Finance

South Africans are flocking to private universities – with a twist

Luke Fraser

 ·18 Mar 2024

Stadio Holdings has seen a significant increase in the number of on-campus and distance-learning students – but remote learning has kicked off in a big way.

In its financial results for the year ended 31 December 2023, the group, which also owns Milpark Education and AFDA, saw its semester 1 student enrolments increase by 9% to 42,874 students as at 30 June 2023 (June 2022: 39 167).

For semester 2, student enrolments increased by 10% to 46,508 at 31 December 2023 (December 2022: 42,463).

The number of distance learning students grew by 11% to 37,067 as at 30 June 2023 (June 2022: 33,505) and 11% to 40,689 as at 31 December 2023 (December 2022: 36,764).

“Strong demand in professional qualifications continues to drive strong growth in registrations for the period,” the group said.

“The Group’s distance learning student numbers are still impacted by the legacy business-to-business (B2B) Milpark Education business offerings.”

“Excluding the impact of the B2B business, the distance learning student numbers grew by 17% to 30,419 as at 31 December 2023.” Milpark Education is repositioning itself to become less reliant on its B2B business.

Contact learning student numbers increased by 3% to 5,807 as at 30 June 2023 (June 2022: 5,662) and
growth by 2% to 5,819 as at 31 December 2023 (December 2022: 5,699), with the registration of new contact learning students increasing by 15%.

This follows a 4% decline in student numbers in semester one and semester 2 in the prior year.

Registration of new contact learning students increased by 15%.

“This follows the strategy of accrediting new programmes as well as expanding the offering of qualifications to new campuses. The overall growth is muted as a result of lower intakes in the prior year, resulting in a lower roll forward of returning students in 2023.”

“The final Milpark Education contact learning students are transitioning out of the student number base for the period in accordance with Milpark Education’s shift to focus only on the online distance learning mode of delivery.”

Financials

The group’s revenue grew by 16% to R1,414 million (2022: R1,214 million), with EBITDA increasing by 11% to R391 million (2022: R351 million).

The EBITDA was partially impacted by increased costs incurred on computers, license fees and additional fuel costs due to running generators on campuses due to load shedding.

For the period under review, the group reported a profit after taxation of R236 million (2022:R186 million).

Earnings per share (EPS) increased to 24.5 cents per share (2022: 19.5 cents per share), and headline earnings per share also increased to 24.5 cps (2022: 20.0 cents per share).

“The growth in profit after taxation, EPS and HEPS for the year was primarily due to organic growth in the underlying institutions, as well as lower growth in depreciation for the period of 3%.”

“Higher cash balances and increases in interest rates also resulted in a net interest income position of R4.0 million (2022: net interest expenses of R6.6 million).”

The group also upped its dividend per share by 12% to 10.0 cents per share (2022: 8.9 cents per share).

Read: Curro boosts profit as it adds over 1,000 more learners