Moegamat Isaacs
Group CEO & Executive Director

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I am approximately 90 day into the CEO [Audio Gap] and I'm joined by Megan Pydigadu. Who is also 90 days into a role as Group CFO. So this is our first results presentation to the market as the new executive team of SPAR.

I want to be direct with you from the outset. The H1 results are disappointing for us, for our people, for our retailers and for our shareholders. The numbers speak for themselves, and there is no dressing that up. And this morning, I want to cover 3 things: what went wrong, why both in this half and the periods before, what we are doing about it and why we remain fundamentally confident in the SPAR model and its future.

I will cover the strategic and operational picture, and Megan will walk you through the financial detail, and I will close with our forward-looking focus and the investment case for SPAR. Reflecting on an eventful past few years, this slide really provides important context for where we are today. SPAR has navigated a genuinely difficult few years, shaped by post-pandemic headwinds, the operational disruption associated with the SAP implementation in KZN, sustained margin pressure and a complex international footprint. The international businesses, particularly those we have disposed of, placed significant demands on management time and focus funding and stress on the balance sheet and cash flows.

And at the same time, the group was also executing a large-scale SAP implementation across its