First up, I need to correct an error in this morning’s mailer, with apologies to Harmony Gold (and to you as a Ghost Mail reader).

My mistake was to view the SENS announcement online in a format that had some odd spacing in the operating results table. This led me to misread the copper production line. I thought I was looking at the number measured in tonnes, but I was actually looking at the number in pounds.

Production guidance of 28,000 - 30,000 tonnes for copper is actually an increase on the 18,207 tonnes in FY26, not a decrease as I erroneously wrote this morning. I felt that this was important enough to correct with an unscheduled mailer this afternoon.

The fact that the share price fell sharply on the day of results, despite the uptick in copper guidance, shows you that the market mostly focused on the gold production at Harmony. This was I correctly noted as being expected to decline in FY27.

This is a good time to remind you to always do your own research. I make every effort to keep errors to an absolute minimum in Ghost Mail, but I’m still only human.

I also attended STADIO’s results presentation earlier today at the new campus in Durbanville. I’ve shared some notes below from the site visit and the results released this morning.

With that, I wish you a good weekend! See you on Sunday for Weekender.

A drive to STADIO’s new Durbanville campus takes you somewhat off the beaten track. It’s on the other side of Durbanville, near a restaurant hilariously named 007 License to Grill. I bet they do a decent steak!

This area is in the early stages of its development, but residential nodes tend to develop quickly in Cape Town due to seemingly endless demand for new housing. I suspect that it will be only a few years until the outskirts of Durbanville become a lot busier.

Ditto for the halls of this new STADIO campus, which I understand is being built to accommodate around 5,000 students. They originally planned to open with 1,000 students, but demand was sufficient for enrolments of 1,250 students.

Although opening student numbers were ahead of expectations, the campus still feels rather quiet, especially on a Friday. That will change in years to come as the student numbers fill out, with extensive construction work currently taking place on the sports and social facilities that will drive the campus vibe that many students seek out.

Goodness knows that the broader group has a demonstrated track record in attracting students. After all, STADIO came in ahead of the pre-listing statement target of having 56,000 students by 2026.

Growth remains clearly visible, with total student growth at a healthy 18% for the six months to June 2026. This was driven by an increase of 16% in distance learning and 33% in contact learning.

But one of the themes that came through in the latest results is pressure on the qualifications at higher price points. This is why revenue was only up by 13%, despite the 18% increase in student numbers.

Revenue mix was a drag on performance in this period, leading to questions around broader affordability issues.

Management is playing their cards close to their chest, but they are working on a blended learning solution that will come in at a lower price point than the contact learning offering. It’s not confirmed yet whether this will be under the existing STADIO brands. This is certainly an interesting approach to driving ongoing growth in student numbers.

There were many questions about this new blended offering at the presentation. My read of the room is that there’s a high degree of trust in this management team from the analyst community. And why not? After all, STADIO just increased return on equity from 15.4% to 17.2%. For a business with relatively little debt, that’s an impressive result!

Gross debtors increased by 9% year-on-year, while debtors related to prior academic years only increased by 5%. The benefit of improved collections is coming through here. This is important, as the 2025 period saw a spike in aged debtors as a percentage of gross debtors. It’s good to see this come back in line.

This is a company that has more than doubled core HEPS over the last 4 years. When STADIO provides targets out to 2030, people tend to take them seriously.

I look forward to learning more about the blended offering!