Clicks Group Ltd S/Adr (CLCGY) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good afternoon and a warm welcome to the webcast of our annual results for the year ended 31 August 2024. I'm Bettina Engelbrecht, Chief Executive Officer of the Clicks Group. I'm joined by Gordon Trail, our Chief Financial Officer. We will be taking you through the presentation of our annual results and respond to your questions after the conclusion of our presentation. This slide sets out the outline we will follow. As usual, I will start with a review of our financial year. Aude will follow with an overview of our financial results. Year after, I will take you through the trading performances of our business units, first Qliks, then UPD. I will then close with the outlook for the group. Please submit any questions that you may have via the webcast platform. during and after the conclusion of our presentation. Suyin from our investor relations team will read out your questions to which Gordon and I will respond. I will now commence with a review of the year. As a business, we remain optimistic about the economic, social and political environment of our region. Despite some challenges, we maintained our growth and performance momentum. We attribute our sustained performance over the past two decades to the proven resilience of our business model, defensiveness of our core product offering, brand strength, relentless focus on incremental efficiency gains, and the commitment of our people. For the year, we delivered another strong performance, with diluted headline earnings per share up 14.3%. This result is in line with increased market expectations. We continued to invest in the expansion of our store and pharmacy network, increasing our Qlik store count to 936, pharmacy count to 720, primary care clinics to 206, and standalone Qlik's baby stores We opened a net 51 ...