WESTERN CAPE-based private school business Generation Education has grown revenue by an impressive 60% to R138.5 million in the year to end August.
The fast growing business is now valued at close to R420 million, and ranks as investment company Trematon’s biggest single holding (representing almost 40% of the R1.1 billion portfolio).This is a brisk value build from a business that Trematon helped to start from scratch in 2016.
Trematon chairman Robin Lockhart-Ross said GenEd’s growth had led the group to the conclude that that the most appropriate avenues for application of available capital over the next few years will continue to be in the expansion of the private schools business.
He said that investment would feed ongoing growth in the number or scale of the GenEd school campuses, through strategic partnerships or through opportunistic acquisitions in the EduTech arena.
Lockhart-Ross pointed out that more than a third of Trematon’s turnover at year-end was attributable to education. “The rapid expansion of the brick-and-mortar education business and significant development spending on EduTech operations has delayed full profitability, but the group is rapidly maturing and is cash flow positive at an operational level…”
GenEd now boasts six campuses in and around Cape Town – including Imhoff (near Kommetjie), Sunningdale, Blue Moon (Heathfield), Somerset West (the site of the old Reddam School), Melkbos, Sandown (near Milnerton) and Hermanus. Another campus is awaiting development in Noordhoek.
