Trematon shareholders approve $10.4M sale of Generation Education
What's the deal? Trematon Capital InvestmentsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → shareholders have approved the R172 million (≈$10.4 million) sale of its roughly 87% stake in Generation Education GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → to the Education Investment Impact Fund of South Africa (EduFund), managed by Old Mutual Alternative Investments. At a Wednesday special meeting, 98.06% of votes cast backed the disposal, with 1.94% against.
What each side does: Generation Education, founded by Jevron Epstein with Trematon in 2016, runs six school campuses across the Western Cape and Gauteng. Its model blends Montessori-inspired teaching, Cambridge qualifications, and digital learning content. EduFund is an education-focused investment fund.
Why now? Trematon said the business failed to meet its early growth expectations, and that realising its remaining potential could take years. The board decided that holding the investment indefinitely offered shareholders no realistic route to unlocking its value.
The numbers: An independent valuation of Generation Education fell from R293 million in August 2024 to R200.7 million in August 2025 — a drop of almost a third. The R172 million price also sits R19 million below the R191 million fair value recorded in Trematon's February 2026 interim results, though the figures are not directly comparable.
Red ink: Revenue slipped from R209.1 million in 2024 to R206.4 million in 2025, while operating profit fell from R30.8 million to R25.4 million. Trematon blamed falling enrolments, particularly in pre-primary, as cash-strapped parents delayed formal schooling.
Student numbers have since stabilised. The discontinued operation posted a R3.06 million profit for the six months to February 2026, compared with a R1.98 million loss a year earlier.
What's not in the deal: The disposal excludes GenEx, Generation Education's former technology arm, which built learning management and student information systems. Unbundled from the school group in 2024, GenEx is now held directly by Trematon, which previously said it had been approved to work with a major US online school on artificial intelligence applications.
The signal: The sale lets Trematon exit a business it concluded was weighing on its listed share price, while keeping the higher-potential technology assets in-house. For EduFund, it is a bet that South Africa's private, tech-enabled schooling model can grow where a listed holding company could not wait.
Read more: itweb.co.za
Image credit: University of the Fraser Valley
