(L)earning lessons
MARC HASENFUSS: Investment firms cautiously approaching education sector
RECM & Calibre and Trematon are cautiously approaching the education sector, while Oceana's (un)lucky star hits the bottom line
Sentiment for the private education sector is still at excitable levels, but it’s noteworthy that two investment companies are adopting a studious approach to their investments. For one thing, it appears investment company Trematon, which reported year to end-August results this week, has no plans to list its 97%-owned private school venture Generation Education in the short term. Unlike the accelerated academic expansion of large listed counters Curro and (to a lesser extent) AdvTech, Generation — which started early last year — has set a relatively modest goal of 10 schools by the end of 2018. At the moment there are 500 pupils enrolled in two schools — in Sunningdale, Cape Town, and Hermanus — with plans in place to increase this to 2,400 pupils in three years. Generation, which is incurring substantial development expenditure, contributed a profit of just R100,000 for the year to end-August — but revenues have breached the R20m mark.Perhaps the most significant development is th...
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