Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the annual general meeting of Megaport Limited. My name is Bevan Slattery, Chairman of the company. I'd like to begin by acknowledging and paying my respects to the Turrbal people, who are the traditional custodians of the land in which Megaport's head office stands and where we're presenting from today . I'd also like to pay my respects to elders, past and present, and to extend that respect to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who are joining our AGM today. On behalf of the board and staff at Megaport, it's my pleasure to welcome you to the AGM for 2023. As we have a quorum, I declare the AGM open. I would now like to introduce you to Megaport's board of directors. Michael Reid, our Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, and I are together here in Brisbane. I also have Melinda Snowden, our Audit and Risk Committee Chair, in the room. As this is a hybrid meeting, our other Megaport directors, Naomi Seddon, Jay Adelson, Michael Klayko, and Glo Gordon, will be joining us online today. Also here in Brisbane are Leticia Dorman, our Chief Financial Officer, and Celia Pheasant, our Company Secretary. Jessie Yerna from Computershare is also in the room today as Returning Officer for the meeting. I'd also like to introduce Richard Wanstall from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Richard will be available to take questions on the conduct of the audit and the preparation and content of the independent external auditor's report. We have not received any apologies from shareholders unable to attend the meeting and have not received any questions prior to the meeting. This meeting today... Sorry, this meeting is being held as a hybrid meeting. In addition to shareholders and guests who are able to join us in the Brisbane office, we're also have shareholders and guests joining us online via the Computershare meeting platform. This online platform allows shareholders, proxies, and guests to attend the meeting virtually, no matter where they are located. All attendees can watch a live webcast of the meeting. In addition, shareholders and proxies have the ability to ask questions and submit votes. To ensure an orderly process, I'll be taking questions from shareholders and proxies in the room. Please raise your hand if you have a question. Once you have the microphone, please introduce yourself with your full name and then ask your question. After all questions in the room are answered, I will then ask questions to be submitted online. Finally, I'll move to audio questions that came through. Online attendees can submit questions at any time. To ask a question, select the Q&A icon on the virtual meeting platform. Type your question in the text box. Once you've finished typing, please hit the Send button. For those shareholders who wish to ask a verbal question, an audio question facility is available during this meeting. To use the service, please follow the instructions written below on the broadcast. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until the relevant time during the meeting. Please also note that your question may be moderated or, if we receive multiple questions on one topic, amalgamated together. Questions that have been submitted regarding other items of business will be held over until we come to those items, and general questions on the business of the company will be addressed after the meeting closes. Finally, due to time constraints, we may not get to answer all of your questions. If this happens, we'll answer them in due course via email or by posting on our website. Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. In order to provide you with enough time to vote, I will shortly open voting for all resolutions. If you are eligible to vote, once voting opens, press the Vote icon and all resolutions will be activated with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of those options. There is no need to hit a Submit or Enter button, as the vote is automatically recorded. You will receive a vote confirmation notification on your screen. You can change your vote up to... Sorry, you can change your vote up until the time that I declare voting closed. For those in Brisbane, you have been issued with a voting card. Computershare will collect your completed card, voting card, later in the meeting. The proxy votes already received are contained in our presentation today and will be displayed on screen at the appropriate time. All op en proxies will be voted by me in favor of the resolution, to the extent I'm permitted to do so. I now declare voting open on all items of business. For online participants, the Voting tab will soon appear. Please submit your votes at any time. I'll give you a warning before I move to close voting. I will now give the chairman's address. I'd like to refer all shareholders to the company's 2023 annual report, which was released on the 22nd of August this year. This included a letter to shareholders from me, as well as extensive information about the company and its operations. As set out in my letter, 10 years ago, a handful of talented and passionate people set about building a business that we believed could transform the way enterprise customers connect to the cloud. We saw there was an opportunity to build a platform that was so unique that no one had considered it possible. Our vision? To do to networking what Amazon did to computing: totally automated, virtualized, and on-demand. From these humble beginnings in a small office around the corner here in Fortitude Valley, we started executing that vision. Fast-forward 10 years, and that start-up is today an ASX 200 company, exiting FY 2023 with an annual current revenue run rate of $178.6 million and connecting to all the major cloud providers around the world. This little Australian company pioneered Network as a Service as it is today, the leading independent net provider of Network as a Service worldwide. The past 10 years have been extraordinary, filled with many amazing stories, supported by so many remarkable people. As they say, it's often more about the journey than the destination. In our case, there was no path to follow. We were leading the way in almost every respect. So the journey's been difficult at times, but also incredibly rewarding as we delivered on our vision. It almost seems fitting and ironic for me that the 10th year as the company has been probably the most challenging yet, simultaneously, possibly the most inspiring. But above all, FY 2023 for Megaport has been a year of transformation. Today, we find ourselves with a business that's EBITDA positive, generating cash, and with a new streamlined focus and invigorated executive team. We've delivered a significant upgrade in earnings, outlook, and trajectory, an annual AUD 30 million cash flow improvement in less than 6 months, and a first net cash positive quarter in history. In March, the company appointed a proven technology and SaaS leader, Michael Reid, as Chief Executive Officer. Since commencing his role as CEO in May, Michael has already had significant impact on Megaport. His experience and energy are greatly welcomed by the team, with his openness and his inclusive leadership style. A big thanks, especially to the Megaport team, who worked tirelessly to implement the transformation over the past year. On behalf of the board and shareholders, a big thank you. I'd also like to thank you, our shareholders, for your ongoing support and belief in our business as we continue to revolutionize the way the world connects to and through the cloud. Finally, I'd like to personally thank our board. I'm genuinely humbled by the extraordinary people around our table, and I really wish to thank you and for your trust and support. It has been a particularly challenging year this year, but we've come together as a board and done what we've needed to do, and a really big thank you to everyone. I'll now hand over to our CEO and Executive Director, Michael Reid, who will provide his address. Well, thank you, Bevan, and thank you for joining us here in the room and online. So over a decade ago, Megaport disrupted the market, inventing the cloud internet, interconnect and network as a service space. We have since built out an unrivaled platform in 800+ data centers across more than 150 cities, spanning 25 countries, with 284 cloud on-ramps, servicing 2,856 diverse customers. In FY 2023, the world faced a challenging macro environment. Yet Megaport proved to be the must-have technology, with low customer churn, strong expansion, and an essential component of our customers' digital infrastructure. This saw us celebrate record revenue of AUD 153.1 million, up 40% year-on-year, and exit annual recurring revenue of AUD 178.6 million, up 39% year-on-year, and an incredible AUD 20.2 million of normalized EBITDA, our first ever positive year. Strong revenue growth, coupled with improved operating efficiencies, resulted in a tremendous turnaround for the company's financial position. In Q4, we announced our first ever quarter of positive net cash flow, and more importantly, guided that FY 2024 will be cash flow positive, excluding any strategic investments. As we progress further into FY 2024, we remain focused on achieving sustainable and profitable growth, with the company continuing to return record EBITDA and positive net cash flow performance in line with our guidance. Since signing on in March 2023, I was welcomed by a passionate, world-class team with a firm belief in the transformative value that Megaport brings to our customers. Today, our product and engineering teams remain committed to innovation, relentlessly improving and enhancing our platform even further, continuing to push the boundaries of what is possible. With the recent announcement of Megaport Reach, we're preparing to expand into new data centers, sustainably unlocking new markets. We're also driving an internet exchange expansion throughout the U.S., having already launched in Charlotte, and will roll out 8 additional locations by the end of third quarter, FY 2024. We recently shared details of Project Centurion, which provides our customers the ability to upgrade to 100-gig ports, enhancing their cloud connection capacity tenfold, and catering to the world's increasing AI connectivity speeds and needs. Starting this month, we will be offering Virtual Cross Connects up to 25 gig across most major locations globally and up to 100 gig across select markets early in the new year. Global WAN as a Service also launched recently, adding to our ever-expanding suite of innovative products and solutions, allowing our customers to utilize the power of the Megaport platform to enable their hybrid cloud, cross-cloud, and global WAN requirements. With our new internet product launching soon, customers will also be able to add enterprise internet to their network in less than 60 seconds. I'm honored and grateful for the privilege to lead the Megaport team through this pivotal next chapter by solving complex problems for our customers, profitably scaling our business, including expanding into untapped new markets, and ultimately driving enduring value for our shareholders. Thank you to all staff for your dedication to executing through the transformation, which saw us enjoy a strong finish to FY 2023. On behalf of all of us, I now want to extend a sincere thank you to you, our shareholders, for your continued support. Thanks for joining us in the room and online. Thanks, Michael. We now come to the formal business of the meeting. As set out in the notice of meeting, there are five resolutions of ordinary business and special business to be considered today. The resolutions have been outlined and explained in a memorandum that was included in the notice of meeting. Each resolution will be put to the meeting. Shareholders' questions are submitted, which are relevant to the resolution, will be addressed by me. I will then advise the number of proxy votes received on each resolution before moving to the next item of business. Each resolution set out in the notice of meeting is to be considered as an ordinary resolution, and as such, must be approved by simple majority of votes cast by shareholders. Once the voting is closed, Computershare, our registry provider, will tabulate the results, which will be released as soon as possible on the ASX today. Those results will also be displayed on our company website once available. I now turn to the financial statements of Megaport Limited. You've received the annual report of directors, the auditor's report, and the financial report for the financial year ending 30 June 2023. I now invite shareholders to comment or ask questions on the reports of the company. Questions may also be asked of the auditors about the conduct of the audit, the content of the audit report, accounting policies adopted by the company, and the independence of the auditor in carrying out the audit. Are there any comments or questions in the room? Got one. Good morning. My name is Paul Donohue, and I represent the Australian Shareholders Association today. Hi, Paul. So I'm holding 31,000 proxy votes today. My first question is about the Q1 update and the share price crash that happened immediately afterwards. Do you have any- Sorry, it needs to relate to the audit report. We, the... Okay, it's the financial statements as contained in the annual report, not kind of the ASX one. Is that all right? We can hold that one to later, if that's all right. No worry. Thank you. The second one is from the annual report. It's about ports versus MCRs versus MCEs. Yeah. Okay. Physical? Yeah. This really relates to the annual report, and the financial statements contained in the annual report, and the process of the audit and the auditor. It really relates to those questions. General business questions that come from ASX things are for later. Later, then. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions online? No, there are no questions online. Just to clarify, and sorry, we absolutely take those questions. They're good questions, I'm sure. The invitation was comments or ask questions of the reports of the company that contain the annual report. Questions may also be asked to the auditors and the conduct of the audit report, accounting policies by the company, independence of auditor, and the carrying out of the audit. So, do any questions online? No, there's no questions online. Any other audio questions, operator? There are no telephone questions at this time. Thank you. If there's no more questions, we'll move on to the formal resolutions. The first resolution of the notice of meeting is a non-binding resolution to adopt the remuneration report. Please note that the vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the company or its directors. The resolution is that the remuneration report of the directors for the financial year ended 30 June 2023 be adopted. Are there any comments or questions in the room? Yep. This is about the REM report. So specifically, FY 2022 AGM concerns. The REM report says that the FY 2023 frame, framework seeks to address concerns raised at the 2022 AGM. For those of us who were not at last year's AGM, could you summarize what those concerns were? Oh, God. Concerns were around, from memory, were around KPIs, especially. The linking of KPIs and also providing a bit more transparency on the structuring of the remuneration report. So when we look at the REM report now and the AGM, sorry, the REM report that was provided, we've aligned more transparency around the STI, the LTI, and provided more transparency on the, from, at least from my recollection, more transparency on the, the KPIs that relate to it. Thank you. Just an observation, it must have- No, no, no, please. I chatted with your CFO earlier, and- I'm not sure, but that's from memory. Okay. Second one's about the CEO's FY 2024 total opportunity. Can you confirm if my understanding is correct, that the CEO's total opportunity for FY 2024 through 2026, which is the subject of this REM report, if Michael meets his targets, he gets fixed remuneration each year of AUD 1 million. SDI is 100% of that in the first year, 50% in the next two years, and LTI is 225% of one year's fixed REM, but it's only paid at the end of the three years. Fixed REM is paid in cash, and the other component is paid in equity. I'm just trying to summarize the REM report into a short paragraph. Summarizing something that's in a report in a short paragraph can be dangerous because it's in detail in the report, probably for a reason, but I can only really, I suppose, relate to what's in the report as what he's getting. Certainly, he gets a base remuneration. That sounds about right. In terms of that, so that sounds right, and from an STI standpoint, sounds pretty accurate as well. And the opportunity for him really is to hit the targets on the STI, LTI, that will then, and the share price improvement that should come with that, and then, yeah, he gets the RSUs. So if that's correct, then the total opportunity over three years is AUD 7.25 million, with a skew towards next year to reflect the opportunity cost of moving from your previous employer. Over the years? Over three years. Yeah. Sounds about right. So the summary is Michael's getting in the ballpark of just under 10% more than the previous CEO, which is hopefully you're a 10% better? I don't think so, no. No. I think it's- Total, total REM. The report suggests that the fixed REM is lower, which is true, but the total REM is slightly higher. The at-risk component is higher, yeah. The not at-risk component is lower. The at-risk might be higher, but not by anything much. So if he achieves all his targets and exceeds everything, then he will probably be about the same, if not slightly higher. If he underperforms compared to previous, then he's actually lower. Correct. We actually dialed back some of the guaranteed components. Great. All that was just an observation, not a criticism. It's good- No, no, no. It's good. Yeah. No, thank you. That's all? Excellent. Thank you. It's all contained there in your report. Yep, go for it. Hey, Bevan, team. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess it was more just around the LTI structure. There was I spoke to Steve about it. I think a couple, couple of weeks ago, but just wanted to hear from your perspective. I know a lot of companies and boards are using relative total shareholder return as, you know, as a component of an LTI, but wanted to hear your perspective on why you think it's an acceptable component of an LTI, what the rationale is, I guess. Thank you. I think we were sort of beaten by proxy advisors. That's what we had to do, so I think that's probably why we came to that conclusion. Matt, do you think three years is too short or not enough time for, you know, relative total shareholder return? Given, you know, we've seen the last three years, anything can happen, market sentiment changes quite drastically, and it's. I feel from my perspective, it would be unfair to penalize, I guess, Michael, on his efforts over the next three years, on something that's kind of out of his control, market sentiment, versus, you know, the operations of the business over a longer term. That should shine through, but three years, I guess, is a short period of time. We'd love to hear your thoughts independent of from- Yeah, look, three years seemed to be the number we could land on, and you know, obviously, currently share price is up from where it was then. So, it was a number that we landed on as part of the total REM package. It was a horizon that we thought was achievable for the next phase of growth of the business, effectively. And then to your point, things can actually change more in three years in terms of product. So this year is certainly a year of transformation. The next year is that year of, well, sorry, calendar year is kind of like the year of transformation, I suppose, is the right way to put it. From a financial year that we're in now, it sets that transformation back into growth, is really what we're looking at by the end of this financial year. Then, you know, for the next two years, effectively, we should be seeing the fruits of that growth, and not just in terms of sales, but also in terms of product. You know, and, yeah, I think three years is, it's a good horizon. Awesome. Thanks. Any other questions? Any online? We've received a question from Stephen Mayne. Yep. Would you like me to read out the question, or- Is it this one, one here? Okay. On the REM. Okay, which proxy advisors are covering this? Actually, there's two. Did any of the five main proxy advisors, ACSI, Ownership Matters, Glass Lewis, ISS, and ASA, recommend a vote against any of today's resolutions, including the REM report? If so, what reasons do they give? We did have some proxy advisors vote pretty much, I think, all four. We had some vote, some against, some was on the LTI, some was on the REM report more broadly. The reasons were, were wide and varied, I suppose. Not wide and varied, but they were, Australia seems to have a bit of a problem with paying technology company directors and executives stock or RSUs on performance, which while technically it might be a good cookie cutter if you're a 150-year-old bank, it doesn't really make sense if you're a 30-year-old, 20-year-old industry or even 10-year industry trying to fight for talent. So, we just have to take that as it is, and I don't think we're really gonna change that. In terms of the REM report, more broadly, I think most likely the REM report will probably get close to being voted down. At the end of the day, you know, we put forward a REM report that we think is the most accurate we can for the business and that suits the business, and that's all I can really say to that. As Forrest Gump once said. Which proxy advisors covering this, and please describe the engagement we had with them before today's AGM? Will you disclose the proxy votes before the debate on each resolution? Shareholders can ask questions and reasons if there have been any protest votes. So, most of them are covering us, most of the usuals. We're gonna disclose, obviously, proxy votes before the vote. At the same time, we bring that up, so we disclose it, which is our legal requirement to do so. I don't think protest votes... People shouldn't be protest voting. They should just be voting for or against the resolution. People are using proxies for protest votes, and I suppose it's a safe decision, but, you know, it doesn't make sense to me. Why not disclose proxy position at the ASX for the formal addresses and more often timely to the market? We're just doing what we're legally required to do, which is, and what we've always done, which is we provide visibility to the proxy votes at the time, which we do the votes. There's no particular reason for or against. Okay. Any other questions? Yep. No, that's it. ... Thank you, Chairman. George Palmer, Director of Faircase. I was going to talk about the grants later in the thing, but you seem to be talking about them now. I would like to bring that subject up. Sure. I think that the idea of the grants is to encourage growth in the company and to keep the executives there that are doing a good job for a long time. I just believe that a short-term incentive over one year, and a long-term incentive over three years are short-term methods. I think the short term should be three years, long term should be seven years, to encourage the building of the company. We don't want to build a mountain and knock it down next year, which is what encourages the one year and then the three-year term for the incentives. Thank you. Cool. Okay, noted. Any other questions? I think that's a question. Online? No. Okay, great. So looking now in terms of, remuneration proxy votes, as there are no further questions, the votes received in relation to this are on screen. 71,923,823 for 26,317,812 against. 123,000 votes that are open. Approximately 90,342 have abstained. Voting solutions apply to this resolution as set out in the notice of meeting. The directors abstained in the interest of corporate governance from making a recommendation in relation to Resolution 1. As this resolution, so the election of Bevan Slattery as a director. As the resolution relates to me, I now ask Melinda to address this item. Thank you, Bevan. For Resolution 2, I ask you to consider, and if in favor, pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution, that Mr. Bevan Slattery, being a director who retires in accordance with Rule 19.3B of Megaport's Constitution and ASX Listing Rules 14.4 and 14.5, and being eligible, be re-elected as a director of Megaport. As set out in the notice of meeting, Bevan is seeking re-election as a director of the company. Bevan's background, qualifications, and experience appear in the explanatory memorandum to the notice of meeting. For the reasons set out in the explanatory memorandum, Bevan has the full support of the board for his re-election. I will now turn to comments or questions regarding Bevan's re-election. Are there any comments or questions? No? Thank you. Celia, any comments or questions online? Yes, we've received a question from Stephen Mayne. I'll read out the question: Bevan has sold more than $200 million worth of shares since, yet remains chairman, and despite having sold down from 20% to around 5%. Is he planning on selling any more shares, and why has he been selling so aggressively? Does he need the money for other ventures? Also, isn't now the time to move to an independent chair? Bevan, do you want to comment on that? Although I don't think it's appropriate that, The only thing I can say, I have been relieved that there are other projects, but... I think the only thing is, it's been well documented, the number of projects I've been working on for the last 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 years, since 8 years since it's been listed. So, submarine cables around the place and things like that. They've been pretty well documented. More share sales, you know, there's nothing that's sitting in front of me right now that's saying I'm going to do anything about that. And in terms of time for an independent chair, that's something for the board to consider. I'll just comment, the board is always actively considering succession plans for all of the board members, so as any board should do. Are there any questions, audio questions? There are no telephone questions at this time. Okay, thank you. So, as there are no further questions, the proxy votes received in relation to this resolution are on the screen. The directors with Mr. Slattery, abstaining, recommend you vote in favor of Resolution 2. So I will-- Now, we've considered Resolution 2. I'll pass back to Bevan. Thank you, Melinda. We now move to the special business of the meeting. Resolution 3, I ask you to consider, and if you vote in favor, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. For the purposes of ASX listing rule 7.4 and all other purposes, shareholders ratified the previous grant of 386,379 RSUs, as detailed in the explanatory memorandum. I now turn to questions or comments regarding Resolution 3. Are there any comments or questions in the room? Celia. Thank you. My question is about the purpose of the RSUs. Is it primarily for the employee share plan? ... Yeah, sorry. Yeah, they're, they're relating to the employees, mostly. And the employee share plan, correct. Thank you. Any other questions? Any questions online? No, there are no questions online. And, any in the quorum, caller? There are no telephone questions at this time. Thank you. As there are no further questions, the proxy votes received in relation to this resolution are now on screen. Votes for 403,342,604. Votes against 1,610,132. Votes open 159,703. Votes abstaining 92,252. Voting exclusions apply to this resolution as set out in the notice of meeting. Directors unanimously recommend that you vote in favor of Resolution 3. Resolution 4. We now move to Resolution 4 and ask you to consider, and if in favor, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 7.2 and all other purposes, issue equity securities under the employee share plan, the details of which are set out in the explanatory memorandum, be approved as an exception to ASX Listing Rule 7.1. Are there any comments or questions for Resolution 4? The annual report says that eligible employees normally receive AUD 1000 worth of shares each year under the ESP, but no shares will be issued for FY 2023. So why is that? Do we do shares or just straight cash? That's right. Yeah, it was a couple of reasons. One is, it was a bit of a tough year last year, but, we just didn't go ahead with that. Sorry, take that back. One other thing is that we actually ended up paying out the PBIs, the performance-based incentives to staff. We paid them in stock instead. Thank you. Any questions online? There are no questions online. Any questions on the phone? There are no telephone questions at this time. As there are no further questions, proxy votes released in the resolution are now on screen. Votes for, 99,477,723. Votes against, 215,669. Votes open, 122,231. And votes abstained, 5,389,309. Voting exclusions apply to this resolution as set out in the notice of the meeting. The directors unanimously recommend you vote in favor of Resolution 4. For Resolution 5 A, I ask you to consider, and if in favor, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purpose of ASX Listing Rule 10.10.14, and all other purposes, shareholders approve the grant of 517,680 performance restricted stock units to Michael Reid, as detailed in the explanatory memorandum. Are there any comments or questions on Resolution 5A? Yep. Did you do the math for me? If the resolution is to grant 507,680 PRSUs, what's the current value of that grant, roughly? What's the share price right now? About $5 million yesterday, so. Okay, there you go. On the record. Okay. Thank you. Are there any comments or questions of Resolution 5A, apart from that? Any other in the room? Any online? We've received earlier a question from Stephen Mayne. Okay, let me go through that. Okay, given the interest... Here we go. This is 5 A. Could the CEO summarize his past LTI grants as to whether they have vested or lapsed? Also, has he never sold any ordinary shares in the company or bought any on market without relying on the incentive scheme to build his equity position in the company? Please don't say, "Look it up in the annual report," and through ASX announcements. It's complicated, and the CEO could be factually summarize the situation in 60 seconds. I mean, I'll summarize in 60 seconds. I mean, he's only been CEO for about 4 months, so, I don't know how he is adding to his previous base or the previous situation. So, he's only been CEO for 4 months. Everything's in the explanatory memorandum, and in terms of his shares, and he hasn't bought or sold any shares since he started. Thank you. Any other questions from the telephone? There are no telephone questions at this time. Thank you. Okay, as there are no further questions, the proxy votes received in relation to this resolution are now on screen. Voting solutions apply to this resolution as set out in the notice of meeting. Directors abstain in the interest of corporate governance from making recommendation in relation to this Resolution 5A. The votes for, 51,136,637. Votes against, 47,112,917. Votes open, 122,130. Votes abstained, 5,120,983. For Resolution 5B, I ask you to consider, if in favor, to pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. That for the purpose of ASX Listing Rule 10.14 and all other purposes, shareholders approve the grant of 460,160 PRSU to Michael Reid, as detailed in explanatory memorandum. Are there any comments or questions relating to 5 B? ... Similar to last time, it's just turning that big number of PRSU into a dollar value. That's AUD 4.3 million. Okay, thank you. Yeah. At today's value? Yeah, okay, great. Not at the point we gave them, but today's value. Keep it up, buddy. Probably wouldn't be highlighting if it was at AUD 2, but you're good. Are there any comments or questions relating to 5B apart from that, in the room? Any questions online? Stephen Mayne, and we got one from Stephen. Excellent. 5B: Given the interesting discussions across a range of topics today, including the incentive plans for the CEO, could the chair undertake to make an archive copy of the webcast, plus full transcript of the proceeding available on the company's website? The likes of Nine, AGL, ASX, ANZ, Domino's, and Lendlease all produced their first AGM transcripts in 2021. Will you follow suit today? This is something IAG has been doing since 2003. Okay, so I don't know. We don't need to do it. We haven't decided to do it, but we'll take that on advisement and consider that. Let's blow that out. Excellent. Any other questions from the telephone? Audio. There are no telephone questions at this time. Sorry, I show my age. God, I'm that guy now. I'm over 50. We're not using telephones? Okay, no audio questions. Thank you. Great. Voting, there are no further questions that are going to come. There are no questions, the proxies are on the screen, as shown on here, 66,720,862. Against 31,526,733. Votes up, 122,260. Votes abstaining, 5,122,812. Voting solutions applied as resolution as set out in the notice of the meeting. The directors abstained in the interest of corporate governance, of making recommendation in relation to Resolution 5 B. That concludes the items of business. I'd like to advise that all voting on all resolutions will close shortly. I'll provide you with a few moments now to allow you to finish your voting. Please finalize your voting now. For those in Brisbane, the member of Computershare team will collect your voting card. She's coming through now. Everyone good? All good. Okay. Voting is now closed. The results of these votes will be released later today on the ASX. On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank you for your attendance and participation online today. Thanks for your interest in the company, and we look forward to your ongoing support. This brings the formal proceedings to an end, and I now declare the meeting closed. Yeah, uh- Yeah. A general question. Yeah. So shareholders are now invited to ask general questions, the business and management of the company. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. George Palmer again. Customarily, at these type of meetings, the company would normally give an indication how the results to this part of the year compare with the previous year. Can you give us that information? Thank you. That's all contained in your report. At this point, the annual report takes us to a certain point, but that's not that point yet. Okay, our quarterly report came out last week. This is an annual general meeting, just to be kind of clear, and if we want to give an update, the fact that we actually gave a quarterly update last week, which then also gives you comparables to the year before, we thought would actually suffice for people. But if someone wants to pull up the quarterly report for me while I'm here. Sorry, I don't- No, no, it's, Right now. Oh, okay. Let me... Well, I'll give it to you. Hang on one second. Got the quarterly. There we go. So, that's quarter-on-quarter. So it's quarterly... I'll get the 4C out. 4C. Oh, got it. Thanks, yes. So the, so there's the executive... So sorry, I thought it was the mic. So from an executive summary standpoint, I'll actually go through the 4C itself. So on the previous year-... the revenue for the quarter was up AUD 46.5 million, which is up from, I think, the previous... No, actually, it only gives comparison to the previous quarter. Sorry about that. But to give you an idea, from our annualized revenue, it's been consistent. So the previous quarter was up 5% to previous, to the previous quarter, and the previous quarter from the year before, we did quarter-on-quarter comparisons. The previous quarter was up 38% from the previous year. So that's a quarterly kind of update. So from our quarter we just closed, we're up 5% from the previous quarter. So, and from a year ago, that was up 38% from a year before. Comparison was Reach. Oh, perfect. So if you look at last quarter that we just closed, revenue was AUD 46.5 million, up 38% year-over-year. Gross profit was AUD 32.4 million, up 49% year-over-year. EBITDA was AUD 15 million, up 1,400% year-over-year. Net cash flow was up AUD 5.6 million... Sorry, it was AUD 5.6 million, up AUD 22.8 million year-over-year. We burned AUD 17 million the previous year, this time a year ago, and the exit annual run rate was AUD 189 million, AUD 189.8 million, up 36% year-over-year. Just, it was good. Anyone else? Yeah. Oh, hi, Nick. Just ask about Megaport Reach versus kind of the traditional business. I don't know if now is the time to go through it, but could you just talk about how it differentiates or how it's different from the traditional setup? Just 'cause obviously it relates to your expansion into new markets. I think you used the word sustainably. So could you just explain, you know, is the infrastructure itself quite different or how- No, it's just a different model, effectively, right? So previously, we had to build a business case to go into data centers, and we had to buy the fiber, buy the colo, do whatever, or sometimes we'd come to an arrangement with a data center operator. We're always flexible, but we probably decided to productize that and make sure, you know, if there's a data center, there's—we're always approached sometimes by data centers to go in their facility, but the economics for us didn't make sense. You know, we needed a certain amount of ports and VDCs to make the revenue fly. Sometimes we got commitments from data centers to do that, but really what Megaport Reach for us was saying, "Hey, you know, if you're a data center provider and you want to see..." Pardon me. There's a model in which we'll both share a little bit of risk. From that side, they might, for example, do the connectivity and the colo. We don't need much colo in some of these small sites, just only, you know, that much space in the data center. So, you know, it basically helps enable data centers and data center potential partners to allow us to extend their facility with just a slightly different kind of change in economics, where there's a bit more potentially rev share on some elements of it. So they'll get a slightly bigger piece of the pie for a certain element at the beginning. So really, from our standpoint, I think if we just stuck to a rigid model of how we deploy, there's usually, like, a AUD 7,000 a month hurdle we need to get over. Whereas under the Reach model, it's, it's less than that. Potentially, new markets will structure something even more interesting, like big new markets we want to get into, if we want to partner in those markets rather than just deploy ourselves. And sometimes we might consider that because it might be a regulatory nightmare going in some of those markets if we did that alone, just from a licensing, whatever standpoint, because we've got commitments from data centers to do that. But really what Megaport Reach for us, we're saying, "Hey, you know, if you're all the infrastructure needed," and they just want a platform. So from a Megaport Reach standpoint, it gives us the optionality of that as well. That can help you get into the new markets a lot more efficiently. Yeah. New markets, potentially. And it's just, we're already doing some of this stuff anyway, but it's just putting a brand around it and actually creating a product of it and actually just going out with it. That's, you know, Michael kind of went, "Why don't we just call it Megaport Reach?" Actually, yeah, it makes sense, you know, 'cause it... Oh, okay, and the fact that you're bringing it up and asking: Oh, what about Megaport Reach? We've got to get those questions from data center providers. Oh, we could, you can use this to get us in there. And it just makes it an easy conversation to have with people. Just a question on sort of the strategy going forward. Are you - How do you think about prioritizing getting into new markets, so installing more equipment versus growing the revenue from your existing customers with new products? We've always looked at new markets. I think there's a couple of—there's a bunch of analysis being done. The exec are doing that as well right now. Michael's only been in the seat for four months, but part of our growth is products, markets, and existing customers, new customers, right? So, if we go into new markets, there's existing customers that will follow us there. If we go into new markets and we can take more product sets and things in there as well. I think it's reasonable to expect we'll always look at new markets, but I actually think there's some key strategic markets we're not in that, you know, I would think, you know, this time next year, or even, you know, by the end of next year, you know, we want to be in them. They're, they're big, meaningful markets that we want to be in one way or another. They're like, like, country markets, not metro markets. Great. No, I'm not going to tell you which ones. And I'd appreciate it if you did stick around as the chairman. Thank you. We'll see. The person I mean. Oh, excuse me. One more. Oh, thanks. Go for it. Yeah. Today, this is about ports versus MCRs versus MVEs. There seems to be a lot of... You read the market commentary, a lot of obsession on customer ports and them going up. Looking at the- Sorry, what was it? Sorry. Just talk about- Sorry, there seems to be a big focus when you read commentary about Megaport, about customer ports and the trajectory going up. But we look at the data in the annual report that shows quarter-on-quarter growth; number of ports is strongly correlated to number of customers. The ratio between customers and ports hasn't changed in a year . Same with the cloud router; again, it's related to the number of customers. And they're headed up in line with customer growth, which is good. But the Megaport Virtual Edge is different. It seems to be growing much faster than the growth in customers. I just want to know, is there some reasons why it's been so well received? I appreciate it's coming from a small base, but it's growing fast. Also, the annual report talks about how much more profitable a customer who uses multiple device, multiple services is. So maybe a bit of comment on that. Yeah, okay. I think a couple of things to note, and if you, if you're unable to join the quarterly calls, that we've had historically, I don't know if they're available online, are they? They're all online. I really encourage people to have a listen to the previous quarterly calls. Especially the one when I kind of took over in April, when I did the quarterly call in April. 'Cause it was a pretty cathartic kind of part where I, you know, I had to... I stepped in in March and had to do the transformation. You know, one of the things from a board standpoint that, you know, even we weren't aware of, was the number of-- so the number of ports, you're absolutely right, that ports, VXCs, there's a correlation between pretty much all of them. But the thing that was really the most corollary thing that wasn't obvious to us is that when the company made the decision to invest much more heavily in channel, there was a thing from the board that we said, "Okay, we're okay to invest in channel, but don't do it at the sacrifice of direct." Right? Direct's been the 70% of our revenue's been direct, 30%'s been channel. We're gonna invest really hard in channel because over in... The logic was in 2-3 years, we think channel will be 70% through massive growth, and direct will be 30% of kind of new ports. So there was a decision to do that, but we said, "Okay, we're okay. We'll fund that, and we'll understand the logic behind it, but what we don't want to do is you don't touch the direct. 'Cause if that investment doesn't work out or if it doesn't bear fruit, it's a new kind of model, it's a new model to what we do in some respects, then we don't want to interfere with that. And that was the mandate. Go ahead and do that. So kind of early February, we found out that in all of North America, we only had 4 direct salespeople. It had reduced from 15 to 4, and I spoke about this in the call in April. And so what had happened is that a significant number of salespeople were moved from the direct part of the business into the indirect channel part of the business. In retrospect, I could probably understand why, is that so much personal capital, professional capital, had been put in that model, that they wanted to see it succeed no matter what. Now, so I think there's more of a correlation in terms of salespeople and ports and revenue and those types of things, growth, on the number of salespeople than, than anything else. So, you know, when I kind of came in in March, it was a pretty chaotic, you know, seven weeks. It was a pretty chaotic three months, to be completely candid, four months. What, because I've, I've been in the business a long time, from the beginning, I suppose, I understood a couple of things pretty quickly. One is I could see a big problem in sales in North America. So fortunately, we got Michael to come on, he's nearly hired every seat that we needed to fill. Only started in October. Most of them started in October, right? So you didn't see it last quarter because, well, there was no one there last quarter. But I knew that by the fact of what had happened, we have to rebuild that. So I called out that quarter. I said, "We're gonna have a soft Q4, we're gonna have a soft Q1. We will hopefully see green shoots, green shoots in Q2, but possibly Q3. Definitely Q3, and we'll see momentum turn into sales in Q4." So, you know, just starting to see those metrics change. So, you know, I'm disappointed in the numbers of the metrics that we've reported in terms of those key metrics. I care a lot about those metrics because I think they... We're moving away from those being the only kind of metrics in terms of growth. We think Global WAN will be fantastic. You know, some of the other products we're doing will be good, but they are, for the next period of time, still gonna be the kind of the bread and butter of, at least from a KPI, how we're performing type thing. Now, unfortunately, you know, we literally only have, you know, those, that sales. I think he's hired something like 23 people in the space of three months, which is remarkable, and just didn't hire, you know, people. We hired people that were enthusiastic and had a different level of experience, right? It's no good to have experienced people who aren't enthusiastic. It's no good having experienced people that you can't, that can't be surrounded by some enthusiastic people that have some knowledge, but a rather enthusiastic person that's passionate and driven around a team of really good people, that we can grow them, but you still have to have your experienced team, that they're the leaders. Michael's done an amazing job in recruiting those. So the other thing that, you know, I'm just cathartic, being transparent. You know, the other part that we noticed, and we spent a bit of time talking about these ports, these aggregation ports that had happened. So you go back 7, 8, 9 years, you know, we were doing very few cloud ports in a quarter because, you know, one, even 5 years ago, the role of the port was different. So we could go to Amazon, put a 10-gig port into Amazon, do lots and lots. We could do 50 customers, 60 customers into one port on Amazon.... But then about 5 years ago, they changed the rules a bit and said about contention and things, and we're always really good performance. But they kind of changed the rules on that with us, and then—which we're okay, that's fine. It's how it is. Same thing with Microsoft. They had a 2-to-1 contention, Amazon did something different. Now, the sleeper in that part of from us was that some of those cloud ports were still kind of counted as customer ports in the thing. So what we also then did, I could see the cross-connect rev costs, our costs, going up significantly. So we did this big aggregation project where instead of having lots of these 10 gig ports to Amazon or Microsoft or whatever, once they made 100 gig available, which was only in the last 12-18 months, we pushed so hard to do this cost out reduction aggregation, but it actually affected ports as well. So I think it's a very long answer to what seemed to be a very simple question, but you're right about those metrics in terms of wanting them to be better. We want more new customers, but we can't add customers without salespeople or ports or MCRs. The MVEs, and we're really working hard. We kind of started giving some metrics in this last quarter, the four Cs, so make sure you get the quarterly report. We probably, I'm not committing because we've got to be sure, we're looking at focusing on revenue generating ports, right? Because sometimes, MVE is a good example. You'll see one quarter will go incredibly well and one quarter kind of go down. The great part about Megaport, one of the great things about Megaport is it's all fully automated and live. You know, we don't have just, we do have a production of obviously a live environment, production and testing, but a lot of our partners want to test, you know, like Cisco, whoever, they want to test proof of concepts with their customers, on our production environment, and we give them a code to do these proof of concepts and things, right? But the problem is that they kind of put a customer name in and do these things, and it can actually skew it in a quarter when you've got such a small MVE, such a smaller base, as you said, it can kind of cause variability. So, you know, we kind of looked at this quarter and went, "Oh, how come this is down?" When, no, it's actually not down, it's actually up when you look at revenue generating. It's just that they did a big proof of concept last quarter. So our focus is to get even more transparent around and clearer around the KPIs. So we're going to work on it this quarter, hopefully for the half year, get that done and give a two-year look back on how does this look so you get the historical context of it. I can see Nick shaking his head, being an analyst over there. So you can do your models and things like that. But the second part is, and what I said back in April, we expect to see it's going to be a soft quarter, Q1, Q2. We only just hired the people in October, so. And, anyone who's been to North America, you know, you've got Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. You know, it's a, you've only got about three productive weeks in North America now from this point forward. So it's going to be a bit of a, it'll be a little bit kind of soft, but we'll start seeing the pipeline fill, I expect, in Q3, and we'll see the results coming through in Q4. So that's pretty much what I said in April, and it hasn't changed now. People, the reaction that happened from people this quarter that just happened, I can't explain why, except that maybe people thought the sales momentum would have picked up, but I was really clear it wasn't going to happen because it just can't happen. You've got to hire the salespeople, you've got to put them in seat, you've got to give them training, give them the territory, and get them to set up a pipeline. It's any experienced person who's run a company or a sales force knows, you know, you can't plonk 20 people in a chair a month after the quarter is closed and expect them to have a change of number, but you can't even do it in that quarter. It's not going to happen. And, and I was just trying to be transparent that maybe some people got a bit ahead of themselves, really excited, but that's, that's the, the laws of, of sales, unfortunately. So, and again, I just want to give full credit to the whole team who've worked incredibly hard. I've seen a whole change of how the organization recruits. You know, there's interviews. You must be available the next day, within 24 hours, that day or within 24 hours. Get this thing, get it done. They've done an amazing job. So I'm really pleased. So Q4. Q4 results, screenshots, Q3. Thank you. It's a long answer. Any other questions? Hey, guys. Thanks again for the questions. Rob from Blue Stamp here. I guess you highlighted on the earnings call, Michael, this new, you know, internet service for- Michael, why, why don't you come up and answer some of these questions? I'll get him to answer some of these questions. Awesome. Rather than talk about him as if he's not in the room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Third person. Just wanted to check, you, you kind of highlighted a few things about how... I know it's not launched publicly yet to, to, you know, the wider customer base and or even a few of them yet, but just wanted to check out how, I guess, it works with the underlying network. Will it, will you need any additional capacity, dark fiber or anything, or is it largely utilizing, utilized network capacity? It's interesting. So, we already have an internet product that links to MVE, and so the MVE platform, which is our virtual edge, is basically an ability for vendors to spin up their hardware, well, what was traditionally hardware, the software component of that, on our hardware in the data centers that we support that in. And then what happens is, for SD-WAN, if you're familiar with software-defined WAN, for you to leverage that, you need internet. And so the move from MPLS towards internet is SD-WAN. So you're basically using internet as the connectivity platform versus what was traditional MPLS. We're getting a bit technical here, but basically, for you to access an MVE, you had to have internet. So we've actually had an internet product that's always bundled tightly with MVE, and we never offered that to our customer base beyond MVE. Because it's basically, if you want it to an MVE, you've got to connect to it, you've got to get through it via internet. So actually, we already had the platform. We've gone through the huge amount of the process to get that done. We- ... When I jumped in the seat, I sent out a questionnaire to all customers. It was quite a long questionnaire around what could we do better, what do you love about Megaport, et cetera. And one of the feedback around product was what do you wish we did? And a lot of it was internet. And so, beyond MVE, if you're a customer that sits inside the platform today, you can spin up a connection to any cloud provider, any data center, you can do that in 60 seconds. But we never had an option for them to go and connect to internet, enterprise internet, which is kind of it's sort of a no-brainer, actually, when you sit back and look at it. And so the team's been working to launch the product. The reason we haven't launched it... It's actually available technically. What we need to do is go and update our contracts globally, and I think we needed a month, looking at Jim in the audience, I think it was a month of notice. And so then as soon as that's done, the platform ticks live. So there's no infrastructure requirement to go and add it to the platform. It's a great offering, actually, like, it's an additional, I call it the arrow in the quiver. You know, more arrows in the quiver for the team to bring value to our customers. That is the game. Awesome. True-born salesman. Thanks, Mike. Love it. I guess, yeah, just you can stay out there. This is another one for you, Mike. Okay. I guess, you know, you're, you're from Cisco. Cisco was, you know, before you were here, I guess, touted as an emerging growth opportunity with the integration with vManage being on Cisco's global price list. Just wondering if you had any comments or from the broader team as well, around how relationship with Cisco has tracked, or whether that's been completely deprioritized within the organization? No. So it sort of goes back to Paul's comment earlier as well, around MVE and the success that we've seen in that space. Certainly, it's off a smaller base, but if you look at it, I think, Paul, you were alluding to the fact that we're adding more MVEs faster than we're adding customers, as an example. And the point to that is that's quite a, I call it a newer product for Megaport. It's a couple years old, but still a newer product. But it's something we can take back to all of our existing customers, which is why we can grow that significantly faster than the existing customer base. It goes back to the strategy around arrows and the quiver. Like, the game is so much easier to sell more to an existing customer and add value to an existing customer than it is to go and hunt and find a new customer. Now, we need to do both, but the point is, by adding the arrow and the quiver, we've got an opportunity to do that. So MVE is a great option for that. We will continue to expand our partners in that space. So if you look at it, Cisco, Palo Alto, Fortinet, Versa, and there's a whole range of other companies that want to add their platform in there. It makes a lot of sense. You basically spin up a software platform inside our data centers. It's a really great opportunity. Obviously, I was at Cisco for a long time, had a great tenure there and great reputation inside that business. Hopefully, I was speaking to Bevan's parents about it earlier, so they were even giving me a good little pump up, which is nice. And so, we've doubled down on that relationship. In fact, when we launched just recently, shout out to one of our team who's gone and actually upgraded their contract that we have with Cisco. One of the challenges on their price book was we couldn't offer month-to-month billing, and it was more of a limitation of what Cisco could deliver. They're not traditionally used to a month-to-month service, to be frank. It's different. And so we've just launched that. Well, we're in the process of launching that at this point in time. So we're actually reinvesting the engineering team on our side and the partnership inside companies like Cisco. Cisco is the one that we have sitting on their price book, which means 30,000 sellers can go and actually sell Megaport without any interaction from us. It doesn't mean that it happens, and that's what I think. I think maybe, you know, we're not talking about millions and millions of just instant sales, but it's, it's a process for it, but still a great opportunity. Fantastic. I'll ask one more question, then I'll pass along. This one's probably for Letitia and I guess, you know, the broader board, but, yeah, AASB 16 Leases, it's, you know, great for looking at the financial position of the business, but it's wreaked havoc on income statements. I'm just wondering if you guys are looking at a different metric internally for profitability of the business or pre-AASB 16 EBITDA, or... And if you intend to, I guess, you know, release, I guess, a pre-AASB 16 EBITDA metric to the market. Sorry, a bit technical. I thought I wasn't gonna have to speak at this one. So I guess from us, a big part of our cost cut program was also understanding every single one of our contracts, which is thousands and thousands of individual contracts. So everything that we do around our connectivity within data centers, within metro, within national, international, involves quite a complex setup or simple setup, depending on who you talk to. But a lot of them are, each contract will be 1 year, 2 year, 3 years, depending on what we signed up to. And so part of that does fall into that AASB 16 rule, where you have to recognize it on the balance sheet as opposed to within the P&L, and that's just simply an accounting treatment thing. So in terms of what we're intending to do, we haven't... It's more simply we've gone out after the least cost to Megaport for those contracts, and that's been the focus of us over the last 9-12 months, really. And so that will continue, that effort will continue. And it's really just about getting the best value for us, Megaport-wise, rather than worrying about if it's EBITDA, non-EBITDA, if that kind of answers the question. In terms of a metric, not something I'm particularly focused on, because the bottom line to me is cash out the door. Pleasure. Or in recent times, cash in the door?... But you gotta pay them to cash out the door. It's nice to pay them on time. I think there's one more question I have. Celia, is it the only one that we've got from online? Correct. Just the one. See if I can go and find it. Here we go. One from Stephen Mayne. An easy one. Could you please lobby CommSec to lend against your stock? It's not... I don't think it's about me. Why doesn't this happen when we have a market cap of AUD 1.5 billion? CommSec happily lends 80% against CBA shares, but won't lend a dollar against Megaport. Do we have a banking relationship with CBA that could help fix this? I don't think the company does have a relationship. I mean, I personally bank with CBA, but I don't think that's gonna hold a lot of water. But at the end of the day, I think the investment banks and those guys really determine their own, or banks or brokers determine their own, margin lending. Seems like margin lending. So, you know, I don't know anyone at CommSec, actually, but it's something, you know, we could follow up and just ask the question why? But I almost feel a bit conflicted. I don't really want people margin lending against stock. The short is all right. So, yeah, it's a good question, but I'm not sure the answer why. It's probably a question more for CommSec to ask. Any questions on the audio? There are no telephone questions at this time. She said telephone. That's what put me off last time! She's playing with me. Okay, thank you. If there's no more questions, I'll declare it closed, and I think we've got some, it's already closed, but some biscuits and tea and things. We can all have a chat. Now, to the board, thank you very much for being on the call and for everyone here today, thanks for coming. Really appreciate it. Thank you.