Well, good afternoon, everyone, and as stated, I'm Mark Freeman, the CEO and Managing Director of the Australian Foundation Investment Company, and welcome to this full year result briefing. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians from all the lands we are gathered on today, and pay my respects to the elders, past, present, and emerging. I have joining me today on the webinar, David Grace and Nga Lucas from the investment team, Andrew Porter, our CFO, and Geoff Driver, General Manager of Business Development. Before we start the presentation, a bit of housekeeping on this 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. Please note, following the presentation, there'll be time for questions and answers. You can ask a question either via the webcast or through the operator. I will now move to slide 2, which is the disclaimer. This states that we're here to talk about what we're doing in the company, and we're not here to give any advice as such. Moving to slide 3, the agenda, I'll just give an overview of the company, then pass over to Andrew Porter, who will discuss the recent financial results. Then David and I will talk through the markets, portfolio activities, and outlook. On to page 5, just to remind everyone that we primarily invest in Australian and New Zealand companies. We're the largest listed investment company on the ASX, with over 160,000 shareholders, with an independent board of directors. Importantly, shareholders own the company and own the management rights to the portfolio. Therefore, the management expense ratio is kept extremely low at 0.14%, with no performance fees. We are a long-term investor and seek to be low turnover and therefore, tax effective. We understand that tax can be a considerable drain on investors' final returns. We also like to have a portfolio and ultimately share price, that produce returns than that are less volatile than the index, and a long history of growing and stable fully franked dividends. That was demonstrated through the downturn in COVID, where we sustained the dividend. The investment team manages 3 other funds, Djerriwarrh Investments, Mirrabooka, and AMCIL. We'll move on to the next slide 6. We're aiming to provide shareholders with attractive investment returns through growing stream of fully franked dividends and growth in capital. Over the long term, we aim to pay dividends which grow faster than inflation, although that's not gonna happen in the short term with interest rates and inflation where they are, and to provide those total returns over the medium to longer term. With that, I'll pass over to Andrew Porter, our CFO, to talk through the results. Thank you, Mark, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, we are on slide 8 for those of you that are following along on the screen. If I run through these boxes in descending order, the first one, the profit for the year, just over $310 million. On first sight, this is down from last year's profit, which was just under $361 million. That included an $75 million, what we used to call scrip dividend, as a result of the BHP Petroleum and Woodside merger. If you were to take that out, actually, the profit was up 8.6% for the year, the dividend increases came from a wide range of sources. What that meant was that we were able to increase the dividend for the whole year at the interim. That went up from $0.10 to $ 0.11. Overall, for the year, the dividend is $0.25, up from $0.24. The final dividend has remained constant at $0.14. Just to remind shareholders of what we said in the past, the board will continue to take the disparity between the interim and the final dividend into account when setting their dividend policy. Total shareholder return, which is the box on the bottom left, that was actually down 1.4% for the year. I'll come on to that in a moment. The total portfolio return for the year, including franking, we think that's an important part of the equation, because that does take into account the tax that is incurred. Of course, the franking benefits the shareholders can take. David will come on to that in the next session. That was up 30.9% for the year. The management expense ratio was down to 0.14% from 0.16% in the year. That means it costs $ 0.14 for every $100 that you have invested in the company. Some expenses, particularly travel, for instance, did go up, but the reduction was largely caused by the amalgamation of incentive plans during the year. More details on that can be found in both last year's remuneration report and this year's, for those who are interested. The big driver, of course, for the MER, which is the total costs of running the company as a proportion of the average portfolio value, is that average portfolio value. Although you can see in that last box that it was up to $8.9 billion from $8.2 billion the year before, actually, the average value was down. It was $8.7 billion this year against $ 9.1 billion last year. That's an important thing to bear in mind when looking at the MER. Nonetheless, AFIC continues to be, we think, a cheap and solid way of investing in the stock market. If you go on to the next slide, page 9, slide 9, this shows what we were talking about. You can see from this graph, which is a graph of the premium discount on the share price against the net tangible assets of the company, that we moved at the end of June to a discount of 2% from a premium of 13% at the same time last year. That's quite a big movement, and that, of course, is why that shareholder return is showing a -1.4%. This decline from a premium to a discount was faced by many, if not most, or all other LICs on the market, and that does create a stagnation in the share price. What we have seen generally is that over the long term, which is our horizon, the share price will normally track the NTA performance. I'll be around to take any questions on that or any other aspects of the financials later on this afternoon. In the meantime, I'll hand over to David. Thank you, Andrew, good afternoon, everybody. Moving on to slide 11. In managing the portfolio, we look to invest in quality companies and remain low turnover, as it minimizes tax and allows us to benefit from compounding returns over the long term. Our focus on quality companies has delivered returns with a lower volatility than the broader market. Additionally, we have been able to maintain a consistent dividend profile, including increased dividend to shareholders this year. The chart on the left-hand side shows the relative performance of the portfolio against the ASX 200 over various time periods. Including franking, over the last 12 months, the market increased 16.6%, while the portfolio delivered a return of 13.9%. As a reminder, the returns for the portfolio are shown after tax and expenses, which combined, were a drag of approximately 0.6% during the year, largely reflecting capital gains tax on profits realized. The associated franking credits are now available on the balance sheet for distribution in a later period. It's been a choppy time in markets, with macroeconomic factors driving investor sentiment, particularly focused on the next move of central banks and reported inflation data. Despite this, the portfolio delivered a return of almost 14%. We're not trying to pick the next macro data points and focus our research efforts on the fundamentals of the companies we invest into. In this regard, we consider the core of the portfolio to be invested in quality companies with good long-term prospects. Additionally, we feel we have an appropriate mix of income and growth attributes, well-positioned to deliver our investment objectives of attractive total returns over the medium to long term, and to pay dividends which grow over time. A couple of things to point out in relation to the 12-month performance. Firstly, the sharp pullback in share prices of many quality companies. These include portfolio holdings, Mainfreight, ASX and Transurban. For context, all of these companies delivered solid returns in the prior two years. These were all quality companies, well-positioned to deliver strong long-term returns to shareholders. As a low-turnover, tax-aware investor, we elected to hold on to the majority of our holdings in these companies, as we believe the fundamentals remain unchanged. Following a period of overvaluation, we now consider valuations to be more reasonable. Secondly, as the chart on the right-hand side shows, the materials/resources sector delivered strong performance in FY 2023, increasing just under 23%, well ahead of the market return of 14.8%. Several factors contributed to the strength, most notably the reopening of the Chinese economy post-COVID lockdowns in late 2022. Additionally, the strong performance was also reflective of supply chain challenges following Russia's conflict in the Ukraine. The largest resource holdings in the portfolio are BHP and Rio Tinto. Both are favorably exposed to generally long-term positive economic growth. Both are well managed and own long-life, low-cost Tier 1 operating assets, and importantly, both have very strong balance sheets. The strength in the resources sector was primarily driven by smaller companies. We wouldn't expect to have a large holding of small resource companies within the portfolio for the following two reasons: firstly, they offer little in the way of dividend income, a key attribute we look for as we seek to maintain a consistent dividend profile, and importantly, a measure that a company is generating free cash flow. Secondly, small resource companies typically have a poor track record of capital allocation as they seek to replace their finite assets. Accordingly, over our long-term investment horizon, we think we can find better opportunities of where to allocate capital. Just a few comments on the banks and why we've used the recent sell-off to add to our holdings. There's been a lot of fear surrounding the banks over the last 12 months, risk of contagion from the challenges faced by several U.S. regional banks, and fears around a potential bad credit cycle in Australia. We see Australia's banks are among the strongest and most tightly regulated in the world. Accordingly, we don't see any systemic risks for our banking sector. We feel the price we are paying is reflective of the prevailing backdrop, and while we're not expecting strong earnings growth, we see they represent value and are supported by strong, fully frank dividend yields. Moving on to slide 12. Just to briefly recap our investment philosophy and how we manage the portfolio. We aim to invest in quality companies and maintain low turnover, so as to minimize the tax payable by shareholders. To deliver attractive total returns over the long term, we want to hold a diversified portfolio, delivering a mix of attributes. We want growth companies holding market leadership positions, cyclicals with strong balance sheets favorably exposed to long-term economic growth. Stalwarts, being companies owning difficult-to-replicate strategic assets and income stocks, companies with an attractive dividend yield, as dividends play an important role in total shareholder returns. Maintaining appropriate diversification across the four factors allows the portfolio to perform under various scenarios. Shown on the slide is a long-term performance of the ASX 200 going back to 1980, while also showing the outperformance of industrial companies versus resource companies over the time period. Chart provides excellent long-term context that the general trend in market performance is from the bottom left to the top right-hand corner. Over the time period shown, you can see the impact of the GFC and the onset of COVID. Despite the temporary setbacks, the ASX 200 has delivered an average growth rate, including dividends, of slightly more than 10% per annum. Equity markets always face challenges from external events. The chart shows sharp pullbacks in markets are not uncommon, and when they occur, they quickly recover. These events can't be predicted, and their impact on market performance varies. We don't profess to have the skills to frequently trade our company holdings around the unpredictable economic events. However, we take comfort that over the very long term, equity markets deliver positive returns for shareholders. As history shows, buying in times of bad news delivers good returns for long-term shareholders. We want to be holders of quality companies that own strategic assets, position them well to maintain earnings growth despite the constantly changing operating environment. Moving on to slide 13. There are lots of drivers of headline inflation, the charts on the slide show a very simplified view of recent moves in headline inflation, shown by the blue lines, and central bank cash rates for both the U.S. and Australia, as represented by the purple lines. As I mentioned earlier, while we are aware of the macroeconomic environment, we do not select stocks by predicting the next data point on any economic factor. We observe the fundamental drivers of every company we invest into and allocate capital to companies where we consider their long-term prospects remain strong. The key takeaways for us from the charts: inflation continues to remain at a high number, leading to rising costs for companies that is extremely challenging to manage, and companies with pricing power are best positioned to pass on rising costs to customers. The charts indicate the policy initiatives, or at least a normalization post-COVID, are having the desired effect of lowering headline inflation. We know that equity markets are always forward-looking, and while rates may go higher and inflation may remain elevated, there is now evidence that the worst of the cost inflation may be behind us. While we remain cautious, we've been able to use recent share price weakness to add to a number of our existing holdings at attractive prices, where we consider long-term fundamental opportunity is not being adequately appreciated. Moving on to slide 14. As we've included in previous presentations, the charts on the slide show long-term valuation metrics for the overall market. Charts shown are the price-to-book and price to sales for the ASX 200 over the last 20 years. They're helpful to understand market sentiments, particularly investor risk appetite towards the broader market. The two measures indicate that the valuation of the market is in line to slightly expensive with long-term averages. While a helpful starting point, we know the operating environment today for many companies is more challenging. Earnings growth is harder to come by, as leading economic indicators are slowing, while companies are left with high cost bases. Charts reinforce an earlier point: selective value is emerging in a number of companies, while the overall valuation of the market remains fair to slightly expensive. At this point, I'll hand over to Nga. Thanks, Dave. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Just moving on to slide 16 on recent transactions. The companies listed on the left-hand side show stocks we have trimmed or exited during the period. We trimmed our position in carsales, Transurban, Mainfreight, Iress, and NEXTDC to manage the size of those positions in the portfolio. We trimmed Brambles as we think the share price was fully reflecting the strong COVID-induced operating environment, which we think will prove to be temporary. The decision to exit Orica, InvoCare, and Reliance reflects our view that the long-term prospects for these companies will be increasingly challenged as competitive intensity increases. During this time, InvoCare received a takeover bid, assisting our exit price. In the case of Temple & Webster, with the share prices of many quality companies falling, we saw more attractive opportunities to reallocate that capital. On the far right-hand side, we show existing holdings that we have added to in the last 12 months. We used share price weakness to buy quality companies that we see value presenting. Short-term share price weakness gave us the opportunity to add to our holdings in Goodman Group, CSL, BHP, NAB, Mirvac, Santos, Domino's, and IDP. I'll talk a bit more about IDP later in the presentation. Domino's Pizza has been a disappointing investment so far for us. We are now confident that we are through the worst of the cost headwinds and operational issues. We also think the current share price does not reflect the long-term opportunity to grow stores in key markets. In the new purchases column, we added one new stock. Breville is a well-known Australian small home appliance brand, which is growing in popularity in the U.S. and other overseas markets. Following a number of years of strong profit and share price performance, share price weakness gave us the opportunity to initiate a position. The company has the opportunity to grow its brand overseas, has an experienced management team, and a strong balance sheet. In the following slides, we'll focus on a few portfolio companies in more detail, highlighting why we consider them to be good long-term investments for the AFIC portfolio. Starting with Slide 17, CSL. CSL is a specialist biotech company that develops and manufactures products to treat serious human medical conditions. We've seen a decent pullback in the share price recently, largely over fears around a new competing product. The trial results of this competing product are now known. Whilst we expect CSL to lose some market share, we believe this will be manageable and only very small in the context of the broader growth opportunity for the company. We've used the sell-off to add to our holding, as we think the share price reflects good long-term value, and the company has attributes we like, including a very strong management team and board, who have delivered significant shareholder value by successfully allocating capital over many years. The company has a market leadership position in its core plasma fractionation business and has a proven track record of delivering higher returns than competitors. CSL invests more than 10% of revenue in R&D, which is a key driver of new business growth. We continue to have high confidence that CSL has many years of strong earnings growth, delivering attractive returns to long-term shareholders. On to Slide 18, Goodman Group. Goodman Group is an industrial property specialist. They own, develop, and manage logistics and distribution centers, warehouses, business parks, and data centers in major global cities. Their customers are the likes of Amazon or Woolworths. They operate in 14 countries and have built a leadership position in its key global markets by building high-quality properties that are close to consumers, providing essential infrastructure for the digital economy. A lot of this growth in demand for industrial properties has been due to the boom in e-commerce. The business has over $80 billion in assets under management and is led by founder and shareholder, Greg Goodman, who remains highly motivated and disciplined in his investing. The very experienced management team are in a great position with their balance sheet to take advantage of any opportunities should they present in the current industrial property market. On to Slide 19. IDP is a leading international student placements and English language testing business. They help match international students with universities and facilitate English language testing for the purposes of education, work, and migration. Due to its global network of facilities, investment in technology, and highly regarded brand and reputation, IDP has become the market leader in each of its businesses. We think the company will continue to grow, helped by the growing demand for a Western education and immigration. With investment in technology and digitization, we believe IDP is well-placed to take market share as they use data to better match universities with potential students globally. Alongside this, IDP has been investing to transition the English language test from paper-based to digitally delivered and assessed. Their strategy to create an online marketplace through education, through digitization, should deliver higher returns for the business in the long term. We used recent share price weakness to increase our holdings in what we believe to be a high-quality business. At this point, I'll now hand back to David for some outlook comments. Thanks, Nga. Just on Slide 21, we've highlighted in the presentation today that economic conditions and the operating environment for companies remains uncertain. Economic growth in developed markets remains solid, with slowing growth in China. Returns from equity markets have been strong, despite broad-based expectations of a recession, and cost inflation, while easing, remains high in a historic context. Despite the uncertain backdrop, the portfolio is invested in well-managed, high-quality companies that own and operate highly strategic assets while maintaining strong balance sheets. We feel we have an appropriate mix of companies able to deliver income together with capital growth, enabling us to meet our investment objectives. I'll now hand back to Geoff to coordinate the Q&A. Thanks, David and Nga. Just to remind you can ask questions via the web or via the phone. The first question we have is in regard to Mainfreight, a international growth story, and a company we've held for quite some period of time. I guess the question is coming from the viewpoint that the shareholder is a little surprised to see you've been selling your Mainfreight. Can you provide some background to reasons for this? Yeah, sure. Thanks, Geoff. Thanks for the question. The Mainfreight, for those unaware, is a transport warehouse business that has been a meaningful holding in the portfolio for a period of time. One of the things that has attracted us to the business is the ability to invest alongside the founder of the business, who remains the chairman of the company today. It's a really well-managed business, maintains a strong balance sheet, and has been able to deliver many years of organic growth without making any sizable acquisitions, as it's taken its business model initially from New Zealand, where it was founded, into Australia, and then more recently into Europe and the U.S. In both of those markets, they've now been there for over two decades. I guess, for us, we just see some short-term headwinds coming for the company, more related to the consumer environment and its slowdown with anything consumer facing. When we saw attractive opportunities on the other side, and one of those being CSL, for example, we needed to capture that opportunity. It's really a function of portfolio rebalancing. We continue to like the long-term story for Mainfreight, and will continue to be a meaningful part of the portfolio for a long time. Thanks, David. The quick first question is really coming to perspective about whether, how AFIC approaches ESG in terms of its investment process, and we don't put ourselves out to be an ESG fund, but we clearly look at the factors within the elements of environmental, social, and governance as a way of understanding the long-term potential for a business and its profitability. The question really is coming from the viewpoint of climate change, and how we view that in the context of the portfolio, and the stocks we have within the portfolio. I guess the question's related to the fact that we did underperform over the last 12 months, but we've clearly stated that was partly due because of that underweight position in energy. I'll hand to you first, Mark, and then perhaps the others. Yeah, Geoff, just to follow on there, we don't label ourselves as an ESG investor as such, and we do hold positions in Woodside and Santos within that oil and gas industry. Our process as a long-term investor, we wanna be in companies that we think can grow their earnings per share over the long term, and therefore, dividends per share. We look at a number of factors to help us assess the quality of a company, a couple of those are the uniqueness of the assets, so that really goes to the market position of the company. A couple of the other factors we consider is the sustainability of a company's business model. What are the risks that could come onto a company? To the extent, what outside influences can impact the company? If you actually break down the components of ESG, the individual elements, they've been part of AFIC's process since I first started, a long time ago. If you think about G, the governance has always been something we look to. We want companies that are well-governed, and that goes to the people that run a business, and assessment of people is very important. Social implications, I mean, we believe companies should have a social license to operate a company. In fact, you know, we've taken a view for a long period of time, that we won't invest in pure play gambling stocks, and that's been a very clear and stated policy, certainly in the 28 years that I've been involved with these companies. Environmental issues, again, it goes to the assessment of sustainability of business models. If there are environmental issues that's gonna impact or affect the ability of a company to grow their earnings, then that comes into our analysis because we don't wanna be in companies where profits are gonna go down, essentially. If you're assessing the sustainability of your business model or its outside influences, then environmental considerations may or may not be an impact. If they are relevant, obviously, they come into our consideration, but for many companies we hold, it's not a high issue in terms of the way it may impact the business model. As I said, the elements are incorporated in, into the way we think about companies. Sorry, Mark. Just to, I'll guess, there's another question here, which is probably a follow-up to that discussion, about: How do we look at investing in fossil fuels at this point in time? Which is the other side, I guess, of the other question we've just had. Yeah, we do, as I said, but in. When you're an investor, it's really hard to influence what companies do if you're not an investor. Certainly, the, if you take Santos and Woodside, what we're looking for them to do, and, I mean, at this point, I mean, they're not doing anything illegal as such, but we want them to be responsible in terms of the way they run the company, and we want to see these companies endeavor to improve their carbon footprint, like all companies are doing. In that sense, it doesn't make them any different to any other company. We want them to doing their best to improve on their footprint. In fact, we see that producers like Santos and Woodside, if you look from a global perspective, these companies are doing a lot to improve their footprint. We want to support companies that are really doing the right thing, because if these companies are not supplying oil and gas, certainly they're needed in the short term, supply will fall to other areas in the world, and there are a lot of places in the world that we know that don't take ESG very seriously, and we certainly don't want the world relying on those areas for their oil and gas. Yeah, David, any follow-up to that point? I think, yeah, it's for both of those companies, Santos and Woodside. The majority of their production is LNG, which we see as the key transition fuel as the world's energy needs come from or move from fossil fuels into renewables. Look on that, we would have expected two or three years ago that that was going to happen much faster than what the reality has proven to be. We're really encouraged in the interim about the measures that both Santos and Woodside have taken in terms of being able to decrease their carbon footprint as we move through that transition. I think the other point to note, too, is just the much stronger balance sheets that both of these companies have post the mergers that they've done, and that's Santos with the acquisition of Oil Search, and then Woodside with the merge with BHP Petroleum. I feel the companies are really well positioned, and we're encouraged about the measures that they're taking just to remove their carbon footprint as that transition plays out. Thanks, Dave. I've got a question here about. Sorry, Geoff, just one other. It's in watching these companies, we obviously meet with management twice a year. Companies like Santos and Woodside. Obviously, there's always a lot of discussion about where they are and us asking: What else can you do? What are the improvements you can do? It's an ongoing conversation. It's not just a point in time. You know, they are certainly aware that they need to keep improving how they're performing on these issues. I guess the other point is that we've benchmarked the portfolio against certainly carbon intensity, and we're certainly well under the index. That's really an outcome of probably focusing on quality companies. Again, we don't, we're not an ESG investor as such, but our focus on more quality companies sees an outcome that shows our, the AFIC portfolio has a considerably lower, I guess, carbon footprint than the broader index as such. Thanks, Mark. There's another question here. We've seen a number of ASX-listed companies taken privately recently. Is this an ongoing trend, and is it likely to impact future AFIC returns? Yeah, look, it's something, it's not For a lot of the companies that we hold, off in our starting position, we actually don't want them to be taken over because some of these companies have irreplaceable strategic assets. We always find. Sydney Airport. Yeah, Sydney Airport is a good example. We weren't keen sellers of that because we thought that was an incredible asset if you're prepared to take a longer-term view. Most of the market are not prepared to take those long-term views and are looking for a sugar hit, most of the market doesn't consider the tax implication of selling shares as well, certainly at the institutional level. Look, does it concern us? I mean, we'd like to see more companies come on to the Australian market. Yeah, there is a bit of a concern that longer-term investors, a lot of larger groups or, you know, institutional funds globally, can look to buy into companies, particularly when there's share price weakness. I'm hoping that the ASX stays vibrant. I mean, it's still a good market at the moment. I hope that people take longer-term views when they're considering a takeover offer. Thanks, Mark. You mentioned IDP Nga. The question is sort of currently viewpoint, sort of where were you sort of buying it, holding the cycle of IDP share price? Thanks, Geoff. The vast majority of the shares were bought in the recent pullback of the share price. We're long-term patient investors, and we generally take a small initial stake and wait for value to present in high-quality businesses before, you know, moving a bit higher. We'll track the business from here and their strategy in their execution of the strategy going forward, and we'll continue to assess the size of the position in the portfolio from here. Yeah, when there was a dislocation in price, I mean, there was a significant event. One of their areas of business, which is in the Canadian market, said they were gonna open up for competition. That means all their businesses now are open for competition. They've got English language testing and a student placement. This was in the English testing part of their business. It will have a bit of an impact on profits, but the share price fell over 20%, and the market became very nervous. We think the student placement part of the business still has fantastic growth opportunities. They've got a great market position, and I think perhaps the value of that business was lost in the share price falls. As Naa said, we watch for quality companies to have some sort of dislocation. A bit of bad news often presents the best buying opportunities. That's what we've done here. The question, next question I'll ask is about the franking credit reserves and, how many years of dividends does the franking credit reserve currently cover? After we pay the final dividend, essentially, we've got just under $0.40 worth of franked dividends payable out of the franking reserve. We're paying $0.25 out, that's just under two years, if we receive no other income at all during those years. I'd always be cautious. I wouldn't say we're over-reserved, but I would say we're adequately to well, to comfortably reserved. There's 2 questions here, which I'll sort of put together in terms of raising capital through a share purchase plan. More generally, you know, down markets are seen as a good buying opportunity, although we're not in a down market at the moment, I suspect. I guess the question is, you know, how do we look about raising capital through a share purchase plan? Yeah, we'll look at. We've done them before. Often it's around where opportunities are in the market, stocks we'd like to build up. But I just think it's an ongoing conversation with the Board. We're always open to it. And it could also be how we're seeing the balance in the portfolio. And traditionally, it's given us an opportunity to get fresh capital in, adds to stocks without necessarily having to trim existing holdings to take advantage of other opportunities. It's very much a, it's something that's always live and something that's always up for discussion, and really, we have those discussions with the Board, and we'll take a view on that as we go. The other thing that we have to look at is whether the share price is trading at a discount. Well, we're unlikely to do it at a discount. Yeah. That's for sure. It certainly the case. This is a key question about why AFIC and the broader listed investment company market has rerated from a premium to NTA to a discount to NTA. I guess the general answer is a lot of investors have switched from equities to other assets, cash and fixed interest, which has taken quite a lot of demand, and we're seeing it across a lot of these investment companies that Mark spoke about earlier on. That this seems to be a general feature in the market. Of course, if you're an open-ended fund, then when there's less demand and people redeem their units, clearly, they get their money back, but the fund becomes smaller. I guess, in a listed investment company space, where there's a certainty of capital, a closed-end fund, that dynamic plays out where the premium or where the share price is trading relative to NTA, and that's what we're seeing. Yeah. Yeah, across the whole market, this is happening. Yeah. I think the interesting part is that, you know, just said that retail investors can now get a pretty good yield in the bank, and I think that's taken some buying out of the market. These things are cyclical, and even when you look at the earlier chart, the way AFIC trades, you know, there are periods where it's at a premium and periods where it goes to a bit of a discount. In the long run, it probably averages just a small premium to NTA. I've got a question on the banks here about, I guess, broker reports or wherever that may came from, in terms of net interest margins for the banks have potentially peaked and are likely to trend lower as a result of strong competition in the sector. I mean, how are we actually viewing the banks in general, David? Thanks, Geoff. I guess that's what has provided us with the opportunity. The buying that we have been doing in the banking sector has been in NAB recently, and the price that we've paid just in the last few months is sort of 20% down from its highs of where it was trading late last year. Yes, it is competitive. The banking sector is always competitive, and we don't expect that to change anytime soon. It's that pullback in the share price to a level where we feel it's now attractive value, and as I mentioned earlier, we're not expecting rapid earnings growth from here, but we are attracted to a very strong dividend yield of, you know, over 6% and really well positioned within the sector. So we just feel relative to what we see as an expensive market, that the banks are displaying good value, particularly for that income attribute. Thanks, David. Question here about how the international share portfolio performed. There was a small comment of this in the media release. Mark? Yeah, it's the international part of the portfolio is still around 1%, just over 1%. It's still a very small part of the portfolio, but the performance has been pleasing. It's outperforming its benchmark. We just continue to learn and grow and develop understanding of the companies and markets, and the team's doing a good job in terms of expanding its coverage of stocks. We'll, you know, as we've always stated with AFIC, we'll just take our time with it, but the results have been pleasing. Thanks, Mark. There's a question here. Obviously, we have probably written a little bit more in terms of call options over the year. If you get exercise, or if we get exercise, do you look to immediately replace the shares that are called away? I guess, how do you manage the options portfolio within the within the broader portfolio, David? Yeah. Very small, yeah. It's only very small. Options be written over slightly less than 5% of the portfolio, where we do get exercised on a call option. We're not looking to buy it back, so we only use the options to write at a strike price where we're really comfortable to be selling the stock or exiting that position. It's really just saying if we see a share price has run pretty hard, if someone's prepared to take the other side of that call option, we'd be happy to lose some stock at that level. Where we do get exercised, we look to redeploy that capital elsewhere, just where we're finding the next opportunity, but not to buy that stock back straight away. Thanks, David. Question here about Cleanaway, our views on Cleanaway, and challenges in health and safety and landfill issues at New Chum. Cleanaway, it's a nature of the industry that there are always problems popping up, year to year in terms of what this company does, and they are certainly two that they had to face over the last 12 months. There's a couple of things that we really liked about this business over the long term. The new CEO, Mark Schubert, who's been in now for just over 12 months, we feel is a really capable and a steady pair of hands as the business transitions under their infrastructure to 2030 plan. That's really around post-collection assets and the higher value recycling assets as we move to more of a circular economy. Cleanaway's position within that is market-leading, and we feel they're able to extract a higher return as a function of just their strong market position. Importantly, they've been able to maintain a pretty strong balance sheet as they transition across with that asset base. Thanks, David. There's a question here about, is AFIC prepared to invest in IPOs, or only after they're listed? Absolutely, we are, and there just haven't been many of recent times, and of the very few there have been, have certainly been quite small companies. The ones that have been presented recently, Redox being the most recent, was really too small for what we're endeavoring to achieve, so we didn't participate in that one. As the IPO window will open up, or no doubt it will, as confidence returns to the market, we absolutely look at them and happy to invest where we see the right opportunity. AGL used to be in the portfolio. I mean, how are you viewing that company at this point in time? The AGL, we exited a couple of years ago, sort of around $17 and $ 18. The share price fell quite materially from there, but has recovered recently. The thinking here is that as we transition away from fossil fuels into renewable energy, that the wholesale electricity price is set to increase steadily higher from here, and that has certainly been the case in recent times. We question the sustainability of that, as we've all seen electricity bills and gas bills have increased quite materially over recent periods. You really need to believe that that wholesale price continues to move higher from here to get an adequate return. look, we're really cautious around the sustainability of that, and while that wasn't reflected when the share price got down to around $4 or $5, we think a large degree of that is now being priced in at current levels. we keep it on the radar, we continue to monitor it. We catch up with the company, but at current levels, it's not of interest to us. Thanks, David. Just a reminder, if you want to ask a question on the phone, it's star one one, obviously, through the website as or through your website as well. Question here about buybacks, in terms of buying AFIC shares back. Mark, do you wanna sort of talk about that? Look, we've permanently got a buyback in place that allows us to do that. It's really there for, I guess, an emergency, if we see a really steep discount, and I'm talking something of 10% plus, before we'd even contemplate it. We really want the market to determine the price and the trade, and if it does trade at a deep discount at some point, we'd rather the market take those sort of opportunities on. It's there, so, I can't even remember the last time we prevented it. Well, it was about 2004, 2005. Yeah [inaudible] fund managers suddenly unload a lot on the market. As you say, the market couldn't actually cope with that volume, which is why we stepped in. Yep at that discount. I think the other observation I'd make is that you've seen a lot of listed investment companies buy back shares at discounts. It really hasn't done much to change the equation on the discount. I think if I look at the LIC market, what counts is performance, and dividends, and costs. If you line those things up, then you are more likely to trade closer to NTA. Mm-hmm Then not. Anyway, that's my observation about that. Apart from Goodman, have you looked at any other new industrial transport-based organizations? Are there any on your list? Yeah, thanks for the question. We look at them, Goodman is definitely the standout in terms of quality for us, and one, you get to invest alongside Greg Goodman, who still maintains a meaningful shareholding within the business. Secondly, they've been able to maintain a really strong balance sheet. The part of Goodman Group that sort of attracted us to the stock a number of years ago, is just how they reposition the portfolio. They decided to exit a lot of their, what they defined as B-grade or non-core assets, and these are the more commoditized industrial sheds that you see on the outer urban fringe. They're a dime a dozen to a degree, in that if the tenant isn't happy, they've got the ability to move to a new shed down the road at any point in time when their lease expires. Goodman exited out of those assets, and they redeployed the proceeds into sort of core markets as they define them. These are the ones that are really favorably exposed to the trends that we're seeing on, you know, online retailing and the whole e-commerce thematic. They've just targeted now, just over a dozen global cities where most of the freight goes through. It is in those centers where land value is set to increase, and also you get a more sustainable rental profile. Just a higher quality asset base than what they've got against their peers. Every time we look at the competitors within this space, they're more exposed to those commoditized, secondary type assets, and they don't have the unique attributes of what the Goodman portfolio has. Thanks, David. Just a reminder, we're slowly coming towards the end of the questions. If you want to ask any questions, please put them through now. There's a question here about earnings. The fact that, by this comment, the earnings have declined by 0.5% per year over the past five years. I guess, Andrew, can you sort of give some color to that? It's an interesting way to look at it. I mean, it certainly, as ever, it depends on where one starts. In 2019, which is essentially 5 years ago, that was an unusually high profit because of the participation in the Rio Tinto and BHP off-market buybacks inflated the income, and the government have closed off that particular avenue of pleasure. There were some special dividends and the receipt of a dividend from the Coles demerger from Wesfarmers as well. That was an artificially high earnings per share. 2020 and 2021, both a lot lower than we have today, that's because of COVID. As we said last year, so 2022, where the earnings were a bit higher, that was because of that scrip dividend. There are a number of one-offs in all of these, but generally, the underlying earnings that we've seen over the five years have actually increased this year. They were flat in 2020, 2021, they went down a bit from 2019, up a bit in 2022, and up again in 2023. Thanks, Andrew. Mark, there's a couple of questions about international portfolio. One about, is it mainly U.S. stocks, and do we envisage buying other major markets? The other question is, how do we go about, in relation to international, managing the exchange rate within that? Do we hedge, for example? Yeah, no, well, we don't hedge. We want it to just to be a sort of cleaner structure. The outcomes are the outcomes. In terms of markets, certainly the large proportion of the portfolio is in U.S. stocks, but the rest is essentially in European stocks. We had one Hong Kong-listed share for a while, but we've now exited that position. So really sticking with the major markets. I'll make this the final question, unless we have any last minute ones come through, but, are we still happy with the Woodside holding? Yes. No, we are. It's been a really strong performer, sort of post that merger that they undertook with BHP Petroleum. As I mentioned earlier, it's had a much stronger balance sheet, which has just provided significant flexibility about them being able to pursue growth options. Ultimately, their earnings are pegged to what happens to the underlying commodity prices, and we've seen an upward trend in that over the last sort of 12 to 18 months. They've benefited from that. With the stronger balance sheet, the ability to capture growth options, we've seen the share price perform strongly. We feel really comfortable with that, I guess that ties into the earlier discussion just around the efforts that this company is going to around ESG and trying to reduce their carbon footprint. Thanks, Dave. There's no other questions have come through. I'll hand back to Mark now to close the meeting. Thank you. Okay, thanks, Geoff. Thank you everyone for joining this, webcast, webinar, sorry. The next opportunity to get an update to hear from us will be the AGM in early October. We'll be doing another call in January for our half year result. March, we'll be doing shareholder information meetings around the country. There's lots of opportunities to hear in what's happening with your company. That does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.