, really very insignificant impact.
Thank you. Lebeko Shai from Abax Investments. Morning, and thank you for the presentation. I have a question around the P&L closure costs. Have those been fully accounted for in the first half, or will there be more in the second half, assuming no further closures?
The first one is fairly simple answer, is that the first half's cost, the closures that we had to take or could take in terms of accounting has been taken. Since the half end, we've closed another four P&L stores and those costs will come as and when we close it. Our process, as we've mentioned, is that we will look at every single store as and when leases come up for renewal, and then either close or convert into a Cashbuild Small Model store, ending up with probably in the end about 15 P&L stores trading.
Simon Steyn from Peregrine Capital. What is the main driver of the growth uplift in the first seven weeks? Were some of the purchases of second quarter deferred to third quarter due to weather impacts?
That's a very interesting question. We saw good performance all over the country. I can't really say that the whether it was deferred. There's a good possibility 'cause Q1 was very low for us, only 1% growth. We've also seen that the initiatives that we're working on our new format stores and that they're really well performance in the new, in the new or the second half of the financial year, the start was very good. Nothing specific other than than what we've done up to now.
Michelle Wheatley from Laurium Capital. Thank you for the presentation and congratulations on a great set of results. With your gross profit up 7%, do you believe this is sustainable going forward? What mix of this would be from cement?
Shane Thoresson, I don't know if you want, but let me maybe.
Mm.
Maybe let's just talk about that. The 7%, I think Hanré explained it in the presentation that it was off a lower base, 24.3% last year, so one must bear that in mind. The 25% that we reached this half or this first half is the stated objective that we wanna trade at. Do we believe it's sustainable? Yes. There's nothing that indicates to us it's not at this stage, but as you know, things change very quickly and we need to react if things change and we won't be sitting and be fixated on that. But for now, yes, we believe it's sustainable. What mix is from cement? I mean, sales mix is 22%, 23%, definitely not gross margin mix.
I unfortunately don't have a number for what percentage of our gross profit is made out of cement. I can just tell you very little 'cause cement is sold nearly at cost.
Thank you. David Fraser from Peregrine Capital. What would the like-for-like sales growth been since December, excluding the acquired growth?
Thank you, David. It is 5.5% growth if we exclude all the Malawi, P&L closures as well as Amper Alles.
Jan Meintjes from Denker. Was Malawi closed or sold, and what was the operating profit impact on the group in this period?
Jan, Cashbuild Malawi was sold to the other minority shareholders, and the operating profit impact for the year was ZAR 11 million, and in the prior year, ZAR 2 million. We can see a much improved result from them, but as I said, based on inflationary pressures.
Zaid Paruk from Wealthvest Investment Management. Please could you provide insight on initiatives to grow your operating margin, and how do you see this trend playing out over the medium term?
Zaid, yes, I don't know, Shane, if you wanna maybe talk about some of the initiatives we're busy with, that might be more appropriate.
There are a number of initiatives that we've started some, probably 18 months, if not longer, ago. I don't think it's one specific event that has improved the margin. I think it's a number of small initiatives that are coming to fruition, as well as obviously better trading margins coming out of the P&L business, especially in those stores that have been converted to Cashbuild SMS store. The likes of, for example, paint mixing, which we've implemented. We have 45 odd stores now that offer a paint mixing facility, which we never offered before. Not only are we seeing growth in revenue there, but we're also seeing substantial growth in margin. You know, that as well as the Cashbuild Xtra stores, where we've included some extra categories of products, specifically on a more decorative line.
Margins out of those categories are much better than what we've seen on the structural products.
Thank you. Larisha Chetty from Ashburton Investments. Is the improvement in the gross margin in P&L a function of the level of profits at the remaining P&L stores or other factors? How many more P&L stores have been identified for closure?
Yeah. Well, fair.
Yeah. I think I've partly answered that question previously. At the end of the day, I mean, it's a little bit of both. The existing P&L stores are seeing marginal improvements in the margin. The biggest improvement is coming out of those that have been converted to Cashbuild SMS store. How many more P&L stores have been identified for closure? We'll look at each one of those stores individually as and when leases are up for renewal, et cetera. Depending on performance, we will then make those decisions closer to the time. We do believe that ultimately there's probably gonna be in the vicinity of around 15 or 16 P&L stores that will remain trading under that brand.
Thank you, Shane. There are no further questions. On behalf of Cashbuild, we would like to thank you for your participation. Goodbye.