Morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Computershare FY 2024 results conference call. Nick Oldfield, our CFO, is with me, along with Michael Brown from our investor relations team. Now, as usual, we have released a presentation pack to the ASX. Now, I won't subject you to a full page turn on this call. Instead, I'll focus my remarks on the highlights. Nick will take you through the financials in more details, and then we'll open the lines for Q&A. Just to remind you, we will be talking in U.S. dollars and constant currency unless we state otherwise. All right, let's get started. Now, the headlines at Computershare for FY 2024 can be summarized quite succinctly: strong results, reduced complexity, and increased returns. So let me just expand on that. Firstly, the results. Management EPS was up over 8%, slightly ahead of guidance. Management EBIT ex MI up 21% and ROIC at 30%. In the year, we had growth in all the revenue lines of core fees, events and transactions, and Margin Income revenues. So let's look at that across our three core business units. Issuer Services revenues were up 11%. In fact, all revenue line segments with an issuer improved. Register Maintenance delivered positive growth in client paid fees and strong performance and shareholder paid fees in the U.S. Over in Corporate Actions, revenues were up over 23%. The result was really driven by an increase in the average size of transactions rather than growth in volumes. I think that recovery is yet to come. You know, if I call out our U.S. Corporate Actions team, which had a strong year, its revenues for the year were about 25% higher than the average over the past six years, whereas other regions were below average. That really illustrates the uneven nature of global market recovery, but also potential opportunity if non-U.S. markets become more active. Elsewhere in Issuer Services, we saw good growth in Governance Services. Our Entity Management and CoSec businesses are resonating in the market, and we're making good progress leveraging our Issuer Services broader footprint to drive positive new client growth. Although, of course, new clients from IPOs are at all-time lows. Over in Employee Share Plans, you can see that it performed strongly. Client-paid core fees were up nicely, and as we flagged, the latent earnings power in this business is coming through. Transaction fees were up over 35% as we saw strong vesting activity in the period across our diverse client book. The volume of assets under administration is importantly continuing to be at a high level, even with these high number of vestings. Equity is increasingly being used to attract, retain, and reward in employees, and our market-leading technology, EquatePlus, continues to roll out and is helping drive new client wins. Now, in Corporate Trust, headline revenues modestly declined. There was a few things happening here. We exited a Ginnie Mae REMIC business in June 2023, which was about $28 million in annual trust fee revenues, and outside that, underlying trust fees were flat. You know, market conditions were challenging. Higher interest rates did impact new deal volumes and mix. This affected balances and yields, particularly in the first half. However, in the second half of the year, new structured product issuance improved and our book returned to overall growth. Encouragingly, this recovery in structured product securitization is driving an improvement in trust fees, client balances, and yields. We finished the year with an increase in CCT balances versus the prior year, and we see scope for further recovery here in 2025. Now, moving on to reduced complexity. We have delivered on strategy to build a simpler Computershare with higher returns. After waiting somewhat patiently for the right market conditions, we announced the sale of our U.S. Mortgage Services last October and subsequently completed in May. Now, this was a significant milestone in reducing the complexity of our overall business, resulting in a more capital-like Computershare with higher returns. It's been a multi-year strategy, so if anything, I'm now expecting our investor meetings to be about 60% shorter. But to recap, our simplification strategy also encompassed the sale of KCC, our bankruptcy and claims business in FY 2023, that had no recurring revenue and high levels of working capital. Now, we're not completely done. There's still some smaller businesses that we feel may be better owned by others, but these are not material to overall earnings or will significantly change our returns profile. So just a light pruning here and there. Now, let's move on to talk about increased returns. Our strengthening balance sheet supports growth, investments, and returns to shareholders. Net debt to EBITDA leverage was 0.36 times at the end of the year, and net debt itself more than halved, including the sale of proceeds from U.S. Mortgage Services. Now, that strength of the balance sheet enables us to pursue a range of opportunities. We are investing in our core businesses, making selective and disciplined acquisitions, and of course, increasing our returns to shareholders. Now, let me explain how we're investing in technology to strengthen our core businesses. It's my favorite topic as we continue to build out an enduring future for Computershare. We have multiple technology projects running across the group. These will increase the value and integration of our offerings to customers and improve the efficiency of our processes. New technologies coming on stream in the next 6-18 months will replace many of our existing customer-facing products within Issuer Services. We have rolled out natural language search products to improve our servicing and continue to assess other capabilities to help in the fight against costs, yet still providing a great service. We'll also continue to selectively acquire to strengthen our businesses. We announced a couple of smaller acquisitions in Employee Share Plans and Corporate Trusts throughout the year that will strengthen our market positions and expand our customer bases. I've said before, we are patient when it comes to acquisitions, and are comfortable maintaining a strong balance sheet while we wait for the right assets at the right prices. Of course, our capital policy is also to balance investments with returns to shareholders. We are around halfway through our buyback program and expect to resume purchases after these results. We will renew the program for another 12 months when it comes up for expiry in September, and in the absence of franking, it is a sensible way to reward all shareholders. We have also determined to pay AUD 0.42 per share final dividend. That's an increase of 5% on last year's final, making AUD 0.82 per share in total. So let me summarize. FY 2024 was an important year for CPU. We delivered strong earnings, which was a direct result of the integrated model we have assembled. With that portfolio of recurring core fees, event and transaction revenue, and Margin Income. We recycled capital out of non-core businesses and also strengthened our core, too. We reduced the complexity of our business and also deleveraged the balance sheet, and we also developed new cost-out initiatives, including a new Stage Five, and also laid the foundations for future growth. Now, we have multiple earnings drivers, and I'll talk more about that after Nick takes you through the financials in more detail. But we enter FY 2025 with a positive outlook. Management EPS is expected to increase by around 7.5% to around $1.26 per share. Now, while forecasting risk is elevated, given global market volatility, we are confident in the guidance. We assume lower interest rates, but this is exceeded by our other earnings drivers. Our initial Margin Income assumptions are based on rate curves as at July 22 to match with this year's budget and board process, and of course, as we know, rate expectations have come down a little bit since then, but no doubt, these curves will change many times between now and when we report. Ultimately, it's not that material, and we have other levers, and Nick will take you through that. Guidance does not include additional share purchases from the buyback, nor any contribution from the Bank of New York Mellon Canada Corporate Trust business, which is expected to close at the end of the calendar year. That's not included in the initial guidance, but with the momentum of our core businesses, the benefits of recent investments, these counter benefits of lower rate environments, such as improved client balances and events revenues and our new cost out programs, we can deliver another year of positive earnings growth. Now, Nick, over to you. Thank you, Stuart, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with our financial results on slide 10. Total revenue for the group increased 2.1% over the PCP. Ex Margin Income revenue was broadly flat. Remember, however, these comparisons include KCC and the PCP. Adjusting for this, revenue for the group was up 8.6%. Excluding Margin Income, it was up 7.8%. As you've heard, this revenue growth was largely driven by an increase in event and transaction fees, particularly in the employee plans business. Margin income was up 7.3% to $832 million due to higher rates, supported by improved balances in the second half. Total costs were flat, and I'll talk a bit more to them later. EBIT increased 10.7% to $1.143 billion, and the EBIT margin improved 270 basis points to 34.8%, both largely attributable to the higher Margin Income and transactional revenue growth. Excluding Margin Income, EBIT was up 21%, and the EBIT ex MI margin improved 210 basis points to 12.7%. As well as the transactional revenue growth, EBIT ex MI benefited from lower amortization expense because of the sale of U.S. Mortgage Services. On a pro forma basis, excluding U.S. Mortgage Services, FY 2024 EBIT ex MI would have been higher by around $38.7 million at $349.6 million. Interest expense was up 22% to $163 million. The average cost of debt was almost 7%. Net debt at year-end was $461 million, as we repaid $220 million in USPP debt in February, and some of our syndicated debt post the sale of U.S. Mortgage Services in May. All of our debt is at floating rates, so it's a natural hedge to Margin Income as rates fall. Tax expense was also higher, up by almost 12% at $275.7 million, while the ETR was higher for the year, too, by 68 basis points at 28.1%, due to more Canadian withholding tax payments than anticipated during the second half. Post the sale of U.S. Mortgage Services, we do expect ETR to be a little lower going forward. Management NPAT was up 8% to $704.2 million. Management EPS was also up 8% to $1.167 per share, and adjusting for the FY 2024 buyback, it was a little higher still at $1.176 per share. Statutory results are on slides 27 and 28. Statutory NPAT was $352.6 million, down 21%. This was largely attributable to the impairment related to the U.S. Mortgage Services disposal of $129 million. In addition, amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets of $70 million, acquisition-related expenses of almost $90 million, largely the cost of the CCT integration, and $47 million associated with our cost out programs also impacted the statutory result. We also had to revalue the contingent consideration expected from the KCC disposal, following a worsening of its performance outlook, and that also negatively impacted the statutory result by $20.5 million. Slide 11 bridges the almost 9% improvement in EPS from FY 2023 to FY 2024. The sale of KCC cost us $0.013 per share in earnings, but was more than offset by improvement in both core fees and events and transactional revenue, almost $0.10 per share between them. Margin income added almost $0.097, but the cost of running the business and delivering the higher revenue was up $0.05, while interest and tax expenses were also up by $0.047. After including $0.01 in benefit from the buyback, overall EPS was still $1.176 for the full year. On Slide 12, we break out the cost bridge. Pro forma BAU OpEx, that's excluding KCC and U.S. Mortgage Servicing, is up 5.6%. This is the balance of the benefits from our cost out programs of $28.7 million, offset by cost growth to support those higher revenues and inflation across our personnel and third-party expense lines of $102.7 million. Overall, however, OpEx was up just over 8%. This reflects an additional $32 million of costs, which were unusual or less BAU in nature. Around $7 million of this was an investment in establishing a new captive back-office operation in India. These costs will be better absorbed in FY 2025 as the operation there gets up to full capacity. Around $15 million were the operating costs of the Solium Capital business we acquired in the U.K.. The remaining $10 million was stranded costs associated with the KCC disposal. As Stuart has mentioned, we've launched a new Stage Five cost out initiative to tackle both the KCC stranded costs and those arising from the disposal of U.S. Mortgage Services. This program is targeting $45 million-$60 million of cost savings, which will be delivered over the next three years with a cost to implement of around $50 million. Slide 46 provides an update on all of our cost out programs, and we've also incorporated the CCT synergy projects on this slide, too, so all savings initiatives are in one place. I'll now talk a little bit about Margin Income, starting on slide 8. In FY 2024, we delivered $837 million in Margin Income. That's at FY 2024 rates on average balances of $29.2 billion. That's a yield of 2.87%. We expect around $745 million of Margin Income in FY 2025. That's a yield of around 2.6% on average balances of $28.5 billion. To be clear, this excludes money market funds. Now, the lower yield in FY 2025 reflects an assumption of four U.S. rate cuts in September, November, December and January. This is based on curves as at the 22nd of July. Now, I appreciate that markets have seen substantial volatility over the course of the last week or so, meaning that the rate outlook is a little lower today compared to then. But if we cut the curves in our forecast today, FY 2025 Margin Income, in isolation, would be around $20 million lower at $725 million. But to be clear, I say in isolation, because this doesn't include any counterbalancing benefits. So, for example, if rates are lower, our natural hedge in terms of lower interest expense kicks in. When it comes to non-exposed or interest sharing arrangements with clients, in a lower rate environment, we'd look to manage payout rates to clients, reducing the amount that we pay out. And we'd also expect balances and other activity to increase further, as we saw in CCT in the second half.... So as we think about the risk of lower rates and the curves, it's important we retain a sense of context. We have options and levers available to us to mitigate any risk of lower rates in general. But getting back to our FY 2025 outlook, altogether, the impact of rate cuts on our FY 2025 forecast is $136 million. While the sale of U.S. Mortgage Services reduces MI by a further $56 million. These negatives are offset by growth in balances and an improved balance mix. When we adjust for the sale of U.S. Mortgage Services and its balances of $1.5 billion, we still expect growth in average client balances above this, of around $800 million in FY 2025. That's an extra $500 million in Corporate Trust and $300 million in Issuer Services. These higher balances are in line with our June exit balances and what we've seen through July. Higher balances add $33 million in Margin Income in FY 2025. While we also expect a slight change in mix away from non-exposed, this adds a further $29 million in Margin Income. As a result, we expect a decline in the exposed non-hedged yield of 45 basis points to 4.37%, and a reduction in the non-exposed yield of 13 basis points to just over 1%. We also expect to increase the hedge book by $700 million as we look to get similar protections into our foreign currency balances as we currently have in U.S. dollars. This will help improve the average hedge yield to around 3.1%. In FY 2024, it was 2.93%, while the exit hedge yield is marginally over 3%. We provide some further color on balances in the hedge book on slide 7. You can see here, balances of total balances were up 9.2% over the second half in FY 2024. Money market fund balances were 13% higher, CCT was 7.8% higher, and while legacy Computershare was down 2.7%, this really reflected the sale of the U.S. Mortgage Services balances. Excluding U.S. Mortgage Services, legacy Computershare balances were flat to the first half, and aggregate client cash balances, including CCT, were up around 4% versus the first half. We had approximately 50% of our average exposed balances hedged as at the end of FY 2024. This is around $9.3 billion, and we've delivered $1.5 billion in Margin Income over its life. $273 million guaranteed in FY 2025, and $1.1 billion over the next five years. And as I said earlier, we're in the process of adding approximately $700 million in additional hedging. This will add a further $39 million in hedged yield in FY 2025, driving hedged MI to $312 million, and the hedged book to 57% of our exposed balances. We'll continue to be fairly conservative on our hedging, so expect us to remain in this 50%-60% range. There's more detail about balances in MI on slides 48-53, including some increased disclosure on how the hedge book unwinds over its life. I'll now wrap up my comments with a look at our balance sheet and cash flow on slide 13. In the period, we generated $612.3 million of free cash flow. That's an EBITDA to cash conversion rate of around 60% at actual rates. We spent $43 million on CapEx, while net spend on MSRs was $76 million. These were sold as part of the U.S. Mortgage Services disposal, and obviously, we'll no longer see this drain on our cash flow going forward. The U.S. Mortgage Services disposal delivered $577.8 million in cash, with the difference to gross sale proceeds being the transaction expenses and the cash included in the tangible assets of the entity being sold. We spent $27 million on other acquisitions. That was largely the Solium U.K. deal. The dividend was $312 million, and the share buyback cost us $211 million. Net cash flow was $640.1 million, and as I said earlier, we ended the year with net debt of $461.4 million, an improvement of $568.5 million versus the PCP. Net leverage was 0.36 times. Looking forward, we will fund the acquisition of the BNYM Corporate Trust business in Canada and complete the buyback in it in this next financial year. Taking both these into account, as well as the higher dividend, I'd expect net leverage to be similar at this time next year. I'll now hand back to Stuart. Thanks, Nick, and just a quick summary wrap-up before we get to questions. So at Computershare, we think we're very well placed to deliver growth. Our focus in Issuer Services is really to continue to broaden the service offering, integrating Entity Management, Company Secretarial, and registry services, as we see that resonating in the markets where we've tested it. We'll also continue to roll out our technology innovations to drive efficiencies and also enhance service. In Employee Share Plans, we will continue to roll out our EquatePlus product in the U.S. and Canada and continue to invest in the products and features of this offering. We'll also integrate our recent acquisition and move these clients onto our platform. In Corporate Trust, we should see some recovery, and we'll also invest in technology solutions to drive market share in some products and continue to focus on the synergy deliveries. I continue to believe we have roll-up opportunities in this space.... At a group level, we will focus on cost out programs to reduce some of the stranded costs from these disposals we've talked about, and we've also got well-developed plans to achieve this. With business growth, investment in technology, lower interest costs, as long as these cost out programs, along with our hedging policy to give us some protection when rates start decreasing, we are well placed to deliver growth in FY 2025. Now, that's it from the presentation elements, and we'll now move on to questions. Thank you. 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. Your first question comes from Ed Henning from CLSA. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Look, the first question I had was, you-- next year, you really start to step out some of the cost out opportunities. Can you just talk about the underlying cost growth of the group? You talked about BAU this year of kind of 5.6%. Do you think that can drop, and it should be kind of slightly below inflation overall on cost growth, including, you know, obviously, ex the U.S. mortgage servicing business, but, on overall, I guess, including all the costs out that you're bringing through in the synergies, as a first question. Hi, Ed. Thanks for the question. Fundamentally, yes, we do believe that, as we go to 25, the cost will be below that sort of BAU OpEx. Yeah, you know, we announced our cost out drivers. I mean, a lot of what the costs, you know, in Computershare, personnel costs, we've seen some interesting things around third parties and some of their sort of approaches to cost of driving things up in the short term. But, you know, with a range of our programs that are, you know, well underway, we do expect that to reduce through FY 2025 and continue to fight that fight. Okay. That's, that's great. But you still anticipate cost growth as opposed to absolute ex U.S. mortgage servicing, cost falling? Well, Ed, just to be clear, I mean, if we including the U.S. mortgage servicing business in FY 2024, we'd expect cost to fall in FY 2025. There will be absolute cost, lower cost in FY 2025. Yeah, no, I was saying, excluding that, just on an underlying basis, we should expect some modest growth, but hopefully below the BAU that you disclosed today, just given your- Yeah, it'll be- Cost out. It'll be modest growth. It'll somewhere- Yeah. It'll be between, I would say 0%-3% in FY 2025. Okay. No, that's very helpful. Then just a second question on the revenue. Obviously, you talked about very strong ex MI growth of 15% for next year. Can you just touch on, you know, where you're seeing the strong pockets of revenue? You know, obviously, the event-based business, it's only been higher in 2021 before. Are you seeing any headwinds there, and where are you seeing the strong growth come through? There's a number of things that are going into that, the ex-MI prediction for FY 2025. You know, when we talk about sort of momentum, you know, we've got a range of things happening within Issuer Services. You know, we have increased market share in some areas, which will help drive some of that growth. You know, and Employee Share Plans, I mean, obviously, it was quite a standout year as far as transactional volume was concerned. You know, the question is: Will that stand up? Now, part of that is gonna be equity markets, but, you know, I think that will be, you know, similar levels, maybe a little bit below. It really depends on what's happening within that particular space. But, you know, we continue to see, you know, client wins within Employee Share Plans, and opportunities there. Corporate trust, you know, ironically, in a slightly lower rate environment, a little bit more stability, we should actually see more securitizations, you know, coming through, which will drive, you know, revenue growth within that particular business line. Then you tie that across with the, you know, the cost out programs that we have within the group, just in terms of running efficiencies and sort of wrap that up. That really sort of is the key to how we think EBIT ex MI will be up next year. Oh, that's great. Look, really appreciate the color. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Buncombe, from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just the first one is on the strength of the balance sheet. So it's obviously, you know, very well placed. Can I just ask why the buyback is not being run harder, but also, should we expect an extension of the current program to be announced at the February result? Thanks. Hi, Andrew. Thanks for the question. So first of all, just on the buyback. So we announced, you know, AUD 750 million or so buyback program. We've done, you know, a little bit less than half of that at the moment, just in terms of a run rate. And the intent would be, is we can continue to be in that market until the beginning of September, and then we'll just follow that one through and look to complete that one through FY 2025. I guess just, just a pace question. I mean, I wouldn't read anything into the pace. You know, I think that there's lots of times where we have to be out the market in blackout periods and, you know, you know, when we're sort of setting prices for DRPs and, you know, when we have, you know, information on sort of larger scale M&As and other bits and pieces over the years. These are the reasons why you can't always be in the market every single day. So it's just a little bit of plodding along, right? But, you know, we'll probably run it at a similar pace throughout FY 2025, but expect to complete the full buyback in that period of time. Yep. And I think that just gives us a little bit of flexibility in terms of, you know, committing to do it, but also, you know, allows us to look at, you know, our capital. 'Cause, you know, when we look at the balance sheet, and you're right, it's very, very strong, you know, there's a question of, well, what you're gonna do with it? And, and, you know, we've always taken that sort of balanced approach to, you know, using that self-funding sort of capability in Computershare to support growth for inorganic acquisitions. We also have, you know, some of our investments, you know, in tech and others. And then we balance of the, you know, returns to shareholders through a combination of the buyback and also the increase in the dividend. As you're aware, you know, we don't have any franking credits at the moment, and so we try to balance the buyback and the dividend. So, you know, we are committing to continue with that buyback and sort of, you know, going through the formal process to, you know, announce that out once it comes to an end in early September. And then as far as February is concerned, the Computershare board will look to where we are, what, you know, whether any acquisition, you know, in the pipelines and the status of them, and make a judgment call about whether we wanna do more then. Thank you for the detail. Second question: What's the latest thinking on the U.K. mortgage servicing book? That's been something that's been discussed, the potential exit, for some time. What's the latest thinking there? Thanks. Yeah. So it's been a bit of a challenge to sell the U.K. mortgage business. And you know, just in terms of you know, the growth and sort of buy-to-let has been challenged you know, for a while. And you know, as a result, you know, we've had a number of parties sort of look at the business, but you know, their ability to be able to you know, stand it up, et cetera, has been a concern. I mean, what is interesting in that business is you know, I think there'll be a little bit more consolidation in the marketplace. For the first time in a couple of years, there's some reasonable-sized mortgage books that you know, will be available. And, you know, I mean, that business has done a cracking job at using tech and pulling out costs, you know, over the years for Computershare. So look, we, we've got a... You know, we can see a very clear runway for another sort of, you know, 4-5 years of profitability in that business, albeit modest. And, you know, it, it's not a significant management distraction. You know, it's Andrew Jones, who runs that for us in the U.K., you know, does a really great job. There is still interest in the business. There are still people actively looking at it, and we're in discussions there. But with a combination of, you know, being very well placed to top up the book, through some of the mortgage asset sales, you know, continuing the cost out there, and also, you know, working through some of the interest in the book, you know, it's not a huge pain point for Computershare. But it certainly is on that list of assets that we feel would be perhaps better owned elsewhere, but we've just got to wait for, you know, the right buyer and at the right moment. That's really what's happening in that business. Thank you. And then just a final one from me on the other side of the coin. When you're looking at M&A opportunities, what are going to be the most likely divisions that they align with, in the next 12 to 24 months? Thanks. It's really the three core businesses, which is, you know, Issuer Services, Employee Share Plans, and Corporate Trust. You know, we have a, you know, an active pipeline in terms of, you know, in all of these divisions in terms of running our eye over the assets. You know, we are being fairly patient in terms of making sure that, you know, that it's the right assets, it's gonna be the right return for Computershare shareholders, and clearly, we're paying the right prices... We're doing a lot of work in the background to be able to create the appropriate regulatory structures within Computershare, to be able to participate, for example, in Corporate Trust throughout Europe. So, you know, you should expect over time to see, you know, acquisitions, certainly bolt-ons through Issuer Services to expand offerings and also Employee Share Plans, and perhaps slightly larger potential acquisitions throughout Corporate Trust. So the focus is across the three core businesses in terms of driving growth. That's it for me. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Nigel Pittaway from Citi. Please go ahead. Oh, good morning, guys. I'd just like to delve a bit further into your views on the transaction activity, if you could. I mean, obviously, you've mentioned it might come back a bit in plans, but obviously, in Issuer Services, there was a pickup in Corporate Actions in the second half, and you talked about, you know, some of the other regions not yet firing, and you are obviously flagging a $300 million increase in balances in Issuer Services next year. So can we just sort of get a bit more sort of color behind the thinking behind all that? Do you think some of the other regions are ripe for picking up soon? And, yeah, how should we think about these dynamics? Yeah. Thanks, Nigel. So just a few sort of insights on Corporate Actions, you know, what we saw. I mean, generally around the globe, global M&A deal volumes were sort of down 18% between 2023 and 2024, right? However, global M&A deal value, you know, what was, was up. Yeah. And, you know, the average deal value out there was between $45 million-$54 million. So you've got less transactions, but higher sort of deal volume. I mean, in Computershare, in 2023, we processed, you know, 1,664 Corporate Actions across all different classes of corporate action. And in 2024, we did 1,673. So we only did nine Corporate Actions more than we did the previous year. But obviously, you know, a lot of that was driven by the U.S., where there was above average sort of size of events. You know, we did work for Johnson & Johnson, you know, a Walmart stock split, you know, some of the Broadcom acquisitions, et cetera. So, you know, that was sort of driving that. You know, you sort of break these numbers down, you know, what we did see was in the U.S., it was only a 6% increase in the number of jobs that we did, so it wasn't huge. In Australia, it was actually up 10%, but Hong Kong and Canada, and the U.K., they were all down, you know, low single, double digits as far as the number of Corporate Actions. So when we kind of sort of project that out and think about what that corporate action transaction volume will do, and you know we look at a number of data points you know when I was looking at pending M&A you know which is sort of global deals announced but they're still pending you know when I was looking at that last year there was quite a few sort of cash and stock-based offers on the table. You know and I think there's still pretty healthy activity waiting to materialize you know across you know all markets are up and a lot of these sort of larger ones are much more cash-based rather than just stock and cash-based which does help with the balances. Yeah? And I also think, you know, depending on cost of debt, et cetera, you know, it creates a little bit of confidence and momentum. So that's a little bit of color on, you know, the world of Corporate Actions. I mean, obviously, the only downside that we have at the moment is really what's happening with the IPO markets, you know, new listings and IPOs, you know, really, you know, we did 121 of them in 2023, and we only did 78 of them in 2024. And, you know, when I dive down, is that a market share issue? You know, what's going on? It's really just the number of IPOs coming to the marketplace. Elsewhere in transactional revenue, you know, you go over to plans, as I mentioned, you know, they had a cracking year. You know, the number of units is still high. You know, will it be as high? You know, we don't think so. We think it might come off a little bit. You know, we've seen equity markets come off a little bit, but the underlying number of units still remains very high. And then also remember, anyone that gets stock, and it comes to vesting in the Northern Hemisphere, has to pay the tax on vesting, right? So there's always a transaction for the most part, unless they're gonna fund it themselves. So that, that will help create you know, that transactional revenue in FX as well. But that... Yeah, so, so that's really some color around Corporate Actions and other sort of transactional stuff. You know, on the events, Stakeholder Relationship Management was obviously had a sort of better half. That's always been a little bit lumpy. We'll see what happens there as far as the sort of mutual fund sort of proxy is concerned. But, anyway, that's transactions and events. ... Great. Thank you very much for that. And then maybe just a question on the FY 2025 guidance bridge on slide 9. Just, I mean, if my back-of-the-envelope math is right, that suggests about a $70 million saving in interest expense in FY 2025. So just firstly, is that about right? And secondly, you know, are there any other assumptions going into that, like debt repayment, or can I just sort of be a bit clearer about exactly what's assumed in that 8.8% move? Yeah, that ninety million number that you've got, Nigel, sorry, the $70 million number that you've got is about right. So, my expectation is interest expense will be sort of in the mid-90s next year. That assumes that the current net debt position remains broadly flat. Remember, the guidance is predicated on there being no more buybacks. So, we've built the guidance, assuming no buyback now, obviously. So with trading profits, you'd expect debt to drop down within the guidance, but then it'll be offset by any share buybacks that we make over the course of the year, in practice. But we've deliberately guided on an ex-buyback basis. Okay. So in reality, if you assume a buyback, that might not be quite as big a reduction, but you're not really assuming any more payment to debt down or anything. It's just your sort of closing balance and what you think the interest rate will be. That's right. Yeah. All right. Very good. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question comes from Simon Fitzgerald from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi there. Just my first question relates to M&A activity as well as the... or really related to the $2.6 billion of acquisition capacity. I would imagine that Corporate Trust services would be in your preferred, yeah, acquisitions. Maybe if you could just talk about how you could do that without materially increasing your exposure to Margin Income, what options might be available to you? Would this be sort of more shifting some of those balances into money market funds, for example? Yeah. Hi, Simon. Thanks for the question. You know, I think strategically at the group, you know, we do, you know, look and value acquisitions a little bit different, those sort of companies that don't come along with any Margin Income at all. But ultimately, they're also very, very expensive. Yeah, so, you know, when we assess particular businesses that are all sort of, you know, fee-based or recurring revenues, you know, you're paying quite a whack as far as, you know, an EBITDA multiple on these particular businesses. You know, but we also are a little bit careful in terms of, you know, our exposure to Margin Income and, you know, a Corporate Trust business, as you know, does have that exposure to Margin Income. What's important when we look at Corporate Trust businesses is, you know, we don't want to pay any multiple on current Margin Income amounts. You know, we kind of normalize that out as part of any discussions and negotiations. And it gets a little bit, you know, odd in so much a number of these businesses are actually departments of banks, and they just get allocated amount of Margin Income back. And more often than not, with our active treasury policy, we can actually enhance the Margin Income in that business, you know, even if you just assumed rates were sort of flat, because just the way in which some of that sort of allocations go within these financial organizations. But, you know, when you look at these businesses, you know, you don't want to pay out right at the peak. For us, it's much more about looking at the quality of the underlying business, the underlying core fees. You know, when we acquired the Wells Fargo business, we talked about our aspirations to increase the trust fees, the underlying trust fees, a little bit like we've done with in the Canadian business over the time. You know, when we bought the Canadian business, you know, 24 years ago, you know, loss-making on an EBIT ex MI basis. That's not the case now. And, you know, what is interesting for me in that Corporate Trust business, and sometimes gets lost in some of the noise on the numbers, you know, the amount of new issuance has been pretty low because of high rates, et cetera. But generally speaking, you know, on a lower number of deals in the marketplace, trust fees have held up, and the reason they've been held up is because, you know, we are trying to shift more into that trust fee rather than the Margin Income. Anyway, I kind of went off a little bit track there, but that's how we sort of see, you know, acquisitions in this space and how we deal with the Margin Income element. That's helpful. Just a question for you, Nick, then. Just, thanks for those, elements related to the Margin Income in terms of the levers. That's very helpful. I imagine another $500 million in balances would cover the change in the OIS curves as well. But just, just so we can get a better understanding, can you also talk about the sensitivities to the non-exposed balances? Yeah, look, on the non-exposed, Simon, I mean, look, a large part of that non-exposed book is in our Deposit Protection Service product in the U.K. and in our Employee Share Plans, our Sharesave product. And those are, you know, pretty stable books, and I don't want to expect to see much change there. Obviously, if rates drop on Sharesave, you might see a little bit of, you know, a reduction in new saving activity. But typically, it's a long-standing product, and we've seen lots of employees enjoy that and participate in that over the years. And on the DPS side, it's been growing pretty much at 2%-3% for the last 15 years. So pretty stable, regardless of rate environment. The real sensitivities are on the Corporate Trust side in terms of general new issuance and the likely volumes that we'll see coming through that business. The Corporate Trust clients have tended to be a little bit more sophisticated and challenging in terms of the rate that they you know wanting a rate on the balances that they hold with us. But you know, the sensitivity really goes back to market activity, and we'd anticipate as rates come down, there'd be there should be a little bit more impetus from a market recovery perspective. And so you might see those non-exposed balances grow. To your point, you know, $500 million in balances probably covers the risk, and some of that would probably fall in the non-exposed book. Okay, all right. Just one final question in regards to the Corporate Trust balances that you're forecasting for 2025. The additional $500 million, is that backed by mandate wins, or is this, you know, your view of the environment and where you think you'll end up? Look, it's pretty much where we exited the year, Simon, and where we are through July. So yeah, it's backed up by, you know, activity and business mandate wins through the second half. Okay. Very helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrei Stadnik, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good morning. Can I ask my first question just around the tax rate? It seems like the 26%-27% guide is a little bit better than what the street has baked in for FY 2025. Can you comment a little bit about that and how sustainable that rate might be? Yeah, Andrei, we think the rate's pretty sustainable, given, you know, assuming that there's no major sort of tax reform in any of the major markets that we operate in. It's really a reflection of a cleaner, simpler business in the U.S. post the sale of U.S. mortgage servicing and some at a state level, a number of states where we have got a significant activity, reducing their state income tax rates. So it's largely driven through the U.S., and yes, right now, assuming no changes from, you know, governmental perspective, we think it's sustainable. Thank you. And can I ask around the revenue ex Margin Income had a clear rebound in the second half, compared to the first half. Can you talk a little bit about what's driving that? Is there any seasonality in that, or should we be really thinking that, you know, the second half of 2024 is a better building block to going look into FY 2025? Yeah, look, I think that's right. You know, as I mentioned on the call earlier, you know, the first half was pretty low, but we'd always said in this business a little bit of stability goes a long way in terms of confidence and issuance. And, you know, we did see momentum in the second half, you know, some of the, you know, the products, the deals coming to the market, you know, our sort of new deal volume was skewed a little bit to the second half. And it's not really a seasonality issue. I think it was just a timing in the markets issue, you know, with our clients in terms of issuance. Thanks so much. Thank you. Your next question comes from Matt Dunger, from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Yes, thank you for taking my question. I was just keen to follow up on Corporate Trusts and understand some of the uncertainty there around the weaker debt issuance and when that's going to recover. Are you able to give us a sense as to what you're factoring in for revenue growth in the Corporate Trust business in FY 2025? Look, we don't sort of guide specific businesses to exact sort of revenue some growth targets, Matt, but look, we are optimistic on it. You know, I think... I mean, what is interesting is the overall amount of debt being issued hasn't actually changed that much, you know, when you kind of calculate it out, but the number of... You know, it's a smaller number of larger deals, right? So, you know, that sort of underlying sort of structural growth trend and debt, you know, amount of debt being issued still very much intact, but it was just getting done with less... you know, less deals. In the first half, you know, as sort of debt runs off and gets repaid, some of it will get paid, some of it will just get sort of pushed out. You know, there's always that sort of runoff effect, yeah? The number of sort of new sort of deals across a lot of our products, you know, didn't match with the runoff through the first half. But in the second half, it started to increase, and the net book actually you know debt actually improved. We did try to provide some additional disclosure in terms of, you know, number of mandates won in the period, and, you know, the total number of mandates that we're actually managing in that business. That sort of new disclosure on these slides. We continue to see that sort of, you know, second half momentum, you know, continue through in, certainly in, in the first sort of month or so of this financial year. So that's where, you know, we, we've got confidence that, it will return. Yep. Thank you very much. And if I could just follow up around the significant deleveraging you've taken. The gearings traditionally provided some hedge on the Margin Income. Going forward, how are you thinking about the optimal level of leverage, noting you're talking about $2.6 billion of capacity there? Is there an optimal level? Yeah, look, it's a good question. You speak to some market participants, and they say that, you know, in a market like today, you shouldn't have any debt. You speak to others, and they'll complain that it's a lazy balance sheet, right? So, you know, we probably sit there in between. Obviously, the deleveraging was pretty fast this year. The proceeds that came through from the sale of Mortgage Services, you know, we have signaled intent to, you know, patiently do acquisitions that, you know, are strategic and, you know, also accretive to the group. So, you know, as that rolls out, you know, you'll probably likely see that, it would creep up. I mean, absent, you know... I mean, just doing the buyback and the dividend and all the rest of it, and if we did no acquisitions, it would probably remain at a similar level to what it is today, but you will see that just tack up as we're, you know, deploy capital inorganically in the group. Yeah. Now, we used to sort of run this sort of, you know, 1.75-2.25, sort of neutral zone, you know, but, you know, the market sort of, you know, changed a little bit since we did that. You know, I think that it's prudent to have, you know, that lower gearing at the moment. And it also gives the group, you know, real optionality, and that optionality is that balance that I talked about between, you know, ability to spend money, you know, to drive growth and, you know, investments in the business, but also these returns to shareholders. Thank you very much, Stuart. Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Adams from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Hey, guys. Hey, just a couple of quick ones. Can I just, can I just confirm that the ex Margin Income growth guidance of 15% is on the actual 2024 base? So if we, if we strip out the U.S. mortgage servicing sale, you're guiding to about 1%-2% EBIT ex Margin Income growth? It's on the 24 base, so it does include U.S. Mortgage Services in the base, Andrew, but it's up by more than that. It's more than 1.2%. It's about... It's up, it's up sort of 5%-6%. All right. I'll send through the numbers to reconcile that one. And just on the hedged balances, we kind of got back to 100% of the cash rates, as the yield you're doing, and I guess now we're back, back below 85% of cash rates. So how do we think about the yield that you can deliver now going forward? Should we be doing 10%-20% discounts on cash rate, or what's our thinking there? No, I think if you look at cash, if you look at cash rates, the weighted average cash rate is around 93% of our overall yield. And we'd anticipate that in a falling rate environment, we'll probably trend back to around 90% of cash rates. So I think 93-94% is where we've kind of assumed in 2025. I think that's pretty reasonable. We're still close towards 100% right now, but it'll drop down over the course of the year, I expect. You know, on the hedged yield, you know, hedge yield is heading to 3.1%. But look at five-year swap rates, 10-year swap rates, they're still a fair bit north of 3.1, and so my expectation is that the hedge yield will continue to slowly inch up, as older hedges churn and are replaced by newer ones. So I think a hedge yield over the medium term in the sort of 3%-3.5% range is where that will head to, and then on the exposed yield, trend back towards 90% of cash rates. All right, great. Thanks. And then just quickly on the costs, I guess. We kind of guided to BAU OpEx growth around 3% last year. I guess it came in at six or even eight, if we include the projects. So, you know, we're guiding again to, you know, to that around three. What gives us confidence this year that we can kind of hit that cost guidance or anything we can kind of add that kind of caused costs to blow out last year? Well, I think firstly, you've got to remember in terms of last year, there was growth in revenue, so some of that cost growth was to deliver the improved revenue. And remember, our EBIT and our EBIT ex MI margins both saw expansion over the course of the year. So yes, we saw you know, greater cost growth than we guided to, but we also saw... You You know, it was more than offset by revenue growth. So I think we've got to have that in context. We should think about that going forward. If we, if we get a pick up in revenue, maybe, maybe that cost guidance will be higher, too? Yeah. I think... Look, I think that's a fair point. In some of our, you know, if transactional revenue grows, for example, there are costs to deliver that. If events pick up, there are costs to deliver that. And so when we look at costs in isolation, we sometimes miss that, miss that point. But more generally, I think, you know, cost growth at inflation or below inflation is absolutely reasonable given the cost out programs that we, that we've got in train. And, you know, what we're starting to see in the broader market. You know, I mean, we've seen we've been under pressure from a wages perspective over the last two to three years, and that those sorts of pressures are starting to dissipate. So I think those broader inflationary pressures that we've seen in the market the last couple of years, as I say, are lessening, so that gives me confidence. Great. Thanks very much, guys. Thank you. That is all the time we have for questions today. I'll now hand back to Mr. Irving for closing remarks. Yeah. So thank you very much for taking time to go through the FY 2024 result and also see how we think with the world as we move into FY 2025. Nick, Michael, and I look forward to seeing a lot of you over the next few days to go into a little bit more detail and some of the underlying businesses and also some of the achievements throughout the group. Thanks very much for your time.