Good day, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ethos Capital interim results. All participants will be in listen-only mode. There will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. If you should need assistance during the call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero. Please note that this call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Peter Hayward-Butt. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Again, thank you very much to all our investors and stakeholders for taking the time. Good afternoon to everybody. I will go through the presentation and spend obviously a significant amount of time on the underlying portfolio companies and their performance. Just to start off, let's give you an overview of the performance over the last six months and 12 months. There's been very strong growth in our unlisted assets.
Remember, we've got two portfolios. One is the unlisted assets, the private equity investments. The other is Brait, which is obviously a listed asset that we market to market. The growth in the unlisted assets over the last six months was 8% and 17% over the last 12 months, which, compared to most indices, has been a very strong performance.
Very pleasingly, this has been driven by EBITDA growth, 16% EBITDA growth across the portfolio on an attributable basis, plus an uptick in the Optasia, the Channel VAS partial realization, which we saw during the last six months. Very pleasingly, we've seen the cycle of private equity come to fruition in the fact that we've had ZAR 214 million of proceeds, which is about 15% of our market cap over the last six months or so, all at very significant premiums to the NAV.
Again, I will touch on that in the presentation. Then pleasingly again, a lot of progress has been made on the Brait value unlock. We announced earlier this week or back end of last week, the resuscitation of the Premier listing. I will touch on that during the presentation.
Also very pleasingly, the performance of Virgin Active, certainly over the last quarter, has been very strong. The proceeds that we've received, the ZAR 214 million, will be used to repay the existing debt that we have. The board has undertaken to institute a buyback program post the results today once we receive the proceeds of the Optasia realization.
In terms of my presentation today, I will talk a bit about the portfolio performance at a high level before going into the underlying portfolio companies. Talk very briefly about the outlook for the liquidity, then finally an outlook for the portfolio going forward for the next 12 months. At a very high level, the performance, the NAV per share as at the 31st of December was ZAR 10.80.
The NAV per share on the basis of using Brait at its share price was ZAR 8.51, which, as I mentioned, gives growth relatively flat through the last six months. The unlisted portfolio, as I mentioned, grew 8% over the last six months and 17% over the last 12 months. The flat performance was due to the underperformance of the Brait share price and the exchangeable bond.
The carrying value of the invested capital as at December was ZAR 2.6 billion, with 100% of that invested in total assets. As I mentioned, what has been pleasing over the last 12 months, both from a revenue and EBITDA perspective, is the broad growth in both revenue and EBITDA.
The portfolio companies on an attributable basis grew revenues at 15% and EBITDA at 16% over the last 12 months, despite, as I think everybody knows, pretty difficult operating conditions, particularly in the South African context. Realizations of ZAR 214 million, largely from the Optasia transaction. I'll touch on that during the presentation, which increased the multiple of invested capital, the times money back on that asset up to three times, which is again, pretty pleasing.
Ethos Capital continues to trade at a discount of around about 50% to the ZAR 10.80, and the current market implied valuation is about 5.5 times LTM EBITDA for the portfolio. Again, there's a slide I will touch on during the presentation. Where are we in terms of the strategy? I think I mentioned in my introduction.
The lifespan of a private equity portfolio starts with the commitment phase, where we gave commitments to invest into certain funds of Ethos back in 2016 and 2017. We have about ZAR 130 million of outstanding net commitments. That's all we have left for the existing fund commitments. You go into investment phase where those funds invest those capital into various assets.
That leads onto an asset growth phase. Once that asset is in the ground, how do you grow that portfolio? If you look now, we have about 12 of our assets or 78%, just under 80% of the portfolio sits in the asset growth bucket. The average age of those assets is about four and a half years. Then you move into a bucket, which is called realization. That's what we call the exit lounge.
We've now got probably eight assets that we have in various phases of the realization process. It's about 16% of our total assets, and the average age of that consort is around about seven years. Obviously, once you realize those assets, that sits under the capital allocation bucket. As I mentioned, we received ZAR 214 million from realizations over the last six months. That's about 15% of our market cap.
That then sits in the capital allocation bucket. You can either return the capital to shareholders, again, in the form of dividends or, in our case, probably in the form of a buyback, or then start to look at reinvesting part of those portfolio proceeds into portfolio alpha generation. The long-term strategy to drive market leading shareholder returns, I'll touch a bit on that, is how we perform relative to the market. We've gone through the cycle.
We're starting to see those capital allocations. A capital allocation come to fruition, and that will formulate in the form of a buyback program, which has been instituted post these results. Moving on to the perspective of how it's performed versus the market. As I mentioned, we measure ourselves based on what we call the Ethos benchmark, which is the JSE All Share, excluding international stocks, given that we can't invest internationally, Naspers and mining and real estate, because we can't invest in those portfolios.
That leaves you with about 170 companies. How have those companies performed over the last six months, one year, and three years? As you can see there, pretty flat over the last six months, down 6% over the last year, and pretty flat over the last three years. To give you some idea of how Ethos Capital's NAV per share performed over those periods.
On an alpha basis, relatively well, although I think massively underperformed what we would hope to achieve. 1% growth over the last six months, 7% over the last year, and over the last three years, a CAGR of 7%, so certainly alpha compared to the market. To give you some idea, most of that underperformance has been driven by the listed portfolio.
The unlisted portfolio grew 8% over the last six months relative to the 2% of the market, and 17% over the last 12 months, compared to -6% for the benchmark. As you can see, the underlying funds there, the biggest exposure we have as Ethos Capital is to Fund VII and the AI Fund. Those have performed very well. The Brait Ordinary shares have performed relatively poorly from an NAV growth perspective, and we'll touch a bit on that.
From a perspective of the multiple, the increase in the multiple, the market increased slightly over the last six months by about 3%, from 12.7% to 12.8%. The Ethos Capital multiple increased, and that was solely the function of the fact that we had to mark to market the Optasia transaction, which was done at a 20% premium to the multiple that we held it at.
All of the other multiples have remained flat to down. The only increase really over the last six months has been having to mark to market versus the partial realization we did in Optasia. From a constituent parts, as you can see, the unlisted portfolio grew 8%, largely driven by a multiple increase, and that's to do with Optasia, as I mentioned.
Some FX movements that really, again, also relates to a weakening of the ZAR over the last six months compared to the Optasia valuation, which is based in dollars. Earnings down slightly, and that's as we've grown into the maintainable earnings. Again, I will touch on that during the presentation.
Then if you look on the right-hand side, the listed portfolio, which is effectively the Brait portfolio and MTN Zakhele Futhi, is down ZAR 86 million, down 11%, largely driven by a 17% decrease in the exchangeable bond valuation or share price, a decrease in the Brait share price, and also a 17-odd percent decrease in the MTN Zakhele Futhi share price over the last six months. From a portfolio perspective, from a liquidity perspective, we remain fully invested. We have ZAR 2.6 billion of assets invested.
We have, in December, ZAR 323 million of debt that has been reduced to ZAR 250 million with the Optasia proceeds. We have committed facilities of ZAR 450 million. We currently have net undrawn facilities of ZAR 131 million outstanding. From an investments perspective, during the course of the year, of the six months, Ethos Capital in the Ethos funds invested ZAR 152 million.
Our share as Ethos Capital of that was ZAR 61 million. We received gross proceeds of ZAR 214 million, largely from the Optasia transaction, Crossfin, which sold Retail Capital and returned some capital to shareholders, a dividend from Gammatek, obviously the coupon on the exchangeable bond. The Optasia deal, we will talk a bit about it in more detail, was sold to new consortium investors who came into the business.
It was sold at a 20% premium to the valuation where we were carrying it as at the 30th of June 2022. In addition, Retail Capital, which was a business that Crossfin owned. We've owned Crossfin for about a year. Crossfin sold that business to TymeBank during the course of the last six months at a 55% premium to the current carrying value at the point in time.
From a strategic outlook perspective, as we have focused on, as mentioned before, portfolio optimization continues. We really have seen strong growth in the unlisted portfolio, EBITDA growth of 16% over the last 12 months. We're starting to look at the number of exits. We've seen some of those happen already. As I mentioned, ZAR 214 million of proceeds returned over the course of the last six months.
From a perspective of narrowing the discount, which is obviously a key focus of the board, as I mentioned, the board has approved the introduction of a buyback program, which will kick off post the results. Just giving you a very quick update on the key portfolio companies. We will go into these in a bit more detail. Optasia, which is the Channel VAS, it used to be called Channel VAS.
Again, another very strong performance, up 26% in the last 12 months in U.S. dollars in terms of revenue, driven by both the airtime credit services business, and very pleasingly, a very strong performance in the MFS business. That's been driven by advances growth and obviously higher services penetration. As we've been flagging for some time, the FX losses effectively predominantly out of Nigeria and to some extent Ghana, have obviously negatively impacted the EBITDA growth.
We look at EBITDA pre and post. The FX losses on a pre basis, it's grown ahead of the 26%. On a post basis, it's grown at about 7% for the. That's largely been driven by the devaluation in the Naira. As I mentioned in many calls before, we've taken a hit to maintainable earnings over the past two or three years to reflect the fact that we saw the Naira devaluation coming.
Obviously, the impact on maintainable earnings is significantly less than it is on actual earnings. The business development pipeline remains very robust, with very strong opportunities, both geographically and by product diversification across the portfolio. From a Synerlytic perspective, again, a very good performance year- on- year, really driven by a turnaround in the WearCheck business. Last 12 months revenue up 11%, but more pleasingly, EBITDA up 20%.
Some of that has been from the upfront investment we made over the last 18 months in people and value creation initiatives, particularly in the WearCheck business. The Particle Group, which was the old AMOS business, which consolidated with the Canadian business, CDN, to be renamed the Particle Group, has again, continued very strongly in terms of its operational results to drive the overall performance in Synerlytic.
Echo, again, no different to where it was six months ago. Very, very strong performance in the South African business. EBITDA materially up year-on-year in the South African business, offset by very poor performance, the international business management are looking at ways to change the trajectory of that international business. Effectively, the sales cycles are very long.
It takes quite a long time to convert the pipeline, and we are looking both organically and inorganically to try and find ways to ensure that those subscale international business are returned to profitability. From a Vertice perspective, it has been amazing to see how slowly, actually, in most cases, the surgeries have returned. Elective surgeries in particular, that has started to normalize.
The last couple of months have been much better for the Vertice business. But over the last 12 months, the larger businesses within Vertice have performed very, very well and above budgets, particularly the cardiology and cardiovascular businesses. We have run a strategic review, or the business has run a strategic review on the smaller underperforming businesses, a number of which have been sold. From a Crossfin perspective, again, we have invested heavily behind that business. Very strong revenue growth.
EBITDA has slowed, but that is really due to a very significant increase in the marketing spend, particularly in the Adumo business, and the iKhokha business as well. The Crossgate business performed very well. We have just opened up a new banking facility in Cape Town, which should continue to drive profit in that business. Moving just quickly to the Brait portfolio. Premier has continued.
I have got the chart here for the low with the numbers for the last six months of 16% growth in EBITDA, as we mentioned in a results announcement for Brait about a week ago. That has continued up until December. Very strong growth in market share, volume growth, and we have been able to see input costs passed on to the consumer with very little impact on the overall volumes in the business. Again, a very strong performance which has continued.
Good contributions from all businesses, but particularly the banking business has performed strongly. We declared a dividend in late November for about ZAR 950 million, which was declared and paid to shareholders. Very pleasingly, the business has already repaid ZAR 300 million of the ZAR 950 million it drew down on over the past three months. So a very strong cash generation in Premier over the last quarter.
As you will have seen at the back end of last week, we announced the intention to float off Premier. We were approached by a number of institutions who committed to following and participating in the IPO such that the free float was met, which was the reason we had to pull the IPO in November. That was announced on Friday, all things going according to plan, Premier should be listed before the end of March.
That will realize another ZAR 3.6 billion of proceeds for Brait, which, combined with our share of the ZAR 950 million, means that Brait will have received around about ZAR 4.5 billion of proceeds in the last six months. From a Virgin Active perspective, I haven't been able to say this since we took over three months ago, the week before COVID-19, but very positive membership growth over the last quarter, and that's very pleasingly across all territories.
The U.K. had a very, very strong performance both in January and February. Italy is absolutely shooting the lights out and has continued to do so. The South African business has had a good January and February. We've seen 66,000 increase in net members, so that's new sales, less terminations in the last two months.
To give you some idea, that's an 8% growth in our membership base over the last two months. All key territories, and by that we really mean the U.K., Italy, and South Africa, are either at above EBITDA breakeven or forecast to be certainly before the end of the year. As we've mentioned, the APAC business is recovering, but that is likely to take a bit longer.
The new strategy under the new management team is starting to bear fruit. We've seen the estate renewal and the impact that's had on memberships. There's a new app being launched probably in the next month or so, which we believe will enhance membership engagement and a significant investment in our digital capabilities in that business. Obviously, there's costs to be taken out of the business, particularly around the central and head office costs.
The Real Foods business that we bought, the Kauai business at the back end, about a year ago, performing very, very strongly, certainly above budget, and really is assisting us in the shift that we've talked about of moving Virgin Active into the wellness space from just being a gym operator. New Look, again, despite the very difficult operating conditions in the U.K., has had a very strong performance for the first three months of the year.
First three quarters of the year. It's got a March year end. The results will be up very significantly over last year, which is pleasing despite the fact that obviously footfall is under pressure in the U.K. and many of the supply chain issues that have plagued the industry have continued.
The business recovery remains on track and the outlook, whilst the outlook remains challenging, we do believe from a perspective that this business has performed its peers. Just briefly, in terms of where are we on the progress on Brait from a value realization perspective. If you look at the chart on the left, not forgetting the fact that we sold the Iceland business at about a 70% premium to NAV.
That business, for anyone who's continued to follow it, is under severe pressure in the U.K. at the moment. I think we were fortunate to exit at the time. The bonds are currently trading at a very significant discount to par, which says something about the equity value in the business.
The BKB business that we sold at NAV, and the Consol business, which we sold at the back end of last year, at about double the NAV that we took it on. From a Premier perspective, the current times money back compared to when we start the business is two times. Virgin Active and New Look sit at 0.8 times each.
From a realizations perspective, as I mentioned, we've managed to exit three of the core assets at a very significant premium to our entry NAV. We de-geared very significantly, both through the rights issue and the exchangeable bond during the course of the last three years, ZAR 7 billion of disposals if we include the Premier deal.
If you combine the ZAR 8.5 billion we've raised with the ZAR 7 billion of disposals, that's ZAR 15.5 billion that we've managed to refinance. From an operations perspective, we've reduced the cost in that business by just under ZAR 0.5 billion on an annual basis. From a portfolio perspective, very significant time and effort has been invested in turning around the Virgin Active and New Look businesses, and we're very pleased when we look at the results today that some of those efforts are coming to fruition.
I get asked all the time around our NAV. I've updated this chart. I think the key to focus here is on the new funds post 2016, and the reason we use 2016 is obviously that was when the launch of Ethos Capital. When that came to fruition.
These are all of the exits on assets, not selectively, all of the assets that we've realized value, either partially or wholly on since then. If you look at the average of those, the value uplift has been 43%. By that we mean if we had the valuations in our books at 100%, we've sold the asset for 143%. A very significant premium to where we had it in our books.
The IRR on a realized basis across those assets is 30% per annum, and the multiple of invested cost is about 2.1 times. Again, on all those metrics, relatively similar to where we've achieved in our Funds III, IV, and V. We believe this will continue. I've said it many times, I've only been in Ethos since 2016.
We have never, since I've been here, sold an asset at below the NAV we have it in our books. According to Rowan, I think if you look across all of our portfolio companies over 30 years, more than 90% of those have been sold at a premium to our NAV. I think we are confident that our NAV is broadly in the ballpark, and we would hope to see some uplift when we exit assets going forward.
From a portfolio perspective, again, just touching on the total portfolio, I'll focus on the dotted lines, the changes, in half one, over the last six months. As you can see from a revaluation perspective, Optasia was up ZAR 184 million. That was the increase over our cost as at June, based on the current transaction. I'll go into that in more detail.
We distributed ZAR 182 million of value. If you look at the valuation of Optasia, ZAR 765 million as at June, ZAR 767 million as at December 31st. They look exactly the same, but you've got to take into account we've distributed ZAR 182 million. Broadly flat, despite the fact that we've sold a portion of our stake in the business. The only other ones really to focus on, I think, is if you look at the exchangeable bond for Brait, the revaluation of that is down ZAR 52 million.
That's due to the share price going from ZAR 110 million to ZAR 90 million on the exchangeable bond as of December. You will see there from an Ethos Fund VII debt perspective, we've repaid ZAR 42 million of the debt facility that we took on in Fund VII to do the exchangeable bond, and that's largely been from the proceeds of the Optasia transaction.
As you can see on the bottom right under the December 31st, 2022 numbers, we've got ZAR 3.1 billion or ZAR 3.2 billion of assets. If you assume Brait at its NAV per share or ZAR 2.6, if you assume Brait at its share price. The net debt in the business, including the Black Hawk, as I mentioned, if you add those two together, is about ZAR 500 million.
It's been significantly paid down as part of the Optasia proceeds. Looking at the portfolio again, 28% of the NAV remains in the Optasia company, and about 27% of the portfolio is in the Brait stable. If you take Premier, Virgin Active, the Brait exchangeable bond, and a small amount for New Look, that's around about 27% of the overall portfolio.
55% of our NAV is in SA, with about 45% of the business either in Sub-Saharan Africa or internationally, mostly in the case of the Brait portfolio. In terms of where the performance of the various companies, what we try and do is we break it down by number of companies, but also by value.
If you look at the top left-hand chart, the LTM revenue growth, you can see 75% of the companies that we are invested in grew revenues by more than 15%, 70% by value grew more than 25% over the last 12 months. Very good performance from the unlisted portfolio. Similarly, from an EBITDA perspective, 98% of the portfolio grew EBITDA, and 38% of the portfolio grew EBITDA by more than 15% over the last 12 months.
From the perspective of growth returns, investment returns over the last six months. Optasia was the leading one, and we'll again touch on that later. That was through the partial realization, which we saw is a 24% increase in the valuation. Synerlytic was up 11% due to its strong performance, largely driven by its EBITDA growth. Gammatek, largely driven by its de-gearing, and dividends paid, up 9%.
Tubuku, which is the business that sits in the mezzanine fund, had a strong revaluation through its performance over the last six months. In terms of the detractors, three to really point out are MTN Zakhele Futhi, the Brait share price, and the Brait exchangeable bond, the bottom two. Together those constitute about ZAR 89 million of devaluation. We mark those to market. We can't do anything other than that. That's about ZAR 0.35 in terms of NAV.
The other businesses that were detractors from value were AutoZone, which ran a sales process which did not come to fruition. We decided to mark that value down and take a hit on the valuation of that, and Vertice, which we will touch on during the presentation. In terms of how is the market, what are their market implied multiples?
We consistently show this to the market. These are effectively price-earnings, PER ratios. The current portfolio is trading at about six times on a P/E basis. You can go through the various assets and look at them in your own time. You can see the effective P/E ratios that is implied by the discount to the current share price across the Brait and Ethos Capital portfolios.
From a perspective of NAV composition, between Optasia and Brait, which as I mentioned before, is call it together 50% odd of the portfolio. Those two assets combined equate to the current market capitalization of Ethos Capital. The other assets, as you can see there, based on the current market capital, are worth zero.
You can see the constituent parts of that up to the attributable NAV, with Brait trading at its NAV per share. Touching briefly on the various portfolio companies. Firstly, starting with Optasia. As we mentioned, Optasia's results continue to be very strong. From an Ethos Capital value perspective, it achieved a 24% return over the last 24 months, largely driven by the partial realization, which I will touch on over the page.
We can thank Anthony Sedgwick for his, the new investor relations guy at Abax, who gave us some comments on our slides. We have tried to simplify what the companies actually do so that people can half understand it. From this business's perspective, Optasia really does three things. It is a micro lender. It lends together with other MNOs. It lends small amounts to customers of those MNOs.
From an airtime credit perspective, it lends airtime credit to customers of MNOs, and then in partnership with some of those MNOs, it monetizes the data. It is effectively an AI technology credit scoring platform. That is what we have got. We use those for really those three key metrics in the business. From a TMB perspective, this business is currently three times more than what we invested. We have returned three times .
We are valuing the business at three times what we were when we got in, and we have effectively returned about 100% of what we put in the first place. Over the last two years, this business has grown, if we rebase revenues back to $100 from $100 to $161, 26% of that growth has come over the last 12 months in dollars. As I mentioned, the LTM pre-FX losses has grown more than 26%. If you take the FX losses into account, which largely was driven by this year's devaluation in the Naira, there is obviously a very significant impact. The LTM revenue over the last 12 months is up 7%.
Very pleasingly, the MFS business, the mobile financial services or the micro lending business, has continued to see very strong momentum, both from existing and new deployments, and the growth rates on that have exceeded the ACS business, which has been very pleasing. From a valuation perspective, our valuation will be broadly flat, but obviously including the proceeds that we've received over the past six months, it's up 24% for the last six months.
Just to touch on the transaction. We received an opportunistic approach from an existing consortium member who had put together a consortium to buy from all shareholders 20% of Optasia. This is a very sophisticated investor group. They know the asset very, very well. They've been invested with us for some time. The valuation represented that they were prepared to come in, represented a 20% premium to where we held it in our books.
We only sold 14% of our stake. In addition to that, Optasia geared up by $40 million and paid a special dividend. From an Ethos Capital perspective, we received ZAR 184 million of proceeds. The unrealized value will remain largely flat in our books, despite obviously a slightly lower stake that we have. As I mentioned, to date, the investment has delivered an MOIC of three times, of which just about one time has been realized.
Effectively, the money we put in originally has been returned to us, and we have an asset that is three times more valuable than when we started. We started in quarter four 2018. That's when we made the investment. You can see the MOIC at one time. It was valued at $379 million. That was our investment at the time.
From then to June 2022, there was a value uplift of $560 million. Partly, $174 million of that came through proceeds, and the rest came through on fair value uplift. From June to December, as I mentioned, there was a 20% premium paid for a portion of our stake. We marked it to market. We received proceeds of about ZAR 184 million. You can see the multiple of invested capital has increased from two and a half times in June to about three times.
Very significant uplift in the valuation of the portfolio, which again, I was asked lots of questions about how do we value this portfolio. I said I wasn't too worried about the valuation at the time, and I think that's been brought to fruition by a sophisticated investor buying in at a significant premium to our NAV. Touching on Echo quickly.
The business, again, I think I've mentioned, is really a tale of two halves. On the right-hand side, just so that people know, it's typically a corporate internet service provider. For those of you who don't know, it aggregates third-party networks. It runs managed networks for clients, connectivity, cloud hosting and security products and services.
It's been very, very successful, particularly in the South African context. If you look over the last 12 months, the South African business has increased revenue by 28%, which is really driven by new customer wins, and also growth in new products to the existing customer base. Very pleasingly, in the South African business, EBITDA up 30% year-on-year, again, driven by the strong revenue growth and obviously costs being contained. The other side of that equation is the international business, which has performed poorly.
Very long sales cycles and slow pipeline conversion, which I mentioned. We are looking at ways to expedite the growth back to profitability in these businesses. We have taken a reduction in the multiple of this business, despite the strong performance of the South African business, to reflect the international business' poor performance.
Over the last six months, we have reduced the valuation by 7%, which might be conservative, but we think until we start to see the turnaround in the international business, we think that a lower multiple is the right way to value the business. Moving to Synerlytic, as I mentioned, a very strong performance. Valuation up 11% over the last six months driven by both parts of the business. The Particle Group, which as I mentioned, is both the South African and Canadian business, which we bought at the back end of 2021.
Both continued to perform very strongly. Very pleasingly, the WearCheck business, which is effectively the leading oil condition monitoring specialist in South Africa and on the continent, has turned around and has very strong performance. As you can see from the LTM revenue over the last 12 months, up 11%, but probably more pleasingly, given the costs that we have taken out of the business, despite the investment we have had in the front office, EBITDA up 20% year-on-year.
WearCheck has recovered well, as I mentioned, both AMOS and CDN continue to exceed their budget. From a value perspective, this business is up 11%, largely driven by the increase in the maintainable earnings that I mentioned, but also the very strong cash generation. That takes the times money back or the multiple of invested cost in this business up to 1.83 times.
From a Vertice perspective, again, it has taken longer, as I mentioned, for the elective surgeries to come back. That said, the larger and more specialized businesses, which CVG, ONS, surgery, et cetera, perform very well, all ahead of budget. Those are 80 odd percent of the business. Some of the mid-tier or smaller parts of the business, which were parts of businesses that we bought, have underperformed.
We have exited a number of those, particularly those that were subscale and did not help for the overall strategy of the Vertice business. Overall, the valuation we have decreased over the time really reflecting the fact that we think it is going to take longer for the maintainable EBITDA to be achieved and for elective surgeries to come back.
Whilst we have seen over probably the last quarter, a pickup in elective surgeries, it has not happened as quickly as we had forecast coming out of COVID-19. From a Crossfin perspective, again, very strong performance in some of its assets. There are five or four key parts of the business. The Adumo business, which is the acquiring part of the business, payment gateways, et cetera, point of sale software provision.
The iKhokha part of the business, which is really around providing card mobile and processing platforms to customers. Sybrin, which is a software business that was bought at the back end of last year. iKhokha, which is a point of sale business providing mobile-centric point of sale hardware and software to customers. Across the group, revenues were up very significantly, 16% year-on-year, very pleasingly.
The EBITDA is down 6%. I do think we've taken account of very significant increase in the marketing spend, particularly in the iKhokha business, which has partly driven that 16% increase in revenue. Adumo has been impacted by load shedding, obviously as many of our businesses have, and the increased marketing spend. The Crossgate business has sort of offset that by performing very strongly.
Overall, a pretty strong performance. Just in the last six months, the Retail Capital business was sold out of the business. As I mentioned, it was sold at a very significant premium to what we bought in at and a premium to what we had it in the books at the time of the transaction. I think a 55% premium to the NAV at the time of the transaction.
That business now resides in TymeBank and is performing very strongly within that business. In terms of some of the other smaller companies, Gammatek, which is about 5% of our assets, very strong performance. It's a leading distributor of mobile accessories and low technology products. EBITDA is up 14%. The business took a decision the back end of last year to invest heavily in stock, given that many of its competitors couldn't, and that has paid off very well.
We've seen the valuation up slightly, 9% over the last six months, largely driven by de-gearing in the business and strong EBITDA performance. From a Primedia perspective, again, quite pleasingly, EBITDA was up 15% over the last 12 months. The out-of-home business really has turned around strongly, which was laggard in our performance over the last two or three years.
The recovery, whilst it has been soft in broadcasting, is definitely on the right trajectory. The equity value over the last six months, we've increased by 6%, largely driven by the EBITDA performance. TymeBank, which is a big digital retail bank, its customer base is now over six million customers. I have to blink every time I see that number. It's amazing performance.
Even its active accounts are up to nearly two million, which is significantly ahead of where I think, many market commentators would have believed this business could get to. Also, very pleasingly, their launch of the Philippines equivalent of TymeBank, called GoTyme, alongside another co-investor in the Philippines, has gone very, very well, and we're starting to see traction on that business.
The acquisition of Retail Capital has been a very, very strong contributor to the success, certainly since it's been integrated and completed over the last six months. We've kept the equity value constant. We haven't moved it in constant currency terms. From a Premier perspective, as I mentioned before, a very strong performance. These numbers here are to 30th of September. 16% increase in EBITDA.
That performance has continued for the nine months to December and has continued both in January and February. Very strong performance across most of the categories, particularly in the Millbake part of the business. As you can see there, the adjusted return on invested capital up to 14.9%, call it 15%. That's continued to increase over the last couple of months and is approaching somewhere between 16% and 17%. A very strong performance in the business.
We were very pleased to receive the interest from the five or six institutions who have cornerstoned the listing. We would be very pleased to see this business come onto the JSE, hopefully by the end of the month. From a Virgin Active perspective, again, it's a long time since I've been able to say this, or in fact, I've never been able to say it since we took over three years ago.
From a membership rebuild perspective and a yield perspective, we really are starting to see the benefits. I'll turn over the page and give you the exact numbers. The focus has been on getting people back into the gyms. We've seen that happen. We've seen it happen very strongly over the last couple of months, which has continued into March. That's been pleasing.
Operating cost optimization, we've absolutely focused, and when I say we, I'm euphemistically talking about management, on cost optimization in the businesses. Significant costs coming out of the APAC business, now a very significant commitment to reducing central costs in the business, which is happening as we speak.
I think those will largely offset some of the inflationary cost increases that we have seen, which we think have peaked across the various territories. From an IT platform, we've invested very, very significantly in both capital and time in a membership engagement and an IT platform. The app is going to be launched probably in the next month or so. We really do believe it'll be best in breed. It'll ensure that we have much better contact and engagement with our membership base.
It'll talk to gamification, all of those things that get people, their competitive juices flowing when they're in the gym. I think this provides us with much more data on what do our customers want and our customers with much more data and information on what they can get out of the whole Virgin Active group.
From a capital allocation liquidity perspective, there are growth opportunities out there. The team, and I was one of them, traveled down to the Australia business and the Singapore business at the back end of last month. There are lots of growth opportunities. We need to be very clear about getting the right return on invested capital. I think if we want to expedite the trajectory back to and beyond pre-COVID-19 levels, we do need to continue to invest in this business rather than waiting.
There's some exciting opportunities which we think can be announced relatively soon. In terms of growth, as I've mentioned, there are lots of opportunities to do that. We need to do it quantitatively and ensure that we're investing in the right clubs and in the right territories. If we can get it right and we can continue to see the trajectory of our membership growth, we believe this business really is back on a trajectory towards 2019 and beyond.
Again, just touching quickly on the numbers for the last 12 months. Last 12 months, we've increased memberships from, I think it was 790 in February 2022, just to give you a 12-month picture, to 956. 17% over the last 12 months. More than 50% of that has come in the last two months.
We grew from 890,000 members to 956,000 members over the last two months. Really, that's been across all of the territories. Very strong performance in Italy, strong performance in the U.K. and South Africa, and certainly in January, a very strong performance in the APAC business. If you go back for two years, if you go back to February 2021, we've increased the membership by 60% over that base, which I do think there were a lot of people asking, did gyms have a place in a post-COVID-19 world?
I think we can categorically say that they do. We are starting to see members come back very significantly over the last two months. Very pleasingly from a perspective in the U.K. and to some extent in Australia, our inner city gyms have started to see people come back.
Again, for the first time in a long time, we can say an above budget performance in our inner city gyms. Just moving on to from a liquidity perspective, I showed a similar slide to this the last time we presented. As with all private equity businesses, there are three phases. The first is the investment phase. Effectively, when we were Ethos Capital and we raised the capital, we had a significant amount of cash held before we invested into the various portfolio companies.
You then go through the J-curve as you invest those into the assets. Where are we? I think you can see the red blob there. It moves across to the right. As I mentioned, we had ZAR 214 million, 15% of the market cap returned to us over the last six months.
I think we are getting close to that point somewhere in 2024, where we will see very significant returns on invested capital. As you can see in the bottom left. We have surplus commitments. That means we have more than enough facilities and surplus facilities over and above our net undrawn commitments.
Clearly, we still have debt in the business that we need to pay down. Very pleasingly, there's no issue from a liquidity perspective. On the right-hand side, I've changed the chart to show a calendar year because people keep confusing 2024 with our financial year of 2024. These are calendar years. What that does show, again, I keep referring to this as an Excel spreadsheet, there is nothing linear about private equity.
If you believe the Excel spreadsheet, which we do on an asset-by-asset basis, as I mentioned in the chart at the top, certainly by financial year 2024, we start to see very significant returns of capital and seeing Ethos Capital in a very positive cash position, certainly by 2025. From an outlook perspective, it's always easy to put this into positive and negatives, and I always try to focus on both equally.
From a positive perspective, I think what are we pleased about? I think the broadness of the recovery of the portfolio. As I mentioned, 16% EBITDA growth over the last 12 months. Operating conditions, I think have never been more difficult in South Africa, I'll be honest with you.
Whether it be load shedding, whether you can take one of 20 different things that have impacted our portfolio companies, you've got to take your hat off to the management teams who've driven EBITDA growth and revenue growth in extremely difficult conditions. That's been a very big positive, and I think significantly ahead of what I think our peers have performed, which I think shows the benefit of active management.
We have continued to see significant alpha generation from an NAV perspective from the unlisted portfolio. As I mentioned, over the last 12 months, 17% up in NAV growth compared to a market which was down 6%. On an alpha generation perspective, north of 20. Clearly, we need to look absolutely as well as on a relative basis, and we continue to need to see growth, certainly in excess of our cost of equity.
Pleasingly, we've seen ZAR 212 million of capital returns to us, both through dividends and realizations. All of those, and I repeat, all of those, have been at significant premiums to our current valuations. Very strong membership growth, as I mentioned, at Virgin Active has been a positive. I think it does show the strength of the company's position. You only have to go and visit the gyms like I've now done. I think I've been to just about every gym that we have now in the portfolio.
We have an unbelievable portfolio in great locations, in many cases, well capitalized, probably outside of some of the U.K. estate. I do think we have a proposition that is attractive to members, and we're starting to see members come back. I'm certainly, from my perspective, never been more positive about Virgin Active.
From a Brait perspective, when the proceeds are received from the IPO, which will hopefully be by the end of this month, there will be very significant proceeds for Brait. ZAR 4.5 billion raised over the last six months. That will be used to repay debt and will put Brait effectively into a position with the capital that it has to offset the convertible bond in a very strong capital position.
Many of you will have seen the recent announcements of a merger between TRG, which is a large emerging market private equity firm based out of New York, and EPE Capital Partners . That will probably complete by the end of the month. We've seen very, very strong interest from LPs.
I think what it will do for Ethos Capital shareholders in time is broaden the optionality for Ethos Capital investors to invest not just into Ethos products and portfolios, but across the whole TRG portfolio, across many, many emerging markets where they are very strong and have very strong performance indicators.
We will need to obviously come back to shareholders to get their approval to broaden the MOI in the business. To the extent we can, I think it will provide very significant optionality for Ethos Capital shareholders in time. I mentioned at the beginning, the board has approved a buyback program. I think the discount at the 50-odd percent that we talked to just is not the right number.
The board is absolutely convinced that this is a way to drive NAV per share growth, and that will be implemented post the Optasia proceeds having been received, which they have, and post this presentation. From a negative perspective, in terms of outlook, I think we continue to see the impact of high inflationary, the impact that's had on all of our portfolio companies and also growth.
I think, quite frankly, across all emerging markets. The Eskom load shedding, and less the load shedding, but just policy indecision remains the most key impediment to business growth across not just our portfolio, but every portfolio. I wouldn't be the only person telling Cyril that. Let's hope he and his team find ways to resolve this issue. It is having a massive impact on not just performance, but consumer sentiment.
The decrease of the valuations in the listed portfolio, by that I mean Brait Exchangeable, and MTN Zakhele Futhi were obviously detracted from an NAV perspective. That's why we were flat. Otherwise, we would have been up, as I mentioned. That is disappointing. There's not a lot we can do about it. Hopefully, with the things that are happening at Brait, that will turn around relatively shortly.
Exits remain difficult, to be honest. We've run a number of exit processes on one or two assets. Exits remain difficult for two reasons. I think the fickleness of international investor interest. Six to nine months ago, I was sitting here talking about the Consol deal where we had just sold a deal to Consol, and we had interest from international investors into some of our portfolios. It's amazing how quick [Inaudible] largely because of load shedding, I think, and policy in decision.
We really need that sort of investor interest to come back into the South African market for us to get exits away. That said, we are running a number of processes now, and I think there is capital to deploy into these, but it's always better when we have international interest. Obviously, the share price discount will continue to impact capital allocation decisions.
It's extremely difficult to invest into new opportunities unless there are significant discounts. When you are trading at a discount to your own NAV. As I mentioned, one solution to that is obviously the buyback program, which will hopefully drive the NAV per share. Again, thank you very much for taking the time, and very happy to answer any questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if anyone would like to ask a question, you are welcome to press star and then one on your touch-tone phone or on the keypad on your screen. If you however wish to withdraw the question, you may press star and then two. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, you're welcome to press star and then one.
For the benefit of those on the webcast, you may submit your question via the text box at the bottom of your screen. We will pause a moment to see if we have any questions from the conference call. It seems we have no questions at the moment from the conference call. I would now like to hand over to the webcast questions.
Let me read the one that I got. It is from David Averill. Hi, David Averill at SaltLight Capital Management. Thanks for the presentation. Could you comment on how much of the portfolio is in the AI fund? There were some announcements last week of a new $200 million AI fund with some of the Ethos AI team members. Is EPE, EPE Capital Partners participating in the fund? If not, are the team members still with Ethos? Let me go through the questions.
Firstly, how much of the portfolio is in the AI fund? It is ZAR 150 million at cost, but I think it is at two times. I would say it is rough numbers, ZAR 300 million of value, David Averill, out of the ZAR 2.6 billion, to give you some idea. We also co-invest in a number of their assets, obviously, the biggest one of those being Optasia.
Through the AI fund is probably ZAR 300 out of our ZAR 2.6 billion as a percent, in terms of current capital. There were announcements last week of a new fund to raise $200 million with some of the Ethos AI team. Absolutely, David Averill . As EPE Capital Partners , we are a 20% shareholder in that vehicle that is raised. We are on the investment committee with the team.
They remain alongside us exactly as they have been before. From a question of is Ethos Capital participating? Clearly, we would need to take any participation to the Ethos Capital board. They would need to make the decision. The AI fund has been massively successful, as we know. We really do believe in the theme. This business has co-invested alongside Ethos in just about all of its investments to date and will continue to do so.
They see massive value in having Ethos as their execution partner. We see massive value in having them and their AI expertise, including Michael Jordaan and Willem Ruis, who have joined with Nick Griffin and Roger. Yes, we continue to work with them. We are shareholders in the business together with them. We would love to participate. We will look to raise funds alongside them in their new fund. Ethos Capital can make a decision at the board as to whether it decides to invest in the fund or not. Those are the only questions I have, unless there are any others on the call.
Yes. We have a question from Nick Griffin of Signal Asset. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my call. I've got a few questions. Can I ask them one by one? My first question is: What investments are you the most excited about today?
Okay. Look, the easy answer is always going to be one that's performing fantastically well. The Optasia business is a fantastic business. It really is. It's proven through extremely difficult times operationally that it can grow its business. Whether you look at the number of deployments, whether you look at the number of customers it effectively has, whether you look at the number of partners it has in the form of MNOs, or whether you look at the financial performance of the business, it's a scalable business that can go onto new continents, into new territories with relatively low costs and continue to grow.
It effectively can follow its partners wherever they go. We remain very excited about that business. I was excited last time when we spoke, and I was asked a similar question at the time. Someone asked me about the valuation.
Since then, a very sophisticated investor group has paid a 20% premium to what we had it in our books. We think there's value upside from here. There are a number of initiatives in that business that I think will continue to grow value then, as opposed to just the organic growth. That's clearly an easy one to say yes to. The other business that if you had to say to me today, I'm probably most excited about, it's gone a long way back, but I'm most excited I've been in a long time, is actually about the Virgin Active business. That business is a fixed cost business. 90% of new revenue falls to the bottom line.
To give you some idea, as I mentioned, 66,000 new members in the last two months adds, if you take the yield on those customers and annualize it, probably in the region of GBP 25 million-GBP 30 million to your bottom line. It's an amazing business on the way up, as we found to our detriment on the way down.
I think Dean and his team are doing a fantastic job there around reconfiguring that business to appeal to a broader set of people, to ensure that we engage better with our members and keep them and reduce churn. The new territories or the parts of those territories that we're already in that we can grow into, and particularly how well invested the estate is, I think gives me huge potential upside on that business. I think there's a number of other businesses.
I don't want to spend time going to talk about all of our businesses. The one that I think has got potential clearly is the Echo business. We really do need to sort out the international business there. The South African business has performed significantly ahead of what we would have hoped when we bought into the business, which is credit to Angus MacRobert and his team there. We really do need to sort out the international business. I think that business has shown it can broaden its customer set, and in doing so, if we can then export that to the continent, I think there's lots of upside in that business as well. Look, I'll just give you three examples.
We remain convinced, only because of history, that the valuations that we hold these portfolio companies at are conservative just because we've never sold an asset at below our NAV. As you can see, we sell them at a significant premium. What we need to do is get those assets into a position where we can sell them, get a significant bunch of people interested in buying those assets, and then I'd be very convinced that we can exit these assets at premiums to where we hold them today. Thanks, Nick Griffin.
My next question is on Optasia. It's a very interesting business, but it's very difficult to get data on the business. I agree with that. It was nice to get more disclosure today, but maybe there can be an investor day where we can maybe have access to the management team there, just to better understand the business. One of the gaps in my knowledge is how active are they in South Africa at the moment? My guess is they're not very active. The immediate question is, why are they not, if I'm correct, why are they not very active in South Africa?
Okay. They are very active in South Africa.
Are they?
Together with Vodacom. If you read Vodacom's results, and they talk there around their partner, I think they talk to you in terms of their fintech business. That partner is Optasia. It's turned around their business from a perspective of airtime credit services. It's done fantastically well for them. It will now look to do that together with MTN as well.
It doesn't do it with MTN currently in South Africa for reasons of they gave a contract to someone else. I think that may change in time. Look, on your question of, we are definitely trying to put a day together for two things. One is around Virgin Active, to get Dean to come and present to the Brait and Ethos Capital investors, and the other would be on Optasia.
Trying to put those two together so that people, we use the best time of our investor base is what's proving a bit tricky. We absolutely want to have an Optasia capital markets day together, probably with the Virgin Active capital markets day.
Okay. That's great. It obviously shows the gap in my knowledge that I thought they were pretty absent in South Africa, and you're correcting me there. I think it'd be nice to know more about the business. My next question is on Capitec are doing a deal now with Cell C, and that they also want access to this data. I think they want to try and get into that same business. Will Capitec be using Optasia or are they gonna be building their own systems? How do you see this developing?
Look, the answer is I don't think they are using Optasia, Capitec. I presume that, I would imagine as a bank, they would try and use their own systems. Look, in every single market we operate in, we have competitors. There isn't a market that we're in where we don't. I think the trick to this business is Optasia has data on 580 million customers. I'll repeat that. 580 million customers, which it runs its AI technology platform of every single day. It's got a massive customer base, not just Cell C's customer base in SA, but across 28 countries, et cetera. The quality of that data is what ensures that your loss ratios when you're lending are as low as they are.
I'm sure Capitec has fantastic data, no doubt, but I think it would be quite difficult to compete with data on 580 million customers across not just this continent, but many continents. In doing so, seeing what spending patterns are, should you be lending to those customers or not? Those are the decisions which get your loss ratios below 1%, which is what you need in this business to be profitable.
Yeah. I think for Capitec, maybe I need to make it clear, the MVNO they're setting up for Cell C, I think the major goal of that MVNO is to get the data. It's great to get the data, now you need the systems on top of that to help you make decisions.
Yeah.
I think they're targeting initially about eight million customers. That's quite a big target. When you say MTN is gonna start using Optasia, isn't there gonna be a big hockey stick growth for Optasia? How am I supposed to think about that arrangement with MTN now, South Africa?
Yeah. MTN has been a very big and very loyal and supportive partner of Optasia for many years and will continue to be. I think we see a closer relationship with them going forward rather than a more distant relationship. There are opportunities that the business is looking at to grow the business together. Obviously, it's to MTN's benefit if we do it together and we make good investment decisions and good capital allocation decisions together. I'm not going to give numbers to it, but I think we are very positive about the relationship we have with MTN, not just in South Africa in terms of ability to grow, but in other countries where we're not represented as their partner.
We are, when I say we, again, euphemistically, the business is looking at many opportunities to continue to grow our exposure and relationship with MTN, as we do with many of the other MNOs. It's not an exclusive relationship by any means, but we have a very strong, longstanding partnership with MTN, which I think if it continues as we hope it will bring lots of benefit to them and to the Optasia business.
My third line of questions are on the Premier listing. I suppose the one concern I have for the Premier listing is there's going to be two entry points into Premier. I can either buy through Brait, or I can buy on the market. That's never really a good idea for the ratings of these shares. I think there might be some concern in the market that there might just be this overhang on the stock as it might be unbundled. You even think, "Well, maybe I should just unbundle this thing and get it over with, rather than just letting it linger." What is your opinion on the two different entry points and the possible overhang?
Yeah, look, there's obviously likely to be common overlap between people who are interested in investing in Brait because, 54% of the NAV is constituted in the form of Premier, right? There's lots of investors who are going to invest in Brait because of Virgin Active and the potential recovery there as well.
The point is, Nick Griffin, we can't unbundle it until we repay the convertible bond. I've been explicit in this in every Brait presentation I've done. Is to say, until we pay the convertible bond back, okay? Which is GBP 150 million sitting in the U.K., we cannot unbundle Premier to you. If we could, we would. Okay? We cannot unbundle it until such time as we settle. Now, part of this whole disposal proceeds will give us ZAR 4.5 billion. Okay? The current RCF, the revolving credit facility, is ZAR 2 billion.
You can do the math of what the excess capital is that we would raise. Now, once we settle the convertible bond, and we've got until December 2024 to do that, because that's when it matures, we will absolutely unbundle or return the capital to shareholders. We can't do it today. I don't think this issue of a double entry is a big issue. Is it an issue? Of course, on the margin, it would be. We were approached by investors, most of whom are Brait investors, who said, "Guys, we believe that Premier would be a fantastic business to list on the exchange. It's outgrown its competitors.
It continues to invest in its business, and the three years of capital investment it's made has positioned the business well for growth." Those investors came to us and said, "Guys, we want to see this thing on the JSE," and here's a commitment to getting it done. It's step one of a multi-step process to unlock value for Brait shareholders.
If we can get it away, it'll go a long way to realizing value for Brait shareholders and paying down the existing debt, which will enable us to unbundle. I don't think unbundling will lead to an overhang at all. The reason for that is if you're buying into Brait today, you're buying into Brait because you believe that Premier is a company that's worth something, right? Given its 54%, 35% of the NAV.
Why would you sell those shares the day you get them if the asset that you're investing into in the form of Brait, gets unbundled to you? I think it's a highly unlikely proposition that most investors would sell their stocks. I don't think the issue is around an overhang on unbundling. I actually think the unbundling will create more liquidity in the stock, more investor interest, and hopefully that will have a re-rating at the time.
I was thinking more about the unbundling. We list Premier, but there's always this uncertainty about when Brait will unbundle the rest of it. That weighs on the rating, on the P/E of the existing listing.
Yeah. Nick Griffin, look, you got better at these conversations with investing. My view is, again, totally different there. When we unbundle, there's no overhang. We'll unbundle the shares in six months' time, at 12 months' time, or unlikely in 18 months' time.
Those shares, why would it cause a de-rating if those guys don't then sell their shares? It'll cause more liquidity in the stock. I don't think we should be worried about that. Look, I'm not the investor here. We've considered all of these concerns. It's the only way to manage this process. To be honest, I don't think we have any other options. It's the best that we can do to unlock value for Brait.
No, I was hoping we could just speed it up and get it over and done with and get that uncertainty out the way. Run on its own steam. There's no double entry point. Oh, I could rather buy Brait instead of buying Premier and, that's never great in my experience. I understand that you-
I hear you.
My idea is, can't we get this done quicker, faster rather than slower? That's my only point.
No, agreed.
I've heard what you've said.
Thanks, Nick Griffin. We've got a couple other questions quickly on this thing again.
No, I'm sorry. Very much so.
Perfect. Sorry, Nick Griffin. Thanks very much. From Mark Hodgson, "What is the rough quantum of the funds available for a buyback?" As you can see in the numbers, there's obviously relative, there's debt on the Ethos Capital balance sheet, large, which we will use to repay. I would suggest that the number, it's not a fixed number per se. What the board has given us permission to undertake is firstly a ZAR 20 million buyback to see how things work.
Obviously, we will then monitor going forward what realizations are coming out of the portfolio and what impact the buyback has had on NAV per share growth and narrowing the discount. If you look at the volume currently in Ethos Capital, that's a very significant number of trading days, to invest that sort of quantum, and that's really what we're playing with.
Based on what the current valuation and current volume, that's around about somewhere between 70 and 90 trading days of volume, if we're about 30% of the market. Wallace Barnes from Steyn, "Can you elaborate on the inorganic opportunities that you're looking at Virgin Active?" Wallace, there's many different things. Dean and the team are looking at many different options, right?
Simply put, going into new territories and running on a franchise model where someone else puts in all of the capital and we put in the management and the expertise of running gyms, that's one. Obviously, there are acquisition opportunities where you could create scale in the market by buying EBITDA and growing concerned business. The other really is, it's less inorganic, but it's around investment into the portfolio.
What we've seen unequivocally on every single gym where you go and invest fresh capital into to rejuvenate the gym is an increase in yield, increase in memberships, lower churn, and in doing so, you get a very decent return on your invested capital. I think selectively across a number of gyms, particularly in the U.K., which is probably our most under-invested estate, we may look to take selective gyms there, invest quite heavily behind them, and then change the yield.
I'll give you an example again of Wimbledon, for example. It's a gym we think we can invest a relatively small amount of money in, well, a decent amount of capital in, really improve the membership experience and then be able to increase the yield and get a very good return. Those are the sort of examples.
Between the sort of franchise type models across either new territories or products, Botala being a case in point, versus going into new territories, or not necessarily into new territories, but into existing territories through acquisition. Probably most of it is talking really around investing into the estate. The next question is, would you realize further value in Optasia if the opportunity arose? It is difficult to say.
You never want to say no to these things. It was massively opportunistic. When before it was not just us who sold, everybody had to sell down pro rata. All the shareholders took their pro rata share off the table. It was not just Ethos Capital. It was at, as I mentioned, a 22% premium to our current valuation for 14, 14% of our stake. We thought that was a good return on capital.
If you look at that and you can use some of that capital for buybacks, your return is multiplicative, as you know. I would suggest that would we? If someone comes today and offers us a massive value for the stake, of course, we will look at it, but it is not something we are actively engaging on today. We remain firmly of the view that it is a great business.
We think in time it could be a good listing on an international bourse, which will create value. Frederic Bouchard from Florin Capital Management. Will Ethos take up shares in the Premier listing? How does the listing valuation compare with Ethos valuation on an NAV per share basis? I do not know if you are talking about Ethos or Ethos Capital. Ethos Capital will not be taking up shares in the listing. It is invested indirectly into Brait.
If you are referring to Ethos Capital, Ethos Capital will not be investing directly into the Premier listing. I think investing into other liquid listed stocks is not what the mandate is for Ethos Capital. The valuation, if you look at the valuation range we came out with in November, the range was rough numbers, ZAR 54 to, do not quote me, ZAR 62 or ZAR 63, I think it was.
You remember that when we pulled the listing in November, the fallback was to sell a 50% stake to Titan at the bottom end of the range. The IPO that we are currently looking at now is at the same valuation we were selling it to Crystal at the bottom end of the price range, which is lower than the valuation in our NAV from a Brait perspective. Those are the only questions I have. Unless there is any others from the call.
We have no further questions from the conference call.
Thank you very much for everyone, again, for taking the time. We really do appreciate it. As we said, feel free to reach out to either Rowan or I if there's any other follow-up questions. We really appreciate the engagement, and thank you very much again. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your line.