Meridian brings down Curro’s marks
The private school group reported growth in full-year HEPS, but the headline loss contributed by its ‘affordable brand’ doubled
Private school group Curro’s share price fell 6.25% to R36.31 on Monday after it released its first results since spinning off its tertiary education arm, Stadio.Although the group’s overall headline earnings per share (HEPS) for the year to end-December grew by 10% to 48.1c, the headline loss contributed by subsidiary Meridian doubled to 7.6c from 3.2c.Meridian is the group’s "affordable brand" with up to 35 pupils per class, whereas its flagship Curro schools limit the number of pupils in a class to 25.The number of learners during 2017 at Curro branded schools grew 11% to 36,205 while Meridian’s declined 1% to 9,665.For the school year under way, Curro said it had grown its total learner numbers by 14% to 52,233."We are satisfied with the 14% growth in learner numbers in 2018, considering that 5% of 2017 learners did not enrol in 2018, mainly due to affordability reasons," CEO Andries Greyling said in the results statement."In its 20th year of existence, Curro has passed another ...
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