Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the Pick n Pay annual financial results announcement for the year ending February 2024. As always, we are, we're doing it here, we're doing it in Johannesburg, and we've got a number of people who are online. So thank you very much to all of those who are joining us and who are not present in the room. Hope you've got good reception and that you can hear. Your questions will be able to be answered, so just follow the process at the end, and we'll make sure that they get put to the team and will be answered properly. Our agenda for this morning is I will start off with the chairman's report. Sean will then do a brief introduction.
Lerena will give you the results overview, and Sean will then go and give a strategy update as to where we are, and then afterwards, we will have questions. This past year has been one of challenge, disappointment, and encouragement. We were all saddened by the passing of my father, Raymond Ackerman, the founder of Pick n Pay, and an icon in the company, in the industry, and indeed, the country. He built Pick n Pay around three core values: the value of consumer sovereignty, doing good as good business, and business efficiency. Since 1967, these values have been enshrined in the way we do business. Given our history and legacy, it was distressing to find that operational changes over many years had caused the core business to decline to its position at the end of the 2024 financial year.
For many years, there were attempts to streamline and refocus Pick n Pay. Operational structures were unwieldy and needed modernization. As a result, the business embarked on a centralization project to keep up with the rest of the industry. However, it became clear in the post-pandemic era that the work done over the previous decade had not resulted in a sustainable model for our core corporate stores. The profit recovery lulled us into a false sense of security. The impact of a number of black swan events, coupled with certain inappropriate strategic initiative, caused a precipitous decline in the profitability of our Pick n Pay supermarket business. But it's true to say that we were not unique in having to face these external problems. All retailers did, so it would not be honest to shift the blame to external factors entirely.
The success of Boxer, the rest of Africa, our VAS strategy, and our clothing businesses carried Pick n Pay and also provided a strong foundation for the recovery of the overall business. In 2022, the management of the company undertook a strategic review of the business. As a part of the resultant Ekuseni strategy, liabilities relating to both the core Pick n Pay supermarket business and the Boxer, rest of Africa, and the clothing businesses were converted to long-term debt, and capital was raised to support the strategy. It became evident, however, that key elements of the strategy were not working in the core Pick n Pay supermarket business. The problem we were facing had been correctly diagnosed. It was a solution that was strategically flawed. Fortunately, it was only nine months after the launch of Ekuseni that the board took immediate and decisive action.
Sean Summers was brought back to the company as CEO, and he has rapidly rebuilt the Pick n Pay team using a number of current, new, and former executives in their area of expertise. Many executives had been playing out of position and now are back to doing what they're good at. For Pick n Pay to survive and thrive again, it needs to embark on a fundamental step change with new ideas and dynamic leadership. Pick n Pay needs a vibrant management team in place to continue the turnaround in 2027 and is one of Sean's key KPIs to succession. Given the position in which we found ourselves, the board has elected to do a ZAR 4 billion rights issue, which is supported by the Ackerman family.
This will be followed by an IPO of a portion of our Boxer business, hopefully by the end of 2024. We thank our funders and other stakeholders for the support of the recapitalization of the business. The board believes this is the best approach to reinvest in our company, recapitalize the business, and reduce debt. This will enable Pick n Pay's management to start investing back into the business for growth. At this critical time, it is understandable that the Ackerman family would carefully consider the future. Ackerman Investment Holdings has chosen to follow its rights in the upcoming capital raise. We will do this because we have confidence in the future of the company, in Sean, and in the management team.... My father, Raymond, and my mother, Wendy's, legacy is an integral part of the Pick n Pay story.
We believe the commitment of a strong shareholder, rooted in the company's founding values, is needed now more than ever to give the management the support they need to complete the renewal they have started. I also recognize the need for change in the composition of the board and its committees. In this spirit of inspiring change and over 14 years as chair, I feel the time to retire is approaching. We need new blood and ideas. I will, though, stay on to support Sean with the turnaround until the release of the 2025 full year results, and thereafter, I will remain on the board. The Ackerman family has also made other appropriate changes to the way it exercises influence at the board and as a shareholder to further strengthen the business that have been shared in other announcements.
These changes will provide a period of stability and continuity as the board steers the company through its current crisis. These changes are summarized on the slide in front of you. I would like to thank the management team, both for what they have done so far and for what lies ahead. I would also like to thank the board of directors for their ability to self-reflect, to accept what has gone wrong under their watch, and for the unbelievable effort they have put into righting the ship. Sean and I have always had a strong relationship, and I thank him for coming back on board and for providing inspirational leadership inside and outside the business. Thank you, Sean. Notwithstanding the challenges we are facing, and they are considerable, the morale at Pick n Pay is higher than it has been for some time.
This is almost entirely due to Sean's leadership. I would like to congratulate Marek and the Boxer team, Hazel and the clothing team, and all the other performing teams for yet another outstanding performance. I'd also like to thank everyone at Pick n Pay involved in the turnaround, in the debt restructure, and the recapitalization-related processes over the past few months, and not to forget the team that's been dealing with the results, be it our team and the EY team. I'd also like to thank the other stakeholders for their support and to all of those who have provided guidance. Please be assured that we are committed to fixing the business, drawing on our operational strength, our people, our brand, and our legacy. Thank you. I'd like to call on Sean. Thanks.
Thanks, Gareth, and good morning, Wendy, and good morning to everybody and all of our colleagues and friends and everybody out there watching this broadcast today. Obviously, our main business here today is twofold. One is to share with you the results from the year past, and then, very importantly, to share with you our plans for the go forward from here. It's obviously been quite tough. As Gareth has said, this has been a very tough period of time for the company that we've just been through, but I think it's in the toughest periods of time that you are actually put to the test and the cream truly rises to the top.
So the first thing that I want to say to everybody in this room that is sitting here and the people who are watching and our colleagues who we'll chat to later, I want to thank you for the extraordinary effort that has gone into this company in the last six months, and specifically over the last couple of months, getting the end of the year financials together. I shared with James yesterday evening, that I've learned something new, so it just shows, even at my age, you can still learn. We always learn. It's clearly become apparent to me that the less beans there are to count at the end of the year, the longer it takes the bean counters to count them. So, notwithstanding that, we really want to thank you for the extraordinary, extraordinary effort that has gone into putting these numbers together.
As Gareth says, there are elements of the company that are really magnificent and, truly beautiful, and then we have our currently under stress and challenged Pick n Pay piece, which we will get to in a little while. Before I call on Lerena to come up and present to you the numbers from the last year, I just want to share this with you as a philosophy, and it is something that I have instilled in amongst all of us inside Pick n Pay, and that is that I have removed everybody's rearview mirrors. Nobody in this company is allowed a rearview mirror anymore. No one. The only person who can have a rearview mirror is me, and that's for context, to understand how we got here.
But for everybody else in this organization, we are clearly focused on the road that is ahead, for it is true, you can do nothing about yesterday. We can only deal with today, tomorrow, and what comes ahead. So, Lerena, over to you. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
... Thank you, Sean. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us here in the auditorium and online this morning. As Sean and Gareth both have said, it's been a difficult year for us, and the numbers reflect that. As a team, what we've tried to do in this morning's presentation is to be as clear as possible as to what has transpired in the year that's passed, and then also to indicate where Sean will talk to how we will address the challenges specifically in Pick n Pay. The group delivered turnover of ZAR 112.3 billion. We are a substantial operation. Turnover was up 5.4%, like-for-like 2.9. Our gross profit margin of 18.1% contracted 150 basis points.
50 of that relates to our modernization of our franchise program and is countered by an opposite increase in our other income. So the underlying increase in our gross profit margin is 100 basis points, and I'll talk to that in, in the slides to come. Our other income was boosted by the franchise model change. The underlying other income was up 4.2%, with our value-added services continue to grow strongly, up 13%. Our expenses is up 11.9%, 8.2% if we exclude the once-off costs that is recorded in this result. For context, the following once-off costs I will refer to throughout the presentation: firstly, ZAR 116 million worth of duplication costs as we transition from Longmeadow to Eastport. That's included in our gross profit line.
Then we also have costs included in our trading expenses, ZAR 307 million of employee restructure costs, as well as ZAR 435 million of incremental increase in our franchise provisioning, half of that pertaining to our Botswana business. This resulted in the group recording a trading profit of ZAR 385 million, compared to the ZAR 3 billion of last year. This is a significant delta. Even if we strip out the once-off costs I've just articulated, of about eight hundred and fifty million, it still illustrates the decline year-on-year, and I'll unpack that in more detail in the slides to come. Our comparable PBT was ultimately a loss of ZAR 1.7 billion, compared to last year's profit of ZAR 1.8 billion.
As a result of the decline in the profitability, specifically of Pick n Pay year-on-year, the group recorded certain impairments that I will unpack in the slides to come. The group's turnover growth of 5.4% was absolutely supported by a stellar performance of our Boxer business, up 17.3%. Our Pick n Pay business grew only 0.3% for the year. That against an internal inflation number of 7.3%, which clearly indicates the volume growth in our Boxer business, but the pressures on volume in our South African business. We have, for the first time, segmented our Pick n Pay and our Boxer divisions. I know that most people in this audience will welcome the segmentation. And I think if I step you through the table, you will see that the...
This is a result that is a story of two business units: one, highly successful and cash generative, and the second, Pick n Pay, that needs to be our focus. I'm going to take you to the right-hand side of the table first, and the first line is our trading profit on our income statement. These numbers are included in our operating segment notes, so it gets stripped out of our audited financial results, and we will disclose this in future years as well. The group recorded a trading profit last year of ZAR 3 billion. ZAR 1.8 billion of that was Boxer, with ZAR 1.3 billion Pick n Pay.
What we've also done is we have stripped out all the lease-related finance costs that are presented below our trading profit line so that we can present a number to you that we've termed trading result after leases. So that result effectively represents our underlying operating profit. It includes all lease-related charges, as well as depreciation, amortization, and all the one-off costs that I've articulated. That number at the end of last year was ZAR 1.9 billion for the group, ZAR 1.5 billion for Boxer, and ZAR 0.4 billion for Pick n Pay, illustrating that the business of Pick n Pay was still profitable and cash generative last year.
If we just focus in on the Boxer year-on-year performance, the Boxer division recorded a trading profit of ZAR 1.8 billion last year to ZAR 1.9 billion this year, up 9.4%. You will, however, note that the trading margin went from 5.5%-5.2%. The reason for that is insurance receivables in the Boxer prior year base in FY 2023 that related to FY 2022. We disclosed those as part of our pro forma disclosures at the end of last year. If we normalize for that, the Boxer profit is up 21.1% and shows a strong margin improvement. The challenge is our Pick n Pay business. The trading profit of ZAR 1.3 billion last year went to a trading loss of ZAR 1.5 billion this year.
If I strip back the one-off costs of ZAR 850 million, you will still see that that trading result is a loss, and that is the area that I will unpack further and Sean will address in his corporate plan. The pressure in Pick n Pay already started in the first half of the financial year, with turnover growth being under significant pressure. But we've communicated previously, the real challenge happened in the second half, where our turnover was down 0.3%, up only 0.2% on a like-for-like basis. That against our internal selling price inflation of 7.3%.
This decline in volumes resulted in pressure on the overall profitability, not just because of the fact that the sales wasn't there, but also as a result of the fact that that pressure has on our gross profit margin. Our growth engines remain strong. Our Pick n Pay Clothing standalone stores grew 17%, up 7.7% on a like-for-like basis, outgrowing the market by 6.3%. We had 74.4% sales growth in our full omni-channel and 102.3% in our on-demand business. The stellar performance from Boxer is what underpinned this result. The Boxer business, as I've mentioned, generated ZAR 1.6 billion of trading profit after lease expenses.
The like-for-like in the second half increased from 4.3% in the first half to 11.6% in the second half, resulting in the business unit recording 8% like-for-like for the full year. The team was able to achieve that performance with a gross profit margin that is flat year-on-year. You might recall that we mentioned in the first half that the team was less promotional, and that did put pressure on the like-for-like in H1. As they adjusted the promotional approach, the like-for-like numbers simply returned, and ultimately, they delivered an increase in their profitability of 20%, for the year. The gross margin contraction is a significant item in this result. As I've mentioned, the first 50 basis points simply relates to a reallocation between our other income and our gross profit.
We also have a 0.1% as a result of the DC duplication costs that will simply come back next year. The 0.9% contraction is all as a result of Pick n Pay. As I've mentioned, the Boxer gross profit margin being neutral for the period. Apologies. Of that 0.9%, a 0.1% relates to additional provisioning for slow-moving inventory that we can liquidate in our clothing and our GMD businesses in order to support the group, the group's liquidity. That still remains with a 0.8% contraction. And the question that we have posed to ourselves is: why did that happen, and how do we get that back? The reason for the contraction is twofold. Firstly, the team has improved the POS margin.
However, customers increasingly shop on promotion, and as a result of that, the positive increase in point of sale margin was neutralized. But secondly, the pressure on the gross profit margin is as a result of our volumes and then the result on supplier incentives and growth hurdles. Sean will talk to how the corporate plan will address this shortfall. Our trading expenses up 11.9% for the year. If we strip out the once-off costs, it's up 8.2%, like-for-like, 5.5%. Our trading expense control remains strong, given the high-cost inflation environment, with a result very much in line with that of last year. The increase in our franchise provisioning, as I've mentioned, half of that comes from Botswana.
The rest reflects the difficult trading condition for the entire franchise community in South Africa. What does that then ultimately mean for the group's overall performance? If we go to the right-hand side of the slide, we have recorded a loss at a 1.5% negative of our turnover. If we step back, the items that we know will come back next year, those are the once-off costs I've articulated, are ZAR 400 billion relating to the Eastport costs and the employee costs. We also have our franchise debtors provisioning, for which we believe most will come back. So all those items, we believe, on the whole, will return into next year's result. We have incremental interest in the business as a result of our increased level of gearing due to the reduced profitability.
That removed 0.4% of our margin. We have a recapitalization plan that will remove that cost from the business in the next financial year. Ultimately, if we step back then, we still end up with a negative margin of 0.3%, with two large pressure points. The one being our expense increase in Pick n Pay outstripping our turnover growth, and the second being the gross profit margin contraction that I've just discussed. Those are the two main elements that Sean will address as part of his corporate plan. As a result of the significant year-on-year decline in the Pick n Pay business profitability, we needed to do an impairment review of the entire Pick n Pay business.
As a result of that, we have recorded impairments in our results of ZAR 2.8 billion, relating to intangible and tangible assets in our store estate. We have grouped the impairments into two buckets. The first of ZAR 1.8 billion, which is more than 100 loss-making stores that will be directly addressed in the corporate plan. There are plans to either close these stores or convert them to franchise and Boxer, and Sean will articulate the savings that we will be getting from those initiatives. As a result of those, we have booked ZAR 1.8 billion in our results. The plan is to action those stores over the next two financial years.
Then we've also have ZAR 1 billion on remaining underperforming stores, which although the team will endeavor to improve the performance of these under the Pick n Pay initiatives, as it stands currently, these the profits are too pressurized and the impairments have been recorded. What does that mean ultimately for our overall balance sheet? We ended on net debt of ZAR 6.1 billion, an increase of ZAR 2.4 billion on last year. This is an improved position to what we've signaled during February, after our weak trading period in November and December. The team has been able to clear out most of the slow-moving stock overhang and just simple overhang stock, by the end of our financial year, resulting in an approved, net, approved net gearing position.
It does, however, still end up with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 6.3, 4.4 times, excluding our once-off costs. Although our debt levels is too high for our business, our challenge is our EBITDA as well, and that will specifically get addressed through the initiatives Sean will discuss. How did we increase our debt by ZAR 2.4 billion? The business did generate cash of ZAR 1 billion, and as per my segmentation between Boxer and Pick n Pay, it is clear that that generation is completely supported by the Pick n Pay business, by the Boxer business, with the Pick n Pay business absorbing cash. We, of course, needed to pay our interest and our tax. We did generate working capital improvement of ZAR 1.1 billion. I'll detail that on the next slide.
We spent CapEx of ZAR 2.8 billion, net of ZAR 1 billion rand proceeds. I will also detail that, and ultimately, it delivered a cash burn for the period of ZAR 2.4 billion. When Sean takes you through the corporate plan, we will indicate that our ambition for next year is to reduce that cash burn by at least half to ZAR 1 billion for the FY 2025 period. We had strong working capital improvement after a stressful time after November and December. The group's overall inventory declined by ZAR 500 million rand year-on-year. ZAR 400 million of that is the buildback of the duplicated stock in our Eastport business. The Boxer business increased their rand value of inventory by ZAR 500 million. They have got 15 new stores and a new distribution center contributing to that increase.
And then the Pick n Pay business ultimately decreased their inventory year-on-year by ZAR 900 million, 400 of that relating to Eastport and 500 relating to underlying improvements. This is strong inventory control despite the high inflationary environment, and ultimately, the working capital delivered ZAR 1.1 billion for the year. Our CapEx investment was ZAR 2.8 billion, net of ZAR 1 billion of proceeds from the selling of our Longmeadow DC and other retail properties within the group. It is important to see these two numbers together, as we made a conscious decision to liquidate some of our assets in order to fund CapEx that was in flight, for the year.
As the net debt increased, the team indicated, when we last met you as well, that we would be cutting back our CapEx in Pick n Pay as much as we possibly can. We have done that, but also liquidated some assets to fund what was in flight. Our Boxer business spent ZAR 1.1 billion, compared to the ZAR 1.3 billion last year. Although that number is lower than our original, our original plans, it was not as a result of a reduction in CapEx allocation. It is simply timing, as the team is on track to in their store opening program. Our clothing business got their full allocation of ZAR 200 million. We spent ZAR 300 million on our e-commerce, equipment CapEx kit out for the e-commerce distribution center.
And we also spent on replatforming our online offer. Our energy resilience plan and equipment in stores has delivered savings of ZAR 225 million, and the rest of the CapEx in Pick n Pay was spent on improving and maintaining our store estate. Our guidance for the year to come will be lower. We will be spending closer to ZAR 2.2 billion, with Boxer and clothing still getting their full allocation, but the Pick n Pay business allocation being cut back until the operational elements are addressed. As I said, we ended up with net funding of ZAR 6.1 billion at the end of the year. We have had great support of our lending partners.
As at financial year-end, all our covenants for February was waived, and we've agreed in a restructure agreement across all our debt for our debtors to stand still until the 1st of September 2025. The group has got significant support and liquidity to ensure that it can execute on its corporate plan. We will also enter into a two-step capitalization plan, as we have communicated previously. The one is a rights offer for Pick n Pay, which is set at ZAR 4 billion, and as Gareth has indicated, the family has is following their rights in this matter, and we've got the support of three banks to underwrite our rights offer: Standard Bank, Absa, and RMB. ZAR 3 billion of the ZAR 4 billion of the rights offer will go to debt repayment, with the rest of the remaining debt being repaid through our IPO.
We are very, very thankful for the lenders' support during this time and believe that our liquidity will allow us to execute on the Pick n Pay plan. It is important for shareholders and commentators to have an understanding of our overall recapitalization plan. What we are presenting here, we do need to stress, it's indicative. The board is still in process of final deliberations, but this is an illustration of what that recapitalization plan could look like for the business. If we work on a requirement for the business of between ZAR 10 billion and ZAR 12 billion for full recapitalization, and we know that we've got a locked-in rights offer of ZAR 4 billion, then the remaining capital that is possibly required for the business can be between ZAR 6 billion and ZAR 8 billion. Those are the considerations the board is currently debating.
What would we then use this money for? Firstly, as I've indicated, we will repay our net debt of ZAR 6.1 billion. We will indicate that there is a cash burn of ZAR 1 billion for FY 2025, so that needs funding. And then there will be additional requirements, whether it's additional debt repayments, whether it is reinvesting in the Pick n Pay business, and making sure that both the Boxer and the Pick n Pay businesses has got the right capital structure, post the IPO. All of these items will be taken into consideration, and will be communicated in due course as the board makes final decisions on the matter. This will stand us in very good state to deliver on the turnaround that the team is working on. With that, I hand over to Sean. Thank you.
Thanks, Lerena. So, time flies when you're having fun. It's hard to think that it's a little over six months ago, I was standing here, having just arrived back at Pick n Pay. The first thing I'd like to do is to thank Wendy and Gareth, as Chairman, the family, and the board for the unbelievable support that they have given me, on my return to the company and, the full width of the crease that they've allowed me to engage in having a look at what it is and where we need to go forward for the future.
So if you ask me what keeps me awake at night, is when Lerena has mentioned about seven or eight times already this morning that Sean's gonna talk to this in the plan, and Sean's gonna talk to that in the plan, and all of a sudden, in May, I'm gonna whip out of the hat this rabbit that is gonna be the salvation of Pick n Pay. You know, one of the extraordinary things for me in the last six months has been how my really deep faith in the people of Pick n Pay has been both restored and renewed. Remarkable, remarkable people in this company.
I'm not ashamed to say this or embarrassed to say this, but when I did walk into this building in October last year, after 16, 17 years of not having been here, it did take me a little while to sort of stumble around and find my way back to where my old office was. But one of the things that really distressed me was when I sort of cast over in my head how many people we had working here in Kenilworth. We had in excess of 1,000 people. There were no cars in the basement downstairs. Most of the people were working from home, and it was very hard to find even a pulse in the business.
And you kind of walk around here, and you think to yourself: "Wow!" I can tell you today, this business has a heart, and it has a heartbeat, and it has a team of people. And the most extraordinary thing for me is that this has all been done internally with the beautiful people that were always here. So as I go into now what it is that we have put together, I just want to thank those people in Pick n Pay that have put an extraordinary amount of work into this, an enormous amount of work into this. So if we have a look at where we are going forward from here.
When we had a look at the plan that we would have to offer up, bearing in mind that we ended up in a situation where we had a very complicated debt structure that sat on top of us in the company, and that our business plan would have to stand the most extraordinary scrutiny, I set us three fundamental principles that would have to underpin our business plan, and the first one was that it need to be reasonable. What does reasonable mean? For sure, it needs an element of stretch, and it needs an element of putting our shoulders to the wheel, but it has to be reasonable to make it believable.
But beyond all else, it had to be defendable because we knew that whatever this business plan was, would get tossed over the wall in the institutions to the retail analysts, and that they would rip this business plan to shreds and ask all of the deep, deep questions about whether it could, in fact, be achieved or not... The third most important thing for me was that it had to be actionable. What does actionable mean? That you need both the human and the capital resources to give it substance, for it serves nothing to have the greatest plan in your head if you don't have the ability to execute it.
So we said there's six major priorities for us in this process: leadership and people, resetting the store estate, improving our offer to grow sales, to optimize our operating model, to leverage the strength of our partnerships, and very importantly, to recapitalize the business. Our medium-term ambition is to reestablish business sustainability and operational excellence as we return Pick n Pay to profitability. We must understand this as a background. We're not looking to do something that is totally counter to the market. The retail market is a profitable space. Our position all make profit, I think one must assume as a norm. As much as we like to think if we all buy better than everybody else, on average, we're most probably all buying pretty much at the same.
We have pretty much the same level of operational costs, and our exit price in terms of selling price to the consumer is all pretty much across the board standard. It's regulated by market forces. So in between, you have your cost of operations and profit. And dwell on this, that for the 55, 56 odd years of Pick n Pay's history, we've been profitable every single year except one. We will return again. We're not looking to achieve totally the impossible here. Are there some little hills that we still have to climb? For sure, but we will deal with it.
So if we have a look at the leadership and people, and the first thing became apparent for me upon my return in December, when I really hit the ground running in South Africa, I went around, over 100 stores, a little under 120 stores across the group in December, to get a good feel for the organization with Jarett and Pat, who were the two operational executives at that stage. And what became abundantly clear to me was that we had denuded and stripped out our operational infrastructure within the organization. And I can assure you that retail is a complex business. It's a simple but complex business, and it's a business that requires an extraordinary amount of support for the very, very important operation in our store, and that is what happens in stores.
To turn on its head, the simple fact that we in the support office work for the stores, the stores do not work for us. To turn this on its head and to get the culture back in the company again, that everything we do here has to be done with a single, solitary goal in mind, and that is to make it better for the life of the consumer in our store, and to make it better to support our people who front up to the consumers in our stores. And that has been our mantra, and that has been our mission. We have reinstated and put back a regional infrastructure back into the company again. We have re-divisionalized the organization again, and we are now able to march to the tune of whatever market.
Our store operations, as I've said, we've had a look at, the levels and structures within stores, where, again, in the pursuit of pure P&L and purely managing the P&L, there were lots of support infrastructures and things that were taken out that led us to a very, very inconsistent execution at store level. And then our internal marketing, the hearts and minds of our people. It irritated me no end that whenever I look in social media, and unfortunately, some of these narratives, due in a way, get a life all of their own. But we always know this overriding complaint about poor service in Pick n Pay, so winning back the hearts and minds of our people. To this end, there's an entire new leadership structure in place in the company, and you can see from this, it's fully populated with people.
Most of those people were existing within the organization, and there are a few who have returned. We lost some very capable, great retail skills in the various voluntary retention programs that were held in the organization, and they have returned to the company. I'll share something extraordinary with you about the few Pick n Pay people that have come back. Not one of them, when I reached out to them to ask them, would they please consider coming back to Pick n Pay? They universally said, "We're so happy you called. We actually couldn't wait for the call." Not one of them post at the end of my time talking to them about coming back. I'd ask them the question at the end: "Are you not interested in how much you're gonna earn?
What's in this for you?" And they were all like, "No, Sean, you'll take care of that. It's fine. We're coming back." So just extraordinary. We got some fantastic people back in this business, and everybody's on a mission. Resetting the store estate. As we said, we've had to have a critical look at the reality of our stores, store by store by store, because retail is one key, one door, one store. That is what our business is made up of. So you need to have a profoundly deep understanding of that. So we've had a cast across our stores and had a look at what we need to do. So in the simplest of terms, those stores that are really critical, and we know the demographic may have changed, that something's happened around that center and what have you, those stores, we will close.
We'll eat it, we'll close. We're not going to do what did happen a little bit in the past, where some of the really marginal stores were converted to franchise, and then you just ended up with an extraordinary franchise debt and a franchisee under too much pressure. So the stores that have no future, we will close and get rid of. But there are stores that demographically fit into the Boxer mold, and we're busy converting those over to Boxer currently. And then there are stores that, certainly in the hands of a franchisee, would be somewhat more profitable than they yield for us at a corporate level, because below a certain level, the franchisee can get profit out of the store more than we can....
So we have critically had a look at our store real estate from top to bottom, and then in the balance of the stores, there are many stores that we still need to remodernize in the existing fleet of stores that we have there. Because we still have wonderful stores in wonderful positions, but some of them are a little bit tired, and they need tender loving care. So if you think of Cape Town, a store like the Waterfront store, that should be a key trading store for us. Canal Walk, those are still wonderful, wonderful sites that we will get to fixing up once we deal with our balance sheet issues next year. We need to improve on our offer to drive sales, and this comes down to the whole issue of pricing and promotions and how we approach the market.
Customer service, we really refocused again on getting the whole issue of customer service and experience at store level back in check. We are reinstating the cornerstones of our business, and Pick n Pay was always known as the fresh food people, and when you go into our stores today, and you have a look at our actual execution of fresh food, it's questionable.
But, you know, the amazing thing for me is I always love this test when you go to a store, is to go to the produce cabinet, and you go and take a packet of lettuce, whatever it is, go and take a packet of, lettuce, Crunchita lettuce, have a look at the sell by date on the pack that's on the shelf, and then you go into the cold room at the back and have a look at the sell by date on the inbound stock, and have a look at the differential between the two. Because the detail in retail is what it's about at the end of the day. We have extraordinary products that are in our company. We know when we run our bakeries properly to the standards that we know we can do, they are, without doubt, the best bakeries in the country.
So we've brought back skills, we've brought back people, and we will reinstate all of this back into the organization. And Pick n Pay, once again, will become known as the fresh food people, and we will be the best fresh food operation in our market and our industry. Because stores and experience is what we're about. You can see at the bottom there, people, pride, passion, and product. The future for us in retail, and it's very, very important, home delivery and this whole new wave that we have, where we do home delivery. We absolutely do it, and we'll do it with a smile, and we will do it within the one hour on the clock, because you seem to be training people to run their home in just-in-time methodologies today.
I'm a little bit confused as to why we would do that, but, that's the way of the world in this phase that we're going through currently. But I certainly believe that the long-term art of retail is still at the heart of what we need to do, and we need to inspire people. We need to reward people for their time. We need to make sure that when people leave our stores, they feel good, and they feel, "Wow, I want to go back," because that's the simple truth. You need to reward people for their time today, otherwise, they will not return.
We know that in our hypermarkets, we've got a lot of work to do in terms of specifically driving the hypermarkets and focusing those business as a specific business entity and a business unit, and we've already seen some great early signs of that on the way. In terms of optimizing our operating model, we've had to have a critical look here, and again, been under a few restraints this year to get a budget. You know, when the company's on the back foot, as we are at the moment, you have to skimp and scrape and cut. So if you look at marketing, to get to our numbers this year, we took 10% of our marketing budget, which is quite a brave move.
It's like taking the petrol out of your tank, and you got about a 10% inflation, so we would physically be marketing about 20% less than last year, and we're doing a whole heap better than last year. So I think fortunately for us at this stage, it would look like, as the great Lord Saatchi said, he knows that in the industry, only half the advertising works. He's just not sure which half. It looks like we've managed to take the 20% out of the half that doesn't work at this stage. So we'll keep on trying to do that going forward.
But it just shows if you micro market your business and you get a much better understanding, and you get people who are closer to the heartbeat of the business, you can make smarter decisions, and you can do more with less. Smart Shopper, store operations, these are all issues that are currently receiving urgent, urgent attention. And on stores and offices, we have gone through a process, and we are going through a process of critically reassessing what we do at a support office level. And again, we've had some great people here that have been redeployed back into being closer to the operational end of the business. And then on supply chain, we are having a look at what we're doing on our supply chain costs at the moment.
To put it in the simplest of terms, the biggest single challenge we have is our Eastport distribution center in Gauteng. We have a massive facility there, a beautiful facility, a wonderful facility, but it's clearly way too big for purpose at this stage of the game. So we have some options that are available to us as to how we can overcome that challenge, and we can deal with it. In terms of leveraging the strength of our partnerships, and, here we have to look, obviously, in the first instance, to our own staff and our own people within the organization. And if we have a look, and we've got 92,000 people in the group, but we've got about 36,000 odd that work for us directly within our corporate Pick n Pay operations.
So we will be embarking upon very, very soon, a huge hearts and minds to really get our people realigned in the company again. Because as part and parcel of the duress that the organization has been under over the last years, it's certainly taken its toll operationally on the floor, and it's very, very unfair. You know, the simple philosophy, if you show me an unhappy store, if you show me a grumpy store, I'll show you a grumpy leader. I'll show you an unhappy manager.
Because 999 people out of 1,000 get up in the morning, want to go to work, want to be appreciated, want to be loved, and want to know that they are making a difference, and want to know that when they go home at the end of the day, they feel good about themselves, and we will reinstate that back into the organization again. Franchise, we've been spending a lot of time in terms of our franchise business, and we've now implemented our new franchise model that's going in, and we've had to take some quite crisp decisions in terms of some of the franchise issues that existed, but those are now done and behind us, and our franchise business is so important to us.
It's about 50% of our revenue today, and they are hugely, hugely a part and parcel of how we go to market in Pick n Pay. So it really is an extraordinary part of our business, and it will grow even faster now that we're actually going to be taking quite a few of our corporate stores and converting them over to franchise. Supplier relationships. We've had really wonderful reach out from suppliers, and I think it's understandable from their perspective that they want balance in the marketplace, in the country. Similarly to landlords as well, they also want balance in the marketplace. They don't want to end up with one chain being too dominant. So I suppose 17 or 18 years ago, we were most probably the bad guys then, and they were looking to re-leverage the other way.
But, we are now certainly the people that our suppliers and our landlords are looking to reach out to us. And, you know, one of the things when we have a look at some of the debate that you will see that's been taking place in the public, with regards to landlords and Pick n Pay, is that when you do look at a lot of the shopping centers that traditionally have the good old big box anchors on each side, a lot of those major shopping centers today are actually the height of inconvenient shopping, no longer convenient shopping, and a lot of those centers need to reconfigure themselves.
On top of that, we also have stores that traditionally used to have a lot of backup area because when we direct store delivery, about 40% of the total lettable space we took was for warehouses at the back. We don't need any of that space anymore. So when we come to renewing leases now, it's just a work-through process with landlords that as we clean up stores, renew stores, do new stores, we need to resize them properly and appropriately. Otherwise, you renew a lease, and for the next 10 years, you end up paying that ZAR per sq ft for all of the space that never gets used. Makes no sense at all. And our suppliers have been extraordinary in terms of their reach outs to us as well.
The recapitalization plan we've spoken about, and this really is about getting our balance sheet back in the right order of affairs and the right order of business again, and once that's achieved, we can then go into the next financial year and then work out how we will start to redeploy capital again back into our company. But I want to share this with you. It's not a race to see who can have the most stores. It's like the old saying in life, who dies with the most toys, still dies. Retail is not about having the most stores and the most stores. It's about which stores where. That's the important thing. And for us, it's going to be a flight to quality, not quantity. We will get Pick n Pay beautiful again.
We will get our real estate productive again, and then once we are on a solid base, then we can work out how judiciously we will grow back into the market again. But for us, it's about being beautiful before big. So I suppose everything I read in the newspaper always goes about, "On this day, Sean is gonna now whip the curtain off this thing, and there's gonna be this magic plan, and we're gonna get going." Well, here's the sneaky truth: We got going a long time ago. Time was our enemy, not our friend, at all. So we worked out pretty quickly that we had to get going on this. So you will see that under this project here, you can have a look, that under these various six here, there are all of these sub screens underneath here, and every single thing is already in play.
The only one is the launch of the internal marketing campaign, the hearts and minds, which we're getting ready to go with now. But every single solitary thing in this business plan is already in play. It's in-game, and it's going. So we're not talking about something theoretical here. We are talking about something that exists in reality, with a team in place that is busy executing as I stand here. So our immediate ambition, as I've said, our target of a 2%+ medium-term trading profit margin for the Pick n Pay segment, and I'm talking here specifically Pick n Pay corporate stores as such. And then in FY 2025, our immediate goal there is operating cash burn after CapEx of circa ZAR 1 billion.
So you can see that's a significant change in the first year, in the year 2025, and then 2026, to get back to a cash flow breakeven situation, and then 2027, to move back into the sunlight and back into profit again. I think it is fair to say, as Gareth has said, that in reality, Pick n Pay has been in decline for the last decade. That is just the simple truth, and you can see it in the numbers, you can see it in everything. You cannot turn around in six months, one year, or even two years, a ship this size. So we already figured and indicated to everybody in October last year when I returned, that this would be a multi-year journey....
You can see from our plans that we have put down here, that our plans, we believe, are imminently reasonable, and they are imminently achievable. If we have a look at where we are currently at the moment, on our green shoots emerging in early FY 25, we certainly are seeing green shoots. Our new leadership structure is fully in place and implemented, and that's done. We're currently busy with our store closure program and implementing, converting to Boxer. We are in the throes at the moment with the franchise team of approaching new franchisees for store conversions. Our Pick n Pay owned stores are positive like-for-like sales growth so far for 25 year to date, and it's a material improvement over the decline compared to last year.
So when I returned here in October, November, December, we were looking at some days you'd come to work or some weeks at the end of the week, and you would see -8%, -10%, -12% across the group. Really, really distressing. Because, you know, the one thing that people really battle to get their heads around is: how did it go so wrong, so fast? And you know those jaws, when those jaws close, they don't just close, they snap past each other. They go past each other. So when you're running a thin margin business, looking to make 2%, 3%, 4%, you're really not making any money until you've done in excess of 90% of your sales, because up until then, you're basically paying the basics.
And it's only in the last bit of your sales where you actually get to make your money. So when you lose your top-line sales and your margin is gone as well, that's how it happened so fast, so quickly. Our working capital has shown positive trends, as Lerena shared with you, and, our restructuring agreement with our lenders has all been finalized, and, to that end, we must thank our lenders who are in this room. A lot of our major lenders and bankers and financiers are in this room. We've had some, we've had some quite strenuous conversations in the last couple of months, but we've all, I think, built a bit of character through it, and we've all built new levels of, understanding of each other in this process, and, we're here today. Against all odds, we're here today.
So the rights offer is also proceeding currently at the moment, and we really want to thank the family, Wendy, Ray, Gareth, and the family, for the faith that they've shown in Pick n Pay, because Pick n Pay, at the end of the day, is the Ackermans, and the Ackermans are Pick n Pay. And as I've said to the financial institutions, when we've been discussing the rights offer and going over the wall, I've said to the financial institutions that they need to understand just how crucial and vital the link is between the Ackermans and Pick n Pay. This company is the Ackermans, and that's who we are. So the future of Pick n Pay is that our people make the difference.
They always have, they always will, and these are the fundamentals that will underpin our business going forward from here. And we will continue to work as seriously as we implement this plan and continue to make sure that the early green shoots and the early trajectories that we are already starting to see continue to gain momentum. We're not interested in small, little tick up and then a fall back again. We're just interested in solid, solid, solid, consistent, sustainable growth. So I want to thank you for your participation. I want to thank you for coming here this morning, and we'll now open the floor for questions. Yeah.
Hi. Thank you, Sean, Gareth, and Lerena, for the presentation, and thank you for letting me ask a question. So this is mainly just on the actual strategy going forward. So I saw that there were 194 stores classified as underperforming.
Mm.
112 of those are reset, that you expect to close, franchise, or convert, and the remainder is just to continue trading. So I've got just three questions on that. The first one is: What store metrics did you apply to classify these in these categories? The second one is: How will the loss in volume going forward affect the supplier incentives? And then the last one: What do you expect the overall cost of closing the stores to be, given that you might have to break some of the leases? Thank you.
Okay. So the metric in the beginning is that you really have to look at it on a by-store basis. You can't just look at it on a spreadsheet. So you actually have to have a context of where is the store, why has it ended up in this situation, and what has precipitated it? So you look in a shopping center, it could be that the landlord's now done an extension, and they've decided, and they've now put another one or two stores in there. So you've got to look in each store and take a realistic perspective on it. So that's what drives that decision. Sorry, the second part of your question?
Supplier incentives.
Oh, yeah, suppliers. This is an interesting one because, you know, all of the suppliers have come to me, and they've said to me, "Oh, Sean, we love you, and you're back at Pick n Pay," and what have you, and, "Pick n Pay has got to get strong again," and all of this good stuff, and at the end of all of this, I'll say the same thing to all of them: "Where are the roses? I can't bank your love. You can't here and tell me you love me. I need roses. You've got to leave something behind here." And the simple principle that we've established with the suppliers is this: as Pick n Pay, for a while, maybe doesn't grow, maybe we will. But maybe there will be a slight decrease in volume, okay?
That we have to have terms in place that allow us to earn the same width of the crease, but not purely on volume growth, because there are other things that we can do. You know, we always built our business on brands. I mean, if you look at Pick n Pay's business, traditionally, we were fresh brands and then well-curated house brand ranges that supported the brands in the business. So we're putting plans in place with our suppliers to make sure that although the volume may drop off, it doesn't affect our terms at the end of the day. And, you know, scale is scale. I always use this example: so if you look at Pick n Pay and you say, "Well, you're gonna be a bit smaller," then I look at that wonderful business that Brian and Mike Coppin have built up in Food Lover's.
They buy effectively, they survive, so scale's not everything at the end of the day. The cost of closing those stores, we have obviously set aside an amount of money that we're going to look at in our provisioning for our budget going forward. And then on a by-store basis, we will look down at landlords individually. You know, some of those stores, when you look at them, the economics of it, it may just pay you to trade to the end of the lease. Others, it may pay you to sit down and go and do negotiation with the landlord. So that we'll deal with on an individual basis, store by store by store.
Yeah, two or three questions. I suppose on Boxer to start with.
Mm.
Of the planned store openings, I saw there was a number of liquor stores there as well.
Yeah.
Do you have in mind food versus liquor? And what's the current rollout plan over the next 2-3 years?
In Boxer?
Yeah.
About half, a little over half their store number openings are liquor. In fact, a little bit more, because, you know, to open a liquor store is a much easier thing to open than Boxer Super stores. So a little over half are liquor stores, and then still incredible runway for growth in Boxer. And as Lerena has said, in our capital planning, there is no ways that we are going to, in any way, hold Boxer back from a capital perspective. And even when we take Boxer to market, Boxer is gonna be listed in a form that, in terms of the dividend distribution in Boxer, the bulk of the dividend will be left in Boxer for growth.
So we would see, and we haven't set it yet, but I think it reasonably, we would say that certainly way less than 50% of the dividend will be distributed from Boxer. The balance will be left for capital growth in Boxer. So Boxer's runway is just phenomenal.
Are those new malls, existing malls, where regionally do you see the biggest opportunities for expansion?
There's lots of growth going into that market. So if you look at the demographic in South Africa, and you look at the population growth going forward over the next 5, 10, 15, 20 years, it's all within that space. And there's extraordinary growth happening within all of those high-density areas of new malls and new shops going up.
And then on the franchise model, could you just talk a bit more to the new benefits of the franchise model? There's obviously been press stuff about some-
Yeah
... disputes with franchisees, et cetera. So just how you see that forming? Because I think over the last few years, the trend had been more franchised back to corporate, so kind of undoing that a little bit. So just maybe a bit more color on that.
Yeah. I think that, you know, franchisees, like corporate, franchisees have felt a lot of the same pressure that we felt at a corporate level. You know, where they've had the costs of diesel and all of the other things that have beset them, so they certainly haven't been unaffected by that. They've been affected to the same degree as we have, so there's been more pressure on the franchisees than there has really been in the past years before that. We have now, with the new franchise model that's gone into place, it incentivizes the franchisees to buy more, and they get more back. So it incentivizes them to buy more through our buying system than the bit of buying outside of the system that they do. We've also made a whole lot of changes in terms of the leadership in franchise.
I've taken franchise, it was a standalone division on its own. I've now moved franchise back into the regional infrastructures. So franchise is now clearly a part and parcel of what happens operationally within the region. So, for example, you have Chris, who's sitting at the back here, who runs the Western Cape region. Chris now has equal responsibility for franchise as he does for corporate. So the interests are far more closely aligned from a marketing and a go-to-market perspective. So, that is one of the things that didn't work for us, was that sort of division that was put in between the corporate and franchise.
Okay, and then just what, what are the actual CapEx kind of guidance or expectations, maybe for the next three years?
For the next three years?
Yeah.
At this stage now, I mean, Lerena, you can talk more closely to this thing. But we have to get ourselves square first with our balance sheet, and then we've got to work out how, or not how, we've got to then work out how we structure our working capital going forwards. So if you've got any banks left that are still talking to us at that stage, can see the smiling faces of the bankers here. No, no, no, we still have enough balance sheet to get working capital back into the business. But we indicate that we most probably need about ZAR 3 billion to address the underlying Pick n Pay core real estate that we have now, and to clean that up properly, to do the rest of the cleanup. But, Lerena, you can talk more to it.
No, it's a very good question. So for the year to come, I've guided about ZAR 2.2 with the cutbacks in the Pick n Pay side. I know there'll be questions whether that is restrictive. I think it would have been clear from Sean's presentation that it's about execution, operational execution first, and then CapEx allocation. So through the recapitalization plan, and the sizing that I've discussed, we will, as we work through what the actual final requirement is, that'll get solved across the landscape. So ZAR 2.2 for the year to come, with the years to follow, likely more, but that is still work that we, we're refining as we're going through this stage, store by store.
... and very importantly, we're sweating a lot harder what we've got because your best growth comes from within. So if you can get, and, I mean, we know it from when we did our last big refurbishing thing across the company 20 years ago. When you get 20, 30%, 40% growth on existing stores, it's almost gross to net. So your best growth comes from within, and we are really focusing now on sweating what we have much, much harder. And as part of that, you know, when we look at the stores that we've identified, those stores that are the challenged stores, as we're seeing the turnovers tick up, as we're seeing the gross margin starting to come back and getting better and better. So what do you do? I mean, you asked the question earlier about how do you look at these stores?
So in the beginning, I just did a simple schedule, top to bottom, from the highest loss store down to the most profitable store. And then you work out in that cut-through there, you get into, like, a middle chunk that's almost like an amber zone, so it's kind of like a stoplight thing. You get into an amber zone, where you look at them store by store and say: Well, what can we do with this store? Is this store now terminally red, or can we actually get it back into amber and then work it into green? And then, how long does it take? What does it need? Does it need a refurbishment?
Well, that may have to wait 18 months until we get the capital to do it, so in the interim, you'll continue to trade the store, even though it may be break even or losing a little bit. But you know that if you put the capital into the store, it's gonna really get a kick-up. So I'll give you an example. Canal Walk. I was actually in the store with the landlord, and if you look at Canal Walk, there's a classic. For those that live in Cape Town, you walk into Canal Walk Mall, into the Pick n Pay. On the left-hand side, you've got all of the fresh food on the floor there, massive fresh food area. Behind that, all of the backup areas, and then the warehouse behind that.
As I said to them: "Guys, you can extend the mall into here, take all of the space on the left, convert it back to line shops or turn it into line shops, and we'll turn our supermarket around this way. We'll give you a brand-new store in here, 2,800-3,200 square meters max is what we want. We'll give you a brand-new store in here that'll be as good a store as you will see anywhere in the world.
And we'll have 40% less GLA. Now, to do that requires capital, so in the interim, you look at Canal Walk, and you say, "No, the store will continue to trade, and in 18 months' time, this is what we'll do." So we're busy doing the planning at the moment, that as soon as next year, we're in a different capital situation, we can do these things. So behind the scenes, we're doing an extraordinary... Well, we have done an extraordinary amount of work for every single solitary store. We have a plan for every single store in this company, every key, every door.
And maybe just one last one, Lerena, while you're there. Are you able to give us the internal selling price split between Boxer and Pick n Pay? I would've seen Boxer as maybe slightly higher. I know you gave the blended 7.3, I think, and then maybe how that's tracking for both businesses in the first 12 weeks of the year.
We haven't segmented that yet, but in future, we will. The selling price inflation is tracking downwards for the first quarter. Okay. Tamara?
Yo.
Sure, I don't have a mic.
Yeah. No, talk.
QualiSave, you kind of mentioned when you first started.
Yeah
... that you would be reviewing that. I haven't seen a QualiSave, I haven't seen a QualiSave logo on any of the slides. What are you thinking, and are there any costs-
Um, that-
associated, if you can, that strategy?
The QualiSave thing, I mean, Gareth alluded to it a bit earlier about some business plans and some thought processes that with a period of time, have proven not to be successful. And one of the simple challenges with QualiSave was that by doing what they did to the ranging in the business, so a radically cut range to take it to back almost a sort of a Boxer-ish kind of soft discount. Well, you know, Aldi, I was fortunate a long time ago to get into Aldi, and Aldi taught you something, Albrecht. You know, if you want to be as a low-cost seller, you better be as a low-cost operator. So if you want to sell at 3% less margin, you can't have the same operational cost, and that was the simple thing that sunk QualiSave, was its overhead structure, and didn't work.
So, but having said that, not all failure. So Guzzi, you're sitting at the back there, good stuff. You put the most extraordinary, beautiful energy into that business and drove that business so hard and put so much energy into it. The QualiSave stores are looking beautiful, as stores. So what's the fix? It's quite simple. It's about ZAR 50 million worth of signage in total on the outside of the building to convert it over to Pick n Pay and reinstate the ranges back in the store, because the stores are actually good. The floors are done, the baskets are done, the LED lighting is in there, the service areas and all of that stuff is done, the refrigeration is done. So that's not all bad. So it's just a case of getting the trading back into the store again, and that's a process that'll just happen.
Within a year, it'll just quietly slide out. So we're just driving those stores as Pick n Pays, and we're really seeing the benefit coming.
Sorry, just to follow on that one. I'd understood there were some benefits that the suppliers had given you guys for being part of QualiSave. Do you have to make them good on that if you remove the QualiSave?
No. No, we had discussions with the suppliers, that they helped with a bit of the conversion in the beginning, and the suppliers are just like, "Into this and Sean, just get on with running a business. Don't worry about what's done, it's done, it's washed." You know, it's rear view mirror stuff for me. People, I, I know when they come and talk to me, are we talking about yesterday or tomorrow? It's clear. We know that's how we operate here. Yeah, Shane?
Good morning, Sean. Sean, your Hypers are about 30% bigger than, on average, your largest competitor. How do you right-size the Hypers? Is the write-down of ZAR 1.8 billion in the real estate in... or Hypers included in that?
Yeah.
What do you see as the future of Hypers?
We see the future of Hyper circa 6,500 odd square meters trading, which is where the Checkers, the new Checkers Hyper is of that size. I mean, we've got, for example, in Ottery now, we're busy giving back about 8,000 square meters at the moment, 7,000-8,000 square meters. So that's a landlord-specific thing when you have a look at the buildings. And just say to us, "These buildings need to be cut up because they're clearly no longer fit for purpose." So that's a process that we are going through. So that's one of the first things I did when I got back here. I had to look at the lease profile on Hypers, and there's, like, a 12-year gap between lease endings, between the next renewal and the last one.
So we're not gonna wait for all of that to happen. So we're going to engage the landlords on those things, because a lot of those Hypers are in incredible positions. You look at Fairy Glen, we're at the moment doing a deal at the moment in Fairy Glen to redevelop the Fairy Glen Mall completely, to take the Hyper down, and then we'll end up with a 6,000-6,500 square meter size. So that's us for Hypers.
But is that included? You've written that space down to what you think is likely to be the outcome eventually?
Yeah.
The cost of right-sizing is included?
Not all of it. In the first lot now, not all of it. That's just the first few that we've got on our immediate horizon.
Okay.
Tam?
Sean, yes, we've got over 300 people on online, so quite a lot of questions coming in. The first question, two related questions, about our landlords. Could we give some understanding of what the ability is to renegotiate leases? And secondly, a question from Alec Abraham, to outline the process, timing, and results of negotiations with landlords regarding stores to be closed.
We're already in discussion with landlords, with the stores that are going to be closed, and that proceeds, Tam. So I mean, as I say, that's on an individual basis, store by store, landlord by landlord. I don't think one can really give more clarity than that.
Another question from Ya'ish Patel, from SBG Securities: If you look at the target for FY 2027 trading profit after leases, it's break even. Is this including clothing in Africa? Does this therefore imply that Pick n Pay SA grocery business could still be loss-making into FY 2027?
No. If Pick n Pay grocery business will be profitable into FY 2027.
Then another question from Ya'ish Patel: Why are cash resources elevated? Is this timing related? Are there currently commitments? Therefore, what has net debt done post year-end?
That's my cue. The net debt position post year-end is more or less in line where we were at the end of the financial year. However, we've guided the cash burn of ZAR 1 billion during the year, so there will be a more pressure on that number until such time that we've gone through the recapitalization program.
There is a question about franchisees. How do we see franchisees turning around some struggling Pick n Pay corporate stores? What factors would drive this?
I think that in essence, when you say struggling corporate stores, we know that circa sort of 8, 10, 12 million rand, that at that level, franchisees can make those stores economically viable for themselves, whereas at a corporate level, it's somewhat more difficult to get them profitable. So that's sort of the cut-off that we have with franchise. But bearing in mind that we have some extraordinary franchisees out there. I mean, our top franchise store is doing over 50 million rand a period. So in between, we've got all sorts of variable turnovers amongst the franchisees that are out there, but that's basically the cut-off for us. The sort of 8-10 million rand per month goes to franchise.
Another question from Paul Steegers from Nedbank: Are there any more asset disposals foreseen?
Very limited ones.
Yeah. I've said Fairy Glen. I've just indicated now Fairy Glen, and that would be pretty much it.
Yeah.
We sold the one little office park-
Regent Square
... next door. We had a building next door to this one, which we sold.
Yeah
... but that's not a big deal.
A question from Yash Pillay at Anchor Stockbrokers: Richard Brasher came in in 2013 and tried to turn Pick n Pay around. How is it different this time, and what gives you comfort that it'll be successful? And why do you think the Pick n Pay corporate business deteriorated in the way it did over the years?
I think at the heart of it was that there was a shift in emphasis in terms of what was important to the company, and the company drifted away from its passion for stores, its passion for product, and its passion for people.
Question from Ya'ish Patel again: Can we expect Pick n Pay store sizes to reduce over time, considering your pre-previous acknowledgement that backroom storage space isn't as likely required?
Yes, I think that the ideal supermarket size of the future will reduce somewhat, a bit. So for us, I would say that we would almost see sort of three sizes of store. I think at 3-3,200 square meters for a good size supermarket is most probably ideal. And then you may go down to sort of some smaller stores at sort of 1,500 odd square meters, 1,300-1,500 square meters, would sort of be the range. You know, the trade has changed. If you think in the old days, you used to have this massive, crazy month-end peak, that's gone. Nobody shops like that anymore. So first of all, you've had that flattening out.
Then you've got to take account of as well, how much stuff is actually gonna be done out of store in terms of home delivery. So, you know, some of those stores are doing 5, 8, 10% of their volume today is being done out of store. So I think that store sizes in and of themselves, in the main, are most probably on the large size today.
I have a couple of questions about the Boxer IPO, whether we'd consider selling more of Boxer?
No. We will sell as much of Boxer as we need to just deal with our balance sheet issues, and the balance we will retain, because obviously the growth in Boxer going forward is still extraordinary. So for the shareholders, they deserve to share in the upside growth of Boxer.
Another question from Paul Steegers at Nedbank: "What are the loyalty levels currently at franchise division, and how good are your service levels for franchise?
Our service levels for franchise are the same as they are for corporate. I've spent a lot of time in the franchise division and around franchisees over the last while, post some of the shakeup that we had and some of the well-publicized issues that happened within the franchise division. I can say without any shadow of a doubt, that at the moment, our relationships with franchisees in the main, are better than they've been for a long time.
Okay, another question from Ya'ish Patel: "Can we assume the current Boxer trading margin at FY 2024 is a normalized, sustainable margin?
Yes.
Question from Bloomberg: "Can you say what sales participation of leading brands is at Pick n Pay, and what has the trajectory been?
Not, not something we currently are-
Yes
... are disclosing, but we do believe that there is, there is potential.
Okay. A question from Bateleur Capital: "Notwithstanding civil unrest recoveries in the prior year and subsequent base impacts, have the Boxer historical margins been more or less 5%?
It's reflective of the performance, and as Sean has just indicated, future performance as well.
A question from J.P. Morgan: "Could you give a little more color as to the extent of losses in the more than 100 stores identified for closure or conversion?
I think the best way to look at that is that we are targeting ZAR 850 million worth of savings relating to those as part of the plan. So that is effectively loss avoidance out of those stores.
Then another question from J.P. Morgan: "How does the 2% margin for Pick n Pay compare to the historical margins in that segment? Why would it not be higher or closer to peer or Boxer margins over the medium to long term?
Well, over the long term, we said the medium term is to get ourselves back from where we are currently at the -2% odd level. So we're looking at a significant turnaround just to get to +2 in terms of where the chain currently finds itself, and then to grow forward back into what would be the industry norm. So we're setting that as a medium-term target.
There's a question from Chris Logan at Opportune. "We're now back at 2004 share price and a huge capitalization. Why was Pick n Pay so oblivious to this decline?
I think it's more important that we have acknowledged the decline and that we are dealing with it. I think that the reasons as to why the decline came about has already been well covered. And as I've said, that's behind us. There's nothing we can do about that. We can only deal with what lies ahead of us.
Question from Nedbank Private Wealth: "How do you effectively segment the market with one Pick n Pay banner?
How do you effectively segment the market?
How do you effectively segment the market? Yes, with one banner.
Well, we've got Boxer that obviously serves its particular market that Boxer serves. In terms of the Pick n Pay banner, I mean, Pick n Pay as a brand is actually wanted everywhere. We open Pick n Pay anywhere in this country. I mean, we've opened them in... If you look in the Cape, for example, and I've always used the example of Mitchells Plain. I mean, the Mitchells Plain consumer is completely different to the Constantia consumer from a demographic. We understand the markets that we serve within Pick n Pay, and we arrange the store accordingly. But the fundamental principles that drive Pick n Pay, of doing good is good business, of people, of serving customers, of consumer sovereignty, that's common across all markets, all peoples, all cultures, all ethnicities. So we can serve right across this country with Pick n Pay.
Question from J.P. Morgan again: "Could you please discuss in more detail what the plan is for the low DC capacity utilization alluded to in the presentation?
In Eastport?
Yeah.
It's simple. Eastport, when it was originally envisaged, was based on a CAGR in the business that was not achieved. So we've ended up with a facility that envisaged a far larger volume of business being generated up in the Gauteng region. So we simply have a mismatch or a mistiming, and the facility we have there is somewhat ahead of its time. So, what we will do is see how we can deal with the short-term period, maybe a 3-5-year window, where we can maybe 3PL the excess capacity that we have in the facility.
Another question from SBG Securities: "Please, can you expand on what the future of your franchise model is? How would it change?
The future franchise model is already in play, and it's been communicated to the franchisees, and we can already see from the volumes that are now being drawn through our DCs in franchise, that it's already growing exponentially. So the plan is already in place.
A question from Nitrogen Fund Managers: "You haven't mentioned the impact of load shedding on earnings. Is there an implicit assumption about the cost of load shedding in your forecasts, or is lower levels of load shedding a potential to save on further costs?
I detailed some of the load shedding detail in the trading expenses analysis, but there's also a slide in the appendix that sets out the impact of load shedding and diesel costs on our business for the year that's passed. We still have a number in our base of about ZAR 700 million rand-
Yeah
... relating to load shedding this year, and our base assumption is that will continue.
I think it's ZAR 6.80 or something like that-
Yeah
... if my memory serves me.
ZAR 6.98, I think, Sean. Yeah.
We still have a lot of questions. May I suggest that we answer these offline?
Yeah.
Because we're starting to run into time problems.
Okay
... and there's still quite a number of them.
Pleasure.
Thank you.
So we just want to thank everybody for being here today, and, this is a journey that we're on. It's a journey that we're on. It's a multi-year journey, and, I consider myself privileged to be here at this stage in terms of, putting this together and dealing, as Gareth has said, part of my remit is to deal with my succession, but importantly, is to deal with succession across the company and to make sure that we have enough young people in Pick n Pay, that are here to learn the skills of retail. This is an incredible business. It's an incredible industry, and Pick n Pay is a phenomenal business, and Pick n Pay will be back where it belongs. So thank you very much.