Advtech does two quite different things for a living. It runs private schools, colleges and universities under names like Crawford International, Makini Schools, Emeris and Rosebank International, and it runs a staffing business that manages payrolls and places people in jobs across Africa. In the six months to June the first one grew and the second one shrank.
Revenue rose 8%, to R5.06 billion, and costs did not keep up with it. Advtech now keeps 22 cents out of every rand it takes in, against 21 cents a year ago.
Headline earnings per share, the cleaned-up profit figure, rose 16%, and shareholders get 53 cents a share, a fifth more than last year. The market marked the stock down anyway on Monday, which is roughly what happens when a share has already run up more than a third in a year.
Where the pupils came from
Advtech taught 119 197 people this half, 13% more than a year ago, and almost none of the growth came from the schools South Africans would recognise. Enrolment at home crept up 1%. The schools elsewhere in Africa grew fourteen times faster than that.
The real growth is in the lecture halls. Close to 71 500 students are on full qualifications, nearly a fifth more than last year, and that side of the business now brings in R2.243 billion. In February Advtech opened a R420 million campus in Sandton for Emeris, the brand that folds Varsity College, Vega, MSA and HSM into one.
The staffing arm going the other way
The staffing arm went the other way, and not gently. Revenue fell 15%, with the rest of Africa down 16% and South Africa down 9%. Advtech points at the closure of USAID in February 2025, which took the aid-funded payrolls it managed away with it. The division still made money and still widened its margin, which mostly tells you how small it is: Business Day puts the whole thing at 4% of operating profit.
The one thing Advtech cannot schedule is the paperwork. Government opened a route to university status in 2025, and the rules for actually applying are still being drafted. Rosebank International and Emeris are both waiting with the forms in hand.
