Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the March quarterly update for Cadence Capital Limited. As you can see from the year-to-date performance, we've outperformed the All Ordinaries Accumulation Index. Over the past two years, the fund is up 29.9% per annum, outperforming the All Ordinaries Accumulation Index by 8.4% per annum. Year to date, our top contributors have been TMC the metals company Inc., Whitehaven Coal, New Hope Corporation, Upstart, DigitalOcean, Johns Lyng Group, and Champion Iron. Our biggest detractors for the period have been Resimac, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Nitro Software. All of the TMC the metals company Inc. has now been sold, and as we have previously indicated, CDM has realized a substantial profit on this investment. Turning now to the half year dividend, we're just once again confirming that the AUD 0.04 interim dividend has now been paid, bringing our total dividends paid to AUD 1.132. When you include the franking on those dividends, AUD 1.607 of dividends with franking have been paid to date. That AUD 0.04 fully franked dividend will be paid on the April 14, 2022, and is a 100% increase on the previous half year dividend. This equates to an annualized yield of 8.2% fully franked or 11.7% grossed up for that franking based on the share price at the time of this announcement of AUD 0.98. Importantly, this equates to around 7% dividend yield based on pre-tax NTA as CDM shares are still trading at a discount to NTA, although not as large a discount as they were. The company is well-positioned to pay an increased dividend. After paying this dividend, the company has AUD 0.30 per share of profit reserves to pay future dividends. The DRP program was operational for the half year dividend, and we had good participation from our shareholders. The next slide is the pre- and post-tax NTA. You can see on the May 13, 2022, our pre-tax NTA was AUD 1.04, our post-tax NTA AUD 1.15, and our share price was trading at AUD 0.95. The NTA discount has significantly improved from the nearly 40% discount we reached at the panic lows in March 2020 relating to the COVID pandemic. We are now trading at a 9% discount to pre-tax NTA and a 17% discount to post-tax NTA. Obviously, there's an opportunity to purchase CDM shares at a discount and receive a high fully franked dividend yield at the moment. Board and management continue to be the largest shareholders and continue to add to their position in CDM. Importantly, you can see on this portfolio composition slide, the fund continues to be very liquid and to hold positions that can be easily acquired or disposed of. Approximately 85% of the fund's gross exposure is in companies with a greater than AUD 1 billion market capitalization. The liquidity of the portfolio has obviously improved significantly over the past few years. As we keep highlighting to you, this has been an important component of managing risk within the portfolio. Currently, more than 95% of the portfolio is able to be liquidated within one week and over 98% of the portfolio within one month. Adding to that risk mitigation is the following slide, the top 20 shareholdings as of the April 30, 2022. You can see a well-diversified portfolio and a portfolio that looks very different to what the portfolio looked like six months ago. I keep urging our shareholders at the moment to refer back to the last webcast that we did and to the prior webcast to that, to see how clearly the fund has been able to migrate into new sectors both domestically and offshore. That, this has been possible because of those high liquidity levels. Turning now to the slide involving cash and gross and net exposure. You can see the fund in this slide moving in and out of cash. Our investment process moves the fund into and out of cash as the share price of their underlying investments in the fund move up and down, respectively. Your shareholding and exposure to equity markets is reduced as CDM moves into cash. You can see, for example, right now that we have indeed moved from a period of being almost 80% invested to now around 60% invested. We were once again more invested, let's say 70% and once again, holding 40% cash. In actual fact, right now as we're speaking, we hold around 45% cash and equivalents. We're constantly, through our process of scaling into and out of positions, moving into and out of cash. That is again a very important risk mitigation strategy for the business and also means at the moment that there's only a portion of your portfolio that's exposed to the equities markets at the moment. I'd now like to turn to Charlie and Jackson to take you through some of the current investment themes, many of which we have been talking about in the last two webcasts, but also to take you through specific stock examples and specific stock selection is becoming an important component in alpha generation at the moment. Thank you. Thanks, Karl. My name's Charlie Gray, Portfolio Manager here at Cadence Asset Management. Today, I'll touch on a couple of investment themes we're seeing in the market, and then I'll touch on a couple of stocks and hand to Jackson, who's going to touch on a couple more stock-specific investments in the fund. In terms of the theme of higher interest rates and inflation, that's certainly built momentum through this year, which you'd have seen through the media. We've seen U.S. bond yields reach 3%, which is quite a meaningful level, the highest since 2018. We've seen central banks continue to increase rates. The Fed's trying to get to 2% by July, it looks, and they're starting to actually wind back or reduce the balance sheet for the first time in many years from next month, from June, which will be quite important in terms of liquidity. The major changes in sector trends that we outlined in 2021 have also continued. This is of resources and energy strength. Certainly energy is the leader here more recently, and technology and small cap weakness that developed certainly in December and through the H1 of this year, it's really picked up momentum. More recently, we've seen other sectors also roll over and start to trend lower, whether it's mega cap technology, which had been holding up quite well, semiconductors, financials, consumers, consumer staples, consumer discretionary. There's a number of other sectors that have started to perform poorly as well. There's a key point here that the performance of the broad market indices has started to only catch up to the underlying weakness that we've been seeing building over the past six to 12 months just recently. Now that really it's been the mega caps that have finally started to correct. You see that the Nasdaq's now down 27% and the S&P 500 is down 17%. For context, in the Nasdaq, already 50% of the stocks within that index are already down 50%, and nearly a third of stocks in that index are actually down 75% now. It's been quite a significant correction, and that was obviously a lot where a lot of the technology stocks were with the highest valuations that are the most impacted by this change in conditions and the move to higher interest rates. Price earnings or PE compression, it's becoming an increasing feature. Investors are looking at higher interest rates. They're looking at a more challenging outlook for earnings growth in many businesses. They're putting, we're putting stocks on lower valuations. For the overall market now we see the forward price earnings ratio for the S&P 500, that's the 500 biggest companies in America. That's now back to 17 x. This is around the 10-year average. In COVID, when they went to zero interest rates, it got up to around 24 x. It's been, you know, down to 13, 14 x in recent years when there's been a slowdown. Turning to the next slide, how are we investing in this environment for this inflationary and increasing interest rate situation? You'd have seen the significant changes in the portfolio over the past six months. Particularly in the top 20, you could see every month the names there versus three months ago versus six months ago. There's been significant changes there. It's been a lot of stocks that we've exited, and in terms of something that's grown in the portfolio is really energy. This was a meaningful part of the portfolio, but now it's over 40%. It's one of the last strong sector uptrends we see globally. We believe that there's strong fundamental basis for this that we'll discuss in the next slide. Capital preservation has been a focus for us. We've been on average 30% cash over the past six months. Currently, we're around 40% cash, and this is also a reflection of the amount of opportunities that we're finding. I should say, the lack of opportunities that we're finding that are meeting both our fundamental and technical criteria. We need something that's in an uptrend and that has strong fundamentals, and there just isn't as many as there were six months ago. There's also a higher focus for us on core positions. We're seeing that the market's now rewarding lower valuations, rewarding free cash flow again in this changing environment, and valuations matter again. We're also watching for changes in trend and an improvement in breadth. What we would like to see is rather than more sectors joining the downtrend the other way, whereas the indexes might continue to fall, if we could see more participation below the surface and healthier price action, that would be a step in the right direction. Bottom-up fundamental research is also playing an important role for us now, identifying special situations where we can find stocks where their price performance isn't gonna be tied to general economic conditions or the overall market cycle. Jackson's got a couple of really good examples for that he'll touch on in a minute. There's been increased shorting activity in the fund, certainly no longer a rising tide environment. There's definitely more opportunities that we find on the short side to generate some good alpha there. Maintaining high levels of liquidity, that's also key in this period, and this allows us to respond quickly to any changes in conditions. If there was any change to the outlook, this is something that Karl touched on. The portfolio is very, very liquid. It'll allow us to be able to move very quickly in or out as required. Okay, turning to the next slide. In terms of specific stocks, we're really looking at the energy sector at the moment. In terms of this commodity bull market that we spoke about in the December quarter, it was really supply disruption driven bull market. We've seen a bit of a divergence in the last couple of months of which stocks are performing. In the mining sector or the sort of base metals, particularly in the wake of their quarterly results, which showed significant increases to costs and a lot of issues around staffing. There's also been some questions from investors over the ultimate demand outlook for some of these metals in an economic slowdown, and also given China's going through COVID lockdowns. On the other hand, the energy sectors continue to perform. We see there that demand's less discretionary. It's actually essential for a lot of these commodities, the energy commodities, and the supply situation there remains heavily disrupted with really Europe doubling down and putting restrictions and sanctions on Russia through over the last couple of months, which has just made the situation more stressed in terms of countries and businesses really fighting for what's left over in the global marketplace in coal, in oil and gas. The coal sector in particular is a big weighting in the portfolio, so I thought we'd touch on that. Despite the recent strong gains that we've seen there, it remains very cheap at spot prices. I've put in some of the spot valuations based on the current coal price, and you can see the massive free cash flow yields. While pre-pricing will eventually moderate, we believe it's going to take longer than many expect. The last webcast, we talked about some of the restrictions, whether it's political pressure, the ESG policies that are in place now. A lot of the banks have pulled out of the financing. There just isn't the projects and the supply that's gonna come online to offset this. And on the other hand, with Russia, of course it's an unknown, but it seems to be a reducing probability that there's gonna be a near-term resolution there in terms of the sanctions. We believe that in the meantime, for these stocks, there's a significant capital return opportunity. For Coronado, they've just announced AUD 0.17 special dividend out of cycle after already paying AUD 0.13 for the H1. You're already at 14% before you get to the final result and the final dividend. New Hope potentially is going to pay the most of the lot, AUD 0.30 for the H1. It's already announced and paid, which was 10% fully franked. Our research shows that the H2 dividend could be over AUD 1 a share, fully franked, using the same payout methodology, looking at current coal prices and the cost base. We don't know exactly what it's going to be, but the management and board there have been very clear that their strategy is to return all of the excess capital to shareholders, and they've got still a massive franking credit balance that they got with the sale of New Saraji in 2008 to BHP. They've still got over AUD 500 million in excess franking credits there, so they can pay significant fully franked dividends back to shareholders over the next little while, which we think is very compelling. Okay, hopefully that gives you a bit of a flavor for what we believe is still compelling and what's still working from a technical and fundamental perspective in the market. I'll now hand to Jackson to touch on a couple more of those stock specific situations. Hi, my name is Jackson Aldridge, Portfolio Manager at Cadence Capital. I'll now talk about two stocks. The first being AGL, which is a core position and a long for us. We actually were short this stock over the last 18-24 months. It was one of our most profitable short positions over the last couple of years, so we're quite familiar with the business and know it intimately well. We covered our stock around about AUD 6. When it got to that level, we took another look at the business and the assets there and the CapEx that's been spent and thought, you know, that if wholesale electricity pricing were to turn around, the business is potentially massively undervalued by the market. They just needed a few things to go right. What I believe has changed, I think there's three things that have changed in the near term. It's been very publicized. The first being Mike Cannon-Brookes and Brookfield at the time made a bid at AUD 7.50. We thought that was really opportunistic. I think it was a 7% premium to last at the time. Then they followed up with an AUD 8.25 bid, only to be rejected by the board. Not even a hint of due diligence or potential agreement or whatnot. Strictly from the management saying it's massively undervalued. You know, we believe that too. Looking at, you know, the four and a half billion dollars of CapEx that AGL has spent in the push to renewables, the NTA is roughly AUD 3 billion. We believe the two businesses combined, whether de-merged or not, that they'll spin off roughly AUD 1 billion in cash flow per annum in a normalized wholesale electricity environment. We think that the bid has been very opportunistic and continues to be. You know that there's a de-merger vote coming up on June 15, and Mike Cannon-Brookes has been very, very public in trying to ruffle some feathers. What his ultimate plan is, I'm not sure. What I do know is, I think by his actions, you know, he's recently taken an 11.5% stake, which is roughly AUD 650 million that he's taken through his Grok Ventures, and an AUD 8.25 bid. I think he understands these assets are undervalued. What I think is interesting was the consortium originally involved Brookfield. Brookfield have form in the space. They've bought two electricity generation related businesses in the past, with AST selling for roughly AUD 10 billion or 16x EBITDA, and then IntelliHub for AUD 1 billion or 17.5 x EBITDA. This AGL Australia business, the retailing business, would potentially, you could argue that that's kind of the final piece of the puzzle for Brookfield to own a large portion of the electricity generation value chain. Roughly, the business is trading at 6 x EBITDA. There's a mismatch in valuation. There's a discrepancy there that we already think is huge. Given the cost of capital for private equity, we believe that, you know, they could significantly sweat the assets here inside the AGL business. I don't think 8.25 is the last move there. I guess the second point that's really changed, you know, the there's a demerger happening or not, but regardless, that it's basically we feel and the market saying and Mike Cannon-Brookes is saying that the value of the assets is much greater than the share price right now. As I mentioned before, AUD 4.5 billion of CapEx is being spent. That AGL Australia business is a highly profitable, lucrative business in the sense that there's a huge customer base, that it would make sense for someone or it'd be very synergistic for someone, you know, i.e., potentially a Telstra or someone to plug in that would get into the electricity market very quickly, and would provide a number of synergies. We think that business is due a re-rate. As I mentioned before, the combined entity is gonna potentially generate over AUD 1 billion of free cash flow and AUD 3 billion of NTAs. You know, given where the current share price is, it's very cheap. I guess the last point that's really changed, and probably more importantly to the fundamentals of the business is the wholesale electricity pricing is very, very strong. It's up 67% in the first quarter of 2022 to AUD 87 a MW. Since then, our data is suggesting that it's since rallied to AUD 150 a MW. Wholesale pricing is up very, very strong. Legislation doesn't allow retailers to pass through a large chunk of that until July 1. We won't see the huge benefit now, but in the coming years, I think you'll see the margin uplift for retailers. What the market's really missing with this business is AGL's actually hedged out their coal exposure. You know, we'd all know what's happened with the coal price. AGL's hedged out their coal exposure through to FY28. Our math suggests it's roughly, you know, it could be AUD 250 million-AUD 300 million per annum EBITDA tailwind on a business that does AUD 1.5 billion of EBITDA. On our numbers, it suggests that the business could be on 5x PE, you know, at 15%-17% operating cash flow yield. It's very, very cheap asset at the moment, which I think is underearning. The second stock that I'd like to talk about is AMP Capital. I know, again, like AGL, it's been decimated from a share price perspective, but it's very similar pitch. We believe there's the assets are starting to become more worth nearly the whole share price. I'll walk it through in a sense that the new CEO's come in and she's made it very, very clear that there's a chopping up of the business, a simplification and getting rid of a lot of the problem children and simplifying the AMP business. What we think there, and from what management has told us through recent divestments, the quantum of recent divestment to Dexus, existing capital, seed capital that the business has, existing liquidity, balance sheet that the company has given the market. That totals about AUD 1.3 billion of excess capital available in the next couple of months. Over the next 12 months, there's a number of management fees, earn-outs, rights related to the real estate divisions and sales, and carried interest from infrastructure equity. We believe this totals approximately another AUD 1 billion. The core business, which is AMP Australia, AMP Wealth. Sorry, AMP Bank, AMP Wealth, AMP New Zealand and a couple of Asian AMP equity stakes. That business will spin off roughly AUD 200 million of free cash flow this year. If you total those three up, it's roughly AUD 2.5 billion of excess liquidity on a market cap of roughly AUD 3.5 billion right now. What management has said to the market is they'll pay between AUD 200 million and AUD 400 million of debt. If we take the midpoint of that, roughly 300, we kinda get to AUD 2.2 billion of excess liquidity that the company has said that will go into capital management. That's roughly AUD 0.68- AUD 0.70 a share on a AUD 1.15 share price that will be given back to shareholders over the next kinda six, 12, 18 months. What we need to look at is the remaining stub or what's left over. As I mentioned, what is left over. The bank is growing twice system growth, so it's growing twice the rate of the other banks. And then the wealth business, you know, has had some issues. The New Zealand business is pretty solid. There's some stakes in Asia and AMP businesses, kind of a minority shareholdings. That business is on track to do roughly AUD 250 million-AUD 270 million of NPAT. Backing out the excess liquidity or the cash and the market cap currently, the AMP Bank or this stub business is on just over 4x PE. Competitors are trading at 14, 15, 16x PE. We think there's a huge re-rate of the stub to come once shareholders start to realize the sum of the parts here and what's actually happening, what's gonna be left over. I guess the final piece to the puzzle is once there's a capital distribution or capital management will either be a buyback or a distribution, we feel it'll be a combination of the both. Once there's a distribution, the market cap of AMP will come in below what an ASX 100 stock requires, so it'll come out of the ASX 100. What that means is a lot of small cap fund managers can't own or don't own 100 ASX 100 stocks, but they will own 200 stocks. There's gonna be a lot of forced buyers or funds who are gonna have to market weight or overweight or have some weighting to AMP. There's a huge wave of buying that will come into the stock as well as the re-rate that we think is gonna happen. Those are the two stocks I wanted to talk about. I'll now pass it on to Karl to finish up the presentation. Thanks, Charlie and Jackson. Turning now to the outlook slide. Well, global financial markets have continued to trend lower in recent months, and this is a trend that started some time ago and looks simply to be continuing, which is an important observation. Australia has outperformed its international peers. We have higher weightings to resources and energy and defensive sectors and less weightings in technology and what we call the growth stocks. Interest rates and inflation trends globally remain the key driver of financial markets. The RBA lifted interest rates in May and has signaled further increases. Similarly, central banks around the world are lifting interest rates. We shouldn't underestimate how important this change in trend is. We have had falling interest rates in Australia for 30 years now, and we're now seeing a change in that trend and rising interest rates. Whereas a year ago, it may not have been universally accepted that interest rates were going up, I think it is more or less universally accepted now that interest rates are in fact going up. Obviously, the outlook for consumer demand is becoming more challenging, with higher costs for both businesses and households. The trends in the resource sector have diverged, with energy remaining the clear leader. You know, coal, gas, uranium and nuclear performing well and some of those base metal stocks, some of them performing well, some performing not so well, and clearly a large swathe of the rest of the market actually performing poorly. This, the trend in resources and energy that emerged almost a year ago continues. Obviously, finding opportunities in stock-specific situations is not tied to general economic conditions, and that particular stock selection is going to be an important component of alpha generation in this environment and going forward. Maintaining high cash and liquidity levels is also preserving our capital and is an important component of risk management in this environment. It shouldn't, it should not be left unsaid that obviously an open mandate and the ability to move in and out of cash are important in mitigating risks in these market conditions. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks again for your time and please, do not hesitate to contact us if you'd like to speak with us in person. Obviously, as I always say, to keep up to date with Cadence, please do join our newsletter, so that you receive the newsletter and you receive any of our webcasts and periodic results. Thank you.
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