Lesaka Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:LSAK) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Steve Heilbron: Sure. So, as we covered in our narrative, we are reinvesting in the EasyPay platform and we’re quite excited about the future of that business. So some of what you’re seeing when you compare FY ’22 to FY ’23 is a function of lost business. The issues that we have struggled with in the business to some extent are the fact that we need to reinvest in some of the technology. We also lost some key billers. A lot of that has been addressed and the year ahead for us right now, we’re expecting growth in terms of both bill payment and VAS, but at the same time we are reinvesting in the platform. So it really has been a case of stabilizing, stabling our billers, developing our tech, also addressing some of the areas that from a product innovation perspective and I think all of that sits behind the reason — the answer to your question.

Matt Chesler: One additional question, Chris, is what are you seeing on the M&A front? What are your plans over the near medium term with regards to mergers and acquisitions?

Chris Meyer: So, as we have said before, M&A does form an important element of our overall strategy. Our ambition is to build the leading Fintech platform focused on mergers and consumers in the informal economy and in the low-income groups in our country. And we do believe that an element of that will be achieved through further M&A or inorganic activity. In particular, we are actively looking and continuously evaluating opportunities where we see opportunities to add scale, adding customer numbers, or to build in terms of our proposition for our customer base, so to add additional functionality or additional services. And we see this mainly as being in our merchant division. I think our consumer division would see probably more organic growth driven, but in the merchant division where we have the opportunity to layer in more services for our merchants, we feel this is important.

It goes to the core strategy of our business, which is deeply entrenching ourselves with those merchants, building, layering in services for them, so that we become entrenched in their business and help them grow and compete, as Steve said. So, continuously looking at opportunities. Our mantra on this is disciplined M&A. It needs to work for us on a number of metrics. And we will have an extremely high bar in place when we look at opportunities. But as I say, we continuously do so at any point in time.

Matt Chesler: Yes, I’d like to conclude the question-and-answer session, so that we could turn it over to Chris for concluding remarks and wrap-up this call before the market open. For those of you who have submitted questions that we did not have time to get to, we will reach out to you directly to ensure that your questions are answered. Chris, over to you for concluding remarks.

Chris Meyer: Matt, thank you. Thank you very much, and thanks everybody for joining us. As we said, 2023 has been a transformative year for Lesaka. We are extremely proud of the turnaround we’ve achieved, illustrated by the improvement in the last year of over ZAR 670 million in operating income and almost ZAR 440 million in net income before tax after adjustment for the amortization of required intangibles and that impairment on the UEPS business that we spoke to. Lesaka is positioned for growth. Our market opportunity is exciting, and we are fully focused on delivering to our FY ’24 guidance. Thank you.

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