Earnings Call: H2 2021

Jun 1, 2021

Good morning, everybody, and welcome on behalf of myself and Lebo to our end February 2021 financial results presentation. I'm hopeful that you're familiar with the two of us for the analysts who follow us. Really, thank you again for your interest that you've shown to register for this audio webcast. A special welcome to our board colleagues on the Famous Brands board and to the members of the new audit team that hopefully have dialed in. A special welcome to all of the Famous Brands family that would've dialed in. This is really your hard work that's on display here. Thank you, and hopefully you're as proud as we are to present these results. We do humbly apologize for the delay in moving the results out by a week. We do hope that the journey continues, or you see the journey continue in terms of improved disclosures. We think, yet again, we've helped to give you some more insight into the business. We'll always welcome feedback from shareholders and potential shareholders, as we have done over the past 12 months. We know it's never enough. There's always a need, particularly in turbulent times like these. We probably have held back a little bit around competitive information. Probably slowed a little bit, but I'm comfortable when IR comes out on the 22nd of June that you'll also have some more disclosures that are helpful in managing the business and managing your investment. Well, just so you're mindful, we'll split the presentation into about 50 minutes of presenting and allow 10 minutes for questions at the end. Just excuse the short statements at times. We'll try and be brief. There will be probably a fair bit of commentary around the three big themes, and that's, I suppose, IFRS again. Relatively new and still coming through the business, the likes of IFRS 16. Very new this year, discontinued operation we'll hear a lot about. Then of course, COVID-19, which has impacted all of our lives, not just our business. There's a lot of usual information that we've relegated to the supplementary section. When the presentation is uploaded to the website afterwards, you'll pick up some of that old familiar stuff that we might normally present to you. In terms of the agenda, which you should have in front of you, the first part will be myself, and I'm going to hand over to Lebo to do section two, and then I will cover the balance of the presentation, and then Lebo and myself will handle Q&A. In terms of where we are right now, if I could just ask you to just look at your screen to just make sure you've got the ability to ask questions if you want to. Those questions you can ask throughout, and we'll pick them up at the end of the presentation in that 10-minute section. Let me get on with it. Just in terms of the operating context, and I think important before we start, that you're going to see lots of pictures of franchise partners throughout this presentation. Really, this is testament to them and the hard work and the bravery that they've shown over this past 12 months. They are the lifeblood of our business. On the screen there, you have Thabo and Patience, who have various Debonairs and Steers outlets in the south of Johannesburg, and really proud of the work they've done. They actually, I think could actually do a bit of a side job on modeling, actually, looking at the two of them there. You'll see lots of franchisees through this presentation that have really pulled a lot of hard work and hardships this year trying to get their businesses back on track, and we're very proud of them and the work that they've done. Just building on that operating context, I think it's important to understand broadly that the operating implications of COVID-19, I mean, most of them are probably obvious and they jump out to you as being fairly normal because they may have impacted your own personal life. It goes without saying that the food services industry has been severely impacted, very difficult safety measures. We've had to reassess certain assets in our supply chain because the basket of goods has changed. As you've seen with most businesses and most people's own lives having to preserve cash, very narrow focus on our geography in terms of expansion, given the difficulties in traveling and of course, realigning our strategy. In terms of the impact on Signature Brands, it has been quite severe, particularly at the top end of the business. There's two things that jump out there for me that have really been key in terms of our business. The one is protecting our core business in terms of our franchisees, and I'll talk about that through the presentation. We've had to do whatever we've had to do, and they've had to do whatever they've had to do to protect their businesses. I think that we're well on track in terms of a recovery plan. The second one was GBK being placed under administration, and I think that the route that we followed in hindsight around that has been the right one, and I'm really comfortable to present these results and drawing a line under GBK, and Lebo will talk a bit more about that. It was a key part of the year and the year has gone by so quickly. I think we forget about the hard lockdown in April and the challenges that we faced as a business. That was a particularly poignant time in Famous Brands' life and the decisions that the board made around that have turned out to be the right ones. Just building on some information around COVID-19. There's a lot on here and it's very colorful. I really just wanted to talk you through some research implications in terms of our business, because we need to understand what we've experienced or what the consumer is experiencing and how we are benefiting and losing from that, and to try and understand what we're seeing in our research. Of course, research has been thrown out completely. I spoke about that at half year. We've had to put in different measures of research, and this is an internal product called the Food Fans Panel. We really had to adapt like everyone else has to give our team some insights in terms of what's happening out there. What this slide says to you very briefly is what the dipsticks have shown you are the key points. I've chosen key months there. That really talks to our brands and the convenience or non-convenience formats that we have. The bottom key indicates the type of channels that they would be using typically, which are the broad channels, other than one being a smaller number. Just to put into context there, if you take the shift from August through to March around sit-down, the encouraging part for me is if you look at that trend, it's heading upwards to a point where we are now and given the third wave, now that that number will obviously change. It certainly gives you some insight that we're on the right trajectory on sit-down. Drive and delivery, which I think has got lots of hype and talk in the marketplace, you can see that is substantiated there through an ongoing trend upwards around delivery. No surprise there, and you can delve into those others yourself around some of those trends. Again, most importantly, the sit-down under pressure, which I think is where we are. That's what people are saying they have used through the pandemic. If you talk about what they're avoiding at the moment, which I think is a flip side of this other picture, I mean, the obvious that jumps out there is that they're avoiding sit-down. The encouraging thing for us, and we're seeing it in behavior, is that they're avoiding it a lot less than they were a few months back, and you can see that number consistently dropping over those months. That's very encouraging for us, and it really does start to talk about a return to some normality. The other part of that is you'll see that delivery has consistently grown, but the gap is not there. It is something too that people are avoiding. It's not immune to the perils of sit-down restaurants. I think, again, data can be a bit skewed, but we've seen the growth in delivery, and I think that that's stabilized. I know that you will have different views around what's permanency, but our view is that you will start to see some return. The next slide really just does talk to that. When we start to ask people what they're likely to use in the near future, bear in mind, if you go back to August, no one knew where we would be in March. You can see that data is evolving over time, and it's showing the right sort of picture that we're looking for in our business, in our particular industry. Again, what jumps out there is if you say what people are going to likely use, is the dependency on delivery is going to drop, which is a good thing for parts of the business, but the real winner there would then be the casual dining part of the business. We play in both spaces, so we need to manage that. Again, the encouraging term for me is really around getting back to normality, and it looks like there is an ability to return back to some sort of normality. If you look in January there at the restaurant drop, again, it makes sense, is that in January they thought, well, unlikely because you're in the middle of the second wave. I don't want to belabor the issue around research. I'll start to wind it up now. This is just to look at the channel behavior, so the type of channels that we talk about in that presentation, and what's the kind of relative size through the COVID pandemic. You can see on the far right there is that sit-down in outlets is really not necessarily something that's of preference and has taken quite a hammering. If you look at the calibration of those graphs, you'll see on the next slide how that changes and moves, too. What's hurt us the most is really the sit-down and outlets on the casual dining side, although we have benefited in the QSR side from the other aspects. If you move on and say, what's your anticipated behavior going to be like post-COVID-19? Again, you can see that sit-down and outlets has dropped significantly from the previous slide. Even currently at that level, the primary reasons for avoiding in the anticipated behavior still relate to COVID-19. You can interpret what you like from research and marketing people tend to, but what we're seeing is the trends heading in the right direction, but also we've been able to capitalize on COVID as we've needed to. In terms of that, what are the kind of trends that we've seen broadly, and I'm talking very broadly around operating context. I've put them all up there across certain categories from consumer behavior right through to technology. I suppose to really share with you what we've noticed and has jumped out broadly in our business. The first one being social media. I mean, it's an obvious one in terms of digital transition that COVID forced, but we're definitely seeing different patterns and different behavior and tone on social media, which sometimes is helpful, sometimes harmful in terms of how you manage the business, and it's a lot more spread out through the week. Typically, we used to see Facebook feedback sort of peak on a Sunday as people were coming back and complaints or compliments increased, and that type of behavior has changed. There's a lot more aggression than there used to be. Mealtime's definitely blurring, so we're seeing that and that has positive and negative impact on the business. That also is driven by curfews right now, and we've seen as curfews were hard at certain times last year, that those changes impacted on mealtimes. Home dining, an obvious trend, and we have benefited from that with home delivery, but we've also seen it through our retail business. We'd also like to see a return to people going out and moving around the country, and that's probably got the biggest benefit for us in terms of the recovery. Half food inflation is something that is really related to H2 rather than H1. Food inflation, I think people were having a great time in the first part of lockdown. There was actually an element of prices decreasing. Certainly H2 and where we are currently, that is starting to come through, and I think retail has probably seen it before we've even seen it. It's probably not as severe as we anticipated back in October when we presented our results. We're fairly comfortable we're managing it, but it's certainly going to push prices through to consumers. As we said before, it's not anything you didn't know, but the food aggregators have really started to increase their presence in the marketplace. Again, we have a relationship with them, but we also have a relationship that we continue to push ourselves in terms of driving market share in that same space. Again, we've all seen the move from e-commerce and contactless payments, and we're seeing it more and more in our business. It's really becoming part of the customer journey, and I'm comfortable to say that we're adapting as well as anybody else to those changes. I'm just going to briefly talk you through some of the context in terms of various trends. I suppose from our perspective, we've always looked at value offerings, but that had to be changed through COVID. Different pack sizes, as you would have seen in retail, different price points. It's not just about saying you didn't have value before, you had to adjust value. We've had to up our game in technology across the digital and social media spheres. The big one has really been where franchisees have dug deep, and that's increasing and improving our own delivery capacity. It's really been a scale game and really working hard around those areas of the business. Our franchise partners have done a phenomenal job there. Of course, your own delivery channel is more profitable, but delivery either way is the least profitable channel across the business. Menus, again, I think as people have adapted their lifestyles through COVID, we've also adapted in terms of healthier options, which was a pre-COVID trend, but has accelerated. Of course, environment is gaining momentum for the right reasons. COVID has helped people to think. We're having to adapt the same way. Of course, safety protocols continue to be a key part of COVID, but also we're comfortable to say we had strong protocols going into this, and they had to be adapted for COVID rather than having to work off a new base. Overall, I'm comfortable that we've responded well, when one looks back on the year to say, how have we responded to the various trends. I'm going to pause there and try and draw a line under COVID and let Lebo talk you through the financial results, and then I'll come back and give you a little bit of insight around where the business has performed at. Thank you, Darren. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Earlier on, Darren reminded us of the harsh and unprecedented reality we had to contend with during the first part of this financial year. In context of the COVID-19 storm, we had to navigate with a strong commercial conviction that this too shall pass, and that we would come out stronger. The picture before you tells a story of a resilient business model whose fundamentals remain intact. Given the loss of a full month's trading being April 2020, which is typically a key trading month for us due to the Easter holidays, as well as operating within the context of the various lockdown restrictions, the decline in our various performance matrices, as you see, were to be expected. What could not have been anticipated with certainty at the time we published our interim results in October last year, were the following two matters, amongst others. One, would the business be profitable in the second half of the year? Just to recap, at half year, we were PBIT neutral if one were to exclude GBK's half year loss. Two, how much reliance would we have to place on our debt facilities to fund the business given the impact of COVID-19 on the business? I trust that you are just as pleased as I am that the group was indeed profitable in the second half of the year, as evidenced by the ZAR 193 million operating profit before non-operational items, and that the business generated ZAR 574 million for the full year from operations, of which ZAR 518 million was generated in the second half alone. The business could thus self-fund without having to rely on debt. Instead, we were able to voluntarily repay an additional ZAR 91 million in the second half, despite the various COVID-19 related challenges. This is testament to how highly cash generative the business remains. The full impact of the group's investment in GBK is reflected in the EPS number. We had indicated at interim that the group no longer has control of GBK, as the business was placed into administration in line with the U.K. Insolvency Act 1986. As a result, you may have noticed that our income statement has been split into two this year, being the portion that relates to continuing operations, as well as the cutting out of GBK's results in a note for discontinued operations. You can find this note in our full S, it's Note 19. From a JSE perspective, we are required to still report the EPS and HEPS numbers on an all-in basis, which is the picture depicted on this slide. The ZAR 4.7 billion revenue from continuing operations represents 72% of the pre-COVID revenue, that's the F2020 revenue. At PBIT level, this translated to 32% of F2020 PBIT. The question that Darren and I often get is, how long do we think it will take us to see a recovery to the FY20 levels? As you can imagine, this is challenging to pin down given how fluid the COVID-19 situation is. The transition to lockdown level 2 just two days ago in response to the reality of us being in a third COVID-19 wave is a case in point. We will unpack the revenue and operating profit lines when focusing on the segmental performance in the next two slides. The non-operational items figure of ZAR 193 million is non-cash. It relates to the impairment of some of our brands, mainly Signature Brands, which we cautioned the market about in a trading statement published in May. The breakdown of our net finance cost of ZAR 176 million is provided at Note 13 of our condensed consolidated financial statement, which are also available on our website. The majority of the interest relates to our debt facility. There is also some interest relating to IFRS 16 liabilities, about ZAR 31 million. On the face of it, one would have expected our tax expense line to not be negative given the loss before tax. This is not the case mainly as a result of the impairment. Our effective tax rate recon provided in Note 18 of our full financial statement provides a breakdown of the different items that had an impact on our tax line. Our SA business reported a 30% decline in revenue to ZAR 4.3 billion. Leading Brands revenue declined to ZAR 491 million. Consistent with recent years, the group's quick service restaurant brands, being Steers, Debonairs Pizza, Fishaways, and Milky Lane, outperformed the casual dining brands, namely Wimpy and Mugg & Bean. Our Signature Brands portfolio comprises a wide range of bespoke casual dining offerings. Their performance, with revenue down 60% to ZAR 76 million, reflect trading conditions which were particularly harsh on this dine-in trading format, including capacity restrictions, curfews, and alcohol bans. Total volumes across supply chain declined due to lower demand on the front-end brands division. Combined revenue of ZAR 3.3 billion was reported compared to ZAR 4.5 billion in the prior year. Our retail business, which produces condiments, coffees, and frozen meats product, has operated for a full financial year as a standalone business unit, reporting revenue of ZAR 151 million. This business unit experienced an increase in sales during the year as consumer demand for at home consumption increased. The U.K. experienced severe economic hardships as lockdown restrictions were only lifted in August, with certain of these restrictions still in place. Wimpy UK turnover down 8%, with revenue in rand terms reported at ZAR 112 million, which is pleasing in context of the hardships. In context of the less stringent COVID-19 trading restrictions in the AME region, though, the AME business unit delivered solid results. Combined revenue reported for the region was ZAR 360 million, which is in line with prior year. The operating profit for Leading Brands was down 55% to ZAR 200 million for the year. Signature Brands posted an operating loss of ZAR 31 million this year. Our supply chain division was negatively impacted by lower volumes, with operating profit coming in at ZAR 169 million compared to the ZAR 457 million last year. In South Africa, operating profit fell by 70% to ZAR 250 million this year. In our U.K. business segment, we reported a loss of ZAR 87 million. There were no further operating losses impacting the group's results from the date on which GBK entered administration. The AME division delivered a pleasing operating profit of ZAR 30 million. The group's overall operating margin was a record low of 3.8%, reflecting extreme margin pressure across the business. The operating margin in Signature Brands was 41% negative, down from 12% positive in the prior year. This reflects the lockdown restriction levels relating to restaurant capacity and alcohol ban during a portion of the year. In the supply chain division, the operating profit margin declined to 5% due to rising food inflation and a decision by the group to support financially stressed franchise partners. Through partially absorbing price increases and deferring passing these on to our franchise partners. The U.K. operating margin of negative 19.4% reflects the poor margin performance that came through the GBK business in the period that we were still consolidating for. The group's balance sheet remains solid with an asset base worth ZAR 3 billion. The decrease in the net asset position is largely attributable to the impairment and subsequent disposal of GBK. While our equity position was eroded from ZAR 1.8 billion last year to ZAR 391 million this year, it is comforting to see how the business was able to absorb GBK's ZAR 1.5 billion impairment without going into negative equity. Although our gearing rose to 351%, as you may have noticed on the salient features slide, this was largely driven by the impact of the impairment on our equity position. Overall, we are comfortable with our level of our total gross borrowings of ZAR 1.5 billion. This slide provides a snapshot of our net working capital position at the end of the year, which we continue to monitor as part of our overall balance sheet and liquidity management. Thank you and well done to my colleagues who did a fantastic job at this. In my introduction, I mentioned that the fundamentals of the business remain intact. This picture before you is testament to that. We went into the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic with robust cash reserves of ZAR 486 million and concluded the financial period with a strong ZAR 444 million cash position. This puts the business at an advantage with regards to weathering the third wave. We closed the period with ZAR 400 million of our RCF facility unutilized. In addition, we have access to ZAR 200 million overdraft facility, which we haven't used. Our solid relationship with our primary lender, Nedbank, offers additional comfort in how we think about our liquidity position, and for that we are grateful. In conclusion, I would like to thank our ever-resilient franchise partners, without whom the picture before us would not have been possible. Kudos too to my colleagues across the business. The agility you displayed in navigating the first and second waves illustrates that our core values are not just words on walls. Lastly, thank you to our shareholders, whose conviction in the business's prospect remained unshaken even as the market and our operating environment behaved as it did over the past few months. One of our shareholders encouraged us to always remember to let the main thing be the main thing. With this in mind, I can reassure our shareholders that our continued focus on cash and working capital management is and always will be top of mind to ensure that we prioritize the main thing being the main thing, which for us is our vision to be the leading innovative, branded franchise and food services business in South Africa and selected markets. With that, I will hand back to Darren. Great. Thanks, Lebo. Hopefully, I can share a bit around the business now, and we can put a line under the numbers as we move forward, but that's very encouraging to see, and I think we're in a great position to tackle this year of recovery. I think, when one looks at those results on the face of it, not necessarily something one would want to present or be proud of, but I think it's important to unpack that, as I'll do now around the microcosms of the business and the understanding below that because I think you'll sense a pride coming out of us in terms of the work that's been done, and we understand what the impact of these numbers are, particularly around GBK, which I said earlier, we've drawn a line under. Just in terms of group wide, I think it's important to look at those four factors. There's an overarching theme around what we did and what we had to do to keep the business going. Again, our primary focus, as I said earlier, was to assist and protect our franchise partners, and lots of people would try and want the detail of that. Again, it's a relationship, so each franchise partner is different and unique, and you've seen this dynamic play out about QSR and CDR being very differently impacted. We obviously have a recovery program. Just roughly, we typically assist franchise partners every year for different things, and that's really in the form of royalty relief and marketing relief. It's quite difficult to quantify the number because there is a base, but roughly we estimate that through the crisis we've probably provided around ZAR 70 million worth of royalty relief, which is related directly to the COVID program rather than typical business programs. Bear in mind, we operate on a percentage, and percentage of a lower number doesn't mean you can easily extrapolate that number going forward. Roughly for those of you who have models, you'll get a sense of that contribution. We've been focused on resetting the business and bringing in more agility, which we think we've done. Of course, that has resulted in some trauma around rightsizing, reducing costs, and obviously managing cash and getting that flexibility over the next two years. Not all easy, but the business has responded well to those challenges. Of course, through that, we think we've improved operational efficiencies, but there's always more we can do. Menu rationalization has been a key, a part of surviving COVID. Of course, as I said earlier about delivery capacity and third-party aggregators have really been an accelerator of surviving this process. In terms of the SA context, I mean, we are primarily an SA business, so I think important to focus that. It's really critical to understand that come 1st of May, we weren't able to operate the whole business. A lot of people were very brave and jumped in and got the business going and got moving. That was a key part of what we had to do. The casual dining has experienced a much slower recovery. That's really been impacted by restrictions, and not as easy to navigate as the QSR segment because delivery typically tends to favor QSR. Of course, the knock-on effect of the supply chain, as Lebo said, when you lose demand at the front end, it pulls all the way through. The plants that have serviced QSR have benefited a lot better than those primarily focused casual dining, and I'll show you those numbers just now. The high food inflation in H2 wasn't immediately passed on. We've seen that coming through more in the March, April menu cycle. We absorbed as much as we could within reason in that particular cycle. In the AME space, many restaurants were closed, and we've had to offer similar financial support. The number I gave you earlier was an all-in number across the group. Some exciting parts, though, I mean, expansion into Oman has been a key point for us. Again, the team could write a book on that on just some of the experiences trying to open a store in COVID-19 in a foreign country. The curfew in Botswana, particularly in wave 2, was challenging. I think when I reported at half year, we were in a good space in Botswana, but the second wave curfew and even running through to currently has been quite challenging around that side. Of course, the less stringent restrictions have helped us deliver solid results. We are seeing, you'll see a bit of data later, is that the AME recovery seems to be slower than the SA recovery. It wasn't as impacted, but we're starting to see a slow or anticipate a slower recovery. Of course, our strategic alliance partners have been very helpful in giving us opportunities for growth going forward. We're very optimistic about our AME business. On the U.K. side, the GBK recovery, we've spoken a lot about, and that almost became impossible with the lockdowns and what happened. I think in hindsight, if you look at what happened, the second lockdown or third lockdown over November, December, our timing was impeccable around our decisions. The restaurant business there was sold. We weren't necessarily involved in that transaction, but we are delighted that there was an ability through our actions to solve the problem and save some of the restaurants and a lot of jobs. Obviously, we have no involvement in that process now, so we don't know how it's gone from there. We are grateful that we were able to rescue jobs for our colleagues. Wimpy UK continued to trade and has really done a phenomenal job. I can't talk highly enough of what the team has done there and the work they've done at head office and across the franchise network in a very, very tough environment, embracing delivery, and really proud of how that business has bounced through this. Of course, it's a highly competitive market, so we'll always find it tough. Really, the future of that business is really optimistic for us. Just trying to give you a sense of numbers. The numbers are not pretty at all in any shape or form. If you look at the Signature Brands numbers there, fairly easy to say, well, at 52% drop for the year on like-on-like, compared to the 70% it was at half year, I suppose one has to be quite proud. The same if you look at Leading Brands, 29.1% down, but at half year, that was 48% down. A strong recovery. In fact, the SA number, which was 32, at half year was 51.2. The AME business, as I said to you, is not recovering as quickly, but it wasn't as severely impacted. At half year, that was 31%. Interestingly, the system-wide number and the like-for-like number are very close, which is unusual in our business. We normally see a bit more daylight in that graph, and that really talks to the closures and openings, which is not necessarily gaining traction this year, and I'll talk about that just now. In the AME space on the right-hand side, there are some standout performers there. The Zambia business was only down 11.2% and the Botswana business down 13%. There's quite a lot of information on that in the supplementary slides if you wish to look afterwards, just around the by-country performance. Those are the two that have stood out for us. What I thought was interesting here is just from a provincial performance. In South Africa, we're quite focused around the geographies. Of course, I think COVID has highlighted that to us as the government has reported statistics. We also couldn't go to our favorite holiday destinations. We're not traveling as much. Of course, that has an impact on our business. We're very mindful that our business is reliant on people moving around, and the biggest inhibitor to growth right now is lack of movement of people. When I say that, you might say, well, we've gone away this weekend. If you think about church tours, school hockey tours, people just going to birthday parties that they would be typically going to, not going to for 50th, flying down to Cape Town for the weekend, that is not happening. That's happening across all LSMs. The ability to go and visit your granny in Warmbaths for the weekend just hasn't happened anymore. There are some standout things that I noticed, and they're obvious. If you talk about Limpopo, in fact, I bumped into a colleague a couple of months back, he'd actually just come back from there, and we were building a store up there. He just said to me, "Sjo, Darren, I don't know what's happening up in Polokwane," but he thinks everybody's moving there. We can see that reflecting in our numbers. Contrary to that, though, quite severely affected has been the Western Cape. This is across our Leading Brands portfolio. Again, not surprising given the lack of tourism or international tourism that typically drives growth down there and that we have benefited from in the past, particularly key destinations like the waterfront, et cetera. Again, that element of recovery bodes well because we'd like to see that improving. I'll give you a snapshot about where we are through the same graph a little bit later. In terms of the footprint that I spoke about earlier, again, there's lots of information under supplementary slides. This particular snapshot excludes GBK and tashas. The key pressure there, I think the number that will probably jump out at you is firstly stores closed, let me focus on new stores first, because I'm actually quite chuffed with the number that came out there. At half year, we were sitting at 51 in terms of new stores, that number has jumped up to 92, as you can see there. We still managed to put revamps through, which has been a testament to franchisees' conviction and strength of belief in their businesses. The closed stores number on the face of it at 123 is quite a daunting number, one does need to break it down. If you look at AME, where the biggest pain has been felt, 22 of those were Mr Bigg's in Nigeria, which really does still relate to our fix and repair strategy there, we're quite comfortable. It's never nice to see stores closed, but also the initial COVID wave did certainly impact the business, but we remain confident that we're doing the right thing there strategically. If you strip those numbers out, it probably takes the shock out. I am comfortable to say that for those of you who run your models, you'll see that the closures are actually quite smooth across the brand portfolio. They are a lot less prominent in casual dining than you think that they would be. I think there might be an expectation that that sort of pain has been felt in casual dining. It's not the case. It's actually across the portfolio in terms of brand and geography, to be honest. We've seen some pain across all countries. In the SA context, which is where you're seeing the 65, it does spread across the brand portfolios and not necessarily related to one particular brand. If you go and look at the overall numbers versus last year, you will see that the numbers are quite big because you've obviously got GBK and tashas in there, which would come out. In terms of moving on to supply chain, I think it's just important to just recap here in terms of where we are. As Lebo has pointed out, the business has really struggled across the board in terms of lack of volume. There has been some really nice positive aspects. The one for me is the line at the bottom, which has really been a slowdown in the CapEx, and that has not been to the detriment of the business. I think we've been fairly confident in that aspect. Logistics, which I'll talk about just now, has taken the most pain. If you look at that ZAR 13 million right slap bang in the middle there, that looks like a horrific number. If you think about what that was at half year, it was ZAR 46 million at half year because of the pain of the lockdowns and of course, the investment that we had to put in terms of running trucks at low capacity and various other things within that. I think a great recovery on the logistics side is something to be very proud of from our perspective. In terms of manufacturing, again, the team has done a great job focusing on various aspects. Given that the lack of demand, dropping 34% from the front end, we've really had the benefit of certain plants benefiting from QSR, but we've had to manage that capacity. We've also had to keep a focus on safety, and also, again, the team is very proud of their safety record with lost time injuries significantly lower than in previous years. In terms of the plant numbers, so overall, 23% down on the plants that we own 100%, and you can see no plant was left unscathed. The plants that typically service QSR a little bit more, like the sauce and spice plant, probably less impacted. Again, if you think about where they were at half year, the overall number at half year was 44% down. The ice cream plant is interesting, that was 58% down at half year, but it is one of those items that we are seeing is not recovering as quickly. Those indulgent and impulsive moments haven't come back yet. In terms of the plants that we share with partners, our JV partnerships, those plants were down 21%. Again, some recovery there. You'll see that the cheese plant, which has probably a slightly more bias to QSR, and of course, products that serve well in delivery, bounced back a lot quicker than the others. The beverage business in terms of TruBev being bottled water, bottled juices, have really found a hard space there. I'm sure the retailers would also tell you pack size changes have made a difference. Bulk packs, which we don't play in, have gained preference versus our smaller single packs. Ten Ten Central Kitchen, which services the casual dining and Signature Brands particularly, has found the recovery a little bit harder. Again, there has been recovery. You will pick up in some of our notes around post-balance sheet events is that we have, from the 1st of May, sold The Great Bakery company back to the founders and our long-standing partners there, and that is reported in those results. There wasn't an F21 event. On the logistics side, again, very difficult business to operate through these times. We're not out of the woods there yet. Again, we're making progress every month, finding efficiencies. We've had to decommission two distribution centers, which fortuitously we were able to do. If you want to look at our supplementary notes around Project Decade, it'll give you some insight there. The CapEx investment that we did make was very focused around efficiencies and capacity, given that we had reduced overall capacity in the business. Route optimization is a real challenge at the moment. As we enter these waves, franchisees' inventory requirements differ, but we have to continue to meet that demand and assist them as much as we can. That volume is coming back, and we're really on the right path right now in terms of that recovery. From a logistics perspective, I think we've seen a better recovery. At half year, that volume number was 46% down, and we're quite comfortable with that spread. It's pretty even. You can see again, the Western Cape number jumps out a bit more compared to the others, and again, I highlighted that earlier. Mpumalanga too, although we made a change there towards the end of the year, we've closed that facility. It only closed in February, the volume still went through, and that really does relate to some of the slowdown in tourism in areas such as the park. Of course, exports relating to our Africa business, slower than in previous years. Our retail business, which I can't hold back my excitement about. It's something I've spoken about in presentations. We are reporting it now as a standalone business, the sales increased 22%. The case sales is actually more because although we operated for a full 12 months, there's a slight difference in the base. It's not full 12 months versus 12, but I'll show you the case sales now. Of course, I'm also excited that we're back to launching new products and products that are being well embraced by our consumers, and those three there are three examples of what we have launched more recently. In terms of the retail, I thought it was also just helpful to just give you a bit of insight as to how that business behaved over the year. Of course, it's not always exact because our sales into the retailers may not well be as it goes through the till. In terms of case sales, we showed a 41% growth. That's not a price case difference, it's just because there's one month in the base that's out on the numbers. The ZAR 151 million is the correct number, and these are the correct case growths. This really is something to be excited about for us. You can see how things spiked pre-lockdown, during lockdown, I think very similar to probably some of the retailer numbers that you've seen. Again, a business that helped us from a cash flow perspective and kept us going. Just a recap on our strategic intent, I mean Lebo did refer to it. I think it is important to just remind you of what our focus is, what's kept us going through this year, and what's really kept us on a path to recovery. Being clear on your strategy, which we were, has helped us. Those seven pillars there are very, very important, and there's two that jump out, and that's really the first two being restoring our financial performance and leading in the categories we're competing. Those are the two that we are focused on. The others are there too, and they are as important in terms of what has to happen in our business, particularly around prioritizing our franchise partners and optimizing our capital management too. Those remain our key strategic objectives. I think you'd be delighted to see that we're not wavering from our strategy, and we continue to be focused. Really to recap on what Lebo had said earlier, is that our goal and our vision of being the leading innovative branded franchise and food service business in South Africa and selected markets is front and center of what we're trying to do every day in this business and what our teams and our franchise partners are also focused on. I'm going to end the F21 year there, I think, on that high note around the vision and how we stack to our strategic intent. I'm not going to close up because I know that some of you are probably more interested in where we are currently than where we've been because you're able to read financial statements, and history is history. Where we are now is quite important. From the current trading snapshot on March and April, as I said to you, we are actually benchmarking ourselves versus two years ago, not F21, and I'll show you why just now. In terms of the two months, March and April, this is where we're trending from a like-on-like and system-wide at Leading Brands level. We're 6% down system-wide on the same period 2019. We've got a way to go, but we're actually very encouraged by those numbers. If you think about the lack of activity around COVID-19, how we would benefit over the Easter period, and of course, the slower recovery in casual dining versus quick service restaurants, we're very happy. If you'd offered us this number this time last year, we would grab it with both hands. Signature Brands, not as much of a romantic story, again, compared to where we've been, that recovery is slightly better. Again, also being dragged down by the hospital business, which are performing worse, and that's understandable. There are still stricter restrictions on visitors in hospitals, et cetera. That business does pull down the overall number, and there is lots of different activities within Signature Brands around it. The AME business, as I alluded to earlier, is slower to recover, we're seeing that versus 2019. The base wasn't as hard hit through COVID, we are seeing a slightly slower recovery through that. Lots of exchange rate differences and challenges in some of those markets, not necessarily related to COVID, I think some of it around the economic challenges. Of course, you can see the gap there now with the store closures that we've experienced, showing that gap and difference between like-for-like and system wide. I mentioned it just now, the provincial snapshot may or may not be useful to you. Again, just to highlight that you see there from a like-for-like and a system wide, the gap in Limpopo. Limpopo is still standing out in Western Cape, slowing down. Even if you compare it to F 2021, and now we're going back to F2019, those two trends are still the same and those gaps are there. You can see even provincially, we see similar trends. There are some provinces recovering better than others, and obviously our calibration size is different in there. This is the front and center of the business. This reflects Leading Brands, and that is what drives the business. Really encouraging that the engine of the business is starting to drive and get into gear properly, which will flow through the entire business. Just my last slide is just, I suppose, a little bit of a cop-out, but to try and end on a high note. If you compare current comparatives to F21, which is actually what we will report on, although we've been quite tough on ourselves comparing to F2019, you look at the same provincial snapshots, and you can see where we are versus last year. Now, it is a cop-out because we were closed for one month, but it just gives you a sense of the kind of numbers that we're going to be reporting and what we are seeing flowing through the business. On that, I'm going to close, and I'm going to ask Pat and Dean, our franchisees from Milky Lane, to answer the questions. No, I'm joking. Lebo and I will take your questions. I ask Ntando, our Group Risk Executive, to go through the questions and to read them out to us, you know that they're being filtered with a very ethical lens. Thanks, Darren, for your comprehensive and insightful presentations. In the next segment, we look to respond to questions from the market. At this point, I think we have three or four questions. Probably I'll start with the first question from Sean out at Mazi Asset Management. Please comment on covenants on revised debt facilities. I think that's yours, Lebo. Yeah. That's right. Thank you, Ntando. Thank you, Sean. In terms of the covenants on the revised facilities, you would have noticed that we've disclosed that there was no requirement for us to be measured on those. The only requirement was in relation to the ZAR 250 million liquidity covenant, which we met comfortably. The first measurement period for the financial covenants from here will be at our next interest for August 2021. Disclosure around our covenants can be found in Note 14 of our long form or summarized financial statement. Thanks, Lebo. The next question will be from Graeme out at Cap Agri. Have your QSR sites and retail fuel sites performed and compared to standalone sites? Actually, the question is broken into two. The next part of the question was to understand if our highway sites perform differently to non-highway sites. Yeah. I have to answer broad brushstrokes. I get the question, so thanks, Graeme. Generally, as I said in the presentation, people are not traveling to the same extent that we are accustomed to, particularly over peak. If you split fuel into highway, non-highway, as you've done, generally, our performance on those highway sites is down significantly lower than the numbers that I probably quoted you. Again, urban sites have probably benefited to some degree where they picked up delivery business or people are living within their suburbs. That whole kind of local commutes, local shop, localization trend has benefited those. Typically, the highway sites, if you look at a month like December, where they're critical, you look at Easter, we didn't have a great December, and we didn't have a great Easter in those trends. People are just not getting out in the same capacity as they used to, particularly bus trade groups and individual traders. Even when they are traveling, their behavior is different. They're not necessarily wanting to sit down. They're quick in and out, and moving around. Of course, there's less traffic. I hope that gives you a sense, but that is an area of the business that we are banking on recovery in, and of course, will come over time. Thanks, Darren. The next question will be from David out at SaltLight Capital. Cash flow generation in the second half seems strong. Could you share how you are thinking about excess cash deployment? Thanks for the question. In fact, to answer that, we'd need to revisit our revised facility in terms of how it's structured. Just to recap, previously, we had a revolving credit facility of ZAR 710 million. When we refinanced the current debt structure, we took that up to ZAR 1.1 billion, the facility. That gives us an ability to put excess cash towards the RCF, which is what we've been doing. Thanks, Lebo. The next question will be from Anthony at Small Talk Daily Research. The stronger rand has assisted in imported food ingredients, but high soft commodity prices are hitting the entire sector now. We have seen many companies warn on input cost pressures. Can you please give us your perspective and what have been your inflationary costs and menu price increases? Can you fully recover? Thanks, Anthony. You're absolutely right. We did caution around that at our half year. I probably over-egged it at half year, to be honest with you. I used some strong terms. We were expecting it. It's probably been a little bit softer than we thought and a little bit later than we thought. The real pressure has been around proteins and oils, and we've weathered that storm, and we think we've managed to absorb that within our menu prices that have gone through. What happens over the next couple of months, I'm probably as unsure as you are. We're expecting that to come through. We've taken a variety of menu price increases in April/May. You can see in our supplementary slides, there's information around those numbers. For F21, it was around 3%-4%, depends on when you look at it. We're probably in for around seven this year in our current outlook, taken in two phases, the April/May, then probably November again. It is quite volatile, so it's not surprising if we came back in two months' time and said something's changed. From what we can see, it looks like it's settling, but there is a bubble under the surface now around the maize price issue and where that's going to settle. I've probably given you a long answer, but very clear on what you've said, and we're comfortable that we're managing it well. Where we are right now is in a good space in terms of how it's rolled through. Obviously, because there's lots of variables in our business, we think we've managed it quite well. I agree with you. There's more pressure coming, but most of it we had anticipated. Thanks, Darren. The next question is from Itumeleng, from Benguela Global Fund Managers. What is your medium-term target on debt? That is, what would be the ideal position management wants to be in terms of net debt to EBITDA? Yeah. I'll take that, Darren. Thank you, Itumeleng. If we first talk about the broad state position, what we're comfortable with is around ZAR 1 billion range-ZAR 1.5 billion range. You'll have noticed that we closed out at ZAR 1.5 billion range. Quite comfortable with where we are even in the short term. In terms of the net debt to EBITDA, the first thing is to meet our financial covenants, which are disclosed in Note 14 again of the long form. Where we would be comfortable is certainly below the level required for us to start getting onto the dividend story. Okay. Thanks, Lebo. In the interest of time, I'll probably take two more questions. Okay. We have one question from Alec from biznews.com. After GBK and tashas, are there any more sales of brands being planned? Alec, no, I think our strategy is very clear right now. The trimming of the portfolio is probably complete. There may well be opportunistic things that come along, but I'm comfortable that the Signature Brands portfolio is something now that we can work with. There may well be something small on the manufacturing side if things pan out, maybe not. Nothing critical. In terms of the core business, it is the same as it is. I mentioned the Great Bakery company sale as an example. No, I think the Signature Brand portfolio is in good shape now. Thanks, Darren. The last question I'll take is from Nick at Signal AM. Looking ahead, what are your expectations on store closures? What % of franchisees are currently not economically sustainable? Look, that's always a difficult one because we don't have access to franchisees' balance sheets, so we have a good sense of the P&L. We're not anticipating the kind of year we've had behind us. We think that that's fairly stable. There will always be movement in the base, so don't get me wrong, particularly with relocations. What we don't know is the demographic changes post-COVID-19. We never provide a projection on that, but we're not anticipating any form of surge or anything that's out of the blue or abnormal. In terms of the franchisee profitability, remember that franchisees have had relief like we've all had in business. As much as the base has dropped, we've provided relief. Government has been helpful around UIF, TERS. Landlords have been very helpful. Banks have been very helpful. Franchisees have rolled their sleeves up and worked damn hard. Labor has really lost out in this whole conversation because there's been a lot less hours put through, which has kept the cost down. The model itself has readjusted to some degree. It's really around now the recovery and how profitable the businesses are. On the path we're on right now, we're very optimistic. Thanks, Darren and Lebo, on enlightening us on your view of the business. Those are all the questions I have for you two. Thank you, Ntando. Okay. Well, thanks, Ntando. I'll close out now. Really just to say thank you to everybody involved. We've been through a year-end process. To thank the team at KPMG. We were admittedly not your first time around our audit, and they really have been wonderful to us and helped us through the process. Thank you to our team at Nedbank who supports us, to our sponsors, Standard Bank. Really appreciate the help. To Nedbank, who've been great to us this year. To the Famous Brands family, thank you for everything that you've done. To the board for the support that you've given Lebo and I, and to the chair, Santie Botha, for the personal support she gives me. Always there whenever we need her, whenever something happens. As you can imagine, in a year like COVID, there's always something happening. Our reliance on the board has been always pressurizing then, but very thankful for the work that they've done and the support they've given us. Thank you, and thanks for listening, and we hope to engage with shareholders and investors post this.