Good morning to all our guests this morning, both in person and online, our local and international. A warm welcome to all our franchisees, international franchise partners, investors, business associates, and shareholders. I'd like to acknowledge our board of directors and our Spur Corp executives, who have worked so hard to deliver the results you'll see today. I'd like to personally thank our Chairman, Mike Bosman, who's right here, for his continued wisdom and direction, and to our non-executive directors for always sharing their expertise and best practice. I'd like to express my thanks to all the executives, as well as the entire Spur Corp team in every region, who have demonstrated an incredible commitment and hard work towards the business. Through their passion, they've worked closely with the network to deliver the results you're about to review.
Finally, my acknowledgement always goes to the customers, who vote for us by stepping into our restaurants daily, as our franchisees and their restaurant teams await to offer them a great dining experience. On behalf of the board, it gives me great pleasure to advise our shareholders and audience that Vuyokazi Henda has been appointed as an executive director of the company, with effect from the 2nd of March, 2022. Vuya will serve on the Spur Corp Board and Spur Group. Vuya joined our team as chief marketing officer in May 2022. Her previous experience gained at Unilever in South Africa and London, which was to drive sustained revenue growth and strong underlying profitability of successful, iconic brands in South Africa.
Vuya's contribution over the last three years and strategic direction have been instrumental, particularly building a marketing division with strong capability. She project led the reigniting of the Spur brand into its new look, and currently is driving the development of a customer loyalty strategy. Vuya adds value in every engagement. On behalf of our Chairman, Mike Bosman, and the directors of Spur Corp, I welcome you, Vuya, to the board, and we look forward to your contribution as we take the business into the future of growth and sustainability. This morning, it gives me great pleasure to officially open up the presentation of the group interim results for the six months ending 31st of December, 2025. Cristina Teixeira, our CFO, joins me to present the financial and segmental review after the business overview. Cristina, welcome.
I think it's our eleventh presentation together. We'll end the presentation today with the opportunity for you to engage on any further questions. If we look at fiscal 2026 interim results at a glance. It's not working. Okay, thank you. If we look at the interim results at a glance, we reported restaurant sales for the reporting period of ZAR 6.4 billion, which increased by 8%. Group revenue increased by just over 8.5%, profit before tax increased by 13% to ZAR 244 million. Pleasingly, earnings per share increased by 13.9%. The board has also approved and declared an interim dividend at ZAR 1.20 per share to shareholders. Our purpose of leading for the greater good continues to be the North Star for the organization.
I think you're all familiar with the model that we set in fiscal 2021 and have evolved it over the years. Our focus has been to preserve the core, and yet, through innovation and design, to propel the business forward. Before I go through the details of the trading review, I thought it would be appropriate just to talk a little bit about what's happening out there because we are trading in a rather volatile environment. Geopolitical volatility in this sector has operated in the backdrop of economic pressure and ongoing supply chain disruptions. Just yesterday, our Minister of Finance, Mr.
Enoch Godongwana delivered his budget speech to convey what the projections are for South Africa's economy, and I thought I would just put it up just to have a look at what a lot of other institutions projected in December. Our Minister said South Africa should deliver an economic growth of 1.6% for the remainder of this year, and over the medium term, growth is expected to reach an average of 1.8% and perhaps 2% by 2028. I hope that this is going to pan out. It's important for all of us and certainly for the country. The Minister also added yesterday that persistent logistics bottlenecks, weak public infrastructure, and the recent outbreak of the foot-and-mouth disease continue to weigh on the economic activity and pose a risk to the outlook.
The foot-and-mouth disease has certainly impacted our business, with brands having to pass on some big increases to consumers, in particularly with brands like RocoMamas, who rely on a freshly prepared beef smash. Brands like Spur, Doppio Zero, and Hussar Grill offer various protein options, so it could lessen the impact of the beef price increase. South Africa's inflation, according to Nedbank's economists, was reported at 3.6%, in line with expectations, but as we know, meat was flagged as the outlier. Meat prices increased and peaked up to 30%-40%, but by December, settled on about 12.5%. Further disruptions with the foot-and-mouth disease were followed with outbreaks in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Eswatini, where we also trade.
We're pleased that with our strong supplier relationships and our supplier chain executives' direction, we acted promptly to secure an increased volumes of alternative options of protein, such as chicken and pork. Consumer spending is intentional. Every single purchase has to earn its place. Consumer research data reveals a trend towards a more careful and deliberate purchase, with 56% of South Africans planning ahead before they shop. 53% compare prices before they buy. 64% ensure they only buy what they know they need and to avoid wastage. South African consumers report to plan to cut back on spending across several categories in the next 12 months, and we saw this trend from about a year ago, where consumers are saying they're gonna be spending less on food and delivery and takeaways, a decline of 45% usage. Out of home dining, 43%.
Out of home entertainment, 43% as well. Functional quality and emotional value are the biggest factors influencing trust. Even in a price-conscious environment, 74% of South Africans say brand trust is important in consideration in a purchasing decision. Trust in brands is highly influenced by product quality and consistency, customer service and responsiveness, and also the importance of consumers wanting personal communication. Consumers' expectations have increased. Their needs are changing. They have very little tolerance for disappointment. They have busy lifestyles and are strapped for cash, and they're looking for a seamless experience. They have predetermined expectations, and if not met, they will be disappointed and, in many cases, do not return. On the tech and AI acceleration and seamless commerce, being the new frontier, the pressure is on.
Social media, now amplified with AI, will influence how people search, how they research, how they look out for reviews and recommendations for their favorite restaurant, influenced by those social influencers, and then they will select where they're gonna go, for what occasion, and what will suit their budget. Building a trust will depend on striking the right balance. Technology that delivers both efficiency and empathy and brand promise that maps out continually the evolving lifestyles and changing habits of the shoppers. We also have to understand that it comprises that they earn loyalty and will not only adapt to shoppers or changing habits, but brands that understand what matters most to the consumer. Looking forward, success will not come from digital acceleration alone.
Retailers, restaurant, and us, too, must capture growth by expanding occasions and building volumes both online and in-store, while giving consumers confidence, control, and a sense of simplicity. The winners will be those who deliver consistency in a fragmented world, meeting the shoppers wherever they choose to engage. That sets a whole new scene for the business going forward. Often, as we've said in our own business, very often there's nothing wrong with the business model, but it's the change in trading environment that requires that we adapt and are nimble, to adjust our offerings and value proposition to suit the changing customer needs.
If we go through a little bit of an update on the trading report, what I will be doing this morning is taking you through some group stats and then highlighting one or two brands, not all of them. If we look at the restaurants in which we trade, it's 14 countries now, including South Africa. This year we reentered Lesotho. We were there before. We now have a Panarottis and Sorry, a RocoMamas and I've gotten up mixed up. A Spur and a Panarottis in Lesotho, which is wonderful. Our international footprint is 113, and as you can see there, our overall footprint mid-700s. Our brand portfolio remains the same. You can see our mainstream brands on the top, as well as RocoMamas, our fast casual brand.
In the center, our portfolio of specialty brands. VK brands are holding their own, still an important category for that convenience-conscious consumer. Our top VK brands now remain Pizza Pug in first place, Rib Shack RocoFellas for RocoMamas in second, and Just Wingz third. If we look at our restaurant count for the period, what's interesting to see, Spur, as we know, being the foundation brand, represents 47% of the count. What's interesting when you look at the Panarottis count of 150, in fiscal 2021, the Panarottis count was 33% of the Spur count. This has now reached 42%. Just wonderful to see the expansion of this wonderful brand bringing a wonderful offering and an easy-to-eat product to the market.
Specialty brands are sitting at 86, with the dominance being The Hussar Grill and Doppio Zero. If we look at some of the new stores and closures and revamps, we've had great success this first half, exceeding the expected numbers of new stores. New restaurants in South Africa were 29, international were nine. We did have some closures. Our closures are usually because they're in the wrong location, they can't relocate because of poor performance, because of new developments in specific nodes. Pleasingly, some of those closures were rebrands. In John Dory's instance, you remember last year I mentioned that our John Dory's in Zeerust was converted to a RocoMamas by the same franchisee. More recently, we converted another two John Dory's to a Panarottis and RocoMamas as well.
For Piza ē Vino, a small brand also struggling to find exactly its value proposition, we converted two Piza ē Vino brands to Doppio Zero. If we look at the group turnover monthly trend, and I know as investors and the audience, you like to see this, we've tracked it now for the last five years, and this is the sixth year. The solid turquoise is obviously our fiscal 2026, half one. We had a very good start to the year. You could remember last July wasn't great because of the way the school holidays fell. We were really pleased, and we thought that trend would continue. It didn't, because you can see a sort of a steady decline into September. Our teams did react well, towards the end of August, September, and into October.
We had very strong brand activity, which delivered a nice growth in that month. November ended quite well with Black Friday. It was a record-breaking Friday for the group, we beat that record for Saturday, Valentine's Day, this year, which has been awesome. Unexpectedly, post-Christmas, we did have a very flat last week of trade, last week of the calendar year and last week of our half one. That was a bit disappointing, the group still delivered a growth on previous year for the month of December, and obviously for the period.
If we look at restaurant turnover in South Africa, numbers and turnover, if we look at the Spur brand, a more mature brand, working now in a highly competitive arena, a lot of competition are trying to copy the Spur offering, and we have to stay sharp and stay in the lead. We've delivered a growth of 7.2%, which we think is a good growth in the current market conditions. Panarottis an outstanding system-wide growth of 17.4%, and I'll show you the like-for-like shortly, but really outstanding. John Dory's continues to show a negative growth, and you will continue to see that for a period while we rationalize the portfolio and either convert, close, and refine the top-performing stores. The rest speak for themselves. Piza ē Vino also declined.
Good news on Piza ē Vino, we have franchised one of the Piza ē Vino company-owned stores, so that hopefully will show a nice increase in performance. If we look at the international market, our international portfolio represents about 10% of our turnover, and its profit has increased. Cristina will take you through that shortly. On the international front, which is really the rest of Africa, we trade mainly with Spur, about 39% contribution. Panarottis is about a 35% contribution, and 25% RocoMamas. Our top-performing countries are listed on the right, with Mauritius being the highest and Nigeria number 5. Lots of growth opportunity in Nigeria, so we're gonna see that country moving up the ranks. They delivered a turnover growth of 14%.
If we look at the group turnover, particularly focus on like-for-like, which is always indicative of the health of the brand, we can see that we had a 8% system-wide growth and a 4.5% like-for-like. Spur 5.2%. Panarottis a double-digit like-for-like growth, which is really great. The one that disappointed us, and we saw a distinct change in frequency and foot count after the end of July, when we had put in an increase for the RocoMamas Smash. We've got our heads together now to look at how we're gonna mitigate that, the beef price hike in an environment where you mainly sell beef, freshly made beef smash, has certainly had a negative impact, but we do believe that that is reversible.
If we look at the brand customer count, this excludes Doppio Collection, because they measure their customer count a bit differently. I've put this slide up only to show that there is a glimmer of hope. It's the first period that we started seeing a slight increase in customer count. We, in fact, had an increase in customer count for December. For Spur, Panarottis very impressive, the overall group customer count also showing a marginal increase, which is really promising. If we move on to our regional growth and contribution, you can see the importance of Gauteng, not only for our group but also for the country. A lot more locations, a lot more development, a bigger population, represents 58% of our group turnover, followed by the Western Cape at 21. Growth was quite interesting this year.
You remember probably a year or two ago, we were seeing quite a bigger increase in the Western Cape. Obviously, we working against high figures now. The two that I could call out is the growth of Gauteng at 9.3% and Western Cape at 7.4%. I'm gonna move on to just some highlights on some of the brands, starting with the specialty portfolio. This is the new look Hussar Grill. This photo might have even been taken before it was completed, but a beautiful store. It's a company-owned store in Mouille Point. It's a very busy store, very profitable, really has done well. If we look at the Hussar portfolio overall, we've got 28 Hussar Grill restaurants in South Africa.
This map is indicative of showing you where they're more saturated. Because it was born in Cape Town, you can see a stronger footprint in Cape Town. More recently, we opened another store in KZN, so we've got three stores in KZN. We opened a new store in Mossel Bay, which has been extremely successful. This is the one in Cotswold, in KZN, owned by a multiple franchisee who owns a couple of other brands as well. Mossel Bay is our franchisee who Piza ē Vino in Hartenbos, a beautiful store in a heritage building. Did exceptionally well over season and continues to attract diners to the restaurant.
If we now look at the footprint of Doppio Zero or the Doppio restaurants, we have 35, 34 in South Africa and one in Botswana. You can almost see the opposite. Strong dominance in Gauteng, and starting to grow in the coastal areas. That is the opportunity. I think this really displays to our franchisees and new business executives the opportunity that exists to expand these two formidable speciality brands. What is important to note, that out of the portfolio of about 85, 86 restaurants, 63 are the Hussar and Doppio Zero brands, and the turnover contribution to speciality is almost 80%. These are our dominant brands, and that is gonna be our future focus. We've launched two derivatives of the Doppio brand, if I can call them subsidiaries.
We told you a little bit about this at the last results. They're now open and trading. The first one is the Doppio Caffè in Sea Point. It's in the Protea Hotel. It not only serves the public, but it also does the breakfast buffet for the Protea guests, and it also does a little bit of room service business. A beautiful little restaurant. Not a lot of parking in that area, as we know, in Sea Point, but really a wonderful-looking store. Sandton Mediclinic, the Doppio Caffè there is doing really well. We know the Mediclinic owners are really keen and talking to us about other opportunities.
You can't see it in this photograph, it's got quite a big counter for takeaways, because as you can imagine, people are walking in for medical appointments or visiting their loved ones. Some sit and wait, and others just grab and go. Our newest baby is a Doppio Bistrot. This has been developed now for a while. A lot of you who come from Johannesburg will know the old Keith Kirsten Nursery, very popular on Jan Smuts Avenue, corner of Jan Smuts Avenue and Bolton. It's a new development called Nine Yards. Really a beautiful setup. The same landscaper who did all the Sun City landscaping actually has done the landscape here, it's a wonderful site to explore and look at. We've got a beautiful site. It has access to both parking lots.
It's in build at the moment. It's going to open by early March. This is just one view of the patio. The patio deck has got a private dining section as well. This is some of the interiors, the look and feel, and just another view. One up, a little bit more of a bespoke menu, just so that it can attract breakfast, lunch, and evening diners. Just two other messages on our speciality brands. Casa Bella, we opened the new restaurant in Century City. I think I'd prompted it last year. Doing very well, owned by one of our multiple owners, who owns a Hussar Grill in the same area and also owns Panarottis and, more recently, another one of our brands. That's happening there.
Nikos, you saw the performance of Nikos, and this is the view of the Silverstar Casino, which was an Ocean Basket that converted to Nikos. At this point, I would like to announce, and you've probably seen it on the scenes this morning, after careful consideration and refocusing our energy and effort on a few good specialty brands that mirror the competency we have, like The Hussar Grill, like Doppio Zero, like pasta and pizza brands, we took the decision, with our partners and founding family, to dispose of the Nikos brand. The Nikos brand, post the reporting period, has been sold to the Nikos family. It will be effective on the first of March, and it will be reported in the half two results.
To the Nikos family, we had an engagement this morning with them and also with their franchisees. We want to say in Greek, efcharistó, thank you to the Nikos family, who gave us the opportunity to grow with them over a period of about five, six years. Thank you, too, to our speciality executive, Justin, and his team for taking care of this baby during the time here at Spur Corp. Our new portfolio of brands will be looking like this without the Nikos brand. If we look at the growth of locations impacted by weather and gambling in particular, yes, a very good results in the bigger malls, because we know with bad weather, people gravitate to malls because it's covered, undercover parking.
Just some to call out, casinos, only a 5% growth relative to the growth in other locations. We know a lot of this has to do with foot count in the malls, either because there isn't, in the casinos, either because there isn't a good show or because of the incidents of online gambling. We know this has had a direct impact. In a recent engagement, as someone mentioned to me, they wouldn't give me the name, but they cited a growth of one of the big online gamblers at a 73% increase. This is definitely affecting those locations. Freestanding, perhaps also because of the weather. Hotels, only a growth of 5%, regional malls, a little bit lower than the small regional or the super regionals. Always interesting to study that.
Obviously, different dynamics per brand, this is the group representation. If we now move on to Spur, our foundation brand, a very loved brand, a heritage brand. This is the new look. This happens to be an Eagle Canyon Spur that's just recently revamped. I want to thank Mornay Brown, one of our multiple franchisees, for his continued investment and trust in the brand. This is the team. They're looking great. We currently have 74 Pegasus looks. That's what we call them, the new look Spurs. In South Africa, we've got seven in the international market, we're hoping that by June, we will reach the 100 mark milestone. The team are telling me it's a little bit higher than 100, I thought I'll only commit to 100. Exciting times for the brand.
If we look at the group day part, it is influenced by the Spur, because we know that Spur is predominantly about casual dining and family entertainment. If we look at our main day part, remains lunchtime, 51% at a growth of 6.8%, and dinner remains constant. We all know that we're all trying to get more people into our stores for dinner, but that changed after COVID. We now sort of closing restaurants between 11 and between 10 and 11. Years ago, we used to close in early hours of the morning, so that has changed. We're just trying to leverage the best seating capacity for each day part up to the time consumers want to shop. Breakfast has also been an interesting one.
For different brands, there's been a different growth, overall for the group, an 8%. This is also because a lot of the smaller brands have started introducing breakfast, like RocoMamas. Panarottis continues to drive it, obviously for Spur, it's an important day part. Some exciting news for Spur. Eventually, after five years, we have our number two drive-through in the new look. It's in Allandale, in Midrand. Really beautiful, also owned by a multiple franchisee. It launched on Valentine's Day. It's early days, we're hoping it will attract the convenience shopper. It also has a very big sit-down environment and play area. We're hoping this will be more of a hybrid drive-through than a traditional drive-through, because our customers still love sitting around a table and celebrating.
This is a new store at the Loftus Park, which is a shopping center just adjacent to the actual stadium. You can actually walk to the stadium from here. We already have a Panarottis there that's traded really well. It's jam-packed whenever there's a game. If you look at this store, it's actually owned by the same franchisee who owns the RocoMamas, who had faith in the Spur brand. This opened recently. We did go to opening night. It was wonderful. Here, consumers can sit inside and look on the TV screens or outside on the patio. To the right of this photograph is a massive screen in the center of the Loftus Stadium. Really exciting, and I know during games, it's gonna be an awesome destination, but it is busy even in non-game times.
Just talking about our proud sponsor, the Springboks, lots of activity happens. Our marketing team are just driving just amazing collaboration and partnerships with the Springboks. Last year, we did the mascot incentive, where one or two mascots could walk onto the field with the players, which was in Durban. We had the send-off of the women's rugby team to the Women's Rugby World Cup, their last meal at Oliver Tambo Spur, before they boarded their flight. Of course, Grilling the Greats, which is an awesome concept where kids can question the professional Springbok players about all the rugby data and information. That's something that our team plan to continue into the new year. In Limpopo, Lebowakgomo, I had opportunity to visit the store myself with the team in November.
A beautiful little store. It was jam-packed with people eating grills and desserts and everything. We actually had to leave quite quickly because we were getting in the way. Really wonderful, and I do take my hat off to our new business executive, who understands the importance of moving into markets where the community will respond so positively to the Spur experience. Canyon Creek in Bronkhorstspruit, the brand was in Bronkhorstspruit many years ago. An important little town as people enter and exit Pretoria on that Witbank highway. Also owned by a franchisee who owns a couple of stores in Pretoria and operating really well. In a more upmarket area, and it's always wonderful to bring Spur to a more upmarket area in Dainfern Square. We currently already have a RocoMamas there.
This was opened by our biggest multiple brand, Spur. Beautiful restaurant, to attract that more affluent consumer from all the housing development that's expanding in the Dainfern and surrounds. Little Thunder, Soshanguve, this is in the Sosh Mall. We already have another store in Soshanguve. This was the second one. You just have to be there. It's a massive mall. I've visited this mall twice, towards the end of last year, before Christmas and early in the new year. It is packed. What is wonderful to see is just how many consumers are living in Soshanguve, and how many affluent consumers with disposable income, and they walk in the mall, shopping their fashion, buying their meals. Also, a great-looking store owned by a multiple franchisee. At Appaloosa Spur, everyone will know the popular Alzu stop on the N4 highway.
We have many stores with the Alzu group. Spur is a very important site there. It has a very strong takeaway business, as you know, for transient traffic, and we have a big seating area. It's been revamped. It was long overdue for a revamp. Looking really awesome, and we thank Alzu for their investment in this brand. Just a small note, we're not telling you a lot about marketing in this presentation. Just the importance of driving value. The Spur brand started towards the end of June, where they introduced a big 3 combo. It was a great success. We then followed that by the Master Griller combo, which was sort of end of September period into October.
Currently, because of the foot-and-mouth disease, our supply chain team have managed to secure ribs at a very good price. Our ribs are all imported. This is just a snapshot of the commercial, so it's not blurred. It's actually new photography that's being used of the plate, sort of moving through the store to the customer. Maybe one day with AI, that's gonna happen in reality. This campaign is currently running, and we're already seeing some good traction for the restaurants. Our group active loyal customers is now sitting at 2.8 million. Obviously, the biggest contributor there is the Spur brand. This becomes and continues to be a strategic priority for us. We know the importance of building loyalty, of rewarding frequency.
More recently, the Spur Loyalty Club was also voted or nominated for 2 categories in the International Customer Loyalty Awards. We're waiting to see what the outcome in, that is a huge accolade to be awarded an international award for a local South African loyalty brand. Well done. Well done, team. If we now move on to more of what influences, obviously, off-premise turnover. Sit-down remains our dominant offering, off-premise is critical to us. At the moment, it represents 12%, which is predominantly collect, where the customer can call, click, or phone and collect themselves, or deliver through the third parties. We have quite a big strategy behind the scenes, working on how we can offer a last-mile delivery model to our franchisees at a better margin and also satisfy our consumers' needs.
RocoMamas, as I mentioned earlier, has been negatively impacted by the hike in beef price. RocoMamas is already a premium burger, so that consumer is obviously sensitive for price. We've now got our heads together to see how we're gonna respond to that, but still attracts those people who are addicts and love our Smash burger. I also wanted to point out that our creative department produced this slide with actual photographs of the burger, but the rest has been done on AI. So don't think it was someone's son. Okay, just a few new stores you'll remember. I think the last cycle, we only reported one new RocoMamas store. They've gained some great traction. We've opened five RocoMamas stores in this last reporting period.
This is in Long Street, a great little store just around the corner from our little pizza pod that we're testing. Garsfontein, Pretoria, also in the outskirts of Pretoria, Lenasia halal store that's opened. At this point, I also wanted to mention that we currently have 40 halal restaurants in the group. 20 are from Spur and 14 from RocoMamas. At this point, I also want to wish our Muslim audience and our franchisees and customers all the strength for Ramadan. Hartbeespoort Dam, this is hot off the press. It will be reported into fiscal two into half two for the reporting period. This is a John Dory's conversion. One of our multiple owners owns the Spur, owns now this RocoMamas at Hartbeespoort Dam, at the Lifestyle Centre.
A beautiful little store has had a great impact for that market. Lots of weekenders and holidaymakers in that area, so an ideal product for food on the go. Fourways Mall has seen a great revamp. It's being classed now as the biggest mall in South Africa. You actually get lost in it, I must tell you. Last reporting period, we told you we had opened a Spur for Peaks, very successful, doing exceptionally well. The same franchisee is now gonna open a Panarottis. Our Black female franchisees, who own five RocoMamas, opened this RocoMamas in the Fourways Mall, also doing really well, and we're hoping in the medium term that we will probably have two more brands in the same center.
For John Dory's, this is our most recent new look, which is Eastgate, Gauteng. The team was successful to secure a very prominent site in Eastgate, being one of the high traffic malls in the East Rand. It had a very good season. We're hoping that that trend will continue. For the John Dory's brand, we only have five new looks at the moment, so there's a lot of work at play to look at, how we evolve this brand. It's probably gonna go through a little bit more difficulty till it turns and improves, but hopefully, we'll get there. I decided to leave Panarottis for last, so I'm almost done, because it has definitely been the shining star in the network, with the incredible growth.
I think this slide just captures the hospitality and the dining of Panarottis, and as you know, we're also pushing pasta in a big way at the moment. This is a recent revamp, East Rand Mall, Panarottis looking really beautiful. I wanted to just talk a little bit about how it's gained momentum. On the left there, you can see the old look, Panarottis Pizza, and on the right, the new. I wanted to just talk about how eventually we understood the flywheel concept, because it happened with this brand. Just to point out some key milestones, in fiscal 2021, we had 112 restaurants. That was for the group, local and international. In 2022, we repositioned the brand and the new look. We were very clear about the vision for Panarottis.
It's a place where you sit and enjoy pizza at the table. It was unintimidating. We saw the vision that people don't only want to eat pizza out of a box, even though we also sell them in a box. We embarked on our small town strategy and a big expansion plan over the following two fiscals. Today, as we stand here, 70% of the network is now in the new look, currently, we have 150 restaurants, of which 53 of those are in the rest of Africa. Well done to Cornelius and his team, our franchisees, who were aligned with us on this repositioning, believed in us, and are clamoring to open and revamp the rest of the Panarottis. Well done.
You remember that peak in October, a lot of it was because of Panarottis. What happened in the prior months, we had opened two restaurants, we revamped four, showed a 20% growth of those, all four of those restaurants. Just to show you how important it is to create a great environment for a consumer. We all love sitting in a new place, new chairs, new ambiance. That helped them, and then in October, they ran a very successful duo campaign, which was pasta and pizza, basically delivered for the reporting period, a 14.6% growth on customer count. Outstanding. Just some sites, Hartenbos. We already trade in Hartenbos with a very good Spur and also a very Piza ē Vino. panarottis did very well over season. They all did.
They took a little bit of turnover away, but there was a lot of other competition. All three of our brands trading really well, which shows that you can dominate a small, captive audience in a town like that. There's a lot of holidaymakers over season, but a beautiful store that overlooks the tennis courts and a bit of the sea. Tokai, also our new look, Panarottis there. Kathu, that's known as the center of iron ore. We know that Kathu, Kuruman, and Postmasburg, those are very important mining areas at the moment and a lot of growth and opportunity. We already trade with a Spur there, and this is the Panarottis that opened recently. Mahikeng, important, also owned by a multiple franchisee. We have a Spur there, and we have Panarottis.
Mall of the South, Johannesburg, also important, beautiful store, also a very high traffic mall. Also attracts a lot of your mainstream consumers, what a wonderful thing to offer them a casual dining environment, especially for the first-time diners. Riverside Mall, Mbombela, was also a John Dory's that was converted to a Panarottis before the end of last year. On the international front, you can see a slight different look. This is Coca, Nigeria. Basically, we focus on more takeout for Panarottis Pizza in Nigeria. We currently have. Where was my thing? I always forget this figure. I can't remember now. Where is it? Sorry, I just wanted to get the international count. We have, in Nigeria, 11 Panarottis, these three opened recently in the heart of Lagos.
All these three sites, Herbert Macaulay, also in the heart of Lagos, and Ojaja as well. Also a lot of promise from our franchisees in Nigeria to expand this model, as well as expanding the Spurs and revamping them. This was Panarottis Pizza. It's a clip-on. It's a clip-on to a Spur. Could this work elsewhere? Carve out a piece of an existing bigger store and deliver a new experience. Just on the CSI side, for Panarottis, they've just launched this new initiative. I think it's amazing. They've partnered with iSchool Africa and basically launched a coding and robotics club. Every year, they'll be contributing to money that's collected, ZAR 1 for every top-up. That will go towards feeding these young minds for their future life, which will be full of technology and innovation.
Really wonderful to see these little youngsters so engaged in this new device. To close off, just some added value, we relaunched our training division, well over a year ago, really successfully, with a new leader, a new team, just doing amazing stuff online, classroom, and in-store. This is our new training facility in the Woodmead location, which our franchisees visit, and our restaurant staff get trained. You can see that in the reporting period, we trained 9,300 people, of which, about 3,000 of those were actually restaurant managers. Really wonderful to see the service provided to the franchisees. Leading up to a close, just to call out one or two things, we remain committed to our transformation journey.
Transformation is not only about CSI, it's about doing the right thing, it's about having the right culture, it's about creating harmony in the workplace. You can see some of those stats. We've got greater good influencers now that run greater good weeks, which help get engagement from our own people. We continue to invest in learning and development, not only with ECD teachers, but our own people, rising leaders, learnerships for our factory people. We're hoping that by the end of the fiscal, we will have probably invested close to ZAR 5 million in learning and development. Many other projects which continue, the feeding of ECD children has reached 3,520.
Just yesterday in the Eastern Cape, our corporate comms team and Spur Foundation team were at another school, giving girl learners their complimentary sanitary wear for their whole high school career. A lot of things happening, which is awesome, and we continue to put our franchisees on a pedestal with a Purpose In Action Awards to recognize all this good work that's happening by our franchisees and by the group. Customer recognition is always important. I'm sure you've seen a lot of these, and you'll see it in the pack. Always important to see that when our customers vote for us, we see it outright, and we know that that is just a affirmation of doing the right thing, but also getting feedback of the things we've constantly got to improve.
At this point, I thank you for your attention and for your time. I'm gonna hand over to Cristina, who's gonna take us through the financial and segmental review, and then we'll both be back to field some questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Val. Morning, ladies and gentlemen. Let's start with the income statement. Val highlighted an 8% increase in sales, which then translates, as you see on the slide, to a 8.5% increase in revenue. This uptick was largely driven by an 11.5% increase in sales to franchisees, and external retail sales sources through our outsourced distributor, as can be seen on the slide, on the third slide. It's also been complemented by a 7.5% increase in local franchise revenue and a 9.6% increase in international franchise revenue. Further down, gross profit percentage is at 31.5% versus 31.8% in the prior period. The other expenses have risen by 3.9% to.
Sorry, to ZAR 452 million, and they're made up of a number of items. Marketing expenses, ZAR 177 million, is a 6.8% increase. Retail company store expenses, it was ZAR 67 million, a 6.6% increase. Operation expenses, of ZAR 88 million, which you'll see on the detailed income statement, increased by 16.3%, but that is as a result of a change in the operating model in managing our retail source businesses. Admin expenses in terms of overheads, it was ZAR 126 million and increased by 1.2%, and this is unpacked later in the presentation.
If we move to the operating profit line, the operating profit margin all in, is then 10.8% for the period, compared to 10.1% in the prior period. As you look at the net finance income, you can see it's down to ZAR 8.8 instead of ZAR 12.3, and that's due to lower prevailing interest rates, but also lower cash on hand. What we did is there was a higher application of free cash to share repurchases, as well as we increased the dividend paid to shareholders compared to the prior period. You'll remember the higher dividend in the second half of last year.
Moving a line down to the equity accounting investment, that is profit on an associate of a company that's owned, it's a Doppio Zero, a company that we own as an associate. The tax rate is 29.5%, profit is reported at ZAR 173 million, which, as you can see on the bottom right, is a 12.4% increase period on period, earnings per share at a 13.9% increase period on period. The Spur brand remains our main contributor to the franchise revenue and profit. The increased sales of 7.2% by Spur translated into a revenue increase of 7% for Spur, and a profit increase of 8% through cost control.
That's at a healthy position at ZAR 161 million for Spur for the period. That brand, the Spur brand, continues to generate also the best operating margin of all the brands, at 88%. The Spur brand is responsible for 50% of the network of stores that we have and represents 66% of the South African franchise revenue. If we look at the remaining sort of franchise businesses, it's the remaining brands in the group.
Panarottis, which is depicted in the teal, sort of third from the top, was the star performer, as Val has mentioned earlier, it excels with a value proposition that is appealing and sustainable, and delivered a 17% increase in sales, which translated into an 18% increase in revenue, and a 21% increase in profit. Again, cost management as well as revenue increase. RocoMamas, which is depicted in the orange, reported solid revenue and profit growth at 5% and 8% respectively, 5% revenue, 8% profit. Both brands are holding robust net operating margins at 75% and 79%, respectively. Panarottis and RocoMamas represent 10% of the South African franchise revenue each.
Well, it's actually 10.5% for Panarottis and 9.7% for RocoMamas, and I'm only that specific and exact because those two CEOs are highly competitive. If I rounded the numbers, they would be very unhappy with me. John Dory's, which is depicted in the blue at the bottom, reported a negative growth on sales, and has maintained its delivery of ZAR 9 million per annum revenue, sorry, not per annum, per half year, and a consistent ZAR 4 million per half year on profits. Growth in this brand category does remain challenging. The specialty brands increased revenue, and you can see them.
I can't actually see what color that is, but the specialty brands increased sales by 9.1%, with, as Val mentioned, Hussar and Doppio Zero still being the dominant brands within the specialty portfolio. This converted into a nearly 12%, 11.6% increase in revenue, and a 9% increase in profit. As Val mentioned, effective 1 March 2026, the group has disposed of its 62% interest in Nikos back to the founding partners, and that will be reported in H2 of this financial year. This forms part of sort of the group's specialty portfolio rationalization strategy, focusing on the specialty areas that we, as a group, think we have expertise in.
I'll also take a moment to acknowledge and thank Nikki, Nick, Pano, and Vellay Panar for the wonderful partnership that we've had with them over the years. If we move to the next slide, we look at the company-owned stores. The group has 14 company-owned stores, four Hussar Grills, 10 in the Doppio Collection portfolio, we add another one, which is that Associate I mentioned earlier, the two Modern Tailors entities. The retail, the company stores, you'll see, shows a negative revenue growth of 5.5%. This is actually largely due to the closure in the prior period of Ciccio, a concept store that we had, which was in the second half of the financial year.
We also sold a Doppio Zero to a franchisee, as Val mentioned, so it's in the first quarter of the current financial year. If you exclude those two stores, which are now no longer in the first half of this current period, the comparable revenue growth would not be -5.5%, but it would be an increase of 2.4%. With added efficiencies that have come through through the running of the company on stores, and removing the loss that came through in Ciccio of the prior year, and a profit on disposal of the company that we said we sold to a franchisee, that profit was ZAR 1.4 million.
We delivered a profit of 10.2%, which is a 17.8% increase period on period for the portfolio. Val did mention this, the review of the portfolio of company-owned stores is also underway. We are currently finalizing the sale of a further two company-owned stores to franchisees. That's part of our structure for transformation and also part of our structure to optimize the utilization of the company-owned stores. If we look at the manufacturing and distribution segment, we'll see revenue increased by 11.5%, which is obviously higher than the franchise or turnover increases of 8%. That's really because of the increased sales to franchisees and external sales on our resale sources via our outsourced distributor. Profit went up by 23%.
The most material contributor to profit still remains the profit on procured items, but it has now also been complemented with the profit on the manufacturing sources. The current period also includes the impact of our change in structure on the insourcing of the management of the group's retail sources, which was implemented in the second half of the previous financial year. Although that change has not yet resulted in a significant change in revenue, it has improved the operating margin. It's really improved performance in all three of those categories that allowed us to generate that profit before tax increase of 23%. If we move to marketing funds, overall, you'll see an increase in revenue of 2.8% on the right-hand side.
That appears lower than the increase in the sales that we spoke of 8%, but that's purely due to the accounting for the revenue over a period of time, in terms of IFRS 15, at least, as opposed to a point in time. If you adjust for that ZAR 7.8 deferred income number at the bottom, it actually increases the marketing revenue, and therefore the period-on-period comparison is 7%, which makes more sense in line or compared to the sales turnover for the group. It's a small contribution profit of ZAR 113 million. It's important to note that the marketing, each marketing fund for each of the brands are fully funded, so they have cash in bank.
It's obviously reflected within restricted cash, because it's not for the group's benefit, but it is funded. It doesn't need a call on the group to run the business, and the surplus is reflected as a contract liability. This enables the further activation, at least, of customer-focused marketing activities. If we move to South Africa, what we call Other and Shared Services, the table on the left, I think you've become accustomed to remembering that, it discloses the operating performance for those activities which directly support the franchisees, so not support overheads, but directly support. So that would be decor, training, and then the work we do with our export departments, and our call center. Our decor and export team have been very important in delivering the revamps and the,
or at least the input for the revamps and the new stores. As we know, that's 38 new stores for the period and 29 revamped locations. Both revenue and profits were slightly behind what we were expecting and slightly behind the prior period. Our training department, that Val showed just now, the part, is delivering good results in terms of training and interventions. It does remain a small cost center for the group, though. On the right-hand side, we reflect the costs associated with the support department, so your traditional head office. You'll see income is in line, net interest income is a bit down, as we explained earlier, with the lower cash balances.
I think what's more relevant is the second row from the bottom, which is the actual overhead costs. What you'll see is it's reported at ZAR 103 million versus ZAR 101 million for the prior period, which is a 2.1% increase. We'll unpack that in a little bit more detail in the next slide. Taking that 2.1% increase, the ZAR 103 million shared overheads, we strip out for you for comparability purposes, some of the sort of maybe key items that you would be expect to say, you should see, they cost, like the legal expenditure in support of the GPS matter and IFRS adjustments, including a gain on de-recognition, as you see, of a lease of ZAR 1.4 million.
We strip those out, because those are inconsistent period on period, and we show you that the comparable shared overheads is actually ZAR 99 million and represents a 6.7% increase on the prior year, which is probably more in line with your expectations, as opposed to the 1.2% increase period on period. We do provide more detail in the appendix, which takes that 99 and breaks it down by department, so you can see the increase. It's the larger increase, ZAR 3, 4 million, that comes through the technology department, as we've added a certain investment for interventions that we're undertaking under the guidance of our CRO or led by CRO.
That is to support multiple channels, and to partner with our marketing department in making sure that we deliver customer-centric, fit-for-purpose, automated, interventions and contact to consumers. We move to international. International, I think, had a good performance in the period. It's performing well. It had a 16% increase in revenue, as you can see on the slide, and a 37% increase in profits over the prior period. The international team have worked really hard to support our, you know, our cross-border franchisees, and they opened up nine new restaurants and revamped three in the first half.
I think Val might have mentioned this, but a highlight was the reintroduction of Spur in Maseru, which happened in the latter part of the calendar 2025, and then the one John Dory's store was closed in the period in Zambia. Obviously, there are always some challenging trading conditions working in the rest of Africa, in several markets. Obviously, Botswana had some pressure with contraction in the diamond industry, and there's also been a change in government administration. Zambia continued to struggle with energy crises that have been running for about two years. Pleasingly, what is good to see is our costs continue to be maintained, and on a constant exchange rate basis, costs increased also by about 6%, so it's costs are in hand.
If we look at our comparable profit analysis, we start with our profits before income tax, at ZAR 244 million. You're used to seeing us strip out marketing funds, because it's not for us to not we do control, but it's not for our account. We see that that profit before income tax was an increase of 13%. When we reduce our profit by, to take out the extraordinaries, the profit on disposal from the sale of the one entity, the gain on de-recognition of lease, and I won't read through all of those, but it's also the legal costs on GPS. We're left with a comparable profit before tax of ZAR 246 million, not materially different to the ZAR 244.
Because there was some one source in the prior period, it actually then represents an 11.7% increase, as opposed to a 13% increase. We do that for full transparency so that you can see the adjustment. All right, onto balance sheet. Slightly small, but balance sheet, you'll see the PPE number, largely unchanged. We've had about ZAR 13 million additions in CapEx, and that's offset by depreciation of ZAR 16 million. To give you a flavor of what those assets are, sort of ZAR 4 million in our head office, a roof repair of ZAR 1.9 million, a revamp of our stock roll of ZAR 3 million, and ZAR 2 million in Doppio Collection for revamps of our stores. There's also the right-of-use asset that you see that offsets the right-of-use liability.
The most material asset obviously remains the goodwill balance on our balance sheet of ZAR 499 million. It's largely unchanged. The only thing that's moved is the amortization of licenses. Other non-current assets of ZAR 6 million, ZAR 3 million are investment in associates, and ZAR 3 million deferred tax assets, all temporary differences, no assessed losses. I'll cover the movement on the working capital, so inventory and creditors and debtors on the separate slide when we do the cash flow statement. I'm gonna move on to the slide.
If you look at the contract liabilities, so if you look at current and long term together, they create a number of ZAR 65 million, and they consist of the unspent marketing funds, circa ZAR 27 million that I mentioned previously, as well as the balance of ZAR 38 million, which is the initial license fees paid by our franchisees to the group on conclusion of a franchise agreement, which is then recognized over a period of time into the income statement. It's carried on the balance sheet and unwound over the franchise agreement. Okay, just to note, a reminder to shareholders, we obviously still have a material contingent liability that we disclosed, and it's fully disclosed in the notes to the interim financials. I think it's note 13 I marked there.
As you know, the shareholders are aware, there was a GPS claim. It was, matter was referred to arbitration by agreement. Closing arguments were heard on the 9th of December, 2024. Nearly a year later, we received a part award, part award on merits only, not on quantum, and that award was against the group. That was in August 2025. The arbitration, as I said. Where are we now currently? The arbitration has been reopened to address matters of quantum. The claim continues to be disclosed as a contingent liability, no liability is recorded on our balance sheet as at the reporting date. We'll await the arbitrator's finalization of the appeal. Not the appeal, pardon.
Finalization of the arbitration, merit determination on claim B, quantum determination before we can bring this matter to close. From a cash flow perspective, as you know, the group reported profits before tax of ZAR 245 million. You'll see that that increased by ZAR 3 million to get to operating profit of ZAR 247 million. Really, it's the add back of non-cash items. In essence, depreciation of ZAR 16 million was offset by ZAR 17 million movement in employee-related accruals and liabilities. We landed up with just the net effect of the non-cash items is only ZAR 3 million. Working capital reflects an outflow of ZAR 30 million. I'll explain that now. Well, let's do that now.
It's constituted by a change in trade payables, as you can see, a positive inflow of ZAR 12 million, and then inventories outflow of ZAR 10 million, and that's additional inventory that we carried at year-end, or at least reporting period end, with our outsourced distributor. Mainly the inventory that goes to our franchisees as well as the retail sources that are on stands. The outflow. That's normalized. The outflow of ZAR 32 million on the trade and other receivables is really just due to the seasonality of our business. Trade receivables are generally higher in December because of the increased volume in December relative to June. You would expect that, period on period, the debtors' value would be higher, and that shows then as a trade and other receivables outflow.
We can, however, confirm that the cash comes in the back in the month of January, it's normalized certainly by the end of the first month, post December, so in January. This generated a healthy cash generated from operations, we feel, of ZAR 217 million, and that represents a 21% increase over the prior period. If I finish off, I think, with just with the cash flow, we've covered the cash generated from operations, we've covered the finance income. You can see then we paid ZAR 230 million to key stakeholders, so SARS received ZAR 72 million of that, and our shareholders received ZAR 165 million in terms of dividends.
You can see that in investing activities, that ZAR 10 million is largely the proceeds on disposal, settled by the ZAR 13 million that I said we spent on investing in CapEx. If we look at the financing activities, that sit at ZAR 61 million. ZAR 57 million, the most of it was spent on share repurchase. A portion of it for share buybacks and a portion of it for our long-term incentive plan. ZAR 8 million spent in settlement of our lease liabilities. External debt was raised of ZAR 21 million for top-up collection, ZAR 16 million was paid out to minority partners. That then leaves us with, I think there's something with my slide. Excuse me. Just one back, please.
As I said, we've now got cash and cash equivalents that are at ZAR 458 million, lower than the closing balance of June. As I said, it's a result of higher share backs, buybacks, as well as the increased dividend to shareholders relative to the prior comparative period. There was also utilization of marketing funds that's in unrestricted cash of ZAR 9.4 million. The allocation of the cash obviously is key for the group. It is a key focus for the board of directors, as discussed at every board meeting. Obviously, the board has to consider contingent liabilities, any future capital expenditure that is required, and of course, we'll also consider any investments that, if they meet the return hurdles that are necessary for the group to achieve.
Obviously, as we said, from a different perspective, of that, ZAR 402 unrestricted cash, the group will pay out ZAR 109 million of that to shareholders in the form of dividends, on the 23rd of March. I'll now hand over back to Val to continue the presentation.
Thank you, Cristina. Well done. It's all yours. Great, where are we? Good. Thank you, Cristina. That was wonderful. Good. Just a quick overview of the way forward. This is a long discussion, but we'll quickly give you a snapshot of what we envisage. I think you've seen our business model going forward. We presented it at the year-end results, where we are on a journey of value creation, across a focus of how we bring new value to our business. That could be innovation, it could be game-changing initiatives, it could be new strategies, it could be new formats, et c.
What we're going to do to look at more value, so doing all the things that we do right, do more of it, because we know we get the return, and we know consumers love it. Obviously, to look at continuous improvement. In every business, we've got to look at how we're going to look sharper. We know there's change in consumer needs, we've got to do and offer a lot more better value in various areas of the business. This year, as we move ahead, as we close the financial year and move into fiscal 2027, we've adopted a mindset of value creation with purpose so that we can ensure that every single initiative that we do is delivering a purposeful and impactful situation to anything that we choose to do. That's quite key.
Our targets remain the same. You've seen it when we announced it at the end of last year. We plan to open a total of 42 new restaurants in South Africa and 12 in the rest of Africa, continue to focus on really driving growth with the brands that are growing and are healthy and stable, and looking at how we mitigate risk with some of the smaller brands that need a different type of attention. We remain committed to effective and responsible capital allocation, either in share buybacks, as you saw this year, this last half, or looking at special dividends, or looking at any possible investments that would grow our portfolio to ensure sustainability and growth of the group.
I'm now going to open up to questions, and I think Graeme is fielding them for us. Thank you.
Thanks, Val. A few questions that have come in on the webcast, the first being from Charles Haw at Bateleur Capital. Charles says, "Well done on a good set of results." And he says, "How should investors think about the dividend payout ratio for the 2026 financial year? Last year, the second half dividend payment payout ratio was substantially higher than normal. Could you please provide some color on the expected payout ratio?
Thank you for the question. Yes, we did pay out a higher dividend in the second half than traditional or expected by shareholders. It represented about 100% of the headline earnings or adjusted headline earnings. The reason why we did that was because we did not have a better application for that cash, and we felt it appropriate to distribute an additional increase to shareholders. We don't have a dividend policy. We look at our dividend distribution, as we said, at every board meeting, based on the conditions of the company and where we have capital, where we feel it's best to allocate capital. We don't have a policy, but what we can say is that as contingent liabilities matters, remove...
The idea is that as contingent liabilities matters, do not materialize, and should we have the ability to increase our dividend payout, we will do so, but it is going to be very specific to the conditions we follow. At the moment, we have no set policy for the end of the year, but we will assess it at the end of the period.
Thanks, Cristina. Two questions from Nick Wilson, from News24. His first one is: With the disappointing sales fall at John Dory's, is Spur considering exiting the brand or does it believe it can be turned around? The seafood sector is quite pricey, so it's a difficult segment to play in. Any color would be appreciated. Thanks.
Okay. morning, Nick. good question, but I'm not gonna give you an answer. it's like any portfolio of brands, you know, not all your brands are at the same maturity in their brand life cycle. this one has challenged us a little more, because of the sensitivity of the seafood category. we think we've got a short-term turnaround plan for it. I think it might need a little bit more creative thinking and innovative thinking. At this stage, we do not intend disposing of the John Dory's brand. Thank you.
Thanks, Val. Second question from Nick. I see the group is also exiting Nikos, selling the brand back to the founding family. I was hoping for a bit of color on why this brand did not work in the Spur portfolio.
Nick, it's not that the Nikos brand didn't work. You could have a look at its profit delivery over the last period. It somehow just didn't attract the interest of our franchise investors. What's very important with any brand, yes, is the health of the brand to the consumer. That's important. We know there are lots of Greek offerings in the marketplace, owned by small players. I think it was more around the fact that our multiple franchisees weren't interested in Nikos. It was a cuisine that was difficult to execute. They're a lot more comfortable at buying and investing in brands where they've got a core competency, and that's grilling of meat, making breakfast, serving a variety of chicken dishes. We couldn't get enough traction to really get growth.
Our repositioning of the specialty portfolio is around brand names and menu offerings, that delivers on our competency. That's why you'll see a big emphasis around Hussar Grill and Doppio Zero, followed by the pasta and pizza brands Piza ē Vino and Casa Bella.
Thanks, Val. A question for Christina from Zaid Paruk, from Wealthvest: Do you have insurance against the GPS damages claim, assuming an amount is finalized and settled?
We have insurance, but we wouldn't have an insurance on the contractual claim. There is insurance on the delictual claim. Yeah, that's my response.
Thanks, Christina. A question from Georgia Hinckley, from Granate Asset Management: What would you attribute John Dory's main struggles and the performance to?
Yeah, it's an interesting one, and, you know, because I'm sort of a brand person, I think it is important to know that brands aren't only about the value proposition and the food you serve. It's about the image that you occupy in the consumer's mind. I think from the early years of John Dory's, at the time when the leading seafood brand was really at its peak, John Dory's was really successful in KZN, nowhere else. It was quite an unusual positioning. It worked for the KZN market, and as the brand started expanding into other regions, it didn't succeed as well as it had in KZN.
I think it's a lot about, just the perception of the actual brand image and brand proposition that I think never really got out of the starting blocks. When you start entering Cape Town, you start entering Johannesburg, where there's an array of great brands and great offerings, it struggles to perform. I think a lot of it has to do with its history. That's why this change that we are about to embark on is probably gonna be a little bit more dramatic to look at how we create an offering that is unique, has a very distinct taste, and appeals to that seafood lover.
Thanks, Val. There's a question from Charles again, at Bateleur Capital: Could you please provide guidance as to the expected proceeds from the sale of the Nikos brand?
Okay. That's one for you.
Yeah. It won't be a material amount. I'm not gonna give you the exact number, but it is not a material number to the results. It does ensure a profit on sale. It does ensure recovery of our initial capital costs and earnings and the like, so I think shareholders will be pleased with its result.
Thank you. Well, Christina, no further questions on the webcast. Thank you.
Oh, good. Thank you, Greame [inaudible], thank you all.