Serge Belamant
Analyst · Seawolf Capital. Please go ahead
Thank you very much, Dhruv. Good morning to all of our shareholders. Today, I plan to spend most of my discussion focused on our strategy and how we intend to create a new impetus for both our rand and hard currency based earnings. At the same time, I will highlight how we plan to reduce our risk profile by relying far less on government contracts and the South African rand. Our results, barring specific temporary product or business related events, were good year-over-year. And for once, exchange rates did not cause wild swings in our reported numbers. Our international businesses are showing great potential. And as result of our investments and the strengthening of our management teams, our pipeline is growing meaningfully. To summarize our Q2 2017 performance, revenue of $151 million was flat in constant currency. And growth in EPE transaction growth, lending and insurance, and our Masterpayment and T24 acquisitions internationally were offset by the self-induced decline in our prepaid airtime sales, lower ad-hoc terminal sales and to a lower extent lower revenue in Korea due to recent regulatory changes. Our fundamental EPS in quarter two was $0.43, up 3% in constant currency, despite a 12% headwind due to the issuance of 10 million shares to the IFC in Q4 of 2016. Today, I would like to focus on three major topics, namely our strategic developments, SASSA, and our strategic investment in Bank Frick. But perhaps before I kick off, it is important to note that last night our President, President Zuma addressed the nation. His speech was pretty much focused on economic transformation for South Africa, South African businesses and South African citizens. I think it is important that this message is understood clearly by all businesses that operate in South Africa. And we believe we are one of those that have merit and supported any transformation plan that the government wishes to put in place. We believe that what we are doing not only in terms of providing financial inclusions for millions and millions of people, but also by employing tens of thousands of black South Africans and by empowering South African businesses, a lot of them that are start-ups, with our technology, giving them a chance to be able to compete with existing and well-structured and well-financed other businesses in our country. We believe that message should be understood clearly and is a sign that there are many changes that will occur in South Africa over time, rather sooner rather than later. And we believe that we are probably better placed both financially, more importantly, mentally to be able to tackle these changes and to ensure that we can deliver our piece to both the South African government and South African people. The second important piece of information from last night is that we have received a letter from SASSA that is asking us if we were willing and able to engage with them to assist them with what they call is a transition plan, which may occur over the next year to two years. I will discuss that a little bit more in detail, because already a number of conversations since this letter have taken place. And I will be able to hopefully throw a little bit better light in terms of what this plan is all about and if we believe that this plan is a viable plan or not. Now, without further ado, let me continue with the original press release. I have often spoken about putting pieces of the puzzle together, which in turn would allow us to paint a clearer picture of our group strategy going forward. Given our efforts, I believe that we are now in a position to start articulating this strategy and also demonstrating why we believe that it is successful and has the potential to scale exponentially not only in South Africa, but elsewhere in the world. Right from our inception as a NASDAQ listed company in 2005, we have said that Net 1 would become a company that provides financial services, so called financial inclusion, to the poorest communities in many different countries of the world, thus providing this financial inclusion in its truest form. Net 1 started out as a pure technology company, focusing on creating technological products like our UEPS that could meet the need of the poorest communities, namely security, accessibility, affordability and functionality. Over time, we have observed that it is harder to build a long-term sustainable business by being purely a technology provider to governments, banks and other financial institutions, given the inherent move by these institutions to squeeze costs and margins. From my inception, we have led to develop aggressive and disruptive business models in order for us to compete and to remain competitive. It was these observations that prior to our new SASSA system implemented in 2012, led us to view our technologies as an enabler, and to use these to provide financial and other services, and no longer be simply used as a commoditized third-party technology provider. To make this transition, we have to assemble a number of pieces of the bigger puzzle in order to own or control the entire value chain. And thus, maximize our returns, return flexibility and accelerate our market penetration. One of these tasks was the onerous and time-consuming effort of getting access to or owning licenses for banking, insurance and lending. Another was to formulate a strategy that will allow us to create a fast and low-cost customer acquisition strategy across various markets. Starting with South Africa in 1997, we have demonstrated that this strategy works and offers high incremental returns, while being capable of scaling rapidly. In the evolution of the FinTech industry, one can see that the customer is more than willing to pay higher interest rates for a microloan as an example, but conversely does not see as much value in paying for just for the technological part including switching and processing. The exception being where there are markets in which accessibility is a challenge. In these markets, that serve most people in the world, our technology will always remain integral to what we do. But the more we commercialize our products the faster we can deploy these. Far more financial service providers often make use of the rules and regulatory environments in existence to slow down or even prevent any new form of competition. For example, many countries’ central banks, they find the rules and standard that must be implemented in order to provide certain banking services. Over the years, we have experienced this first hand, and as a result made the decision that in order to compete we need to become a formal player that operates from inside the tent rather than from the outside. This breakthrough occurred five years ago, when we launched our all-new UEPS/EMV debit card and entered into an agreement with Grindrod bank. Since 2012, we have been able to use our advanced technology to win $10 million wealthy beneficiaries, open almost 2 million new banking accounts, issue in excess of $1.8 million small and short-term loans, sell nearly 300,000 life insurance policies and consistently provide more than 3 million customers on the monthly basis, with our prepaid products using our mobile platforms. We continue to grow our customer base as well as introduce new products and services which are relevant to our customers. In the last five years, we have built a UEPS-based banking platform that is fully compliant and certified with national and international standards, and regulatory bodies. And is able to offer banking services as well as any financial product and services such as microfinance and insurance. What is key however, is that we were able to achieve this, while still be able to introduce a news on superior technological platforms and solutions. This is what gives us a competitive advantage and allows us not only to become a comprehensive fintech company, but also to become a fully compliant digital banking platform that can compete with any form of bank, because of our security, simplicity, affordability, accessibility and functionality. Our digital banking platform, we just to be clear is fueled by UEPS and essentially institutionalizes the platform. There is no need an expensive brick and mortar infrastructure that formal banks have built over time. But it instead uses new distribution channels such as internet and mobile phones through which many different types of transactions can be performed. In addition, our solutions allow us to implement our banking platform in the deepest rural areas. In order to scale our model required an innovative customer acquisition strategy, many FinTech companies rely on acquiring customers through incentives, which over the long-term are in our view not sustainable. Our customer acquisition approach is therefore based on using B2B, and government to consumer channels. As example of this approach SASSA is an organization that is responsible for the payment of social grant to 10 million people in South Africa. And first provides payroll services to approximately 1,700 companies in RSA, and employees in excess of 700,000 employees. We therefore first offer these businesses are technology platform to service the on customer base. And second then target the customers and employees of these businesses while offering them a financial products and services. We have built a proven track record that this strategy works. Going forward, we will continue to look for businesses with large customer basis. To whom we can at some point to other introduce our digital products and services. This potential customers can include government tenders, electricity resellers, and then those intermediate service providers, transactions which is payment gateways, and of course mobile wallet providers. Now looking back at the various investments we have made over the past 18 months. You can see that all of these help us finish the puzzle and address one or more elements of this strategy. Our digital bank platform, she is currently called DB4B, that is the Digital Bank for Business, and EB4C, Digital Bank for Consumers. This banking platform targets the businesses mentioned above and once acquired can offer consumers specific products and services to its B2B2C clientele. Another important role, which is another point to note is that way possible. We will go to market ourselves with these same platform, but we’ll need to be supported by requisite licenses and infrastructure. For other markets including as additional emerging economies, we will take an indirect approach, where we can offer the platform as a service, and potentially were permissible from the cloud by utilizing the local license and infrastructures of our partners. This strategy will allow us to offer UEPS EMV based platform with all of our existing products, and deploy them quickly and across first as well as third-world economies. We are very close to replicating this model in Europe through our announced agreement with Bank Frick, which once finally approved by regulators would allow us to issue cards of our merchants and offer current savings accounts. In order to remove any future risk associated with possible context of the interest. We have agreed to acquire 30% interest in the bank, with an option to acquire further 35% within the next two years. DB4B will also four main business streams namely banking services, payment services, credit as well as UEPS/EMV banking platform for developing economy. In addition to our proposed strategy with Bank Frick, we can complement our strategy by leveraging our e-money licenses in Malta and in United Kingdom. Bank Frick will provide us with all of the necessary licenses in banking relationships and allow us to settle transactions anywhere in the world, and in any currency. In its initial state, DB4B will promote our German B2B business called Masterpayment, including its recently expanded operations across Italy, France, Spain as well as the UK. Our T24 subsidiary provide us with an e-money license in the UK for taking us against from any unwanted results of Brexit. Additionally, T24 will provide our ACS processing into the United States as well as our prepaid card platform while also becoming a distribution sales force for the Asia-Pacific region. As stated, the heart of this banking platform is of course our UEPS/EMV solutions, which will further include corporate card issuing, virtual card and new product named Paylink as well as independent biometric verification, an absolute must in any developing economy. DB4B, with the appropriate partners and licenses will eventually be in a position to offer money transfers from anywhere in Europe and the United States to any country in which we have a distribution infrastructure, such as South Africa, Nigeria, India, Korea and Mexico, specifically some of which are related to our Blue Label cooperation agreement. We are working to replicate this model in India through MobiKwik, and potentially Oxigen, as well once again through the Blue Label initiative. The scale in India through this few organizations alone, would give us access to a customer base of more than $70 million individuals and in excess of 1.5 million merchants. As highlighted last quarter, we are implementing a new management structure to ensure that we have the necessary resources, and attention to pursue these activities across regions. This focus and precise approach to deployment, using this new business model should ensure that we can scale rapidly and protect our business in the future against any form of this intermediation. Our South African operations continue to grow, and as we add additional distributors, we should be able to increase the number of new clients voted on our banking platform, which is called EPE, Easy Pay Everywhere. The expiration of our SASSA contract on March 31, 2017, would have provided us with additional infrastructure uplift, form of our mobile units that would increase our footprint resulting in further customer acquisition. This is probably a good point to address the latest developments on SASSA. But before I discuss the current stated events. It is painful not only to myself, but the thousands of employees at Net 1, and the millions of our customers that unbridled slander with no basis in fact is so easily disseminated by people who have their own political interests aided and abetted by certain sections of the media. We fail to make it effort to separate effect from picture. To that effect, I’d like to spend a quick moment to take certain of the facts. One, the constitutional court invalidated the tender awarded by SASSA to CPS. And I’d like to quote Judge Froneman. And I quote SASSA’s irregular conduct has been the sole cause for the declaration of invalidity and for the setting aside of the contract between it and CPS. Therefore SASSA was solely responsible for the administrative irregularities in the tender process with no blame assigned to CPS. Two, even today, certain parties slanderously posture that there was corruption involved that resulted in the award of the tender to CPS. The fact that this specific issue has been extensively addressed, while all three courts in South Africa. We dismissed these allegations with costs against the plaintiff, as well as the Hawks division of the South African police services, separate investigation by the SEC and JSE triggered by the malicious intent of our detractors all of which have been concluded that no action should be taken against that company. Three, the implementation of our UEPS/EMV system has not only financially included more than 10 million South Africans over the last five years. But also saved the fiscus roughly ZAR 10 billion over five years, which is significantly higher than the cost. The government paid to contract us to operate the system. We have therefore paid for ourselves with no extra burden on the fiscus whatsoever. There’s also been no shortage of social activists. Media and political persons, we’ve claimed to be standing for the rights of SASSA beneficiaries being subject to unauthorized deductions. Once again, here are a few facts that need to be addressed. A, the provision of financial services to beneficiaries was an integral part of that initial tender submission, it was accepted by SASSA. We are very proud of the fact that we provide the most affordable financial services to all of our customers, as it evidenced by the phenomenal popularity of our loans, insurance, products, and value added services. These are facts that cannot be denied. We have brought true financial inclusions to millions of South Africans over the last five years at the lowest possible cost to them. And we believe that all citizens if the right to conduct their financial affairs with absolute freedom of choice. B, we do not perform any Section 26A deductions out of our own choice, but through the facility created by the reserve bank with facilitate more than $15 million debit transactions per month through the South African banking system on behalf of approximately 1,300 service providers. C, while it is widely acknowledged that these are system-wide issue of unauthorized deductions. SASSA reported that 18,800 transactions we disputed during the 2015, 2016 fiscal year, which is far below the industry benchmark for disputed transactions and represents less than 0.01% of all debit transaction processed during the period. D, having said that, we recognize the need to protect our customers. In fact, we are one of the only institutions that recognizes that need for this system-wide issue and therefore have taken the leadership position by implementing biometric authentication, which will protect the customers and provide irrefutable validation and we have also approached the court for a declarative order for further guidance. It should be noted that all of that debit orders that they have been authorized via biometric verification, none have ever, ever been challenged or reversed. With that said, let me provide the current status with SASSA. After much posturing in the public domain over the last few weeks where SASSA has set the intend to extend our contract beyond April 1, 2017. Yesterday, we received an official request from SASSA to see if we would be willing and able to meet with them to explore, what they call the probabilities of assisting SASSA through a transaction. We have already provided a response accepting their offer to meet. We have spent time with numerous SASSA executives and committees over the last year, to make them away of each facets of our current solution. Unfortunately, these in-depth discussions are not shared with other treasury or members of the public, who do not really understand the enormous complexities and logistical challenges of what this job actually entails. This being said, we have put in place a continuation plan, which would accommodate a new contract with us if this prove to be required. We are of the belief that it is not feasible for anyone institution, or for that matter, a combination of providers to take over our activities by April 1, 2017. Any new solution would require 10 million cards to be reissued to all people, specifically those that live in deep rural areas and such new registration would require precise planning and probably more than 12 months to achieve from the time a new tender is issued and awarded. There are more than 10,000 pay points that need to be serviced monthly. And this simply cannot be achieved by any existing infrastructure, specifically in the rural areas where there are no ATMs, bank branches or post offices. SASSA continues to state that they wish to take the payment system in house, rather than to outsource it to a new contractor or contractors, as this outcome would simply recreate the current situation at a later point in time. We await SASSA’s final decision and will continue to assist them to achieve their goals going forward. It is inconceivable that government would simply throw out a system that has brought them massive savings and worked without any flaws for the last five years. To conclude the appropriate alignment of our management team, go-to-market strategy, and focused acquisition and investment strategies will help us drive our foreign currency top and bottom lines, advancing our diversification efforts in South Africa and reducing concentration risks, while increasing the group’s revenue and profitability. 2017 has been all about setting up Net 1’s globalized growth strategy. And we are confident that this will be reflected in our reported numbers starting in fiscal of 2018. I’d like to thank you very much for your attention, and over to you, Herman.