Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We still have some people registering, but we always start our board meetings on time at CSL, so today will be no exception. Welcome to CSL's 2025 Annual General Meeting. Before we commence with the formal proceedings of the meeting, we'd like to play you a short video. The video features Melissa, who is a hereditary angioedema or HAE patient of ours. Thankfully, Melissa and many of our other HAE patients can manage their treatment with CSL products. You can read more about our purpose and how the people and science of CSL save lives and make the lives of our patients better in our Annual Report, which is on our website, or there's some copies outside afterwards. Thank you, Melissa, for sharing your story with us today. Melissa and I live with hereditary angioedema, like a pinky swell or a toe swell when I was younger, and then it graduated into intestinal swells and laryngeal swells and facial swells, and an episode may last seven to 10 days for me, and an example of an episode would be like my whole hand would swell up for no reason, and then it would take all day just to swell up, and then the next day it's somewhere else in my body, say my elbow, and then my foot, to the fact that you can't put a shoe on, and that pretty much dominated my life for 30-40 years. The most challenging aspects for me, the things I couldn't do with my daughter, as a mother, I was just always sick, so my life now, living with HAE, is a 180 from what it was back then. I started a drug trial when I was 39 years old, and I'm 51 now, so those 40 years were nothing, nothing really fun, and I didn't realize how bad things were. I thought about, you know, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other, but there was no light at the end of the tunnel. It was just a tunnel, and you just had to keep walking, and I'm out of the tunnel. There's no tunnel. It's all light. Thank you, CSL. Thank you for this medicine, first of all, that you've changed my life. Oh my gosh, you've changed my daughter's life. I'm just very appreciative. Thank you. My name's Fiona Mead. I'm the Company Secretary here at CSL Limited. It's a pleasure to welcome you all to our 2025 Annual General Meeting, and I do believe we have a full house. I will run through the procedural aspects of the meeting shortly. This meeting is being held in a hybrid format. Thank you to all of you who've joined us today in person, and we welcome everybody who's joining us online as well. For those here in the room, in the unlikely event of an emergency, please follow all the instructions from the RACV staff and be attentive to announcements over the PA system. If we do need to evacuate, please calmly use the stairs, which are located next to the lifts. Assembly points are located on either corner of Bourke Street or William Street. If first aid is needed, please immediately see an RACV staff member for assistance. Today, we will run through each item of business stated in the Notice of Meeting, after which we will invite questions in the room and online. Shareholders and proxy holders present in the room can ask questions during the meeting by lining up at one of the microphones located in the aisles when the chair invites questions. Please advise the Computershare representative of your name and show them your red or green voting card to indicate you are a shareholder or a proxy holder. If you are a shareholder or proxy holder participating online, you can submit a written question by clicking on the Messaging tab on the Lumi platform. Type your question in the box towards the top of the page and press the Send button. A copy of your submitted questions, along with any written responses from our meeting team, can be viewed by selecting My Messages. Written questions can be submitted online at any time during the meeting. If you are online and wish to ask a question verbally, click on the Request to Speak button in the broadcast window. You'll be prompted to confirm your name and enter the topic of your question. Submit your request and follow the instructions to allow access to your microphone and join the queue. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, they will not be addressed until the relevant time in the meeting. If you have any troubles, please call the AGM Helpline number, which is up on the screen now. Online questions may be moderated for inappropriate language, and if we receive a few questions that are similar, we may combine those questions and answer them together. If your questions are too lengthy, we may need to summarize them in the interest of time. To ensure all shareholders in attendance here today have the opportunity to ask questions, we ask that each shareholder restricts themselves to no more than two questions or comments. If we have time at the end, we will ask shareholders with more questions to come forward. The chair will address some questions that we received prior to today and then take questions in the room, followed by written questions on the online platform and then verbal questions on the online platform. Persons entitled to vote today are all shareholders' representatives, shareholders and attorneys of shareholders and proxy holders who hold red admission cards. On the reverse of your red admission card is your voting paper. Please vote by marking a box beside each resolution to indicate how you wish to vote. Proxy holders have attached to their admission card a summary of proxy votes, which details the voting instructions, if any, for business items. You must vote in accordance with those instructions. In respect of any open votes a proxy holder may be entitled to cast, you need to mark a box beside the motion to indicate how you wish to cast your open votes. Please ensure that you print your name where indicated and sign the voting paper. When you have finished filling in your voting paper, please lodge it in a ballot box before leaving the meeting to make sure your vote is counted. Computershare staff will be positioned at the exits to collect your voting paper when you leave. Voting on all items of business will close 10 minutes after the meeting ends, during which time you'll have an opportunity to finalize your voting paper and lodge it in the ballot box. Please raise your hand if you need assistance, and a Computershare staff member will help you. For our online shareholders, once we declare voting is open on all items of business, and if you are eligible to vote at this meeting, a new voting tab will appear. Selecting this tab will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. Your vote is automatically recorded. There is no need to press a Submit or Enter button. You have the ability to change your vote by selecting a different option on the relevant resolution. You may change your vote at any stage until the time we declare voting closed. Ahead of our opening address from the chair, I share with you our legal notice on the screen behind me. That covers the logistics of our meeting, and I'll now hand over to our chair, Dr. Brian McNamee. Thank you, Fiona, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. There was a quorum present, and I'm delighted to open the meeting. I would now like to introduce your board of directors to my right. First of all, Fiona, thank you. Our Company Secretary, who you have already heard from, Dr. Megan Clark, who will be retiring from our board at the end of this meeting, Ms. Elaine Sorg, and next, Professor Andrew Cuthbertson and Ms. Carolyn Hewson at the far end. To my left, Dr. Paul McKenzie, our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Dr. Brian Daniels, who is standing for election at this meeting, and you'll have an opportunity to hear from Brian later this morning, Ms. Alison Watkins, Mr. Cameron Price, who is also standing for election, and you will have a chance to hear from Ms. Samantha Lewis and Ms. Marie McDonald, who is also retiring from the board at the end of today's meeting. We're fortunate to have such a strong group of directors of our board. Voting on all items of business today will be conducted by a poll, and I'm declaring the poll open now. The poll will close 10 minutes after I declare the business of the meeting to be closed. Before we move to the formal business of the meeting, I'd like to speak about CSL, a business I've been involved with since 1990. It's a business that I, like many of you, feel great personal affection for, and a business that I believe, despite current turbulence, has the right strategy and the right people to deliver sustainable and profitable growth. I'll then hand over to CSL's CEO and Managing Director, Dr. Paul McKenzie, who will provide a review of the business and performance for the financial year 2025, progress against our strategy, and outlook for financial year 26. We'll then move on to the procedural matters of today's meeting, and finally, as Fiona mentioned, we will take questions from those in the room online. As you know, CSL is a leader in plasma-derived therapies, influenza vaccines, and iron therapies. We deliver these innovative lifesaving medicines to patients in more than 100 countries. We exist to deliver enduring impact to those patients in areas of unmet medical need, helping to boost public health around the world and contributing meaningfully to the communities we serve. In 2025 financial year, we delivered a $3 billion net after-tax profit and declared a final dividend of $2.92 a share. I'd like to extend my thanks to Paul and his leadership team and our 29,000 people around the world who helped make this happen. Now, our share prices suffered significantly in recent months. It's been very disappointing for us and for you, our shareholders. Let me be clear. Do I believe that our strategy, our IG growth story, and our ability to generate strong return remain intact? Yes, I do. As a company, we've been in these situations before. We've seen periods of growth and faced periods of challenge, and we come back stronger. The actions we are taking now will position CSL for its next chapter of growth. The reality is that for some time now, CSL has been operating in a way that is too complex, and this has impacted our ability to react decisively to the geopolitical headwinds and to maintain our market leadership position. It is clear to the board and Paul that changes must be made rapidly and effectively. Paul and his management team, with the full support of the board, have identified areas where the business must evolve. These are bold strategic steps to reshape and simplify the business, build our growth and pipeline, reduce costs, and improve clinical and commercial execution. We are charting a path forward, one that builds on our strengths, our history, our strong culture, but also focuses on the market challenges. Specifically, we are implementing an improved commercially driven operating model to bring decisive speed and focus to how we run the business and drive demand for what we sell. We must invest in internal and external innovation to build our pipeline and are doing so by reducing our fixed cost base. We've also refocused our approach to research and development to make it more productive, more agile, and better aligned with long-term innovation goals. We're simplifying our operating model to reduce complexity, transform performance, and unlock efficiencies, targeting over AUD 500 million in annual pre-tax cost savings by 2028 financial year. We're optimizing our Global Plasma Network to meet rising demand, improve our productivity, and boost our agility of our manufacturing to match our yield improvement initiatives. Finally, we have begun a multi-year capital management program, starting with a share buyback this financial year, a clear signal of our strong cash flow and balance sheet. I have no doubt that these are the right decisions for CSL, but progress is not linear. Success is not distributed evenly, and change, even positive and urgent change, does take time. I understand your frustration. However, Paul and the team's work is not done. With that, I'll hand over to Paul to present last year's financial outcomes and also talk about some of these matters. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you, Brian. Good morning to everyone here and online. It is a pleasure to be here with you today to discuss the outlook for your company and our progress against our strategy. These meetings are an important reminder that this is your business, and like all engaged shareholders, you have ambitions for it. I share that ambition. As Brian mentioned, change takes time, and progress is not linear, but let me be clear. The fundamentals of your business remain sound, and I am very confident we have the right strategy to deliver CSL's next phase of growth. I am mindful that you have experienced strong growth and returns over many, many years, and your management team remains focused on ensuring the company delivers against that ambition. As I said a moment ago, our core business performance demonstrates our resilience. For the 2025 financial year, revenue was up 5% at constant currency to $15.6 billion. NPATA was up 14% to $3.3 billion. Net profit after tax was up 17% to $3 billion. CSL Behring continued to power our growth, with revenue increasing by 6% at constant currency. Sales of Privigen, Hizentra, and Albumin all rose, with sales of hemophilia growing a robust 13%. For CSL Seqirus, revenue increased 2% as significantly lower immunization rates in the U.S. were offset by avian flu pandemic response opportunities. At CSL Vifor, revenue was up 8% as iron sales grew in volume and our nephrology portfolio gained momentum with multiple launches around the world. As we look to our performance for financial year 2026, I'm pleased to say the majority of the business is tracking to plan. Behring continues to drive the growth of the company with strong fundamentals in our core IG business and the recent successful launch of Andembry. Vifor continues to compete well in an evolving iron market, and nephrology is growing to plan. We are also expanding our clinical and commercial portfolios through strategic business development opportunities, such as our recently announced partnership with VarmX. In the partnership with VarmX, we will develop a first-in-class treatment for patients on Factor Xa inhibitors who require urgent surgery or are experiencing severe bleeding. This collaboration not only addresses a significant unmet medical need but strengthens our innovation pipeline and our ambition to deliver enduring patient impact. Our transformation initiatives are also progressing well, and I will discuss those in more detail shortly. While the majority of the business is performing well, we are seeing two factors that impact our results in the first half of the fiscal year. In our Seqirus business, we have seen a greater decline in influenza vaccination rates in the U.S., greater than we expected. This is despite a positive recommendation from the U.S. administration on influenza administration and an unprecedented level of infection impacting public health around the world. For the current Northern Hemisphere 2025-2026 flu season, based on the insurance claims to date, we now expect the vaccination rates to decline by 12% for the overall population in the United States and down almost 14% for the 65 and over population versus last year's vaccination rates. The 65-plus age segment is where our differentiated product Fluad has and continues to grow share even with this market downturn. This challenge impacts our forecast, resulting in overall Seqirus revenue for financial year 2026 declining by mid-teens versus our previous outlook of high single digits. In addition, we have seen the recent impact of government cost containment controls in China reducing the demand for Albumin. We are adapting our approach to the supply there, which will limit this impact to the first half of the fiscal year. Given these factors affecting our performance in the first half of the year, we are revising our financial year 2026 revenue growth outlook to 2%-3% from 4%-5% previously forecasted. And we've updated our NPATA growth to 4%-7%, reduced from the 7%-10% originally forecasted. All these are at constant currency. Looking ahead to financial years 2027 and 2028, we anticipate that CSL Behring will maintain sustainable and robust growth with strong group cash generation and balance sheet metrics. That said, due to the ongoing uncertainty in the vaccination rates in the United States, while there are some scenarios in which group NPATA may touch double digits, we believe a high single-digit growth is a more appropriate expectation until we see the U.S. influenza vaccination rates improve. My focus as CEO and that of your management team is taking the right action to deliver growth. The changes we are putting in place will enhance the resiliency of the overall business. Brian is right. These are bold strategic steps to realize the full potential of the company. They put in place following significant review and analysis. We had become disproportionately complex, and we are taking steps to simplify and streamline our business. In R&D, we are reducing fixed costs and enhancing efficiency by the reduction of our footprint to six global sites and increasing the speed of both translational research into the clinic and clinical trial execution while continuing to pursue life cycle management opportunities to expand our commercial portfolio. We are bringing the Behring and Vifor commercial and medical capabilities together to improve productivity and reduce duplication. We are also actively reviewing our corporate overheads. These are obviously difficult but necessary decisions to position CSL for the long term. These actions free up more than AUD 500 million in savings by fiscal year 2028, and that savings will allow us to reinvest in our highest priority growth opportunities. I want to assure you that in the markets we serve, there is strong growth demand for our life-saving medicines. We are moving with urgency to serve more patients, drive innovation across our clinical and commercial portfolios, enhance efficiency, and deliver greater shareholder value. We are a global leader in large and growing markets with unmet patient needs, and we have a market-leading IG franchise with attractive and durable growth potential. Our strong balance sheet and cash flow enables a disciplined capital allocation to deliver growth across the business. We will accelerate profitable growth by expanding our leadership in rare diseases. This will be underpinned by increasing investment in programs to improve diagnosis, awareness, and treatment of these rare conditions. A good example of improving treatments is in hemophilia B, HEMGENIX, which offers a life-changing potential cure for patients suffering with hemophilia B. Our operational excellence will continue to drive reliable supply and cost optimization. Our teams are laser-focused on the end-to-end fundamentals of plasma economics, further reducing collection and processing costs per liter of plasma. We continue to innovate in our plasma centers now that we've rolled out the Rika plasmapheresis system, and our ongoing Horizon 1 and 2 yield initiatives are and will deliver more benefits. Delivering on our strategy requires exceptional talent, and I have prioritized building a leadership team ready to drive the transformation and to deliver results. In the past year, we have welcomed Dr. Mary Oates as Chief Operating Officer, leading our push in operational efficiency. Andy Schmeltz was appointed Chief Commercial Officer, overseeing the integration of CSL Behring and CSL Vifor commercial and medical functions to reduce duplication and to unlock new revenue opportunities. And more recently, Ken Lim has been appointed Chief Financial Officer following the retirement of Joy Linton. I want to thank Joy for her service to the company and recognize Ken's deep institutional knowledge and strong track record with CSL. Each of these leaders, along with the rest of your management team, is charged with turning strategy into action and results. This will require disciplined investment and focus. My role is to ensure everyone at CSL, whoever they are, whatever they do, in every location around the globe, is focused on growth. In closing, I want to reconfirm our confidence in our core business. As Brian said, CSL has proven its resilience time and time again, and we are taking the disciplined and deliberate steps to strengthen our performance and streamline the company for growth. I share Brian's confidence in CSL's long-term outlook, as well as his commitment to accelerating our progress. A big part of what makes this company unique is our history and our people: more than 29,000 colleagues worldwide impacting the lives of millions of patients around the globe. I will never grow tired of hearing stories on how people have helped change the lives of patients battling rare and serious disease. Delivering ever-better life-saving products to more patients and generating strong returns on your investment is what motivates me. Thank you, and I will now hand back to Brian. Thank you, Paul. I want to reiterate the strength of CSL Behring, growth in immunoglobulin, and our new products. However, I would like to address one of the challenges Paul spoke of, specifically the U.S. vaccine market for influenza. In August, we communicated a well-founded strategic intent to demerge Seqirus through a separate listing on the ASX. At the time of the announcement, the decline in influenza rates was thought to be moderating. The previous flu season had recorded the highest rate of morbidity and mortality in 15 years, and the U.S. government's vaccine advisory panel had endorsed a recommendation that everyone above the age of six months should have an annual influenza vaccine. Today, I wish to reiterate that in the long term, the strategic direction of both CSL and Seqirus is unchanged. Separation continues to be the preferred approach to unlock simplification and focus and sustain long-term growth for each of these businesses. However, our priority is to maximize shareholder value. Given the heightened volatility in the current U.S. influenza vaccine market, we have concluded that advancing with the previously proposed demerger timing will not fully capture Seqirus' value potential. Therefore, we are no longer targeting completion of the demerger in financial year 2026. Timing will be revisited when we're confident that market conditions would support the maximization of shareholder value for you. Tackling these various initiatives requires the right people at the board level, with the right mix of skills and experience to guide our strategy and lead our operations in an increasingly complex global environment. This not only means the traditional skills like risk management, scientific expertise, commercial acumen, but newer skills in the digital and AI arena. I'm pleased to share some updates about our board since our last AGM. First, we welcome Dr. Brian Daniels to the board of directors from the 1st of December. Brian is based in the United States and brings over 30 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, spanning clinical development, medical affairs, and the commercialization of medicines. He is a highly credentialed director, and we're delighted to have him on the board. We also welcomed Mr. Cameron Price, who joined the board from the 1st of October. Cameron is a highly respected executive with over 30 years' experience, most recently serving as General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer at Australia's Future Fund. He brings deep expertise in global investment, risk management, and corporate governance. You'll have the opportunity to hear from both Brian and Cameron later in the meeting, and I'm sure you'll find their insights informative. It's also my pleasure to announce the appointment of new directors to our board. Firstly, Mr. Costa Saroukos, effective from the 1st of December 2025. Costa had a global career in the biopharmaceutical industry and was most recently Global Chief Financial Officer and board member of Takeda Global, a very large Japanese pharmaceutical company, where he was an instrumental part of its transformation. We are fortunate Costa has returned home to Australia, and I'm looking forward to bringing his deep understanding of global pharma and plasma therapeutics to CSL's board of directors. In addition, I'm pleased to announce that Mr. Gordon Naylor will also join the board effective 1st of December 2025. Gordon was recently announced as our Chair-Elect for the demerged Seqirus business. Given the revised demerger timeline, Gordon's experience and leadership in the global biopharmaceutical sector will be invaluable. His deep understanding of both CSL and Seqirus operations will greatly benefit the board as we continue to advance our long-term strategy. And finally, I'd like a moment to acknowledge two long-serving members of our board who will be retiring at the conclusion of today's AGM: Ms. Marie McDonald and Dr. Megan Clark. Marie joined CSL's board in August 2013 and has brought a wealth of experience across law and medical research. Her deep expertise in financial markets, risk and compliance, and corporate governance has been invaluable. Thank you. Marie has served on both the Audit and Risk Management Committee and the Human Resources and Remuneration Committee, and her thoughtful contributions have helped guide CSL through more than a decade of growth and transformation. Dr. Megan Clark has been a director since February 2016, a distinguished career spanning scientific research, health, investment banking, and mining. Megan has brought a broad strategic lens and global perspective to the board. She has served as the Chair of Human Resource and Remuneration Committee and contributed to both the Corporate Governance and Nomination Committee, as well as the Innovation and Development Committee. Her leadership and insights have helped shape CSL's innovation agenda and strengthen our board governance. On behalf of the board and the entire CSL committee, I want to sincerely thank you, Marie and Megan, for the outstanding service, dedication, and lasting impact you've made on the company. We wish them well for the very best next chapters in their lives. I want to take a moment to talk about our approach to remuneration because it's closely tied to who we are and how we operate as a unique ASX-listed company. Although our roots are proudly Australian, CSL competes in a global biotechnology market, and many of our senior leaders are based in the United States. That's the reality of our industry, and it means we need to attract and retain world-class talent who can foster innovation, navigate complex science, manufacturing, and deliver long-term growth for our shareholders. Your board firmly believes that our remuneration framework supports this goal. It's designed to be competitive globally and to bring in the kind of leadership that will take CSL into the next phase of growth. That said, we've engaged with shareholders and acknowledged their concerns. We take their feedback seriously and are reviewing the framework in this light. This year, it is clear from the votes received that many of our shareholders have voted against the Remuneration Report. This will trigger a spill resolution, which we'll put to the meeting. We understand the importance of finding the right balance between offering executive remuneration packages that are attractive to top talent and safeguarding the long-term interests of the company and shareholder value. We remain committed to engaging with you on this, and our approach serves both our people and your investment. Before I conclude, I want to touch on an exciting development of our manufacturing capacity and capability. In the coming months, we'll be officially opening our new influenza vaccine manufacturing facility at Tullamarine. This is a state-of-the-art facility that has taken several years to build and more than AUD 800 million. It'll be the Southern Hemisphere's premier cell culture influenza vaccine manufacturing and research center. Moving Australian vaccine production to Tullamarine also closes a significant chapter in CSL's history: the closure of our facility at Parkville. That site is close to my heart from my days as Chief Executive a while ago and dates back to the founding of the company in 1916. It's a great example of how our company continues to evolve, being true to its roots and always embracing innovation, competition, and moving towards our next chapter. With these new initiatives and capabilities of our people behind us, I'm confident CSL is well positioned to seize our opportunities ahead. Our strategy is clear, and we remain committed to delivering for our patients and for you, our shareholder. Thank you again for your support. We'll now move on to the formal part of the meeting. The items of business for consideration today are described in the Notice of Meeting, which I'll take as read. In terms of running the AGM efficiently, we'll read through all the items of business set out in our Notice of Meeting, following which we'll address all shareholder questions at one time. I'm confident that I'm holding available undirected proxies in my capacity as Chair of the meeting and will vote all available proxies in favor of resolutions in items two, three, and four, and against in resolution of item five. The board recommends that shareholders vote in favor of the resolution items two, three, and four, and against the resolution in item five, with interested directors abstaining from making a recommendation in respect of any resolution they have an interest in. To conduct the poll, I appoint Mr. Michael Hutchison of Computershare to act as returning officer, Ms. Genevra Cavallo, and Ms. Katrina Mariani of Deloitte to act as scrutineers. Voting is now open on all resolutions. We now come to item one of the Notice of Meeting, which is to receive and consider the financial statements and report of directors and auditors for the year ended 30th of June 2025. This item does not require shareholder approval. However, shareholders will be given an opportunity to ask questions and make comments on the report and about the management of the company later. Ms. Cavallo and Mr. Griffiths of the company's auditors, Deloitte, are also present today and available to answer questions in relation to the conduct of the audit, the preparation and content of the auditor's report, the accounting policies adopted by the company in relation to preparation of the accounts, and the auditor's independence in relation to the conduct of the audit. The second item of business is the election of directors. We have two directors seeking election today. Dr. Daniels joined our board in December 2024, and Mr. Price joined in October 2025. In accordance with our constitution, they are now seeking shareholder election. The qualification and expertise of both candidates are outlined in the Notice of Meeting. Having reviewed their performance, the board considers both candidates to be independent directors and supports their election. Item two A relates to the election of Dr. Daniels. I will now ask Dr. Daniels to address the meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Brian, and good morning, shareholders. Today, I stand for election as a non-executive director of CSL. I spent my entire professional career on patient care and improving patient outcomes. Bringing important medicines to patients is the greatest reward to me as a physician. This focus on the patient was the reason I became a physician and then trained as a rheumatologist and immunologist in the United States. I then spent 30 years discovering, developing, and bringing to market new medicines that help patients with significant unmet medical needs. I want to continue to contribute to this purpose with CSL, a company I've long admired. CSL occupies a unique role in the care of some of our most vulnerable patients, both here in Australia and throughout the world. CSL has a proud Australian heritage and a track record of delivering for both patients and shareholders, and I share the board's optimism for the future as the company looks to build on this legacy. I look forward to driving further R&D productivity at CSL from both internally and externally sourced programs. Good governance and stewardship are essential to this ambition. The skills I developed over my professional lifetime will complement those of our existing board members, specifically my work in researching and developing medicines across a wide variety of diseases, and then, for a decade, I chaired the R&D Investment Committee for Bristol Myers Squibb and had oversight on an annual spend in excess of $1 billion per year. I have experience in the regulatory strategy, medical affairs, market access, and early commercial efforts, all of which are needed for the successful delivery of our medicines to patients. As a biotech leader, I understand the value of high-performing cross-functional teams and the success of our development programs. In the last decade, as a partner in a venture capital firm, I've helped lead investments in over a dozen early-stage biotech companies. In our shared ecosystem, these companies are a critical engine for new innovation for patients. I believe these skills and the global perspective will be valuable in helping steer CSL through this next phase of our growth, and I'm acutely aware of the responsibility involved in serving such a respected and value-led organization, and it will be a privilege to serve on this Board of Directors. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. The board, with Dr. Daniels abstaining, recommends that shareholders vote in favor of the election of Dr. Daniels. I refer to the slide behind me, which shows details of the proxy position for this resolution. Congratulations. I'll now move to item 2 B and ask Mr. Price to address the meeting. Thank you, Brian, and good morning, shareholders. Despite that strange expression on my face up there, it's a real privilege and honor to be considered for election to the CSL board. I've observed and admired CSL's development and growth into a global leader over the last 20-30 years, delivering both important medical outcomes for patients and strong returns for shareholders. To me, CSL is a special organization to be involved with, as it is clearly purpose-driven with a values-based culture, is Australian-headquartered while being a truly global leader in the sectors it operates in, has a strong focus on long-term growth and shareholder value creation. In that context, and as the company progresses with its current growth and strategic plans, as Paul outlined, I believe that my skills and experience will enable me to complement the board's governance and oversight role going forward. Until recently, I was the General Counsel and Chief Risk Officer at Australia's sovereign wealth fund, the Future Fund, for more than 11 years, working closely with the chair, the board, and their CEO. Future Fund invests more than AUD 300 billion globally across all major asset classes. Through that role, including as acting CEO for about six months in 2020 during the COVID crisis and the market crisis around that, I was privileged to gain extensive experience and knowledge of international investment issues, including geopolitical, economic, monetary, market, regulatory, and policy issues. I also gained experience in risk management, theory and practice, and government and global peer relations. It also gave me a very strong perspective on a listed company and its board from an institutional investor's point of view. Prior to that, I had a 25-year career at law firm Allens, where I advised a range of public-listed and private companies on domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, and corporate governance matters, including on ASX listing rules and equity incentive plans. I'm very mindful of the duties and responsibilities of the role and would work closely with my colleagues to continue a strong focus on the best interests of CSL and its shareholders. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you, Cameron. The board, with Mr. Price abstaining, recommends that shareholders vote in favor of the election of Mr. Price. I refer to the screen behind me, which shows the details of the proxy position for this resolution. Congratulations. As we're holding questions to the end of the meeting, I'll move to item three. Item three, on the Notice of Meeting, is an advisory vote to adopt CSL's Remuneration Report for the financial year ending 30th of June 2025. As I mentioned in my opening address, CSL is likely to receive a second strike on its Remuneration Report today. To deliver on our promise to patients and to protect public health, we rely on our people and need to ensure a strong global talent supply. To this end, our executive remuneration framework enables us to attract, engage, and retain suitably talented employees in the various markets in which we operate. This includes competing for talent with larger pharmaceutical companies. The board is committed to an executive remuneration framework that links pay to the achievement of CSL's strategy and business objectives. This creates a performance culture that, in turn, drives long-term shareholder value. Under the Corporations Act, the company is required to include in the director's report a detailed Remuneration Report setting out certain prescribed information relating to director and executive remuneration. The company is also required to submit this for adoption by resolution of shareholders at the annual general meeting here. The vote on this resolution in this item is advisory and does not bind the directors. However, we take the outcome of the vote into consideration when reviewing practices and policies of the company. The screen behind me details the proxy positions for this resolution. Based on what you can see in the proxy slide before you, we have not met the requisite 75% of support for our report this year. We are disappointed that this will result in CSL receiving a second consecutive strike, which means item five, which I'll come to, is a resolution to spill the board will be put to the meeting. We'll provide further background on item five shortly. As I mentioned, talent is a critical factor in driving company performance, and remuneration is a key component of this. The board unanimously recommends that shareholders vote in favor in the adoption of the Remuneration Report. We now come to item four, which seeks approval for the purposes of ASX listing rule 10.14 for the grant of 58,360 performance share units under the company's Executive Performance and Alignment Plan to Dr. McKenzie, our Chief Executive and Managing Director. The board believes in the shareholder interest to provide Dr. McKenzie with an equity-based incentive to ensure there is alignment between returns and shareholders. It also considers it's important to obtain shareholder consent to the grant of performance share units. The board, with Dr. McKenzie abstaining, recommends that shareholders vote in favor of the grant of performance units to him. I refer to the screen behind me, which shows details of the proxy position for this resolution. As the proxy results indicate that CSL has received a second strike on item three, the Remuneration Report, we're now obliged to put item five to the meeting, which is a resolution to spill the board. This is an ordinary resolution. If this resolution passed and becomes effective, a special meeting of shareholders known as a spill meeting must be held within 90 days. The following non-executive directors will cease to hold office immediately before the end of the spill meeting unless they are re-elected at the spill meeting: myself, Professor Andrew Cuthbertson, Dr. Brian Daniels, Carolyn Hewson, Samantha Lewis, Elaine Sorg, and Alison Watkins. Although Dr. Megan Clark and Ms. Marie McDonald held directorships when the board passed the resolution for the director's report for the financial year June 30. They were retired at the close of today's meeting and will not be required to stand for re-election at the spill meeting. As Mr. Cameron Price was elected at today's AGM, he will not be required to stand for re-election at the spill meeting, and as he was not in office at the time the report was passed. I refer to the slide behind me showing details of the proxy position for this ordinary resolution, so we passed that hurdle. That completes all the items of business for today, and we'll now move to shareholder questions, and please remember to cast your votes on each resolution. Okay. I'll get a pen and paper for the questions. Just hang on. We give the shareholders in the room a little extra time to submit questions. We're first going to ask some questions that we received from shareholders prior to the meeting. We'll then take written questions from the room and then from questions online. And we also may have some questions. We have a lot of shareholders online today who may ask online questions. So the first question we have is from Mr. Hyland. His question is, "Given the acquisition of CSL Vifor and ongoing margin pressures from plasma collection, cost inflation, and geopolitical risks, how does management quantify the risk to return on invested capital, ROIC, from these factors? What specific margin recovery levers are in place, and how is the board ensuring that capital is deployed only into growth opportunities that meet a rigorous ROIC threshold?" Thank you for that question. There's a lot of matters embedded in that question, so I'll try and briefly summarize them. I think that if we look at our underlying business, we really feel the plasma therapeutics driven by immunoglobulin demand continues to provide strength to the company, and our ability to compete that market is very strong and will continue to provide returns to shareholders. The investment in Vifor, we've pulled many levers to try and improve the performance from our perspective after the acquisition, and that includes growth last year and now integrating the medical and commercial teams, particularly in Europe, to further strengthen our capability. There is no doubt that Vifor took us into areas of great interest to us in the iron area and in nephrology, and we're continuing to look for ways in which we can expand. We have important clinical trials in the area of renal disease that we'll read out late this decade. I share your concern that we need to find ways that we continue to improve our return on invested capital, that we allocate capital fairly and consistently to all the opportunities that we see that we can generate high-quality returns. And one of those things is our ability to buy our own shares back for shareholders, that we manage our capital for both our internal investment, whether it be R&D, whether it be manufacturing expenditure, but also returning funds to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. So we are absolutely laser-focused, and part of our ability to perform is having a great executive team and also continue to build our board capability. And you've heard from two of our excellent new directors today, and we're bringing on additional new directors shortly. So I think we're well primed for continuing growth, and we share your interest in growing returns and growing our ROIC. Mr. Hyland. Mr. Hyland had a second question, which was in relation to the demerger. So your answer to this may change in light of today's announcement. Chair, can you please outline in clear detail the board's view of how the separation would unlock shareholder value, including the key value drivers for both the remaining CSL group and a standalone Seqirus entity? So I think I've probably dealt with the question of the drivers of the remaining co., which is Behring and Vifor, excellent opportunities as we see in the plasma therapeutics immunoglobulin portfolio growth into our Nephrology franchise. So we're doing that. The reality is they're very different businesses. There is no doubt that the Behring plus Vifor business is about rare diseases. It's about high unmet medical needs. It's about smaller clinical trials. It's about our ability to source those products and compete effectively and have a highly integrated team focused on that. Seqirus is a very different business. I mean, I love the Seqirus business. I don't want people to think we're wanting to push this away because we don't like the business. We love the business. They have done an amazing job building this business up, differentiating the portfolio in both pediatric and in the over 65 portfolio, generating excellent real-world data and clinical trial data, demonstrating the utility of vaccines, particularly our vaccines. But there are challenges internationally. Paul spoke of it today. Vaccination rates are a surprise to us. It's true. Did we think, given the declines we'd already seen in the last two years in the key U.S. market, because this really is a U.S. business plus Europe plus the rest of the world, but it's a really powerful U.S. business, did we anticipate that given the severity of the disease last year, the strength of the recommendation of the vaccine and our ability to manufacture these products efficiently and well, did we expect that vaccination rates would drop again another, I don't know what it is, 14%-15%? Remarkable, but it's our reality. So we can't see the bottom of the U.S. vaccination realities today. It must be coming soon. The disease prevalence is real and strong. Our challenge also is we've made so people understand why did we have to update our profit for the first half? Because we've made this vaccine. We anticipated we're going to sell it. We haven't. You don't lose what you've thought was just merely your manufacturing cost. It's a 100% loss of revenue that flows through to your profit, essentially. So it's a significant swing factor in how we see our business this year in the first half and how we look the next couple of years. It's quite complicated to forecast. We're trying to be very clear about that. So it's a long answer because I wanted to give it. We think the Seqirus team have done an amazing job. We think they've got a great team. We think they have a great potential. It's just a very different business dealing with vaccination, vaccination policy, influenza rates, capability dealing with retail market and retailers in America, dealing with policy. It's a completely different business. So when we looked at how do we simplify CSL, how do we get back to that gritty, determined, focused company, we said, "We've got to separate these two businesses." Trying to create them as one business and integrate doesn't work. So Paul led this. He's the driver because he knows we want to get back to focus, discipline, and we're still going to do it. We're going to separate the business out. It will separate, and it will leave us, but don't think we're doing it because we think it's not a great business. It is a great business. We have one more. We have one more pre-submitted question from Mr. Williamson. Mr. Chairman, the market's reaction to the company's last two major earnings announcements has been severe, wiping out billions in shareholder value in single trading days. This suggests a profound loss of confidence in management's forward guidance and strategic narrative. How does the board diagnose this clear disconnect between the company's communications and the market's expectations, and what specific oversight mechanisms is the board implementing to ensure future strategic announcements restore rather than erode investor confidence? Again, a lot of issues embedded in that. I mean, we know there's choppiness at the moment geopolitically. We have had to endure additional taxes in America called the Inflation Reduction Act imposed upon our immunoglobulin portfolio in America. So that cut 2% of our growth into this year. It's just an additional tax on companies selling essentially over $1 billion. It's called Part D. So we are aware of that. We've recognized also that some of the investments we've made in some of the investments we've made over a number of years haven't delivered the sort of returns we're looking for, and that would include the 112 trial. It would be our phase III trial. So we know that we have to generate even higher returns from our existing business today, and Paul's driving that really hard. It's why we have an engineer focused on this stuff every day. How do we extract more value from what we're doing? And that's what we're doing because we know some of the opportunity we thought we had had been challenged by geopolitical matters or just challenged by our inability to do some of the phase threes that didn't work for us. And to be frank, some of the infrastructure we're moving on, shareholders have to understand it's been built up over almost a decade. We built up a lot of infrastructure to do a very large and complicated trial, the 112 trial globally. We rebuilt the Marburg R&D facility. That decision was made seven, 10 years ago. Some of the R&D infrastructure we put together. And fundamentally, when we looked at R&D productivity, again, our engineer wanted to look at our productivity. We just weren't productive enough is our bottom line. And so we just can't say, "Well, let's just continue what we're doing." So Paul and his team came up with a plan. It's a significant shift for the company, but we are shutting sites. We're changing the way we're operating. We're cutting costs. We're refocusing. Yeah, it's true. Now, that's while we're still growing, but we've had challenges because of some of these other factors. But this is a growth company. So what can I say about the market? I think the market misunderstood, I believe, the underlying strength of our plasma business. We're essentially shutting plasma centers, not because our IG portfolio wasn't growing. It's because they were inefficient centers. And all the great work Paul and his team had done in the adoption of Rika has meant we had higher yields and more efficiency. And we're building efficiencies in our manufacturing plants as well. We just didn't need more expensive plasma, so we shut down the sites. Some people saw that as a sign that we'd lost faith in the sector. So I think over time, when it's clear that the underlying strengths of the company remain are what they are and that this year of transition that we're actually orchestrating at the moment and you, the shareholders, are having to wear the cost, it's an expensive thing for us to reorganize. That is true. But it's going to deliver value. It's going to deliver high focus. It's going to deliver simplicity. I believe it's going to deliver new products and our ability to compete effectively and therefore generate higher returns for you. Will it take time? Yes. Can I predict when the share market response? No, I can't. I think it's a mug's game. It's a mug's game focusing for us on the share price alone. We have to run the company. Paul and his team superbly. We've got to do what we've got to do. And we believe, given everything we're doing, including the share buybacks, it will one day be reflected in the share price. How long that takes? I don't think it's a matter of just simple communication that we bring out some glossy PR and that'll fix everything. No. It's about what we do. It's about how we deliver. And there's a little bit about how we say what we're doing. I accept that in this modern world of highly responsive markets. So that's what we're doing. Thank you. We will now move to two questions from people here in the room. I ask that you move to the microphone and please give your name to the Computershare monitor who will read that name out to us. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Mike Robey from the Australian Shareholders' Association. Good morning, Mr. Chair and board. My name is Mike Robey. As mentioned, I'm a volunteer monitor with what is really Australia's retail shareholder sort of support group. Today, I hold proxies for about 1.08 million shares to the value of about AUD 230 million. So I think that makes the 16th largest shareholder on the old register. And look, thank you very much, Dr. Clark, Mr. Price, and Fiona for meeting us in advance so we could share some of our concerns with you. I know it's very productive for us. We note, Mr. Chair, the reports of your comments in the press on the unacceptable failures at CSL in R&D and particularly the D part at the Australian campuses. You said, I believe, or it was reported, there was something fundamentally wrong with the way R&D is carried out in Victoria. Now, we shareholders are used to chairs and their CEOs stroking their people at their greatest asset. This was a moment of great candidness that we actually appreciated. It is in keeping with some of your retrenchment programs that you've signaled as well. It is rather unusual. We're interested in what particular performance issues that your review identified with the Australian R&D centers. I mean, we all come from this part of the world, and some of us have actually been in R&D in the past. What progress has been made against what you did see with these shortcomings in order to keep staff motivated? First question. Would you like to go on to my second general question, or would you like me to stop there? Look, I'll do a brief answer and then get Paul to comment on. To be frank, it's always, yeah, do you look back and say, the R&D challenges within CSL were clear. It was global. And Paul will comment on that. Australia's part of it. Although my dream has always been for Parkville and Australia to be the center of our excellence and innovation and to drive. And I was frustrated we just didn't have enough great quality candidates coming out of the pipeline. I probably drifted into territory that was probably not sensible. Do I love some of the cheerleaders for work from home? No, I don't. Do I get very annoyed when I turn up to places and there aren't people working there? Yes, I do. Sure. I get a little frustrated. That's the reality. I'll let Paul talk about that in more detail, what we did and the analysis. Thank you, Brian. And thanks for the question, and thanks for your support of CSL. It's great to have a chair and a board who's so passionate about innovation. So one thing I want to make sure everybody understands is we are not at all diminished in our goals for innovation. Innovation is the cornerstone of what has made this company and will make this company successful. Innovation comes in many different shapes for CSL. It comes in new clinical assets as well as lifecycle management extension of our commercial portfolio. In both of those categories, our performance over the last several years has diminished, and we need to aggressively address both of them equally for our success. Lifecycle management has been a key critical attribute of the success of our plasma-derived therapy portfolio, and we need to continue to drive that. And that doesn't just take R&D. That takes a relationship between research and development and commercial and a cunning, as Brian likes to call it, knowledge of the market and knowledge where you can differentiate. How commercial and research and development work together is extremely important. In terms of the R&D, what I'll call clinical productivity, we have a great example of what I'd love to see more of recently. We launched Andembry, developed prior to 2010 in our own labs in Melbourne, and recently launched. I need four or five more Andembrys. And we need to be able to drive the translation of science, both internally and externally developed, these preclinical assets. We need to transition them in industry-leading times to the clinic because they're no good until you get them in the clinic and you're able to see the safety and efficacy profile. When you look at our clinical trial execution overall, our metrics had slowed. Our clinical protocols became very complex. And we were really burdened by that large clinical trial, CSL 112, which was 20,000-plus patients. When I looked with the team at where we were as an organization, we had grown to almost 20 R&D sites. Very hard to be relevant, very hard to be connected to both the ecosystem, very hard to optimize your relationship between R&D and commercial when people are spread across 20 sites. We have gone aggressively after fixed costs. We're reducing our 20 global sites to three main hubs with three support hubs. A difficult decision, but one that is critical for us to get the speed and urgency to move the portfolio. We're really looking at how that overall governance happens in terms of how we govern and move medicines through the pipeline to be successful. Thanks, Paul. Thank you very much. I think the man next to you, Dr. Daniels, will be an interesting asset to the board on both of this. So we're looking forward to your contribution. And Mr. Price also from the investment process. So my second general question was, this financial year, CSL sold the Ruide plasma collection business in China about seven years after acquiring it at a significant loss of $167 million or roughly half price you paid for it. Now, I understand that COVID rather unexpectedly happened in the interim. Most large businesses in this country, and we've seen many of them go through the COVID dip and then come back out the other side stronger and more focused. So what went wrong strategically with the business for Ruide? Sounds the right sort of thing. Plasma collection business, your core golden business, all sounds good to shareholders, but basically lost a whack of money. And was there a due diligence issue associated with the M&A? Look, thinking back to my medical days, retrospectoscope is always a fine instrument. You always look back and think, "Could you have done better? Could you have done better due diligence in the M&A?" There's no doubt China is a really important country. They're a very big country. I'll get Paul to specifically talk about Ruide itself, but it's not the simplest place in some ways, and I agree. It's disappointing. You hate losing money. You hate wasting money. It's true. I mean, but when you get to a company our size, it's not going to be the first or last time we do things that you go, "That didn't work." Yeah, I would say our aspiration was to make the same difference in China that we had around the world for plasma-derived proteins, and plasma economics was critical in that evaluation. What we could not do in China that we've been able to do around the rest of the world was get more products that were meaningful commercially. So although albumin was meaningful, we could not get immunoglobulin or any of the inframarginals to be meaningful in the China marketplace. And it just made the economics because the acquisition of plasma cost was on par to global prices, and we couldn't just generate the revenue to drive the economics of plasma. So at some point, it became an economics decision. We love China. We want to be in China. It's an important market. We just couldn't get the economics to work. Next question. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Phoebe Rountree. Good morning, everyone. I'm from SIX. We're an ethical share trading platform. We work with retail and institutional investors to engage with ASX-listed companies like CSL around environmental, social, and governance issues. Throughout this year, we've been engaging with your company about how the company is considering and managing the risks of gas and how that's being communicated to shareholders. Gas is a fuel characterized as volatile, uncertain, and risky. Sharp price increases are highly possible as the East Coast gas market here in Australia has predicted a shortfall in supply as early as 2026, 2027 in states like Victoria, where our company has a number of manufacturing facilities. As noted in our company, SIX's Gambling with Gas report, CSL uses burning natural gas predominantly to generate steam and boilers and heat and electricity and cogeneration units at some manufacturing facilities. I firstly want to acknowledge the company's positive engagement with SIX and our institutional investor partners over the past few months on this issue. We were pleased to hear about your decarbonization roadmap and your plans to report further in the 2026 financial year as part of the Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards. We were also pleased with your recognition of the need to keep shareholders informed on your progress in managing operational risks, which include disruptive gas supply and climate risks, hence my presence here today. So to come to my questions, I have two related questions for the board. Can you expand for shareholders here in the room today and online? How are you thinking about gas, its use, its risks in the context of your business? And what steps did you take to assess the level of risk that reliance on gas poses to the company? Thank you. Great. Thank you for the question. Look, we examine risk through what we call our business continuity process. We look at risk for every part of our operation around the globe. All of our critical utilities, our wastewater treatment plants, our key raw materials. We assess that risk one by one and look at contingencies, for instance, procurement, making sure we have multiple suppliers. As you said, we've been working hard to take a look at gas and its risk. When we've done the evaluation with everything else that we have ongoing, particularly here in Australia, we see that risk is low at this point. We have to put our resources and allocate them to the other problems we're trying to solve. Now, that doesn't mean we don't have an aspiration to continue to challenge and look at gas from a sustainability viewpoint and an emissions viewpoint. But at this point, with the risk being low, our strategy is focused on other activities that are higher risk for our operation. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Joseph Santa Isabel. Thank you. Good morning. It's more a comment one asking questions, but I think most of us here a little bit taken aback that we're asking to approve a pay increase for our CEO when most of us here are actually bleeding. And you mentioned before, we're bleeding, and we've been doing that for the last five years, which normally when people invest in companies, we invest in the medium to longer term. But I'm asking for a double in the last six to 12 months. So this is five years. We're now pulling money out for our normal retirement and day-to-day living expenses. We're crystallizing our losses. We find it very hard to be able to then approve pay increase for C-SOs. I would rather see that put aside and say, "If you guys can get this business to where it used to be, then maybe in a couple of years' time, we can double that increase and you can do money back." But it's very hard to justify us approving some increases when these things are happening. And I know you've mentioned a couple of times, especially twice or once two years ago now, AGM, Brian, that you can't control the share market. Yeah, I agree with you, but you can sometimes try to soften the blow. We get a lot of comments from managed funds, from brokers, from analysts. And whenever there's a negative outlook on CSL, we don't see anybody from CSL coming out to refute that. And so people get the impression and say, "Well, if nothing's coming out of CSL, what they're telling us, right or wrong, must be right." That's perception. So I don't know whether we've got an expensive, high-salary marketing team, but if Paul's in America and he can't come to the fore, surely we've got other people that can take his place. Look, thank you for your genuine question because it's clear it's very frustrating that the share price has gone nowhere for quite a while and gone down a lot lately. There's no doubt that's true. The company had a very good run for a very long time. That's also true. And so if I just step back, remembering net profit after tax grew 17% last year. I mean, so we did what we say we were going to do, and we can only repeat that if we deliver on what we say we're going to do now over the next number of years, I believe the share price will reflect that. How we deal with the perception of the market, how we deal with how we're not communicating well enough, they're all valid observations, questions. It is something we're reviewing. We believe Ken, our new CFO, will assist us in that role. Time will tell. Broad shoulders can, so we shall, but we are cautiously optimistic that we understand some of those concerns. With regard to the troubles, you've got to separate the share price from pay. It's blending two different things. We have to have people paid. I mean, you can go to the private equity model because I have some knowledge of that model as well where they don't pay much at all and the rewards are extraordinary if the companies do well. That isn't the ASX model. That's just not our model, so our model is to pay people an appropriate pay for their job and that we want people to be appropriately motivated to do their job and to be rewarded for the job. We do not believe at all remotely we overpay our executives. We don't. We think they're a fabulous team and they're here for the right reason, but the amount of time we spend on compensation, I might add, is disproportionate and distracting from trying to get on with the business. It's remarkable. The positive of it, it does improve and create a lot of shareholder engagement, which is what I like, and what Megan Clark did a phenomenal job as chair of our committee that looks after this. She met with an amazing number of shareholders, spoke to them on all the details. To some degree, we're in this difficult situation that there is a local expectation and there is an international market. It's very hard to reconcile that sometimes. But anyhow, Ken, your job now, communicate well and to see if we can do this job better. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Anthony David. Good morning, Chair. Everybody. Good morning. My name's Anthony David. You can call me Tony. I was born with severe hemophilia B and was treated with various CSL products throughout my life. Unfortunately, I'm one of those Australians, one of thousands that were infected with Hep B, Hep C, and cytomegalovirus. The infection's destroyed my liver. I've had undergone three liver transplants in the last 15 years, and if this liver fails, it's the end of the road for me. They've told me I can't get another one. The Hep C virus was removed from Prothrombinex, the main blood product that I was on, by heat treating it at 80 degrees Celsius for 72 hours. This treatment was commenced in the U.K. in 1985. Records show that CSL did not introduce this method of treatment until 1993. That's a further eight years where patients like myself were exposed to this life-threatening virus. When I received this super heat-treated Prothrombinex, I wanted to add that before we could use this product, we had to use the old stock before we had the new stock. And that went on for about six months. So at last year's AGM, he stated that the contaminated blood product issue occurred before your time. Records indicate you commenced your role as CEO and managing director of CSL in 1990. Sorry, I just got written here. Can you explain to the shareholders why you told them that this predated your tenure? And can you explain why it took CSL a further eight years to introduce an 80-degree heat-treated product for Prothrombinex? Tony, we understand the issue. I believe last year, if I recall, we were dealing with the specifics. Possibly wasn't completely clear the specifics of the person who was demonstrating outside. That's what I was responding to. With regard to Prothrombinex, we'd have to go back and look at our records if available. But I know there's been many inquiries that have looked at this, and we're happy to comment on everything we're doing to try and work with government to ensure clarity and fairness for people. Yeah. Well, with regard to CSL's motto of not leaving patients behind, I feel that there's a certain group of hemophiliacs that have been unlucky to still be alive. A lot have died and still. Look, the viral transmission era predominantly in the '80s, if you accept that, predominantly in the '80s. Yeah, it was a terrible time. But anyhow, Paul, can you talk about what we can do? Well, first off, we recognize the profound impact for you and many patients around the world and in Australia. But over the past year, we've actively engaged with the government, the Health Ministry, the National Blood Authority, right, to work with them to see how we could address the concerns raised. We've met with patients. We've met with the Haemophilia Foundation Australia. And we were continuing to work and advocate for the government who was, at the time that you referred to, we were a government entity. And then in 1994, when we were privatized, there was an indemnity done. So we are pulling out. We have a team dedicated to work on this with the government and with the patient organizations. And we will continue to do that. We've written letters to the government as well. And they've read it all and basically said that there's no indemnity there. So I don't know what the answer is. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Richard Davis. Dr. Brian McNamee, AO, Chairman of CSL. Please apologize to the thousands of living and dead Australians and to their families, all of whom have suffered because our company, tragically, imported, produced, and sold infected blood products. This disaster, Australia's greatest medical disaster, Australia's greatest medical iatrogenic disaster, should not have occurred. There is documented evidence that for years, our company secretly, secretly imported high-risk commercial plasma, which was infected with hepatitis and AIDS. There is also documented evidence that for years, our company secretly mixed this imported infected commercial plasma with Australian Red Cross voluntary donated plasma. Dr. McNamee, you're a physician. Please apologize to these people. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. There's been a number of inquiries that have looked at this issue. I'd say that it's rubbish. You know it. This issue came up before the Senate in 1995. And Senator John Coulter over and over again, trying to get it discussed, but the Senate refused. And this is in Hansard. They refused because it might affect CSL's share price. There's never been an honest review of this issue. Sorry. You're allowed to butt in. Look, I think it's fair to say that there were significant matters that occurred in that period. I think people believe CSL has more influence on government than we do. We work very hard with both the Red Cross, now the National Blood Authority, with Lifeblood and the government to try and determine what else can be done. And we have people that do that, and that's where we are. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Tristan Stanworth. Hi, Chairman. I am one of the patients who met with CSL this year, hemophiliacs. I was infected with Hepatitis C. We met with Andrea Douglas, and we asked for Andrea to please use CSL's influence to bring the government and the Red Cross to the table and discuss this matter with actual hemophiliac victims, not the Haemophilia Foundation. I've had dealings with the Haemophilia Foundation. They have said to me that what happened in the U.K. is different to Australia, and that's not the case. We've got the evidence to show it. Now, I run a group called Haemophilia Advocacy Australia. I deal with people who have been infected day after day, people with AIDS, people who have had three liver transplants like Tony David. Now, people need to know, before Tony's liver failed, he was a world champion darts player, earning a lot of money touring the world playing darts. He had that taken away from him because of greed. It was greed that caused this issue. You did not want to heat treat the products sufficiently because you would have lost yield. Losing yield means you lose money. Now, we asked CSL to bring those parties together, and the response we got was, "Let's have another meeting," and then I was told by Andrea, "You're not going to like what we're going to say at the next meeting," so we didn't attend that meeting. We washed our hands with it. CSL, the private company may not have had a hand in what happened, but your name is still attached to what happened. You need to do something to help us. We are not going away. We now have mainstream media support, and videos like you showed at the start where you're showing how the products have helped people, that's amazing. But I could show you 100 videos of people crying because their families have been killed. We've had families who have been completely wiped out with HIV, parents who have lost two sons. We've had Anthony David who could die any day. You need to do something to help us. We're asking you, we're begging you, help us. Look, thank you. I mean, the passion and the clarity is clear. And we recognize the profound impact on patients. So we'll take it back. We'll review it. Speak to victims, not the Haemophilia Foundation. They do not represent victims correctly. Look, I can understand that. Remembering that we are part of a system that included the Red Cross and most particularly Department of Health and the federal government. You also give research funding to the Haemophilia Foundation. So it's in their best interests to do the right thing by CSL. No, no, that's not. The government funds the Haemophilia Foundation. It's in their best interests to keep the government happy. You need to engage with proper victims. At the end of the day, we also have to engage with the politicians. And I think we'll continue to do that. We'll work with the minister. We are doing that as well. We're dealing with Senator Roberts. That's where the rubber hits the road here. It's a political matter. It is, I think. So we need a political will. We don't even have the authority to do it given what happened when we became a private company. We have no authority to speak on their behalf. That is clear also. I'm not asking you to speak on the government's behalf. I'm asking you to use your political influence to help victims. You do have political influence. We'll look at it again, Paul and Andrea, see what we can do. It's not a lack of awareness, understanding, empathy. We get it. These people, they also have many priorities. It's unclear how we make this their priority. Their priority so far has been to tell us that what happened in the U.K. didn't happen in Australia. We have said to them, "We have the evidence. We'll show it to you." They do not want to see it. They do not want to engage with us. We need someone with some weight behind them to say, "Help these people." Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Michael Oakley. First of all, my condolences to those two previous questioners. The people who asked those questions have obvious health issues that they and their loved ones are facing. I hear the efforts and the ambitions of the directors today. And I welcome them, of course, but they seem to me very heavy on motherhood statements. And I don't know quite what else you could say to a group of shareholders. But today, if I'm right in saying, the share price this morning has dropped by around 18%, down to AUD 178. I just ask you all, can you tell us why this is so and why the market knows something that the shareholders apparently don't? Paul, do you want to come in on our outlook statement? Yeah. No, in our outlook statement, we're very clear that the two factors that we have this year are the vaccination rates in the U.S. and China policy and Albumin, which are impacting this year's fiscal year results. And there's the reaction today, so significant. A massive drop today, down to AUD 178 in a share that was AUD 340. Now, this is the vaccination data, and you've carefully avoided mentioning Kennedy, which I guess is politically correct. But I just wonder why. This has all happened on today's meeting, and we are now faced with another massive drop in our shareholdings. As we know our forecast, as we know the information, we see the data for the vaccination rates, albumin. We share as real-time as possible for those events. That's it, isn't it? Yep. Well, we have a legal obligation to make sure the market is informed. How the market takes that data and whether it extrapolates that data as if that's an enduring impact is what you might suggest the share price shows. As I said, therefore, we disclose this information, and we have strategies in place, and we're actively doing them to show growth and performance in the medium term. I believe that'll be reflected in the share price, that it's a market that if you are slightly below what they understand you might be, then the share price drops precipitously. Certainly has today. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing John Saviljack. Good morning, Chairman and Board. Like a lot of shareholders, I think we're a bit disappointed with the share price. But my question goes to the issue of return on equity because the return on equity since financial year 2022 has been around 15%, whereas in the three and four years prior to that, it had been in the 20s, 30s, I think at one stage even in the 40s. So my question is, does that mean that this is the new normal, or are your plans for the next two years to get that back into the 20s at least? Look, thank you for the question. I'll get Paul to comment a bit more on operations, but we earn a quality return today, but we certainly want to see it improving. The Vifor acquisition added a lot to our invested capital, there's no doubt. The Behring business is earning high returns. Seqirus, putting vaccination rates to one side, is a high-returning asset. Vifor is not. That is true, so we're trying to do what we can on the Vifor cost side, and we're doing a lot of activity to try and build the portfolio. I mean, we're a big company, so to flip where we are today into 20s and 30s, that's a massive change. So we're rigorously looking at that. That's only recovering what it was three years ago. Yeah, that's fine. So I'm trying to look forward now and accept we are where we are. Vifor acquisition was done, and this is our new invested capital base. Just a follow-up question. I noticed the buyback's been paused for the last two weeks. Is there any reason why we paused the buyback? Yeah, we always pause the buyback leading into any announcement periods, whether it be the half-year results, full-year results, AGM. It's just fairly standard practice. You don't want to give the impression that you know something that might you're buying the share price on a different set of information. Wouldn't that be covered by your continuous disclosure requirements? No, not really. No. You have to work it up. Things have to be worked up. There's planning, etc. No, so it doesn't. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Peter Calogero. Hello. I'm Peter Caloyero, and I'm a 31-year shareholder in CSL. So I've been coming to a few of these. And I noticed my friend Chris Maxwell is here today. He's another one of the 31 years. A couple of questions back to the business. Before we go on, as far as the share price is concerned, I'll just quote Warren Buffett's mentor, Benjamin Graham, "In the short term, the market is a voting machine. In the long term, it's a weighing machine." That's my comment on the share price. Question about debt. In 2019, our net debt was about AUD 3.5 billion. It slowly crept up to this year's about AUD 9.3 billion, and it was over 10 last year. Net debt I'm talking about. Partially due with the Seqirus proposed split. Am I correct in assuming that after the split, this debt is mainly going to stay with CSL and not Seqirus? And also the level of debt. Are we slowly got a plan to reduce the level of overall debt? Thank you for your question. With regard to debt levels, we are looking at deleveraging down to the 1.75 times EBITDA multiple, is sort of where we feel is a sort of a reasonable number, so we're coming down to that, so we're using mainly our cash to buy back shares rather than repay debt. We think that's a more efficient thing for us to do. Seqirus timetable has now been deferred pending a view on the U.S. What we say is Seqirus is a really high cash generative business. It can tolerate some debt. We hadn't come to any final conclusion how we'd spread the debt, but in essence, both businesses can tolerate a modest amount of debt, which is what we're talking about. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Introducing Rex McKenzie. Mr. Chairman, I've been impressed over more than 20 years how this company was doing well by doing good, and I thought, "This is a company that's worth having shares in," so I've invested over that period of time, and people have gradually become more demanding of the amount of money they're making out of it. They've got used to it. What did we do this year? It's a very good result. Financially, the company is doing well still by doing good, just not so well, so I'm more interested in further developments, like, for example, I listened. I don't necessarily get the whole picture, but it looked quite a sensible thing to do to look at the research arm and say, "Well, we've got these skills, and here's this company over here that's in need of that sort of skill because it's going to take ages to get this product to market." Now, it is a good thing to get this product to market if it's a good product. So my question is, how's it doing? Which program? The Andembry or another? The purchase, I think, for about a billion of. Oh, the VarmX? Yeah. Yeah. So the VarmX program is actively in we just had actually a very deep meeting with the VarmX team at our King of Prussia site. It's doing well. We're enrolling for phase III clinical trials and looking forward to bringing it to registration. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Introducing Julian Smith. Hello. I'll start out by saying I'm actually alive because some of the products that your company produced in the past, so thank you. I just wanted to know where CSL is up to with the U.S. Administration tariff war. And I know that, CSL, that's probably impossible to answer. I know CSL has U.S. sites, and I wanted to know if that will help reduce the effect of whatever the tariff rate is threatened. Cool. No, thank you for the question. Obviously, we're working very closely with the administration. We did file what's called our 232 filing, which in fact details what you just said, that if you look at our plasma-derived therapy, all of the product is sourced from the U.S. We have about 19,000 employees between our plasma network and our plasma fractionation plants. We believe we're in a good position in terms of the investment in the U.S. and our tariff position. I worked in the U.S. a while ago, and I used to think they shouldn't be asking, "Why are things so cheap overseas?" They should be asking, "Why are things so expensive in the U.S.?" Thank you. Do we have anyone else who wishes to ask a question? Mike, we might hold you. We have a number of questions online, so we'll see how we go. Okay. Thank you to our online shareholders. The first question comes from the Murtaza family. Hello, Board. With a 15% decline in share price today, it shows that the market expectations were misaligned to announcements today. What further actions will the board and exec team need to take to ensure market expectations are aligned to the business performance and such sharp gyrations don't occur going forward? Yeah. So we have opportunity next week. We have our Capital Markets Day where we meet with investors from around the world, where we will go through the details of our strategy. We'll discuss the outlook challenges that we discussed today, but also really take the investors through the overall growth strategy for the mid and long term. Okay. Another question from that family. The company market cap is now close to 858, sorry, AUD 85 billion, which potentially is significantly undervalued to long-term growth prospects. Will the board choose to increase buybacks to increase shareholder value further? I mean, you're right at one level. Share buybacks are an efficient way of returning capital to shareholders. We have a multi-year capital program that we have identified. With lower share prices, it's true. We'll be buying more shares back, assuming the share price stays where it is. This will be an efficient use of capital. It doesn't change our plan, to be honest. Whether it's up or down 10% or 20%, we will be buying shares back. Thank you. Our next question comes from Mr. and Mrs. Mammolo.] How is your 29,000 workforce strategy predicting the impact of AI on Australian current and future jobs across the CSL divisions? Fortunately, I'll hand that to Paul. Well, no, AI is going to be a powerful assistant in really making sure that we develop medicines and get them to the patients that need them. We've actually had a very focused approach to AI in terms of how we use it right now as an assistant for our employees. So, for instance, we rolled out a new tool in our plasma centers to help the medical supervisors work through the evaluations of our donors. So there's examples. Our plant floor where our operators can ask the system questions if they're having a problem. So we're looking at AI as a complement to our great people skill sets, as well as introducing new opportunities to understand the biology and the capabilities within research and development. AI can be a powerful tool for the productivity I talked about earlier in terms of speeding up the clinical translation as well as clinical trial execution. But we want to be thoughtful on it because it's very easy to do 150 projects versus do a handful of projects very well. Right. We're going to switch gears now. The next question relates to executive performance. Can the Chair please explain simply how the executive performance process works? Look, that's a fine question. I'm actually going to get Megan Clark to answer this only because she has done a phenomenal job being chair of our remuneration committee, and we're going to lose her, which we are sad about. So, Megan, here's your chance. Thank you very much, Chairman, and thank you as well for the question. First of all, we want to make sure that CSL attracts the absolute best people that we can to be able to do the very things that we do that the chairman and the CEO have outlined. We also want to make sure that our remuneration aligns with you as shareholders. So if we just look at the CEO's performance, he has his base salary, which we only asked for a 3% increase this year. He has his short-term incentive piece, which is aligned to all of the initiatives that you have heard, the very strong focus on our operating model, getting our R&D pipeline and our R&D focus more aligned, simplifying our organization, optimizing the plasma. We're certainly the leading manufacturer in both our quality and everything we do in plasma, making sure that the yield increases are there, the margin increases are coming from our plasma business, and very significantly, how we manage capital. And our CEO has done an extraordinary job in really lifting the way we deliver capital, and you've seen the strong cash flow returns that we had last year. So that sits in our STI. And then in our long-term incentive program, we align fully with shareholders on return on invested capital and earnings per share growth. Earnings per share growth really reflecting directly into the share price. The way we structure this is also that 87% of our CEO's remuneration is at risk. And that really played out in last we had one of our long-term incentive rewards, which vested in June of 2025. And with the drop in the share price, our CEO was rewarded only at 38% of the value there. So we structure it. It's a conservative structure. It's a very disciplined structure, and it's extremely performance-based. And we straddle the fact that we are in the Australian market. As the chairman has outlined, we do not provide really ridiculous reward. It really is aligned very much to the performance of the company. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question is an R&D question. The AEGIS- II trial, while missing its primary endpoint overall, demonstrated a highly statistically significant 31% risk reduction in major adverse cardiovascular events for the subgroup of post-MI patients with LDL cholesterol over 100. This is a powerful signal of efficacy in a well-defined patient population with a high unmet need. Given this compelling evidence for an internally developed asset, why has the board decided not to finish the job and commit to a confirmatory trial to bring this potentially life-saving therapy to market? Cool. You're going to answer, so we looked in detail at those results, and like any clinical trial, you can keep on doing subpopulation analysis, and eventually, you'll see perhaps some areas of encouragement. But when you look at that from a commercial market potential, the commercial market potential relative to the expense it would take to redo additional clinical trials as well as build needed capacity to bring the product to market, the math just did not work out. So although we were intrigued and we published what we saw, we just don't see enough of a commercial market because lots of things have changed in that space since we worked on CSL 112 with the introduction of new cardiovascular medicines. So the business case just is not there. I have one more question online from the Greco family. Can you give details regarding CFO Joy Linton's resignation? She strikes me as a well-qualified and capable person. Look, thank you for the question. I'll ask Paul to comment on Joy's retirement. Yeah. So Joy is and was a great colleague for us at CSL, a real team player, and she's decided to retire from the company. And there's a strong succession planning process that the board runs for all the key executive positions, and we are fortunate to be able to place Ken in succession based on Joy's retirement. We wish Joy and her family the best of success and health, and I know we will continue to see Joy, and she'll be a strong supporter of CSL. Mike Robey again from the ASA. Just a question on the 42% voting against the Remuneration Report. Can you give us any color as to what the proxy house's concerns were? Because it looks like the future earnings, the 87% that Dr. Clark mentioned, they're quite comfortable with because they've voted for the performance rate, but against the report. I think we could all answer this, but again, I'd like Megan to answer this. I think the Chairman has outlined the disappointment with the share price as a major factor, but just to go into some of the detail that was raised by our shareholders, there were a couple of key points, particularly in the STI, the short-term incentives, so the issue raised is, why did the CEO get 124% in the short-term incentives when the share price performance has been down and really, this comes to the fact that our CEO and the executive are delivering on every one of the levers that we need to win in our markets. They are doing exactly what the board and the executive have agreed with: increase our IG margin, lift our plasma yield. They've looked at decreasing the costs, the very successful launch under our CEO of Andembry. The flu business, you saw the performance delivering in a very, very challenging environment, Vifor with a 14% segment growth, and the focus that you've heard from our CEO on restructuring and refocusing our R&D, so these were the short-term aspects that have been handled very well. The impact, of course, on remuneration has been in the long-term incentive, which aligns fully, so it really is balancing the absolute focus on the things that we need to do in the future with the reality of the outcome, so that was one issue that was raised. One other issue that was raised was sales of CEO shares, which I can talk to. I'm happy to talk to you offline in more detail on this, but we saw those as meeting our governance guidelines, and we wrote to the proxy advisor and provided additional detail on that. Chair, I have one more question online that's come in from Mr. Christopher Maxworthy. I apologize that I am unable to attend the AGM in Melbourne. My question: Knowing what you know now, would the board have proceeded with the acquisition of Vifor, noting a former member of the board resigned from the CSL board to take on the role of Vifor CEO? Look, I think the Vifor transaction from a strategy perspective still looks fine. There's no doubt we got the timing wrong. And I think that the loss of exclusivity has come faster for the iron business than we were understood, and our due diligence led us to believe. So there are things we could have done better, should have been done better, or should have been disclosed to us better. Either way, I think Vifor is a good, high-quality complementary business to us, but we did, yes, get our timing wrong on the transaction. And that is it for questions, Chair. Thank you, so ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our discussion on all items of business today. The poll will be formally closed within 10 minutes. For when I declare the meeting closed, the votes will be counted, and the results of the poll will be reported back to me and will also be announced on the ASX as soon as practicable following the close of the meeting. For those in the room, I now ask the Computershare representatives to collect the red cards which record the voting instructions on poll. Please hold those red cards to the end of the row so they can be collected. There's also a ballot box at the exit door if you need more time. I now declare the meeting closed except for the conduct of the poll, which will close in 10 minutes. We'll play a year-in-review video while you finalize your votes and exit the meeting. Thank you for your attendance. And I live with hereditary angioedema. Like a pinky swell or a toe swell when I was younger, and then it graduated into intestinal swells and laryngeal swells and facial swells. And an example of an episode would be my whole hand would swell up for no reason. And then it would take all day just to swell up, and then the next day it's somewhere else in my body, say my elbow, and then my foot to the fact that you can't put a shoe on. That pretty much dominated my life for 30-40 years. The most challenging aspects for me, the things I couldn't do with my daughter, it was a mother. I was just always sick. So my life now, living with HAE, is a 180 from what it was back then. I started a drug trial when I was 39 years old, and I'm 51 now. So those 40 years were nothing really fun, and I didn't realize how bad things were. I thought about it. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other. But there was no light at the end of the tunnel. It was just a tunnel, and you just had to keep walking. And I'm out of the tunnel. There's no tunnel. It's all light. Thank you, CSL. Thank you for this medicine, first of all, that you've changed my life. Oh my gosh. You've changed my daughter's life. I'm just very appreciative. Thank you.