Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'm Mark Freeman, the CEO and Managing Director of the Australian Foundation Investment Company. Welcome to this interim result briefing. I have here with me David Grace, Portfolio Manager of the investment team, Nga Lucas, who's also from the investment team, Andrew Porter, our CFO, Matthew Rowe, our Company Secretary, and Geoff Driver, General Manager of Business Development. Before we start the presentation, a bit of housekeeping on the webinar. This briefing is based on the material available on the company's website. If you are using your computer to access the presentation via the webcast, the slides will change automatically. If you are accessing by phone only, the PDF of the slides with page numbers is available on the website. Finally, please note, following the presentation, there will be time for questions and answers. You can ask a question either via the webcast or through the operator. I will now turn to charts, which is a disclaimer on the slide pack. That disclaimer is just to state that we're here to talk about the company and what we're doing. We're not here to give recommendations or advice in any way. Just moving to page three, the agenda. Andrew Porter, our CFO, will give an overview of the interim result. I will then talk about the investment process. I'll pass over to David and Nga to talk about markets and the portfolio, and finally, a word from David Grace. With that, I'll pass straight to slide five and Andrew Porter. Thank you, Mark. Slide five, for those of you who have it available, is just showing the interim result figures. You'll see on that the profit for the half year was up 73.5% from last year. Unsurprisingly, for a company like AFIC, that was due to the dividend increase, i.e. the dividends that we received from companies that we invested. They were up 68%. I don't think there are any surprises as to where the major increases came from. The big four banks, Macquarie, Rio and particularly BHP, which paid a very large dividend in this half. There were some companies that restarted dividends in this particular half, not having paid one in the corresponding period. For instance, James Hardie and Ramsay paid a dividend this year. The interim dividend remains at AUD 0.10 per share. I would remind shareholders that last year's dividend was partially paid out of reserves. The earnings per share for AFIC last year, which excluding the Endeavour demerger, which was for those of you who were listening to last time will recall, was an accounting entry and carried no cash or franking. The EPS was AUD 0.16, excluding that, and AFIC paid AUD 0.24. One of the benefits of an LIC is the ability to pay dividends from reserves, unlike trusts, which can't. AFIC had to dip into its reserves last year to pay that dividend. The shareholder return, you can see in the bottom left-hand corner there, 10%. That was ahead of the portfolio return, which is why the premium at the end of the year, which is the share price, over and above the actual underlying value of the assets, was 9%, as shown on the next slide. I'll come onto that in a moment. The management expense ratio or the admin expenses did increase slightly to AUD 0.15 for every AUD 100 invested in AFIC. Although we did note at the end of last year, that expenses would increase this year for a number of factors, including the full addition of the international investment team. Last year's figure was artificially low, and the increase in the admin expenses in the MER is largely caused by the non-reversal of provisions that we have reversed in previous years, but not this year. This impacts the H1 of the year but will not have the same impact on the full year. However, as ever, the biggest driver of the MER will be how the market and the portfolio moves. That, of course, really dwarfs all the other factors. The next slide is the premium discount slide. We always like to draw shareholders' attention to it so that they're aware of the situation in terms of whether they're buying shares at a premium, as I discussed, whether they're buying shares at more than the actual underlying value of the assets. We can't control that. That's a function of the market. You can see that AFIC shares have now been at a significant premium for quite some time. With that, I'll hand back to Mark for the investment process. Thanks, Andrew. We'll move on to slide eight, just the objectives of AFIC. AFIC's investment focus is on a diversified portfolio of mainly Australian equities. We've got a few New Zealand stocks there as well, and obviously a few international stocks creeping into the portfolio. We're seeking to provide attractive income and capital growth to shareholders over the medium to long term. This is achieved at a low cost to the shareholders with a portfolio that has a lower volatility than the market and with low portfolio turnover, which produces tax-effective outcomes for shareholders. On to slide nine. How do we actually achieve this? It's through our investment process. Our starting principle is we want to be in quality companies that we can hold for the long term. How do we assess quality? Well, we wanna be in companies that have a uniqueness to their assets. To assess that, we look at the competitive environment, whether the company has a leadership position in the market in which they operate, and the extent to which the assets can be replicated. We wanna be in businesses that are gonna be around for the long term, and businesses that can sustain making good returns throughout their life, to the extent we can predict that. To consider that, we think about the barriers to entry, sustainability of their competitive advantage, potential for new entrants to come in, and threat of substitution. Independence is also important, and this is particularly relevant when thinking about a company's moat. We think about the extent to which a company has strong pricing power, their power over suppliers or buyers, the extent to which a government can interfere with the business, and exposure to such things as commodity cycles. The people that run the business is always critical. We like the owner-driver model, where you have companies where the founder or founding family members are a part of running the company. We like to see the insiders owning stock. We look at track record, incentive schemes, and corporate governance. We've got a preference for companies that have more consistent earning streams. We wanna always invest in companies that have a financial strength about them. The balance sheet, the level of gearing, it's critical. If you look back through history, there's been many companies that have got into trouble simply for carrying too much debt. If you move on to the next slide. The outcome of all that then is that we're a long-term investor in companies. We're not traders of share prices. We wanna identify quality companies with sound growth prospects that we can buy at a reasonable price and hold for that long term. This then supports our belief in the power of compounding returns from great businesses. Finally, our research process is built on observing the key characteristics of a company that our experience indicates will produce strong investment returns. It's not about trying to predict what's going to happen. It's looking for characteristics of companies that we know brings with it a high probability of being a great investment. On to slide eleven. Just to comment on ESG. The important point here is that ESG is integrated into our investment framework. It's not a separate element that we consider. It's part of the entire investment process. Our approach to environmental, social, governance factors include an assessment of overall ESG risk, and it is about thinking about the sustainability of the business because that's a really important part of our input, as discussed previously. ESG can impact the long-term sustainability of a company. We wanna be in companies that have strong governance and risk management processes. That includes the environmental and social risks, and we regularly review companies to ensure ongoing alignment with our investment frameworks. Our engagement with companies, voting on resolutions, is one of the key functions that a shareholder has in ensuring better long-term returns and management of investment risk. We conduct our own evaluation on the merits of any shareholder resolution, but we do take input from proxy advisors, but we make our own minds up about those. We vote on all company resolutions as part of our regular engagement with the companies, and we actively engage with companies when we have concerns that those resolutions are not aligned with shareholders' interests. With that background, I'll pass over to David and Nga to talk through markets and the portfolio. Thanks, Mark, and good afternoon, everyone. Starting on slide 13, the charts on the slide show valuation metrics for the ASX 200 as at the end of December. The charts are a high-level view of where market valuations are relative to long-term history on both the price to book and price to sales basis. Following two years of strong market performance, both charts indicate the market is at the top end or above long-term trading ranges. This reflects improved economic activity supporting strong corporate earnings growth over the last few years. We're now almost two years since the onset of COVID. Stimulus payments are now rolling off, and cost inflation is impacting nearly all areas of the economy. For these reasons, the operating environment is uncertain for corporate earnings, and the range of potential outcomes is significantly broader than the recent past. As outlined earlier, it has always been our belief, and remains so today, that companies owning unique assets, having long-term sustainability, and being run by competent boards and management, are best placed to grow earnings through the full economic cycle. While market volatility may increase, oftentimes like these present good buying opportunities for investors focused on a company's long-term outlook. Moving on to slide 14, which outlines the recent performance of the market overall and by sector. Market returns in calendar year 2021 were strong, with the ASX 200 up more than 17%. It was a tale of two halves, with the first six months benefiting from an improved demand environment as the economy recovered from the impacts of COVID. The H2 was more challenging, as the strong economic growth led to widespread supply chain challenges and meaningful cost inflation for most companies. The softer market conditions have continued into January, with the prospect of multiple interest rates increases in calendar year 2022 weighing on market sentiment. The rotation has been widespread, reflective of the starting point where market valuations were high in the context of long-term history. Many of our companies have sold off over this period. This is a typical rotation that you see from time to time in equity markets. Our strategy in managing the AFIC portfolio remains the same. We continue to focus on a company's growth prospects over the long term. Buying opportunities are beginning to emerge for quality companies where the long-term growth outlook continues to be strong. Reflecting on cost inflation, we think about it in two ways. Firstly, the high cost of business for companies is raw materials, labor, and supply chain costs increase. Secondly, the potential for a change in stance in monetary policy and the effect of higher interest rates on market valuation. In relation to the first point, the key attribute we look for in selecting companies we invest in is finding those that offer a sustainable competitive advantage. While not immune to rising costs, these companies are best positioned to have pricing power and the greatest ability to pass through cost inflation to their customers. On the second point, should interest rates increase as expected, share market volatility will likely provide buying opportunities as we are starting to now see. The chart on the right-hand side splits the market performance by sector over the last twelve months. Telstra, up 47% for the year, has driven the strong performance in communication services, while small resources had a strong finish to the year. Banks have been particularly strong, having started the year at a meaningful valuation discount. From here, as bank valuations are more in line with long-term averages, we expect returns for the sector are more likely to come from income rather than capital growth. At this point, I'll hand over to Nga to discuss recent performance. Thanks, Dave. Over onto slide 15. This slide shows the relative performance of the portfolio against the ASX 200. Including franking, over the last six months, the market rose 4.6%, while your portfolio delivered a return of 6.9%, being 2.3% ahead of the ASX 200. The strong performance reflects the benefit of holding a diversified portfolio with a mix of high-quality companies, together with a number of businesses benefiting from the economy's reopening. We are pleased that longer term performance continues to exceed market returns. The chart on the right-hand side reflects data from a Mercer survey of 115 large cap Australian equity fund managers, displaying their risk and return metrics over the last five years to December. The green lines represent the median manager who has delivered a return of 9.4% per annum with a standard deviation of 14.8%. The standard deviation is a measure of risk or volatility of a portfolio. The AFIC portfolio is represented by the blue dot and has returned 10.3% per annum, while the ASX 200 is represented by the purple dot, returning 9.8% per annum over the period. Notably, AFIC's standard deviation of 13% is well below the risk of the market and the median fund manager. In simple words, the chart indicates the AFIC portfolio has delivered a higher return with less volatility. We believe these metrics reflect the high quality of the holdings in the AFIC portfolio while maintaining a diversified exposure across the market segments. Turning to slide 16. Times like these often provide us opportunities to add to high-quality companies at attractive prices. On slides 16 and 17, we will run through a couple of such examples in our recent buying in Transurban and CSL. Starting with Transurban. Transurban owns a high quality, diversified toll road portfolio that has strong pricing power, resilient earnings, and long-term optionality. We think the resilience and quality of the assets have been proven once again over the last two years, as demonstrated when traffic on their roads rebounded once lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne ended. Transurban has historically been a strong long-term performer with 10-year free cash flow per share CAGR of 10% prior to COVID. Management have done a good job growing the business through sensible growth projects while not overpaying for acquisitions in a sector where there is a lot of competition for these assets. While gearing appears high at 9x net debt to EBITDA, this is before contributions from the funded growth projects. We think the balance sheet is appropriately geared for this sort of business. Dividends in FY 2022 have been temporarily impacted by the extended Sydney and Melbourne lockdowns. We expect traffic and earnings to stage a recovery in FY 2023 and beyond. Pleasingly, the cost blowout at the Westgate Tunnel project has now been resolved. Despite the headwinds created by the rising bond yield environment, we believe Transurban remains an excellent long-term cash flow and dividend generator for shareholders, with a solid pipeline of potential future growth projects in Australia and in North America. I'll now hand back to Dave to run through CSL. Thanks, Nga. Moving on to slide 17. We think the long-term growth prospects for CSL remain strong. One of the key features of investment in CSL has been the consistent delivery of a strong return on invested capital over many years. The company has an excellent track record of successful capital allocation, both within its own business and externally from acquisitions. CSL is a global leader in the development of therapies to treat rare diseases and influenza. The company invests more than 10% of revenue in R&D, with the chart on the slide showing the significant contribution new product development has made to the business. In December, CSL announced the acquisition of Vifor Pharma, a European-based mid-sized pharmaceutical company. Vifor's focus is the treatment of kidney disease and iron therapy, a step out from CSL's core business. However, the market for both areas are forecast to grow substantially over the medium term. While the true value of the acquisition remains to be seen, we're highly encouraged by the strong track record of the CSL board and management, who have successfully invested capital and delivered significant value for shareholders over a long period of time. Moving on to slide 18, which outlines recent portfolio changes. On the far left-hand side show businesses we've exited during the period. The decision reflects one of two views. We either consider the competitive environment is set to become significantly more intense, or there is a structural shift occurring in the industry, where the company is set to be at a competitive disadvantage. On the far right-hand side, we show existing holdings that we have added to in the last 6 months. Short-term share price weakness gave us the opportunity to add to our holdings in Transurban, CSL, Coles, Goodman Group, Domino's Pizza, and BHP. We consider all to be high-quality companies. All of them generate significant free cash flow, all are run by strong management teams, and all have strong balance sheets able to fund future growth. Longer term, Coles is set to benefit from the steady tailwind that the shift to online groceries will provide to both major supermarkets, while Goodman Group is evolving from COVID as a stronger business. The company is a global leader in developing distribution centers, providing the infrastructure needed to the likes of Amazon to meet the growing demand for online shopping. With a strong presence in Australia and New Zealand, Domino's has a long-term opportunity to significantly expand their store network in Japan and Europe. Following a sharp fall in the iron ore price, we added to our holding in BHP at a price reflective of a double-digit dividend yield. At this point, I'll hand back to Nga. Thanks, Dave. Just looking at the trimmed column, we continue to own all three companies in this column. However, we have reduced our holdings reflecting either a deployment of shareholder funds to new investment opportunities or rightsizing our exposure after strong share price performance. Starting with SEEK at the top, we continue to like the market position of SEEK's domestic online jobs classified business and are cautiously optimistic about the opportunity in Asia. However, with the share price strength on the back of a post-COVID cyclical recovery, we took the opportunity to trim some shares to rightsize our position in the portfolio. Moving on to Reliance Worldwide. Reliance is another stock that has had a strong share price run. While the business is performing really well, benefiting from the strong US housing market, and we rate the management team highly, we were concerned about valuation extremes and trimmed some stock, choosing to deploy the capital in better opportunities. Next stock down is ARB. ARB has been an outstanding Australian success story. While we believe the business has a long runway of growth in international markets, four-wheel driving and off-roading has benefited from COVID-related lockdowns, forcing more domestic road-based holidays. When combined with a very strong share price and relatively extreme valuation, we've taken the opportunity to realize some gains. In the new purchase's column, we initiated positions in JB Hi-Fi and WiseTech Global during the half. Starting with JB Hi-Fi, JB Hi-Fi is the largest consumer electronics and appliance retailer in Australia and New Zealand. It is the lowest cost operator with an omni-channel footprint. Management have a proven track record with former highly regarded CEO Terry Smart taking over from Richard Murray in a well-managed leadership transition. The company has a very strong balance sheet, which will support an attractive dividend income stream for AFIC shareholders. On to WiseTech Global. We acquired a starting position in WiseTech Global. WiseTech is a leading developer and provider of software solutions to the global logistics industry through their CargoWise One software, led by founder and CEO, Richard White. CargoWise One helps freight forwarder customers digitize their freight forwarding operations, improving efficiency and transparency while reducing error rates and costs. WiseTech is an innovative tech company supported by their high R&D spend. While the broader tech sector is facing valuation headwinds, we believe WiseTech will stand the test of time as a quality business, and we will look for opportunities to build our position at more attractive prices. I'll now hand back to Dave to run through the final slides. Thanks, Nga. Slide 19 to slide 21 outline the top 30 holdings in the portfolio. We've provided this list before and include it here again. Should there be any questions in relation to any of the portfolio holdings, the team will be happy to answer these during Q&A. In line with our investment process outlined earlier, all companies shown on these slides have strong market positions, generate meaningful cash flow, are run by strong management teams and boards, and all have strong balance sheets able to fund their growth objectives. Moving on to slide 23 for some outlook comments. Markets are always presented with challenges from the macro environments, and today's challenges are no more pronounced. With cost inflation prevalence and the likely increase in interest rates in the near term, the range of outcomes for corporate earnings is broader today than what it has been in recent times. Typically, in times of uncertainty, market volatility will increase. While share price volatility may eventuate, often these times present the best buying opportunity for investors focused on a company's long-term outlook. In actively managing the portfolio, we look to identify quality companies, hold them in a meaningful way, and look to own over the long term to benefit from the power that compounding returns deliver to shareholders. We feel comfortable that the core of the portfolio is invested in high-quality companies with attractive long-term growth prospects. At this point, I'll hand over to Mark for an update on our investment in international companies. Okay, thanks, David. Just a quick comment on this. We've got about AUD 70 million in 41 international companies. That's 70 basis points, so it's just 0.7% of the AFIC portfolio. It's small in terms of the overall context of the fund. The performance so far has been encouraging. The key to this is applying the AFIC way of investing to international companies. There's still a lot to learn and develop from that. As I said, it's been encouraging so far. The strategy is to build a track record from this investing, and then obviously we'll see where it goes from there. With that, it's time to hand over to questions, which I think Geoff will moderate. I will, Mark. Thank you. Just a reminder, if you have a question on the phones, star one is the way to ask the question. We have a few questions here online through the webinar. I'll start with those and then hand back to the operator to see if there's any phone questions. The first question, I'll go in order of receiving them. The first question, Andrew, is what is the dividend reserve per share at this point in time? Well, as ever, as an accountant, I guess I'll say, well, that depends upon what you mean by dividend reserve. If you take straight the amount of profit reserve, including realized gains that we had at the end of December, it's something like AUD 0.98 per share. Certainly healthy, to say the least. Perhaps it's more important to look at what the franking reserves are to ensure that we can pay franking credits. Now, that information isn't something that we make publicly available at the interim. That's just done at the full year. Shareholders will recall at the full year last year, after the payment of the final dividend, we had AUD 0.20 worth of franked dividend that we could pay. If you were to look at the profit for the half year, on an earnings per share basis, which is just under AUD 0.12, you can effectively add, pretty much add that to that, AUD 0.20 to give you some idea. I'd still say that we are in a healthy position re our reserves. Thanks, Andrew. A question on the administrative expenses, but I think you've answered that. I think I've answered that, yes. As I thought. Why they increased? You've gone through that. A few questions on Sydney Airport. Basically, whether we actually hold the shares and what's your attitude to the meeting coming up next week in terms of the scheme arrangement, the scheme meeting? Yeah, sure. We do own Sydney Airport. We have been reducing our holding in recent times, and it's really reflective of our expectation that the vote will get up next week. Also just to take advantage of opportunities we're seeing in the market, given the sharp pullback that we've seen in the first week of January. We still have a holding, but it's less than what we had at balance date, the thirty-first of December. As you said, Dave, you expect that to go through really? Yeah, absolutely. The vote's on February third, so next week, we expect that to be approved. Question here about BHP. A couple of questions about BHP. What's sort of the strategy for BHP, both the unification strategy and what does that mean in terms of accumulating the market weight? Are we happy to stick with the current position? Yeah. The starting point for us is an overweight position in BHP, and we did buy some in the recent pullback where the share price fell below AUD 40. On the unification next week, we will actually move to an underweight position. Our thinking there is really while the short-term outlook looks positive for China and iron ore markets, particularly if any stimulus comes in relation to infrastructure spending, we're a little more concerned just on the medium-term outlook, where we see new supply coming in from Guinea with the Simandou project expected to hit markets in 2026. On that basis, really taking that long-term outlook that we do, we feel comfortable being underweight BHP, but still holding some allocation to that because of the strong income to get from our holding. Thanks, Dave. Got a question here about what are the reasons we don't have companies such as Boral, CSR. We actually do have James Hardie, in fact, ABC type construction businesses. We own James Hardie. We have owned for a period of time, and we deem James Hardie to be the highest quality building products business on our market. The other one we own, which has got a flavor of building products is Reece as well, which is a plumbing supplies business, predominantly in Australia, but also has a U.S. presence. We're conscious of being too overweight any one sector. Really the way we're running the portfolio is to keep quite a balanced allocation across most market segments. We're not setting the portfolio to do well in any particular economic cycle. It's really tried and through the cycle over that 5-10-year view, have a balanced approach. With a quality focus and taking that long-term 5-10-year outlook, we feel that James Hardie and Reece are the picks within that sector. Question relating to the Washington H. Soul Pattinson and the Milton takeover, why we in fact didn't take scrip in that takeover. At the time, the Washington H. Soul Pattinson share price was trading at, I think about a 30%-40% premium to NTA. We felt there was significant risk in taking scrip as a part of that. The ability to be able to get cash and redeploy those proceeds into our preferred holdings, we felt was a much better option for the portfolio. It's nothing against the Washington H. Soul Pattinson's business per se. It was really just a reflection of valuation at the time that transaction went through. Thanks, David. I might give you a rest for a second. Mark, there's a few questions here on the international portfolio. One I guess, are we likely to proceed with the global portfolio or keep it within the AFIC portfolio moving forward? I guess related to that is if we are successful in terms of that proving up the concept, are we looking to have a separate listed vehicle for international? Yeah, okay. Well, Geoff, look, I guess that ultimately, I guess there's two things we think about. Can we add value actually to the AFIC portfolio by investing in international companies? Given we are putting shareholders' funds to work in those stocks, you know, we believe the answer is yes. We think it adds. We can find some good companies that can add to our portfolio. In fact, if you look through even the Australian and New Zealand stocks we own, I mean, a big, a large amount of those are really international companies when you think about the sort of Fisher & Paykel, Cochlear, CSL, Macquarie, James Hardie, ResMed, the list goes on and on. They are true international companies. It's not, you know, we don't think there's a different skill base in that regard. We think we can add some value then ultimately, you know, it's something we think about, can we then turn this into another LIC? I guess that's what we ultimately think about is can we do that? We would only do that on the basis that we can have, I guess a similar approach to why we run our LIC in the first place, which is about, you know, can we have a diversified portfolio? Can we run it at a low cost, no performance fees, try and do it with low volatility, low portfolio turnover and tax effective. That's the basis that AFIC's always been about. If we can make a product that's, as I said, low cost, no performance fees, long-term buy and hold, what we think that's something that, you know, there's many investors in the market would want. That's really what we're pursuing in that regard. Okay. Thank you, Mark. I have a question here relating to the PEXA IPO. Could we just talk a little bit more about how many we hold and why, and are we confident about the company's proposed move to the U.K.? I'll get Nga to answer this question. Thanks, Nga. Thanks, Geoff. In terms of what we hold in PEXA is not actually in the ASX 200 index, so every share we hold is an active position. In terms of the opportunity for PEXA, just as way of background, it is the leading digital property settlements platform in Australia. It's a very unique asset and the management team have a very unique experience in building this platform. We think they're very well positioned to develop the same platform in the U.K. It's still very early days, and we're watching that carefully. They're currently testing remortgages or refinancing products with the Bank of England and some other banks there locally. Interestingly, Dye & Durham, which was a potential competitor in that space to them in the U.K., launched a takeover bid for Link, who owns a major stake in PEXA, and we believe that they are attracted to the PEXA business in that takeover. We see it's an excellent long-term opportunity for them in the U.K., and it's a very unique asset. Thanks, Nga. Question here about management remuneration issues and how do we view them given, I guess, in a lot of people's opinion, they look very generous to the man in the street. How do we view the sort of remuneration structures that are in the market at the moment? Yeah. Look, we do our own voting. We certainly get the assistance of proxy advisors. We take their reports and get a feel for how they're benchmarking each of the companies that we're required to cast a vote on. In circumstances where we do see remuneration to be out of line with what we deem to be reasonable, we'll first look to engage with the company, and in certain cases, we'll vote against the remuneration policy. It is something that we're very conscious of, and we understand it's been a particularly challenging period for many listed companies to be able to assess what are the appropriate incentives with the volatility that's been occurring in the market around COVID and making sure that management is incentivized to deliver shareholder returns along with our investment process. Thanks, Dave. Got a question about, Mark, might throw this to you, about whether we're considering, given, what's going on about potentially a share purchase plan, given we don't hold a lot of cash in the portfolio at this point in time. Yeah. Look, it's a good question. Obviously, we have the DRP running on a continuous basis, so there's obviously opportunities to reinvest through that. Yeah, look, I mean, it's interesting timing around now. We, you know, we're obviously flagging that we could see some more volatility in markets. But we're talking about, we actually had a meeting this morning, as Dave pointed out, with the Sydney Airport takeover, it actually gives us a reasonable amount of, assuming that it goes through and goes ahead, Dave obviously mentioned we've been trimming some anyway. But we've actually got still a reasonable amount of capital to take advantage of some opportunities if they came along. So, we're not sort of thinking there's a need for it in the short term. It's obviously something we always talk about. We have done them sort of in the past, but you know, it really needs to be, you know, do we see the opportunities? Do we need the capital? Probably in the short term, we're probably okay in terms of needing capital. As I said, we've got the DRP, but look, that can always change as markets move. I think that's a point, Mark. We only raise capital when we think it's an appropriate time from an investment perspective to do so. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We're not looking just to make a portfolio bigger for the sake of making it larger, so. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, Operator, just check, is there any questions via the phone lines at this point in time? We've had no questions come through, but just a reminder, it is star one to ask a question. I'll continue on with the questions that have come through the web. A question here about APA Group. What was the reason for the exit? Was it about interest rates particularly rising, given its perhaps considered as a bond proxy, or structural concerns over gas or other growth issues? The main reason we sold APA was really around those structural issues and just being aware of the change in energy mix within Australia. It's more becoming about electrification and less about natural gas. While this is still some years away, we just felt that where the shares were trading, the opportunity of the outlook is looking increasingly more challenged, and the ability to be able to redeploy those proceeds into really our preferred holdings, what we felt were good buying opportunities at the time. Thanks, Dave. The Westpac off-market share buyback that's come and are we thinking about participating? We always look at off-market buybacks. We tend not to announce what we're going to do with those, but we have a look at it and see, well, is it a good price? Of course, generally, they go at a 14% discount, so you've got to look at it. Is it worth going into it and selling at a discount? Will the franking credits that you can get from an off-market buyback more than outweigh the discount that you'll be selling it at? These are the considerations that the board takes into account. Generally, we have not gone into many of them unless we really want to unlock those dividends. We have been into the ones, particularly BHP and Rio in the past, but they've been probably more on the side of not going into them than going into them. We will look at those considerations. One thing to bear in mind, as a company, we cannot actually, it's a quirk of the tax law, claim the loss that is generated in the tax, in the selling or into an off-market buyback. Individuals can. That's another little factor we've got to consider. Thank you, Andrew. Question here about whether have you looked to increase investments in Australian rare earth companies, especially in light of the EV global take-up forecast? We do. We look at the rare earths and the lithium space quite closely. Clearly, the sector's had a really strong run over the last 12 months with the lithium price up over 400%. We understand the demand dynamic around electric vehicles and the future of vehicles in that regard. Our hesitation, I guess, has really just been around valuation, where the lithium price, particularly, and also the rare earth price, are trading at material multiples of what it costs to actually produce. We feel the share prices are reflecting long-term pricing at those sorts of levels, which just sort of holds us back from a valuation perspective. We consider that really in the mix of all the opportunities that we can invest capital into. When we're taking a long-term view over 5-10 years, where we've been asked to assume long-term pricing at significantly above what it costs to produce, we feel the risk profile is slightly higher than what it would be for other opportunities we're seeing at the moment. Thanks, Dave. A question here, which I'll sort of go through. With the diverse makeup of listed companies in NTA, which therefore mirrors the market index, what measures has AFIC put in place to protect shareholder equity in event of any future major market correction? I'll throw that to you, Dave. In terms of cash? No, I think it's more about in terms of how do we protect downside within the portfolio, but I think, you know, it really gets back to the nature of what we invest in. Yeah, I think that's really embedded in the process, that it's very much a focus on quality. We're looking over the 5- to 10-year view. We're not trying to pick the hottest stock or sector where we're looking to deliver short-term performance, but it's really allocating capital on a diversified basis into those quality companies. We aim to keep turnover low, which really reduces the tax cost that flows through to shareholders at the end of the day. I'd also add that we tend to keep an eye on the liquidity. We actually quite often see a major market correction as an opportunity to pick up stock that we like at reasonable prices. We do keep an eye on our facilities and our liquidity to ensure that we can take advantage of those opportunities as they arise. Geoff, I'll just add that, you know, what we aim to be close to fully invested. We don't try and pick market moves. We don't try and catch up. You know, in my sort of time in markets, one of the hardest things you can do is try and pick where the market's going. I'm not good enough to do that. What we try and do is make sure we're investing in a portfolio of quality businesses. The markets sometimes go up, they sometimes go down, but if we make sure in good companies, we'll be okay in the long term. We don't try and sort of hedge away any potential risk. Trying to pick markets, it's a very dangerous thing to do, so we just make sure we stay in good companies. Yeah. Thanks, Mark. I guess the next question is a little bit along this theme as well. With the movement towards passive investing worldwide, does AFIC see that it has something that might cause the company to recalibrate our approach? Oh, look, I don't think so. I mean, you know, that sort of passive investing concept, you know, it's an interesting. Particularly when you can get into a product with very low fees. I mean, our cost recovery is extremely low as it is. We've got, I think, Dave, it's sort of 60-65 stocks. We compare ourselves with the ASX 200, that's 200 companies, so we're not hugging the index. We're just trying to find better companies, and if we can do a bit better than the market over the long term with lower volatility, more consistent dividends, transparent, we think we're on the right track. We're not trying to shoot the lights out here. No, I don't think it changes what we're doing. In fact, we think it could actually open up more opportunities because basically you're gonna go through these waves where the index type funds, I mean, they have to buy every stock. That includes when stocks get overpriced, it includes buying the good stocks and the bad stocks. You know, we can make a choice. With that, you could actually see great volatility in share prices because of the passive investing, and if you can sort of navigate your way through that volatility, it should present opportunities. Okay. Thanks, Mark. Just on the question around JB Hi-Fi and what are our thoughts on the likelihood that JB Hi-Fi's market share becomes eroded by companies such as Amazon? I'll pass that across to Nga Lucas. Thanks, Geoff. Amazon is clearly a phenomenal online competitor, but management at JB Hi-Fi have not been complacent over the years, and they've been anticipating Amazon's arrival for a long time now. They've been building their online capability and delivery experience over the last few years in response to this. I think they're very well-placed with their omni-channel experience, both in store and online. Customers these days, they wanna shop in any way they wanna shop and return goods when they wanna return them. Being omni-channel is definitely an advantage. JB definitely have scale in this space. They've responded also very well during the COVID period, very quickly pivoting to delivering from store. You know, we're very comfortable with JB's response to Amazon, but always, you know, watchful. Thank you, Nga. A question here about when the investor roadshows will restart. Well, funnily enough, we were trying to get them off the ground this March, but we've decided we'll have to probably go webinar again, given the situation with Omicron and the COVID position. Hopefully, we will get them started this year, but obviously not soon. It'll be later rather than sooner. Question about international, which we've already covered, but the other part of this question is at the start of the presentation, you said you engage with companies you feel they drift from the shareholder alignment. Can you give some recent examples where AFIC has engaged with such companies? I guess this gets back to the discussion you raised, Mark, in terms of the ESG slide and our governance processes. Well, look, the discussions, you know, we have ongoing discussions if we're unsure about remuneration outcomes. We will talk to the chairs and the businesses. I think the last time we met, we sort of talked about the engagement we had with Rio on their issues, and we certainly shared that one with our shareholders. Dave, I'm not sure whether there's any. I mean, I don't think we need to go into sort of the minutiae specifics, but it's fair to say that if we don't think a company's been run in a shareholder-friendly way, we certainly have our say. You know, proxies come up regularly. We go through those. We make an assessment of those. We're seeing increasing over time. We've met with more and more directors or particularly chairs of companies, and we have open discussions there. David, I'm not sure if there's anything you wanted to point out. No, the Rio was the one that I was gonna actually mention as well, which I think you covered there, Mark. Okay, thanks, Mark. A question here about- [audio distortion] [audio distortion] To comment. I just would add to that, you know, I guess, given the AFIC approach to investing that we have, I think the important part is that we have really good engagement and a good two-way conversation. I think the way we go about it, I think companies really listen to us and really value our input, and our sort of very measured approach and, you know, the willingness to speak our mind. In fact, the way we go about it, I think it's really quite powerful and effective and, you know, just reiterate, I think most companies really respect our views and opinions and seek it out. In that regard, I think, you know, on governance is a part of that ESG factor. I think the approach that we have works very well for our shareholders. Thanks, Mark. There's a question here about why does AFIC hold shares in the other investment companies such as Djerriwarrh and Mirrabooka, where a number of their shareholdings are common to AFIC. Do you wanna answer that one, Mark? Yeah. Well, look, obviously, both of those funds, AFIC helped seed them at the start, and we bought them well. If you look at the, you know, at the end of the day, once you've bought them, it's an investment for our shareholders. If you look at the performance of Mirrabooka over time, it's been a fantastic investment for AFIC shareholders, and it just adds a little bit extra to Mirrabooka does push down into smaller companies. Some of those would be too small for AFIC. At the end of the day, if it's a good return for AFIC shareholders, which it has been, it's been a good investment and Djerriwarrh has provided a good stream of franked dividends over that period as well. I think the other element to probably particularly Mirrabooka, if you were to say, "Well, we'll sell it," we've got significant capital gains. We'd have to send a very large check out to Canberra and then try and reallocate that money, like, it's been pointed out, often into the same stock. We might as well stick with what we've got without paying the tax. As long as we've got confidence in both those businesses for the long term, I guess we don't see any reason to sell them. Yeah. Thanks, Mark. As you said, it was something we AFIC initially started when they got those funds off the ground. A question here, I guess it gets back to the dividend question we had earlier on about is AFIC seen as a growth or income type share? Then secondly, around that, we haven't seen a dividend increase now for quite some time. Yeah. Um, what's- Well- Sort of what thoughts are on that? Yeah, look, we don't really sort of favor a growth or an income. I think they sort of can be generalizations in a way, but we're just trying to invest in good companies. We know income's important to our investors, so there is a bit of an eye for that. Inevitably, there's always a balance. There's a balance across the portfolio. There's a balance about how you get returns out of stocks. We talked about JB Hi-Fi provide the fantastic stream of franked dividends, but it's a great business at the end of the day. We wanna be in great businesses. In that regard, yeah, a lot of the income it's an outcome, but we find good companies that pay good solid dividends. We don't see ourselves as one or the other, really. The other part of the question, sorry, Geoff? Oh, the second part of the question is really about, you know, we haven't had an increase in AFIC dividend for a while. Oh, yes. Yeah. Look, we get that often. What the outlook is. I think. We've had to sort of keep reminding shareholders that, you know, we do build up some reserves through the normal course of the year, and these are usually capital gains. Occasionally we might trim a bit in the stock. We get a takeover like Sydney Airport. We get proceeds from those strong capital gains that then produce franking credits, and we can use those to pay dividends, but we often store those up. When we get sort of drawdowns in the market, obviously you had the GFC and more recently because of COVID, you get a pullback in market, dividends are cut, and that's when we can say, "Well, actually, let's now take those reserves we have and sustain the dividend through the tough times for our shareholders." The outcome of that is we sustain the dividend and we don't cut it, but then it takes obviously a while for the earnings to catch up before we can increase the dividend. What we could have during the GFC and through the COVID downturn, cut the dividend, and then we would be talking about dividend increases now. We could have done that, but we thought our track record is providing more consistent dividend streams to our shareholders. Therefore, we topped up our dividends using our reserves. Hopefully we come out of that. The operating earnings, we hope, will start to keep increasing, and then we can get to a point where we start increasing the dividend again. Yeah. Thank you, Mark. Question here on Iress and what are our thoughts on Iress now, given the sort of failed buyout recently? Iress is held within the portfolio. It's a technology business that operates in the financial planning software space within super administration, and more recently into the retail platform space. It has a very strong market position. Clearly, with the bid that came recently from private equity, share price had a strong run, and we've seen a pullback once those negotiations ceased. We're happy holders of the company, as it stands at the moment, and we're encouraged by the strategy of management, who are looking to move their services onto a single technology platform, which should allow more onboarding in the cloud rather than having a physical presence to be able to onboard and update client software needs. The outcome of that, we would expect to see lower cost inflation, and if they're able to maintain the same revenue that they've been able to achieve over the last few years, we should actually see some earnings growth coming through from this company. The price we were able to buy some post the transaction ceasing, we feel quite comfortable. Thank you, David. Question now, I guess, asking again about WiseTech and Nga. What are the factors that attracted us as a core stock, and is there a risk of Richard White holding a large part of the stock? What would happen if he decided to sell down his holding? Is there any depth in the company without him? Yeah. Thanks, Geoff. As mentioned before, like, we're attracted to WiseTech because it has a leading software in the logistics space, and the feedback we've had from a lot of customers is very, very positive because it helps them to run their business more efficiently, and it's further highlighted how important good software is in this logistics space under COVID. We also like the fact that it has a very large global TAM to expand into, and the customers are very sticky because it's enterprise-grade software. In terms of Richard White, he owns, you know, roughly 40% of the stock, so a significant holding, and has been selling down. He has a program, you know, a program to sell down gradually over time. From what we can gather, he's very committed to his long-term vision for the business, which is to build a logistics software platform. You know, in terms of further depth below Richard, they have a very strong development team, and that is the key question in a technology business, is you need to have good build people because it is the developers who build good product to sell to your customers. You're correct in focusing in on that point. In terms of. You know, our holding in WiseTech at this point is only a very tiny holding at this stage, and we'll be looking for opportunities if they emerge to acquire some more. Thank you, Nga. Got a technical question here, Andrew, on the accounts. Can we explain the difference in total comprehensive income from December 2020 figure of AUD 718,004 to December 2021, AUD 448,865? Always happy to take a technical accounting question. Those figures are actually AUD 718.5 million down to AUD 448.9 million. That figure is very largely consists of the unrealized gain on the investment portfolio. The simple fact is the market went up more in the half year to December 2020 than it did in the half year to December 2021. Thank you, Andrew. I'll make this the last couple of questions. I've got a question on Woodside Petroleum and its future. The other part of that question is, how many shares will one BHP share earn in Woodside Petroleum? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Geoff. Firstly, I'd say the majority of production from Woodside comes from LNG as opposed to liquids. We see the merger with BHP Petroleum as being a positive for the company. It gives far greater optionality around their asset base, and the other key benefit is just a far better or stronger balance sheet that Woodside has as a result of that merger, where it's better able to fund its growth projects. As a long-term investor, we don't see this as a long-term position in the portfolio. We're very concerned about the future of fossil fuels, the sustainability of those business models around ESG issues, and whether or not really shareholders will get an attractive return maintaining that investment over the long term. In the shorter term, we see CapEx in the sector has been subdued. Global growth, as we're seeing at the moment, albeit inflationary, is typically positive for oil demand. We start the year with inventory levels at lower than what they have been over the last few years. We're really looking for the opportunity to reduce our holding and just waiting for the right timing to be able to do that, reflective of the challenges this industry and this company will face over the long term, in our view. Thanks, David. Well, we've been going about an hour now, which is the sort of time that we put on ourselves to go through this presentation and questions. We appreciate your participation in joining us today, and hopefully, we can see you around the country when you're able to get shareholder meetings going. For any questions that we haven't been able to answer within the time, we'll get to you via email back out to you. Again, once again, thanks very much for participating and we look forward to seeing you soon. Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.