Thank you for standing by. And welcome to the Ansell Limited acquisition of Kimberly-Clark Corporation's personal protective equipment business and associated equity raising conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Neil Salmon, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead. Thank you, and good day to you all. Pleasure to be talking to you today. Yes, indeed, today I'm excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Kimberly-Clark Corporation to acquire their personal protective equipment business, and also announcing an associated equity raising. If we could advance through the slides here, I'd like to start with our strategic priorities for acquisitions. If we could go 2 slides further, please. And this is a reminder of the lenses that we always use when considering the optimal M&A strategy for Ansell. To me, the formula is, firstly, M&A should position the business attractively in segments that themselves offer opportunities for elevated growth. And that's the most important part of any growth strategy in my mind. Secondly, that through M&A we reinforce differentiation, differentiation which is valued by our end users, and where we can, obtain durable advantage in the market. Acquisitions should enhance the capabilities that build that differentiation. That can be in a number of different ways, but manufacturing footprint could be one, but also product technology, and increasingly important to the future, a broader range of services that tackle the most important safety challenges that our end users are facing. And finally, of course, M&A must generate attractive returns. This is often the hardest part of the equation, but as you know, Ansell has been very disciplined, on this lens as well over many years, and we will not pursue an acquisition unless we're confident it offers good returns. And generally, returns requires adding value both ways. Are we clear that we can add value to the business we're acquiring? Are we also clear that the acquired business brings value to the base Ansell business? If you can achieve both those and a reasonable price, then that, to me, is a secret to generating good returns. As you can see down the right of this page, in my view, the acquisition we're announcing today ticks all four of these key priorities, and that's what I will look to demonstrate, together with Zubair during the course of this presentation. Going to the next page. Firstly, the Kimberly-Clark scientific business is highly complementary to Ansell's market position. It improves our organic growth potential through increasing our presence in our fastest-growing scientific vertical. At Ansell, we refer to life science. Here we're talking more broadly about scientific, and I'll explain how those fit together in a moment. And you'll see how the Kimberly-Clark addition beautifully balances Ansell's product portfolio and geographic position and significantly strengthens our overall brand portfolio as well in this attractive space. A second key attribute is that it improves our overall position in chemical protective clothing. Through a number of acquisitions in recent years, Ansell has rounded out a position in chemical protective clothing that we also see as offering us elevated growth prospects. However, most of our acquisitions have been in the APAC region until now, and still, our presence in North America is relatively light. Kimberly-Clark brings a much stronger position in North America for chemical protective clothing. It rounds out our service capability. Ansell is very strong today in assessing in workplace environments what is the optimal PPE. As I'll show you in a moment, Kimberly-Clark is stronger in the post-sale service, and putting those two offerings together creates an end-to-end solution for customers. It drives economy of scale benefits. You'll see that it is accretive to the key P&L metrics, but also through the combination of the Kimberly-Clark and Ansell organization and supply chain, we see attractive synergy opportunity as we bring these businesses together. And lastly, it offers a significant value accretion opportunity for you, our shareholders, and that's what we will look to demonstrate today. On the next page, I just want to highlight a few key elements of the transaction. The total purchase price $640 million. We're funding that through the combination of a placement and a debt raise in the proportions highlighted here. The multiples are 9.7x EBIT multiple, and in this case, EBIT is the same as EBITDA as there is immaterial depreciation and amortization in the acquired P&L. After adjusting for two key additional elements of value creation, the net present value of tax benefits flowing from the amortization of goodwill in the U.S., and the $10 million run rate cost synergy figure, that reduces the multiple on the acquisition to 7.8x, calendar year 2023. Hence, what we view as significant value creation. Reframing this in EPS terms, the acquisition is mid-single digit EPS accretive on a pro forma basis before synergies and low-teens EPS accretive after including those run rate net cost synergies. A few comments on the Ansell base business, and I'm pleased to be able to reaffirm our guidance range as published in our February half-year result at AUD 0.94-AUD 1.10, on adjusted basis, as previously disclosed, for the Ansell base business. However, of course, there will be a period of time between signing and closing on this transaction; for the next couple of months, we expect the additional shares on issue to have a dilutive effect of roughly AUD 0.01-AUD 0.02, and we'll exclude that from our adjusted EPS communication when we get to the year-end result. So now let me go through some more details on the business that we are acquiring. If we could go 2 slides further, please. So KC PPE is a leading global PPE business, similar to Ansell; they design, market, and sell innovative and differentiated PPE products. Their portfolio is similar in that its primary focus is on gloves and protective apparel. They also have an attractive safety eyewear position, focused on North America and one that we think we can develop. Their products are sold into the global scientific verticals, which includes what we at Ansell call life science, and also into the industrial safety markets where Ansell has a leading presence today. KC's strength has been built up over many decades of focus on these key verticals. We see that in the expertise of their teams, renowned in the industry for providing great support to some of the most demanding workplaces in the world where PPE protection is among the most critical, both to workers and to the products being manufactured in those spaces, and accordingly, having built up strong brand recognition as well. We're delighted to have the KC PPE brands now as part of Ansell. Those brands are Kimtech, oriented to the scientific space, and KleenGuard, oriented to the industrial safety space. Then KC has done a very good job of building that customer service intimacy in the post-sale activity, both the adoption and compliance with the use of PP, and then this recycling service that we're quite excited about for the future. The one difference between KC and Ansell is that KC runs today a fully outsourced supply chain model. That's, as you're aware, quite a common model in our industry, and it's an area where Ansell brings more dimensions for value creation in that we run a combination of insourcing and outsourcing, and we can bring those extra dimensions to play as we create value from this combination going forward. You can see the key financial highlights to the right. On the calendar year 2023, pro forma business, $270 million of revenue, $66 million of EBITDA and EBIT, the same, and a very strong cash generation as very limited CapEx, with that outsourced model. Turning to these two key segments, scientific and industrial safety. Here, this slide shows the difference. If we could advance one, please, between scientific and life science. You can see in the middle, life science specifically is pharma and med-device manufacturing environments where clean rooms are critical to quality control and the end production. Scientific broadens that to include the rapidly growing semiconductor space where Kimberly-Clark has a stronger presence than Ansell today, and also the associated research labs, either in these companies or in related activities, which have many of the similar quality and safety requirements as the actual clean room process. So this broader scientific vertical is an enhanced position versus Ansell's previous specific focus on life science. And you can see the products there are familiar to us and to you, gloves, protective apparel where in particular KC has a good presence, and then masks also oriented to the clean room space. On the industrial safety side, this is a very close overlap with Ansell's presence today, similar end markets, similar products, the key addition to the Ansell portfolio being that safety eyewear piece that I'll comment on a little bit further in a moment. So on the next page, a little more, a few more words on the KC product portfolio. Gloves, around 60% of the total, protective apparel, around 25%. Gloves and protective apparel are both sold into both the scientific and the industrial spaces, which is what the different word color here indicates. But gloves, as you can see, primarily oriented to that scientific vertical, protective apparel primarily into industrial end markets. Safety eyewear is an interesting portfolio, $40 million, as you can see here, and also very well positioned and branded in the e-commerce space. I'm seeing right now increased traction for Ansell products through various multiple marketplaces around the world. Many of our products now starting to record top-selling status in different countries and building out our overall e-commerce presence with this safety eyewear portfolio, I think, offers additional opportunities for growth. And then a small position in masks. But it's important to note that in this clean room vertical, there's more interest from customers to offer the complete portfolio of products that a worker needs, which would be gloves, protective apparel, masks, goggles, and potentially wipes also into the clean room space, and having those all presented in a clean room packed version is of interest to customers. So rounding out the portfolio is important. And that's what you'll see, as I get to illustrate the very strong fit between what KC brings and what Ansell has today. So let me talk that through, beginning with the acquisition rationale. If we can go two slides further, please. So firstly, these subverticals should support an enhanced growth profile for Ansell's business. Multiple industry reports and Ansell's own experience within what we've previously called the life science space indicates that this is our highest growth vertical opportunity, and we cite one piece of research and there's many others of a similar nature that indicate that the overall market for clean room gloves should grow in that high single digit arena and for many years into the future. What we also see is that the use of clean rooms in manufacturing is extending outside of its traditional focus of life sciences, and we see clean rooms being adopted across other manufacturing platforms where that heightened quality control and elimination of contamination is critical to the end product being produced. So it's a growing space, and as I'll illustrate in a moment, where Ansell's differentiation plays particularly well. That's because these are highly regulated manufacturing processes. What's important to note is that in a pharmaceutical manufacturing line, the value of the product being produced is very significant and dwarfs the cost of the PPE being used in that application. If the PPE fails, it can cause a huge cost occurrence to the end-use customer, either through contamination or through shutting down a production line. So the value opportunity relative to the cost of PPE is very significant. And then that requires a specialist sales force to deliver that, and that's, something that we're particularly keen about this acquisition, is the knowledge and capability that will join Ansell's existing strong presence in this space through the Kimberly-Clark scientific sales force that in future will be part of Ansell. And then it allows us to sell that broader safety solution, that portfolio of products but also of services as I'll develop in a moment. And you can see to the right here, and I'm sure you're aware of this as having covered Ansell for some time, that it's been a consistent focus for us. Both our life science business has been amongst the best performing over a long period of time, and we have continued to build it out through prior acquisitions, the Nitritex acquisition that built our European presence under the BioClean brand some years ago, acquiring in emerging markets as well. And then we have been discussing this opportunity with Kimberly-Clark for some time. I have long rated it as the most attractive potential opportunity for us in the M&A space, and therefore, I'm delighted that it has finally come to pass or we've finally reached agreement, and expect to be closing on it in the near future. So let me illustrate now why I believe our business and Kimberly-Clark's PPE business fit so well together, beginning with the scientific business, if we could move forward again. And you can see that Ansell's presence is strongest in EMEA and APAC, whereas Kimberly-Clark's presence is strongest in North America. You can see that Ansell's presence is strongest in gloves, especially sterilized versions and left-right-hand specific gloves, whereas Kimberly-Clark's presence is strongest in protective apparel, and this is a market that Ansell hasn't been able to generate significant share in previously. And you can see that Ansell has a brand that works very well in EMEA but not a brand today that really has the global reach that Kimtech has. So that combination of Ansell, first of all, as clearly the number one recognized company in the scientific space, with Kimtech, the number one recognized product brand in the space, and Kimtech by Ansell, in my view, becomes a strong combination. So together, we enhance our global cleanroom business, we complement our geographic presence, we balance our product portfolio and service solutions, we have a strengthened brand position, and that combination of sales expertise around the world will be very powerful. In this market, more than any other, we see leading customers in both the med-device and the pharma space keen to have conversations with us about setting a global standard and then implementing that standard, across all the operations in the world. Clearly, they need a safety partner who is able to do that, and with this combination, we will be even better placed to offer that opportunity to key global end-use customers. Talking to the fit in chemical protective clothing on the next page. Here again, through a number of prior acquisitions, Ansell has built out the AlphaTec brand, which is strongest globally in the high-end range for the general-purpose products, which are still provide important safety protection. Our presence today is strongest outside of North America as the businesses we have acquired have largely been EMEA and APAC oriented. Again, a very strong fit with Kimberly-Clark, and here we acquire that North America presence that we don't have today, and we round out our global position in chemical protective clothing. The Ansell Chemical Guardian safety offering is widely recognized as leading in its space, and now with a broader set of product solutions behind the Chemical Guardian advice, I'm excited about the future of this portfolio as well. KleenGuard fits very well alongside AlphaTec as a brand in our overall brand family. Then finally, turning to the services match. So Ansell, on the next page, very strong in analyzing workplace safety requirements through our Ansell Guardian and our Ansell Chemical Guardian offerings, increasingly as we develop our Intelliforz set of sensor-based solutions, also analyzing and predicting workplace risks before safety incidents happen. So that's Ansell's strength at the what to what product should I use for my workplace environment? KC's strength is after I've made that decision, how do I optimally use that PPE solution? Particularly in cleanroom, how do I ensure that my workers are properly trained and understand the compliance requirements to wear the PPE appropriately and avoid any contamination risk, through donning and doffing procedures? That's the APEX program that they have pioneered. Then one of the biggest challenges we face in our industry is, what alternative is there to landfill disposal? Kimberly-Clark has developed the RightCycle program, which is very well established in North America, and is really the only leading platform that offers customers an alternative to landfill disposal of PPE. We're excited to have that as part of Ansell because it really rounds out our sustainability differentiation to customers. The combination of services, it's our safety risk together with the post-sales support, the broad spectrum of before and after services, and rounding out our sustainability offering. All of that together, and if we go to the next slide, as you can already imagine, this has the potential to unlock scale benefits from the combined businesses. Overall, we're committing today to a run-rate net cost synergy of $10 million per annum that we expect to achieve by the third full year of ownership. And in a moment, I'll talk through the phasing up to the third year so that you understand the sequence of events here. But talking to the ultimate goal here, firstly, supply chain savings. We expect there to be opportunity through the combined scale, matching and bringing together the supply relationships that Ansell and KC have today, and then using Ansell's operating footprint to deliver additional opportunity, potentially in some cases from insourcing or from supplier consolidation and also consolidating warehouse and logistics operations globally. In SG&A terms, the business P&L that I mentioned to you earlier has been presented on a standalone business basis. The business today, though, is run on an integrated business into Kimberly-Clark's overall, shared service structure. In future, it will be integrated into Ansell's equivalent, shared service structure so that the standalone cost assumed in the P&L will actually not be needed as we integrated it fully into Ansell. That's the first element of SG&A savings that will be achieved, and I'll, I'll talk to the timeline in a moment that will achieve that. Then as we put these two organizations together, there's an opportunity to really achieve enhanced leverage, and as we grow the top line, achieve overall SG&A productivity as these organizations move together, so a significant SG&A economy of scale benefit. Accelerated sales growth is an additional benefit that we are not relying on in this model in order to exceed our valuation hurdles. In other words, this is upside against our base case. We see the opportunity for accelerated sales growth both in the scientific and industrial spaces and certainly as a result of the focus that Ansell will bring to this combined portfolio. Let me now talk at the bottom of this page a little bit about the timing, the composition and timing. So, on closing of the business, initially, the business we are acquiring will still be supported by Kimberly-Clark, under a transition service arrangement. Those transition services will be at a modest modestly higher cost than that standalone basis that I described, in the P&L that we are presenting to you. That, of course, ensures that both of us are incentivized to move off transition services and to integrate the business into Ansell as quickly as we can but also without creating any risk of disruption to customers. We estimate at this time that it will take us 6-12 months to move the business from, the Kimberly-Clark transition services integrated into Ansell, and only after we have completed that period will we begin to see the cost synergies come through. Also important to note is, and I'll highlight this a little further later, that while although we're acquiring the scientific sales force from Kimberly-Clark, the and a team that we're excited to have as part of Ansell, we're not acquiring any, members of the broader Kimberly-Clark Professional sales force, which largely supports the industrial safety part of the business. Instead, responsibility for those sales will transfer to the Ansell sales force that's already in place, already has the right call points, already has the right geographic presence, and is well therefore well placed to pick up and grow the industrial safety portfolio as well. Inevitably, though, it's only prudent to accept there could be some revenue leakage as we make that transition from KC Professional to Ansell Industrial Sales, and so I'm allowing for that in the first year or two of our ownership, and in allowing for that, I remain confident that we can deliver the overall value, opportunity from this business. By the time we're through this transition service period, the cost synergies that the gross cost synergies that are higher than the net cost number that I'm talking about here come through, and we see the greater organic growth opportunity of this acquired business, then the full value of the acquisition will come through. So these transitional services are very important to the success of this transaction, and we spent significant time with Kimberly-Clark working through these and getting agreements that we believe support the transition of the business. On the next page, I highlight these in a little more detail. Firstly, a recap here, as I've already mentioned, of what we're acquiring, which is the products, the IP, the customer list, supplier contracts, inventory, and the dedicated workforce on the scientific side. But we're not acquiring the KC Professional sales force clearly as their primary focus is more on the broader portfolio of solutions that KC Professional takes into their primary verticals, and nor are we acquiring the back office functions or IT systems. That's why we need the transitional services for a period of up to 12 months, as I mentioned. And during this period, we both need to prepare the Ansell systems and back office to receive the Kimberly-Clark business and also the Ansell Industrial Sales team to receive the customer relationships. An integration team is already established and is being rounded out at Ansell, led by key members of my executive team and with external resource to support that, as necessary as we go through this. A further word on the Ansell base business. As you're very aware, some months ago, we committed to delivering our accelerated productivity and investment program, and key to me in assessing whether we were whether this was the right time for us to take on an acquisition was to assure myself that this presents no risk to continued delivery of the goals that we had previously committed under the APAC under the APIP program. The, and the reason I'm confident about that is because the changes to our SG&A organization are complete. As you're aware, our new organization structure went into place in October 2023. A few months on, I'm very pleased about how that has bedded in very quickly. Yes, of course, we're delivering the cost savings associated with that, but more importantly, I'm seeing its effectiveness come through, and we're achieving the results that I expected. As I look at that organization structure and consider what is the optimal receiving organization in Ansell for this acquisition, and I'm confident we have already in place the broad organization structure necessary to make a success of this acquisition. From here, under the APIP program, the objectives remaining are in the manufacturing organization, and as you already understand, as KC does not have its own manufacturing operations, there should be no conflict in terms of priorities or focus between Ansell's manufacturing continuing to execute against its APIP goals and the initial integration with KC focusing on the SG&A part of the organization. The one part of the program that we will rephase is the IT initiative. Here, we have given you an indication of the cost of the One ERP program, but we have not yet committed to benefits. It's actually good news that we have this team stood up and ready to go because now the same expertise and the same focus can adopt as their first milestone the integration of Kimberly-Clark before then moving on to the broader ERP objectives that Ansell has. So that team is ready to go and positioned appropriately to manage the transition service, and the integration activity. So that's a summary of the transition services. Now, I'd like to hand over to Zubair, who unfortunately is not able to join us on video, but you know what he looks like. And Zubair, over to you, please, to cover some more financial aspects of this transaction. Thank you, Neil, and good morning, everyone. Neil has touched on a lot of what I am going to go through here, and so I'll be brief but cover a little more of the financial detail. Clearly, we're very excited about this acquisition of Kimberly-Clark's PPE business, and that's not only because of the strategic fit between two very high-quality businesses that Neil has just outlined but also because we believe it will significantly enhance Ansell's financial profile. And that's perfectly illustrated here in this slide, labeled "Strengthened Financial Profile," and you can see in financial terms the combined strength of the two businesses. Organic growth potential, it's increased with greater exposure and the mix towards this higher growth scientific segment, and we're also, as Neil's just said, targeting these greater economies of scale through the combination. The EBIT margin has improved, or will improve approximately 180 basis points on a pro forma basis, and that's before factoring in the impact of those synergies. The synergy opportunity, which again, Neil's already covered, will further boost EBIT margins. I've said many times in our Ansell earnings course, the robust balance sheet that we have, it enables us to take advantage of both organic and inorganic investments as the right opportunities present themselves. This acquisition, clearly, we believe, is exactly one of those inorganic opportunities we've been patiently waiting for and, in fact, tracking for a long time, and it comes with a price, which I'll talk to in a moment, that's enabled us to tailor our funding mix to ensure both good returns for our shareholders and also preserve our investment-grade rating. Pro forma net debt to EBITDA for the year ending 31st of December 2023 is 2.3 turns, and I expect we will delever relatively quickly and fall below 2 turns of net debt to EBITDA within 12 months of completing the acquisition. Note, this hasn't included any proceeds from the share purchase plan or the share placement plan, which is non-underwritten, and that could total up to AUD 65 million and, clearly, further lower our leverage levels. The deleveraging, which I'm highlighting here, is going to be driven by the strong cash flows of our Ansell base business, which are set to improve, and I mentioned this again in our half-year earnings call as we exit a multi-year period of elevated CapEx as we increase our manufacturing capacity in key segments. And of course, it's going to be further enhanced by Kimberly-Clark's PPE strong cash conversion given their largely outsourced manufacturing model. So talking about significant value creation here on the next slide for the shareholders of Ansell, we've always maintained a disciplined approach to valuation and M&A processes, and our board holds us very strictly to key financial hurdles. And starting with the acquisition price, the enterprise value to EBIT multiple of 9.7x pre-synergies, that, we feel, represents a very good discount to market transactions in the safety and life sciences sectors at the moment and Ansell's current EV to EBIT trading multiple, which is circa 12.5x. The synergy opportunity's also very significant. We've identified this $10 million of run rates net cost synergies, which we'll target, as Neil said, by the third year of ownership of this property. Because this is a carve-out deal structured as an asset purchase, we'll be able to benefit from tax amortization of the stepped-up US tax base value of those intangible assets we're acquiring, and that's worth approximately $50 million in discounted cash flow terms. When these two benefits are factored in, the implied acquisition multiple is reducing even further to that 7.8x in the end, which again is a significant discount to current multiples in the market for these types of assets. Now, in the nearly five years I've been at Ansell, I've not seen anywhere near this type of all-in multiple for an asset in the healthcare and life sciences sector. Lastly, the transaction on a FY 2024 pro forma basis is going to be strongly EPS accretive, and the expectation is mid- to high single-digit accretion, excluding those synergies, and low teens to double-digit accretion, including the $10 million of run rate synergies I just outlined. Turning to the next slide, in terms of the institutional placement and share purchase plan, again, I'll briefly talk about the equity raising. It's going to partially fund this acquisition. We'll be undertaking this fully underwritten institutional placement of AUD 400 million, and that represents just over 14% of our issued share capital. The issue price is going to be AUD 22.45 per share, and that's representing a 6% discount to the last close and an 8% discount to the five-day VWAP. The new shares are going to be eligible for the next dividend, and, again, we'll be undertaking this non-underwritten share purchase plan, and that will be close to AUD 565 million. On the next slide, quickly going through sources and uses, you can see the various sources and uses of funds here, and note, it's excluding again that share purchase plan. But in addition to the equity raise of AUD 263 million, you can see the transaction will be funded with AUD 377 million of incremental debt, and that's in the form of a fully committed bridge facility. And that will be a bridge facility which has 12 months running on it, and I'll intend to pursue a permanent debt financing solution to take out this bridge, in the second half of the calendar year. previously mentioned, post-transaction, the net leverage of 2.3 turns on a pro forma basis. Well, again, we expect to delever relatively quickly down to within 12 months down below the 2 turns that we're comfortable with, and it preserves, again, that optionality and the strength of our balance sheet. So with that said, I'll hand back to Neil for closing remarks. Important for me in considering this transaction are a few things. Firstly, are we as a business, Ansell, ready to make a success of an acquisition? And the progress we've made in getting Ansell back on the right track, implementing our accelerated productivity plan means that I believe, yes, indeed, we are ready to take this on and to drive value. Secondly, however, I would adopt a particularly discriminating lens to which M&A we should be doing at this time. For me to act, it would need to be absolutely core to our existing strategy and, frankly, an opportunity that you as our shareholders would not want me to pass up. And that's certainly how I assess this. And then thirdly, I'd have to be comfortable, of course, that is also an acquisition that offers the value upside that I would expect shareholders to see. As you know, we regularly fail against that hurdle, and I will not be tempted to go forward with an acquisition if I don't believe there is significant value potential for Ansell's shareholders. So in conclusion, this is why I believe that the Kimberly-Clark combination meets all those key criteria. It positions us better in our already most attractive vertical, being the scientific business. It rounds out an important part of our overall PPE portfolio, the chemical protective clothing space. It creates really significant opportunity in a broader set of service solutions, and I think those will be increasingly important sources of differentiation for Ansell for the long term in addition to the product differentiation we have always had. You've heard about the economies of scale benefits that we expect to deliver here, and lastly, as I mentioned already, I believe it represents a significant value creation opportunity to today's Ansell shareholders. Let us close there and now go to Q&A, and if I could ask us to try to limit questions to two each initially, and then we'll see how we go through the next time. So operator, over to you to initiate the Q&A section. Thank you. We'll now move on to questions from participants. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Please note, due to legal restrictions, the management team will not be discussing the process or details around the equity raising other than the basic terms referred to in the presentation. Please refrain from asking questions about the specific details of equity raising. With that, the first question comes from David Low from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Thanks very much. Neil, if we could just start with where you ended there, just wanting to understand, you know, what drove the timing of this transaction 'cause it's frankly it is a little sooner than I would have expected given the APIP program is still pretty much in the middle. Yeah, so ultimately, the timing was driven by Kimberly-Clark, of course, rather than ourselves. So if I go back some years, we've had an on-and-off discussion with Kimberly-Clark, dating back a period of time along the lines of, "Are you sure you want to be in PPE long term? Is it really the optimal product portfolio and the one that you will choose to invest in given Kimberly-Clark's many, many other extremely attractive positions globally?" I think previously, they were sort of interested and thought, "Well, maybe," but circumstances were not right for us to do a transaction earlier. Clearly, though, that thought process was continuing within the Kimberly-Clark organization, and then they came to us a few months ago and said, "Well, we've actually concluded that it is time to move on this business." Just a couple of weeks ago, that culminated in an overall investor-day communication that Kimberly-Clark announced to the market. That we were not aware of that at the time, but clearly, this now fits to an overall repositioning that Kimberly-Clark has, has undertaken as they look to position that business. So in other words, they had determined the moment was now, and therefore, I had to conclude, and they also indicated to us that they had other strategic interests in the asset, although a high degree of confidence in us that we would be good owners of the business, which means also taking care of the Kimberly-Clark people who will become part of Ansell in the future, but nevertheless, a competitive process in which they had other strategic interests. So this was the moment, David, and I was concerned that if we didn't act now, we actually might lose this opportunity forever, as of course, if it had gone to another strategic holder, then that would have been our chance to really cement our position in the scientific space lost. So, I would agree if I could have picked my perfect timing, maybe, as you said, but it wasn't my choice, it wasn't my timing to call. I am still confident that we are ready to take on this transaction and that I'm not in any way risking our ongoing delivery as a company, by moving forward at the pace that this transaction will require. Thanks, Neil. That's very clear. Just my follow-up question, could we talk a little bit about the market dynamics post the transaction? So where's Ansell's market share in some of these segments, and does this create a real competitive advantage, something that we could see, Ansell's position actually delivers a premium which, frankly, has been a little harder to see in the past? Yes. Well, we're not quoting the specifics of market share here today, and as ever, there isn't publicly available data on market size, so it's always a question of industry estimates. I think what's important to note here is, it's really that completion of the geographic position and that completion of where Ansell today will have a strong position in certain product categories, and Kimberly-Clark has a strong position in other product categories. And when you put those together, you equal that total portfolio solution, which is very important. And without naming names, I mean, some of the leading players in the med device and the pharma space are already coming to us today and saying, "Ansell, we want a portfolio solution delivered everywhere in the world, and let's agree that between us directly. How do we execute that?" Distribution remains important in fulfilling the product supply to various locations around the world, but let's have a strategic discussion about how Ansell can provide that. And we had some gaps in our portfolio along the lines that I've articulated through this presentation, and Kimberly-Clark happens to have strength in those areas that were key gaps before, so it rounds it out. But I think if you look specifically at life science, David, I think the performance of that sector for Ansell really has stood the test of time. Yes, over the last couple of years, it has suffered from those destocking effects that we've called out and been very specific about. We do we continue to see that business emerging, and as we have got under the hood and looked at the Kimberly-Clark business, we see them showing similar trends, both experiencing that destocking phase and also now emerging from the destocking phase, which is clearly very important. And if you normalize that over a longer period of time, I see the growth rate in evidence that I'm also promising here for the future, and we see very strong margin resilience across the products that go into this space. So, so that to me is sort of both historical and future promise evidence behind the value that I see, particularly in the scientific portfolio, yes. Thanks, Neil. Look, just if I could just push you a little bit, I mean, will you be the number one provider in life sciences or in this category? Well, we are already, so and. Yeah. But it's a question of, you know, the different product categories. So we're number one in gloves, but then in chemical protective clothing, Kimberly-Clark was number one. So now today, we have a rounded-out position. Having said that, you know, while there remain a number of competitors in this space, so it will remain a competitive market, but yes. And I think also, if you look at the brand recognition, so Ansell, we've done some recent brand research on this. The Ansell brand clearly recognized as indicating the company with the greatest credibility and, on an aided and unaided basis in this space, but Kimtech being the product brand that also has the greatest recognition. And so that Kimtech by Ansell combination, I think, will be particularly powerful, in North America especially, but in other markets as well, yeah. Thanks, Neil. I'll stop there. Thank you. Your next question comes from Sean Laaman from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good morning, Neil. Good morning, Zubair. I hope you're both well. Yeah, thanks. Neil, on the combinations of the portfolio, so it seems that it is quite synergistic. So just to be clear, there is no product rationalization necessary, and where our synergies come from is that there isn't perfect overlap with the sales patch. Yeah, so no, no significant product rationalization required. I mean, there might be something at the margin. So the synergies come from the SG&A efficiency, as I described, and in particular, that the business is costed as if all the back-office functions were resourced standalone within the business, which is not the case today as they're provided on a shared service basis and won't be the case in the future. So the marginal cost to Ansell of taking on those activities is much lower than the standalone cost that's assumed in the performance P&L for the business that we've mentioned to you. So that's the first piece of SG&A synergies, which more or less drops out once we are through the transition service phase. Then the second phase of SG&A synergies comes from a long-term opportunity to grow the top line at a greater rate than we need to invest in SG&A because we have the opportunity of optimizing across the combined resources that will come together between the two organizations. Then the third synergy opportunity is around sourcing. So it's not product rationalization, but Ansell already today has the capacity available to insource some of the activities that Kimberly-Clark outsources. For example, the cleanroom packing step. Ansell has existing cleanroom packaging facilities in two countries. We have existing capacity of chemical protective clothing, and we also know, or we have hypotheses at least that we'll only be able to verify once we fully own the business, that there are sourcing raw material opportunities that we would have through our more extensive sourcing network that perhaps are not available to Kimberly-Clark today that might also offer sourcing opportunities. So those are the three main areas that we have included within this net $10 million synergy, and of course, we'll look to identify further opportunities once the business is part of Ansell and we're really able to get into those details specifically. Great. Thank you, Neil. There might be a quick one for Zubair. I'm not sure if it's disclosed in the material, but are you able to give us a sense on what the rate on the bridge is? Yeah, it's not disclosed in the material, Sean, but obviously, we'll be looking to get off that bridge as soon as possible. So in terms of if you're trying to model net interest cost, I think what you should think through, Sean, is our current debt book is 80% fixed interest. Clearly, that's keeping our average borrowing cost low. The acquisition debt, the incremental debt we're taking on, that's gonna be priced at market, and so you do have to model in an increase in our average borrowing cost through F25. Again, we haven't disclosed that yet because we have to take the bridge out, and we'll provide specific guidance alongside our full-year results in August for that. Thank you, Zubair. Thank you, Neil. That's all I have. Thanks, Sean. Thank you. Your next question comes from Saul Hadassin from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Good morning, Neil. Good morning, Zubair. Neil, can I just ask you about the historical performance of the KC PPE business? There's two years' worth of revenue and EBITDA. Can you tell us what the revenue of that business was pre-COVID? Is it higher today than it was then? Yes, yes, although profits, more similar. So, yes, I mean, as we have experienced also, perhaps to a slightly lesser degree, the business did encounter some disruption, supply chain disruption through that COVID period, and that meant some of the business they had back then, they, they do not have today. And this was a function of anyone operating an outsourced model, had difficulty securing the volumes that they were seeking, and then there were other reasons as well as you're well aware of supply chain disruption. But I would say the good news for us is that the overall quality of the portfolio has improved, through that period. The pieces that we were most interested in before had been preserved, and protected and grown, and the aspects of the portfolio not in the business today are ones that we didn't put so much value on. So the quality of the business has improved, and if you look more specifically at the more recent timeframe, we see that very much in evidence, as I was saying. So that was a clear area of due diligence focus for us. We're sure that like our own life science business, that the business is through those effects, that the end-use demand for the portfolio is secure, that distribution is at or reaching the end of its destocking cycle, and the business is on a solid footing to move forward again, and that that's very much that was our conclusion early on in due diligence and has been borne out by the continued performance of the business we're acquiring during the period in which we've been running this process, yeah. Thanks there, Neil. Just my second question is, you've reaffirmed your underlying guidance for this fiscal year. I'm just wondering what's the unknown that's left that leaves you with that wide guidance range? What are you waiting to see that you haven't been able to see in the last two months of this fiscal year that leaves you with such a wide range? Well, we didn't really consider narrowing the range. I think the point is that the overall picture as I saw in February is largely unchanged. So yeah, the key message is that Ansell is on track to the goals that I outlined in February, and that's what I mean to indicate with reaffirming the guidance range there, yeah. Okay, thanks. Thank you. Your next question comes from Gretel Janu from E&P. Please go ahead. Hi, Gretel. Hi, thanks. Good morning. Firstly, just on the transitional service period, how much will that impact margin? 'Cause you talk about the 24% margin in the financials in the pack, but in the short term, should we expect that to be much weaker? Well, I mean, not much. I wouldn't agree with the word much. It's a slight cost increase over the standalone cost basis. The total amount of that, there's a number of aspects of timing that are uncertain. Timing to close is uncertain. Timing of the transition services is also uncertain. We will push to be through those in that 6-month time period, but only once we're further down the detailed integration planning path will we know for sure whether it's a 6 or 12-month transition. So that makes it difficult for you to model out a next fiscal year specifically, and we'll look to update you on those various key timing components, when we get to close and also at our August year-end results communication, yeah. Okay, understood. And then just in terms of the fully outsourced supply chain model, so who does the manufacturing for the Kimberly-Clark PPE? How many suppliers are there? Have you done much due diligence on these suppliers, and is it your intention into the medium term to bring it all in-house? Thanks. So generally, the suppliers, I mean, there's some visibility that remains competitively protected through this process, of course, as we remain competitors today. But what we understand, the suppliers that we know are working with Kimberly-Clark anyway, are ones that we also generally have a relationship with, sometimes are also a customer of. And I'm confident that they've made good choices about the suppliers they've chosen to work with and also that they have a solid and recognized auditing methodology that means that they're doing the right things in assuring themselves that suppliers are meeting the right standards that, of course, would be a minimum standard for Ansell. So that's on the supply base. I'm not gonna give any more specific numbers about that at this point, though. I wouldn't say we plan to insource all of it. You know that within our single-use business, we're now at a 50/50 insourced/outsourced model. I think that's optimal for that business. I haven't yet set the exact percentage mix for the Kimberly-Clark business that we're acquiring, and it will depend a little bit also on timing and priorities. So, you shouldn't. We need to recognize that because these products are qualified into cleanroom environments, which are themselves regulated. If you're going to make any changes to the product formulation or to its manufacturing source, that requires usually a requalification process. So, you need to move at a measured pace here. Now, there can still be benefits to customers from doing that, especially what Ansell will be able to do really uniquely in the industry is offer a twin-track supply chain where that we will have no single point of dependence on any particular country or any particular manufacturing facility. Through the multiple steps, from raw materials through base product manufacture to cleanroom packing and sterilization, Ansell will offer true supply chain resilience and redundancy in a way that no other supplier can. That's important. So we'll be able to work with customers in improving supply resilience and probably also cost through that insourcing/outsourcing strategy, but we have to go at a measured pace as these are qualified products. Of course, that's fundamentally a good thing, as it means that, that is all part of the differentiation that we're offering to customers here. Great. That's all I had. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Dan Hurren from MST Marquee. Please go ahead. Well, good morning. Thanks very much. Neil, I got a little lost when you were talking about sales responsibility. You explain again just the integration of KC PPE and Ansell's sales force and who will do what and where. Yeah. So there's two sales teams within Kimberly-Clark that support this business today. There's the dedicated scientific sales team, and they have—I mean, we admire their—we have admired them for a long time from afar as competitors. They have some of the—they're renowned as some of the absolute experts in the industry, generally long tenured, and really known. And this is a market and a vertical that requires that level of expertise for the reasons that I was talking about earlier. These are such critical products, and helping customers through that qualification and requirements process is key. So that's the scientific sales team that's coming to Ansell, and we're delighted to have them. It's really going to strengthen our overall presence in the industry. However, the more general industrial safety products are sold by the generalist KC Professional sales team that is taking that full portfolio of Kimberly-Clark products that you will see and observe in sanitation and janitorial spaces, both public and private. And so it's a part of an overall portfolio sell by KC Professional. But also, I don't think KC Professional would mind me saying that, that the PPE piece of their bag today is perhaps not their top priority as Kimberly-Clark is known for tissue and non-woven products and so forth, and that's been their core focus for many years. So, that sales team is a generalist sales team, is not specialist in safety, will not come to Ansell, and instead, the sales responsibility will be picked up by the Ansell industrial sales team, which is already in place in all the key markets. For the most part, we're already selling to the same distributors. We have many of the existing end-use relationships, and so it's and, and once it has been transitioned successfully, we'll bring more focus to the PPE part of that portfolio than perhaps it has today, under the KC Professional organization. But however, of course, there's a little bit of difficulty in moving responsibility from one sales team to another. The transitional services period is meant to facilitate that. My commercial objective is that every dollar we're acquiring here, we grow into the future, and yet, it is only prudent for me also to recognize that there's a risk of revenue leakage as we make this transition. That's fully assumed in our model, and I've made sure that we will still deliver strong returns overall even if, my commercial objective is not fully met and there is some, revenue leakage as we make the transition. So does that does that, clear up the confusion there on that transition? Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Neil. And just it's a reiterating a question that we've had earlier today. Just to be clear, where is this business in regards to the destocking of their customers? Is it in a similar position to Ansell? Is it in front or behind? So similar position, and in other words, now leaving destocking behind it, which is also what we see and what I said would be my prediction for the Ansell business at the February results. And the destocking cycle geographically, also, we saw our North America business emerge sooner from destocking than our EMEA business. We've seen the same for Kimberly-Clark, but of course, Kimberly-Clark is more in North America. Therefore, their relative geographic mix means that, overall, as a business, they're actually slightly ahead of us in moving through that destocking phase. So yes, as we go into this calendar year, we see both businesses leaving those largely leaving the destocking effect behind and being positioned to grow again, which of course is good news, yeah. Okay. Thanks very much, Neil. Thank you. Your next question comes from David Bailey from Macquarie. Please go ahead. I don't know. Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Yeah, you sort of mentioned that the Kimberly-Clark's willing seller is a reasonably attractive multiple. I mean, once this destocking is done, how should we be thinking about the growth rates for top line and EBIT for the Kimberly-Clark business on a go-forward basis? Yeah, so the scientific growth rate is that 7%-8% that I indicated as the market growth rate. At this point, I'm not assuming additional share growth on top of that. Of course, we will strive to achieve that. The industrial safety portfolio, though, would be more typical for the Ansell mechanical growth rate, and we've indicated 3-3 well, GDP plus a bit as being the typical market growth rate of that portfolio. So you have the weighting of the two, and you can do a blended average of that. I would say that, on a base business basis, the product margins we've seen over a long period of time, product margins hold up very consistently, also be resilient to inflationary trends, and that's in evidence for both the Ansell business and the Kimberly-Clark business. So I don't expect a major shift in product gross margin going forward, but where the EBIT synergies come in, the net cost synergies come in should leverage the EBIT component of that. So yes, fundamentally, the business growing at that market rate plus then the net cost synergy being an overall accretion as Zubair highlighted in his slide earlier, yeah. Okay. So for that for the business you're acquiring, probably holds the margin with the margin uplift coming from the synergy benefit? Yes. Yep. In terms of ROIC, I mean, I'm looking at, there's more leverage coming through but then also, yeah, a bit of margin improvement. But can you quantify the impacts on return on invested capital for your business once the transaction's been completed? You wanna take that, Zubair? Yeah. So in terms of as you know, we've got a strict returns criteria for all our our acquisitions, so we're not gonna pinpoint the ROIC for you now and in which year, but I can say first and foremost, our ROI is at least on any acquisition, it has to be 1.5 times our weighted average cost of capital. In terms of the ROIC post-tax, we also have to exceed that same weighted average cost of capital within 3-5 years, and then obviously, we have to have EPS accretion in the full first year of ownership. This acquisition clears all those hurdles. Got it. That's clear. And then just finally, just coming back to, yeah, Dan's question. I mean, for those people that are remaining within the Kimberly-Clark sales force, are there any restrictions in terms of what they're able to do from a competitive standpoint? Zubair, do you want to continue with that? Yes. So from a competitive standpoint, they will, so obviously, firstly, we have to close the deal, and then, we will have exclusive rights in the geographies that we've negotiated. There's a couple that we don't have rights to. And yes, they can sell fully into the scientific channels and the safety channels, and Kimberly-Clark will exit from both of those completely. And on top of that, we've negotiated, obviously, Kimberly-Clark has a very strong presence in wipers, and in three years' time, we'll also have access to that very market as well, and it gives us that rounded-out portfolio that Neil spoke to, and especially in those scientific cleanrooms. Thanks very much. Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the conference back to Mr. Salmon for any closing remarks. Well, thank you all for your interest today. This is a key moment for us at Ansell as we move forward beyond the last couple of years of the post-COVID hangover. I'm excited about this transaction. This is absolutely the one that I was keenest on, that has always featured as highest in our overall M&A assessment of opportunities for Ansell. I think we are at the moment when we can deliver the value required. Yes, there's some complexity in the overall process as we described, but that's also why we were a compelling partner for Kimberly-Clark in the decision that they took to move this business on. So, our organization is ready to go, is geared up to make a success of this transaction, and I look forward to reporting to you on that as we go through the next few reporting periods. Thank you for your time today.