Good day, and welcome to the Net1 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results 2012. [Operator Instructions] Please also note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Dhruv Chopra. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chris. Good morning, and good afternoon to our investors around the world. Thank you for joining us on our fourth quarter and full year 2012 earnings call. With me today are doctors Serge Belamant, Chairman and CEO; and Herman Kotzé, our CFO. Both our press release and Form 10-K are available on our website at www.net1.com. As a reminder, during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements, and I request you to look at the cautionary language contained in our press release and Form 10-K regarding the risks and uncertainties associated with forward-looking statements. In addition, during this call, we will be using certain non-GAAP financial measures, and we have provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. We will discuss our results in South African rand, which is a non-GAAP measure. We analyze our results of operations in our 10-K and in our press release in rand to assist investors in understanding the underlying trends of our business. As you know, the company's results can be significantly affected by currency fluctuations between the dollar and the rand. So with that, let me turn the call over to Serge.

Thank you very much, Dhruv. Good day to all of our shareholders. During this call, I will provide an update of the key trends of our business and address certain strategic initiatives before I hand over to Herman that will discuss our financial results in greater detail. First of all, I am delighted with the number of milestones we have achieved this quarter, including the execution of our new SASSA contract that became effective April 1, 2012. Also, for the first time, we have exceeded $100 million in revenue in a quarter; and thirdly, our successful pursuit of certain partnerships that we believe can drive long term sustainable value for the company. This April 1, 2012, we have been paying 9.2 million beneficiaries in excess of ZAR 7 billion per month using 4 different payment methodologies. The FIHRST, which is our own MasterCard-branded mega-disc debit card; the second is our version 10 UEPS smart card; the third is a bank-to-bank transfers using the national payment system of South Africa; and more importantly, the fourth, our world's first EMV-compliant and chip for UEPS smart card. We have also completed 5 months of registrations on behalf of SASSA, and our technological solution and processing platforms have proved incredibly robust, effective and reliable to the extent that we had anticipated they would be. I will come back to this critical achievement in more detail in a few minutes. For quarter 4 2012, we reported revenue of $108 million, a year-over-year increase of 30% in constant currency. Fundamental EPS in the quarter was USD 0.27, down 21% in constant currency largely due to the implementation cost incurred to roll out our new SASSA contract. Pension and welfare revenue grew over 40% in the fourth quarter 2012, while KSNET grew 15% in local currency and…

Thank you, Serge. I will discuss the key results and trends of our significant operating segments for the fourth quarter of 2012 compared to the fourth quarter of 2011. I will also discuss, to the extent possible, the financial implications related to the implementation of our new SASSA contract. My discussion will be based on our results in South African rand, as this provides the best indicator of the group's actual operating performance. For Q4 of 2012, our average rand dollar exchange rate was ZAR 8.03 compared to ZAR 6.81 a year ago and negatively impacted our U.S. dollar-based results by approximately 18%. The year-over-year comparability of our results for the quarter was impacted by our new SASSA contract, which was in effect for the full quarter, as well as the acquisition of Eason. On a consolidated basis for the fourth quarter of 2012, we reported revenue of $108 million, an increase of 30% in constant currency. Fundamental earnings per share was USD 0.27 compared to USD 0.39 a year ago and includes $9.1 million of direct implementation costs associated with our new SASSA contract. We measure the group's profitability by looking at operating income and margin by segment. Within our segments, SASSA-based transaction activities posted revenue of $58 million during Q4 2012, 37% higher in local currency, driven primarily by higher revenue from our new SASSA contract and the inclusion of Eason. Our segment operating margin, excluding amortization of intangibles declined to 12% from 15% last year, primarily due to the implementation expenses, as well as the inclusion of Eason's prepaid airtime business, which by its nature is a high-volume, low-margin business and higher intangible amortization. To reiterate, we expect profitability in this segment to remain under pressure for another 3 quarters as we continue to invest in the…

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Tim Wojs from Baird.

I guess I have a couple of questions here. Just on the fiscal 2012 guidance, can you give us a sense for the amount of one-time operating costs that are included in there, so we could kind of get a sense for what normalized EPS might look like once the contract kind of gets fully ramped up?

Sure, Tim. We expect although, again, it may be a bit lumpy over the next fiscal year, that our quarterly additional operating expenditure for the implementation of the contract will be in the region of $5 million to $10 million per quarter for the first 3 quarters of fiscal 2013.

Okay, that's helpful. And then just on the Hardware side, you had some good profitability there. I'm just wondering, I know it can be lumpy but what's some of the cost containment you guys have done. Is that a business that can sustainably be profitable on an annualized basis?

Well, if you look at the various components of that specific segment, our focus is always to ensure that the businesses, specifically, the ones that we sort of deem to be mature, are indeed profitable. Given the lengthy sales cycles in some of them, obviously, it's not that simple on a quarter-to-quarter basis to ensure that, that's the case. But at least on an annualized basis, we would expect our Hardware and Software -- traditional Hardware and Software sales businesses to be profitable and to maintain profitability on a fiscal basis going forward.

Okay, that makes sense. And then just on the International margins. I think that if you look at them x amortization, I think there's kind of been a little pressure over the past year. And I know you guys have done some sales efforts there to increase merchant counts. But is this a sustainable level kind of where we're at on the margin front? Do you expect a little bit more pressure in fiscal '13?

I think the pressure will always be there. The Korean market specifically, if we're talking about KSNET, is a highly competitive market and there's no doubt that there is sustained pressure on the margins. There are also new entrants into the market that have a better deal than the larger, more established players. So I think from a Korean perspective, the margin pressure certainly will be there for the foreseeable future. We have numerous plans to mitigate that margin squeeze. One of them, of course, is for us to make sure that the product mix that we sell in Korea changes so that a high emphasis is placed on those products that deliver a higher margin to us, also to identify new business opportunities that shouldn't result in significant margin pressure as they are introduced or ramped up. So I think from our perspective, looking forward over the next fiscal year, at the current EBITDA margin level of around 26%, we're quite comfortable that, that will be sustainable. And, of course, you also have to remember that on -- one of the other components of this specific segment is the XeoHealth initiative in the U.S.A. Those costs have been higher due to the testing and implementation of our various projects in the U.S.A. We've had the Banamex implementation in Mexico for our MVC implementation. So if we look at the past quarter, they've been quite a few projects that have been in ramp-up or implementation phase. So I think overall, the margin is probably at its lowest point that we expect to see for the year going forward, as these things scale up and become fully operational.

That's really helpful. And then just if I look at the South Africa business, if I add back the $9.1 million in one-time costs you guys incurred this quarter, I get to a margin north of 20%. Is that the type -- I mean, should we see something in kind of the mid-20s in terms of a normalized margin in South Africa's transaction base kind of going forward as everything kind of normalizes out?

Yes, I think that's a fair assumption going -- once everything does normalize and it will take another 9 months or so for us to get there. Looking at the way we've stepped up the operations, we're obviously getting a much better understanding of exactly what our cost components are going to be going forward especially in the new areas. We certainly hope to maintain a normalized margin going forward of something that is at least 20% for the foreseeable future. So that's the kind of target that we've set ourselves, and that's the sort of margin that we would need to attain with the higher volumes to ensure that we actually make the same quantum of operating profit that we did under our previous contract.

Great, that makes sense. And then, I think, just one clarification from Serge's remarks. Did you guys say that SASSA's adding 40,000 beneficiaries to the base every month?

Yes, that's quite correct.

Okay. So there's still a lot of natural growth underlying in that business kind of going forward?

Absolutely. If you remember, I think during the tender negotiations or let's call it what was issued as far as a tender requirement, SASSA was planning to have in the region of over 11 million, 11.5 million beneficiary within 3 years. So there is no doubt that if we have 9.2 million now, we've still got to get another 3 million in the next 2 to 3 years. At least 2 million more would be coming onto the database anyway.

There's also [indiscernible].

Our next question comes from Kevin Tracey from Oberon Asset Management.

I guess, I was just wondering, now that your smart cards are interoperable with the EMV technology, can you talk about the potential to earn additional fees from -- like purchases made on your smart cards going forward and what kind of magnitude that might have relative to your already existing revenue?

Yes. I think your point is a good one, because the card is now interoperable, our contractual obligations with SASSA is that whenever a beneficiary transacts through an infrastructure, which is not our infrastructure, we are entitled to levy fees as any other bank or spent any other bank in South Africa would actually levy. So we do expect that there would be revenue that would arise after our beneficiaries transacting at points-of-service which are not our own point-of-services or was not part of our 11,000 pay-points and not part of what we call our own retail merchants. The other odd 60,000 merchant stores where beneficiaries can transact at or the other 34,000 ATMs were they can also get cash from, definitely will generate some form of income for us as well. And we are starting to see some of that income being generated. So there is no doubt that you are quite right that, that is to be quantified but there will also be, of course, some MasterCard interchange fees as well that we will be generating which on debit cards is around [indiscernible] 5% on average, which gets given to the issuer, which happens to be us. Because under our agreement with Grindrod Bank, who is really the MasterCard licensee for lack of a better word, the entire 0.55 interchange actually comes to Net1. So you're quite right that there is a substantial amount of fees that are going to be generated after our beneficiaries transacting at all sorts of points-of-sales or points-of-service, which are not ours.

Kevin, this is Dhruv. Just to elaborate on Serge's point, I mean, once we've got some more history, we've only been doing this for 5 months, I think we'll be able to give a little more guidance in terms of what we know where people go and what kind of spending patterns they have, to give you some additional color on that.

All right. And then my next question was with regards to EasyPay. Now I know you're looking to focus on value-added services that are higher margin, and you -- I think you said you shut down hosting processing servers for financial institutions. And I think that led to a significant drop in the number of transactions for EasyPay. But I was hoping you could talk about what the trends in profitability for EasyPay have been and if you expect profits to continue to grow.

Once again, that's a very good question. I think we did mention that EasyPay, in a way, I think, we're going to break the business down into a number of elements and reconstruct it in a different way. Now what I mean by that is that you're possibly aware that we do have a very good contractual agreement with Grindrod Bank, which happens to be a bank. But at the end of the day, we really, to some extent, are the bank. And by being the bank means that we not only have an issuing license through MasterCard, but we are also developing right now our own acquiring license. Having our own acquiring license means that a lot of the EasyPay merchants today that -- whose transaction we route directly to other acquiring banks, the intention, of course, is to -- for us to become the acquiring bank ourselves and to only route then the transaction to the issuing banks, and therefore making, for lack of a better word, the full issuer and acquiring interchange on our own cards and to make an acquiring interchange fee on the cards that belong to other banking organizations as well. So somehow the focus on EasyPay is no longer going to be, for lack of a better word, to make ZAR 0.10 or ZAR 0.15 to route the transaction, which in my view is a business, I think, that is always going to be under pressure, but rather to convert that into making, as an example, 2.1% on a credit card and around probably the 0.75% to 0.9% on a debit card as an acquirer, and then to of course retain the full interchange as an issuer. So that's one aspect that EasyPay -- in the way that EasyPay is going to change. Where EasyPay will not change and will continue to grow, of course, is in terms of registering more and more of our South African municipalities in order to continue to provide services such as prepaid electricity, specifically, and of course, bill payments across the entire national footprint. Now that is very, very important to us because that is a service that we want to provide to the 10 million customers that we now have. So EasyPay is really going to be, for lack of a better word, transformed into somebody who's going to be signing up far more bill issuers, for lack of a better word, on the one hand. But a lot of them will be government bill issuers, candidly because that's where our 10 million customers actually go to, in any case, will need to have. But of course, it will also sign up bill issuers on behalf of other cardholders that may belong to other financial institutions. So again, you have to be a little patient as we demonstrate what the EasyPay picture is actually going to look like as part of our largest South African strategy.

I just want to add to that, I think one of the key elements that will change in EasyPay specifically, will again be the impact that the change of our product mix in that business will bring about. So you've already seen, in the fourth quarter, we acquired the business from Eason, which is primarily a prepaid airtime sales business. This is the kind of business that unfortunately, from a average margin point of view has the impact of significantly reducing the overall operating margin of the business, so it adds quite a high number to the revenue line but given the margins inherent in the prepaid airtime sales and utility sales businesses, the net effect of that on the operating margin is nominal. So what we will see over the next couple of quarters as we continue to grow out the offering specifically of prepaid utilities and prepaid airtime, which is an exponentially growing business in South Africa, we will see that the margins in EasyPay will continue to decline as those products are being introduced. But overall, obviously, the impact on the quantum of the operating profit of EasyPay should improve as we roll out those services.

Okay, that's very helpful. And then my last question, I was hoping to get an idea, maybe if you could explain your long-term strategy. I know you've talked about how you've partnered with many leading industry leaders to provide services to customers who normally rely on the informal sector. Can you talk about what kind of services do you kind of envision providing to holders of your smart cards and ultimately where the business will go over the long term?

Yes. Once again, that's something that we are shaping at the moment. But the obvious things that are the mandatory offer in South Africa or has to be offered in South Africa includes what we call your barrier insurance. And you're probably aware that we have our own insurance license. It includes what they call micro-finance or micro-loans, which are very short-term loans, probably in the region of, let's say, 1 to 6 months at the maximum, which is a huge opportunity in South Africa and very, very necessary. We look at money transfers, which is something that occurs all the time which, of course, with 10 million customers and the infrastructure we have, we are probably the best positioned to provide. We obviously look at prepaid airtime and electricity, which are 2 of the obvious ones that we need to provide our customers. We obviously look at bill payments. And apart from those 6 major trends, then of course, we go into maybe some of the smaller stuff, which is not going to be utilized by 30% or 40% of the 10 million people, but which might be -- even on a higher profit margin, but will only be used by a few hundred thousands of people. And these products, we're only going to start looking at in the next 18 months. We're going to focus on the 6 that I've mentioned at the moment, because these are the ones that can really turn the dial and make a more than a significant impact to our bottom line in South Africa in a very short to medium term.

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions. So on behalf of Net1, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your lines.