Chris Meyer
Analyst · B. Riley. Please go ahead
Thank you Dara, good morning, good afternoon and thank you to all for joining us for our second quarter earnings call today. On today’s call, I’d like to focus on four key pillars that are critical to the successful transformation of Net1 into becoming a leading South African full service FinTech platform. Delivery on each of these pillars will enable the management team to stay focused on repositioning the business for growth and capturing the long-term opportunity we see ahead. Firstly, I will provide an update on the transformation in our consumer financial services business, and discuss the early progress we have made towards our strategic imperative in returning the consumer financial service business to breakeven by June 2022, and then into profitability as soon as possible thereafter. Secondly, I’ll provide a high level update on the acquisition of Connect Group and recap on the opportunity, the merged entity will provide. And thirdly, I’d like to take you through the progress we are making in transforming our organization into a world-class platform. And lastly, I will highlight the important work we are doing in South Africa to strengthen our relationships with key stakeholders. So, I’m encouraged by the progress we are seeing in the turnaround of our consumer financial services business, which is manifesting in some of the key performance indicators we are measuring. Each of the three levers we focused on, which are growth in active accounts, increasing average revenue per customer, and cost optimization have all started to deliver benefits. Lincoln will give you more detail on the performance of each of these. But at a high level, I’d like to make a few points. Firstly, active EPE account numbers increased to just under 1.1 million active customers. We took a proactive approach to winning new customers with our newly trained sales force becoming more active in the communities. As an example, SASSA recently launched a new registration portal for grants, transforming a process that is very paper based and takes weeks to an online process that can take minutes. And as a result, we are empowering our sales force with the right tool to go into the communities and help grant recipients register for their grants online and at the same time, register for a new EPE account. Existing grant recipients who want to move their banking to an EPE account are also being assisted online through the portal. And we see this as a positive step in the right direction. Secondly, ARPU. ARPU performed slightly ahead of our target of $4.50 and with a focus on winning a bigger share of our customers’ wallets, we are investing our efforts into better understanding our customers and the type of products they are looking for. This has highlighted the gap in the market for the launch of two new products, which have already delivered positive signups. Cross-selling into our existing book is an important focus area to deliver growth in ARPU. We already have a 38% penetration into our loan book. However, in our insurance book penetration remains low at around 19%. This presents an opportunity with 90% of our employees now trained on all Net1 financial services products with accreditations to follow, we can actively cross-sell into our existing base. And touching on the last lever cost control, a lever which is fully in our control and which moves the needle the most in returning the business to profitability in the near-term. Progress on the direct cost actions taken during the quarter can be clearly seen in the Q2 numbers. We reported a strong improvement in EBITDA, a loss in Q2, showing the operating leverage in our business. And pursuant to our review and optimization of the overall cost base, we launched Project Spring. Now Project Spring will include the cost reductions we have communicated to-date, as well as further cost reductions realized through a restructuring of the consumer financial services business and the rationalization of our distribution network. On an annualized basis, Project Spring is targeted to deliver in excess of 300 million rand or $19.5 million in annual cost savings would represent just over 20% of the consumer financial services cost base and freeing up some capacity for targeted investments in the business. Lincoln will provide a detailed update on the turnaround of the South African operations later on the call, and Alex will provide more color on the cost benefits to the bottomline. Given our progress on these levers, we continue to work towards reaching our breakeven targets for the consumer financial services business by June 2022. Our second topic is regarding the Connect Group acquisition. And for those who are new to Net1 it might help to briefly discuss the rationale for the acquisition. As we announced back in November last year, the Connect Group acquisition represents a transformational leap forward in Net1’s journey to becoming the leading FinTech platform for the underserved in South Africa. With this acquisition, we believe, we will be able to transform our merchant business, competitively positioning the combined entity to address the 700,000 formal MSMEs and the 1.4 million informal MSMEs, which is a large and growing opportunity. The Connect Group offers four main products to its customer base. First, a prepaid value added services platform branded Kazang. Second, a digitized cash management and supply payment solution branded Cash Connect. And third, a digitized provider of growth capital to merchants branded Capital Connect. And fourthly, a merchant acquiring solutions platform branded Card Connect and Kazang Pay. The Connect Group will form part of our merchants B2B segment with a combination broadening our footprint and enabling us to deliver on our growth aspirations. In our next set of results, provided the transaction is closed, we will provide further information on the strategy for the combined entity. And as a reminder, the Connect Group transaction is subject to regulatory approvals, and other customary closing conditions. The respective financing group agreements have been concluded subject to usual condition precedents, and the transaction has been lodged with the competition authorities to obtain competition approval in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. But on the whole, we feel the transaction closing process is moving forward as planned and importantly, the Connect Group is performing in-line with expectations. I’d now like to turn to my third topic, which is about building a world-class platform. We believe building a world-class platform firstly requires highly talented people. Secondly, an environment where they can outperform. And thirdly, a clear vision and strategy where everyone is aligned, understands their role and knows what winning looks like. We need to deliver on all three of these. And I’m pleased to say that our leadership team of highly talented people is now largely in place with a focused goal on delivering on this vision and strategy. And I want to welcome our new group CFO, Naeem Kola, who will begin his role at Net1 on March 1, 2022, and Basie Kok, our new CTO. Basie is a proven tech entrepreneur who brings over 15 years of financial technology experience to Net1. We also have our new head of Human Capital, Karabo Mothibi, a new head of consumer financial services, sales and distribution, Simphiwe Pakathi. And shortly next week, our head of risk and compliance Denzel Landie will also be in place. I wanted to take this time to thank Alex for his dedication and commitment to Net1 and express how thrilled I am that he will be staying on as our Group Accounting Officer. With these enhancements, we have built an exceptional team who will stay laser focused on executing our growth plans and advancing our strategic initiatives. Our fourth and last pillar is improving stakeholder relationships. We continue to build our relationship with SASSA through regular constructive engagements at both a national, provincial and local level. As I mentioned in our Q1 results, we have made a joint submission together with Grindrod to SASSA to become one of a number of banks providing specific social grant payments services. We also waiting for the announcement from government on the outcome of this tender. However, this joint bid evidences the strength of our growing relationship with Grindrod. Furthermore, Net1 Moneyline is now officially registered on the national treasury database as a supplier positioning us for participation in future efforts by government to digitize the grand payment system in South Africa. A key stakeholder of course, is our customer. And building relationship with them at community level is of paramount insurance, importance rather in building trust to ensure they choose us to safeguard their financial assets. As part of our CSI initiatives, in-line with our core purpose of improving people’s lives we sponsored a number of branded blankets, wheelchairs, and large freshwater tanks in some of the communities in which we operate. Taken together, these partnerships are an important part of our strategy to increase Net1’s visibility and broaden our growth opportunities. And so, before I turn the call over to Lincoln, I would also like to just highlight a change in the way we segment our business. We have decided to move away from the previous segmentation of processing financial services and technology to segmenting the business based on the way we operate, analyze and manage the business. We have therefore made the decision to segment the business into consumer and merchant. The consumer operating segment, i.e., our consumer financial services business will group all financial services provided to customers, in other words business-to-consumer. The merchant operating segment will group all goods and services provided to corporates, in other words, our business-to-business division. And the Connect Group will be included in the merchant segment following the close of the acquisition. This segment change is reflected in our fiscal Q2 reports and Alex will provide additional color later in his remarks. And with that, I’ll now hand over to my colleague Lincoln Mali. Lincoln?