Ghost Bites - Making Sense of SENS
Aug 24, 2026 · 13 min · 6 segments
**This edition of Ghost Bites makes sense of these SENS announcements:** - Advtech's results are solid, but there's still an ugly duckling - Italtile's manufacturing woes reflect broader SA…
The Finance GhostHostWe begin with AdvoTech, an education business that increased revenue by 8% and operating profit by 14%.
Normalized earnings were up 16%, headline earnings per share also 16%, and the interim dividend per share, 18%.
A really strong set of numbers there, mid-teens growth in earnings, hard to fault.
Now, if you dig a bit deeper, the results for the six months to June show that revenue growth, that was the 8% I referenced, was 300 basis points below the compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, from 2022 to 2022.
Interim dividend per share growth was also strong at 18%, but below the CAGR of 23% over that period.
Interestingly enough though, enrollments, that's student numbers, the lifeblood of the business, increased 13% versus a CAGR of 9%.
So they ran ahead on student numbers in the past year versus their recent average, but there was a slowdown in the financial performance.
Now, the group is growing very well and the metrics clearly look healthy, but the underlying revenue and earnings growth over the past few years has been particularly good, perhaps unsustainably good, as the group has unlocked higher operating margins.
Now, those margins can keep going to a point, but they do have a practical ceiling.
This is the kind of thing that investors love seeing, by the way, because that's what you want, right? You want management to take a certain growth rate at the top of the income statement and turn it into even better earnings by the time you get to the bottom.
But investors do need to be careful extrapolating that growth rate and assuming that a particularly high CAGR can continue.
Now, return on equity, 20.6%, also really good, up from 19.7% the prior year, increased from 18% in 2022.
If we have a quick look, Operating margin in schools South Africa was only 19% in 2022, and it's been over 20% each year since, having added 30 basis points in each of the past two years.
Schools rest of Africa may really drive that point home though, because the operating margin is now at 30.1%, having increased from just 18.1% in 2022.
It's also up 70 basis points year on year, so solid improvement versus 2025 as well.
We begin with AdvoTech, an education business that increased revenue by 8% and operating profit by 14%.
Normalized earnings were up 16%, headline earnings per share also 16%, and the interim dividend per share, 18%.
A really strong set of numbers there, mid-teens growth in earnings, hard to fault.
Now, if you dig a bit deeper, the results for the six months to June show that revenue growth, that was the 8% I referenced, was 300 basis points below the compound annual growth rate, or CAGR, from 2022 to 2022.
Interim dividend per share growth was also strong at 18%, but below the CAGR of 23% over that period.
Interestingly enough though, enrollments, that's student numbers, the lifeblood of the business, increased 13% versus a CAGR of 9%.
So they ran ahead on student numbers in the past year versus their recent average, but there was a slowdown in the financial performance.
Now, the group is growing very well and the metrics clearly look healthy, but the underlying revenue and earnings growth over the past few years has been particularly good, perhaps unsustainably good, as the group has unlocked higher operating margins.
Now, those margins can keep going to a point, but they do have a practical ceiling.
This is the kind of thing that investors love seeing, by the way, because that's what you want, right? You want management to take a certain growth rate at the top of the income statement and turn it into even better earnings by the time you get to the bottom.
But investors do need to be careful extrapolating that growth rate and assuming that a particularly high CAGR can continue.
Now, return on equity, 20.6%, also really good, up from 19.7% the prior year, increased from 18% in 2022.
If we have a quick look, Operating margin in schools South Africa was only 19% in 2022, and it's been over 20% each year since, having added 30 basis points in each of the past two years.
Schools rest of Africa may really drive that point home though, because the operating margin is now at 30.1%, having increased from just 18.1% in 2022.
It's also up 70 basis points year on year, so solid improvement versus 2025 as well.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
