Today's presentation, Don will actually do both. He, as a company director, will run through with his company director hat on the financials. Then with his portfolio manager hat on, we'll give you a market update and a portfolio update. Then, as I said, we will wrap up with some Q&A. Don, over to you. Thank you, Chris, and good morning, fellow shareholders. If we move through to the results, you know, the big headline thing, and it is an Income Maximiser, that dividends were not only restored, but in fact increased to a record level in the June quarter. At the headline level, the company did record a AUD 12.9 million loss. This is really due to unrealized losses in the portfolio as we saw markets come off quite heavily, particularly in June, although they've largely rebounded. In fact, probably if we'd had that rebound in the last just finished financial year, we wouldn't have even had the loss. It's just due to that market fall in the month of June. The portfolio did have a negative return, so the actual investment portfolio returned -3.2%. That was actually nearly 2% better than the benchmark. The benchmark is actually the S&P/ASX 200 index return, including franking credits, a franking credit adjusted index. The market actually fell around 5% last financial year. Our investments of PL8 fell around 3.2%. Total dividends paid was AUD 0.0655. If we look at those dividends, we started the year paying AUD 0.0045 a share in the September quarter. We increased that to AUD 0.005 a share in the October quarter, and then further increased that to AUD 0.0055 a share in the June quarter, which is the highest monthly dividends that PL8 has paid since listing. We also, on top of that, directors declared a special birthday dividend in May. PL8 actually listed or Plato Income Maximiser listed in May 2017, so it went through its fifth birthday in May. Directors felt, given particularly the income generated in the year, because it was actually a record year for income, despite that headline loss, we actually earned far more income in the current year than in previous years. Directors declared that special dividend, so that was another little boost for shareholders. In terms of distributed income, essentially that AUD 0.0655 a share reflects about a 7.5% yield, which is about 2.1% better than the index. Since inception, we've actually distributed about 2.3% more than the index in terms of yield. In addition, it was in the first half of the year, in November last year, we raised, or the company raised nearly AUD 140 million through a very successful wholesale placement and share purchase plan, which was well received by shareholders. While the headline number is a loss and markets did fall, we have seen them bounce back subsequently. From an income level, it was actually a record year for the company. Just, again, focusing on that portfolio performance, while the market did fall quite heavily in the second half of the year, financial year actually fell 9.3% or 5.1% for the total year, the portfolio actually only fell 6.9% in the second half of the year, so that was 2.4% better than the index. As I've already mentioned, 1.9% better than the index over the whole twelve months. Since inception, the portfolio has returned 7.7% of total return, which is about 0.2% better than the market, which is one of our. You know, we have two objectives in this fund. One is to beat the market in total return space, which we have done, and the other one is to deliver more income, which we have also done. I'm very happy to say that we have met our objectives in the first five years of PL8. Just in terms of the realized yield from the market over the last 12 months, the cash dividends were around 4%, and there was another 1.4% on top of that if you'd invested in the S&P/ASX 200 index. PL8 actually distributed 5.2% cash in dividends and then the further 2.2% on top of that in terms of franking. You can see we've delivered more income in the last 12 months. This is a slide not of... That goes right back to the start of the underlying investments of PL8. PL8 actually invests into the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund, and that fund has now been running since September 2011, so it's coming up almost for 11 years. Both the income and the total return are plotted on this slide. The lines at the top, the dark blue line is the total return of that Plato Australian Shares Income Fund, including franking credits, and the gray line below it is the total return of the S&P/ASX 200, including franking credits. You can see that Plato Australian Shares Income Fund, and this is actually after fees, has actually outperformed the market over since inception. At the bottom of the slide, we've got sort of the jagged, you know, sort of lines. This represents the distributed income from the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund versus the market. Again, you can see. There's an increasing gap there between what is being paid out by the fund versus the market. Those two slides encapsulate that the underlying fund that PL8 invests in has actually both outperformed the market in total returns at the top and delivered more income along the way, which is its objectives, which are exactly the same as the objectives of PL8, which is why PL8 invests in it, or one reason why it does invest in it. Moving on, we now have the slide for dividends paid and you can see here over the last 12 months that dividends were increased. They were actually increased in the September quarter from last year, last financial year. They were further increased in the December quarter, and then they were further increased to a new record high of AUD 0.055 per share per month in the June quarter. A good dividend position. This slide does not include special dividends. It excludes the May special dividend that was paid, the birthday special dividend. If you look at the NTA performance during the year, the NTA did actually fall over the year. It fell for two reasons. One, the market fell or portfolio performance. I mean, the market did actually fall during the year, as we've mentioned, and you know, that's what happens with markets, but it's subsequently rebounded. There were some company expenses, but they are very minor actually in the scope of things. There's the dividends that were paid out by the investors, or to investors, to shareholders. Actually our NTA did fall from AUD 1.13 to AUD 0.984 a share on a pre-tax basis. That doesn't include franking credits, but I'm happy to say that by twelfth of August, it had actually rebounded to AUD 1.04. You can see the difference. What a difference a few months makes, given you know, markets do go up and down. There was quite a lot of volatility, which we'll talk about in the market update later on. There's obviously a lot of things happening in the world at the moment. Here we have another slide looking at how the share price has traded versus its NTA. I'm happy to say that the dark blue line there, which is the share price of PL8, has continued to trade at a premium to the gray line, which is the grayish line, which is the pre-tax NTA. Indeed the premium has actually increased over the course of the year. We did see a fall in the premium when the new shares were issued, when we did the placement and the share purchase plan. There was a fall in the premium to NTA, but it still remained at a premium. It subsequently moved back up, and I think that's just what happens when you issue shares. You increase the number of shares on issue that there can tend to be an increase in. It's an increase in supply, so the share price will temporarily fall. It's great to see that share price increasing relative to the underlying NTA, and I think that's just reflecting the you know, the shareholders are pretty happy with the income that's coming out of PL8. Another pleasing thing over the course of the year, because we did the share issue, but we've actually now done two share issues. If we look at, you know, the five or just over five years now since listing of PL8, we've basically doubled the number of shareholders from the initial raise, and not quite because of the market falls, but we've virtually doubled the growth in assets of the company. I think that's good for shareholders. If you have more shareholders and a bigger company, that provides increased liquidity, and I think it means that PL8 is likely to trade better, you know, given it's of larger size. It's certainly a view that larger LICs are more liquid and tend to trade better relative to their NTA. If the bigger you are, the better you are, so to speak. I think that's another pleasing thing, that PL8 has been almost able to double itself since listing. Okay, I will now move on to the market update. As I mentioned, there's been quite a few things happening in the last 12 months. One of the first things is that you know, we have over the last couple of years had a record low level of interest rates. In fact, it's interesting that even in February this year, Philip Lowe, the governor of the RBA, was still expecting interest rates to stay at the record low of 0.1% out until next year. Of course, that was February and this is now. This is a longer term chart of the actual RBA cash rate in black. That's the current cash rate is now approaching 2%. The Westpac forecast, I think Bill Evans and his team at Westpac have called the interest rate cycle over the last 10 years pretty well. They're actually now calling for interest rates to rise to around, to peak at around 3.6% in February, March next year. That is a forecast. That's the gray line at the end there, but the black line is the actual RBA cash rate over time. I think what we find now is this longer-term chart shows a couple of things. First, it clearly shows that we are in a cycle. We see interest rates are rising. They have risen before in 1994, we saw a significant rise in interest rates after we came out of the recession that we had to have. Interest rates fell as we went through that recession, and then they've risen sharply in 1994. In fact, I think the current economic environment looks very similar to 1994. For those who can remember, in 1994, we saw interest rates rising around the world. It wasn't just in Australia. Bond yields rose significantly, and equity markets fell. Now, when bond yields rise, bond prices fall. You saw negative returns on bonds and negative returns on equity. That's precisely what we've seen this year, particularly in the first half of this calendar year. We've seen interest rates rise, we've seen bond yields rise from very low levels, which means bond returns are negative, and we've also seen markets fall, you know, sell off as I mentioned before. You know, it's very similar environment, I think, to 1994. We've also got some other things thrown in. We've got rising inflation, and we have a war in the Ukraine, which was one of the reasons for the rising inflation because it's impacted energy prices and other flow-on factors. You know, we are back to a cycle, but this is nothing new. It's just perhaps people who haven't been in the market or haven't looked at markets all that much, if you've only been in financial markets for the last 10 years or 11 years, up until a few months ago, you would have never have seen interest rates or official cash rates rise in Australia because they've only been going one way, which is falling for the last 11 years. We're now back to a cycle. I think that is the big change. The cycle is back. I also mentioned that inflation is rising. Well, I'm not showing it. Here I'm plotting the real earnings on AUD 1 million. If you put in AUD 1 million either in a term deposit or in government bonds, what would be the real interest rate that you would get? Now, what is a real interest rate? The real interest rate is the rate after you deduct the rate of inflation. I just mentioned inflation has actually risen. In fact, inflation hit about a 30-year high in June of this year at 6.1% and is likely to go a little further. Now, if you take 6.1% off the actual interest rate you're getting on a term deposit, you are actually losing nearly AUD 60,000 because term deposits were virtually yielding you nothing. Bond yields have risen. In fact, bond yields have risen this year, as I mentioned before, but they're still only around the 3% mark. If you take off 6% inflation from 3%, you actually get about a -3% return. If you have a million dollars and you lose 3%, you're actually losing around AUD 30,000. You're losing nearly AUD 60,000 if you're investing in term deposits currently, and you're losing nearly AUD 30,000 if you take account of inflation. Even though interest rates are rising, they're not keeping up with inflation at the moment. I think investors are still scratching their head where they can get decent income at the moment. Just summing up. Going back, this is a bit of history, but it's what I did mention before in the company update that actually it was a record year for PLA in terms of receiving dividends from companies, or it actually receives distributions from the underlying investments, which is in the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund. It was actually a record year for dividends since the listing of PLA and in terms of the amount of distributions that PLA got for two reasons. One is that PLA got bigger because after that obviously the raising capital, the company is bigger. Secondly, we had a record period of dividends. In fact, AUD 40 billion dividends were declared in the February reporting season. That was AUD 7 billion more than the previous year. It was actually greater than the pre-COVID level, and led by the likes of BHP and some of the energy stocks, Woodside, Santos and Ampol. Whilst on the negative side for inflation, energy prices are going up, it's actually good for the earnings of energy companies and it's good for the earnings of materials company. You know, BHP continued that run. Obviously it doesn't affect last year's results, but BHP declared another large dividend in this month. And indeed for BHP's financial year ending thirtieth of June 2022, it paid out the largest dividend ever in its history, which is $3.25 fully franked, and that's $3.25 US. Huge dividends from those sort of resource companies, et cetera. There were some negatives in terms of stocks like Lendlease and AGL and Fortescue, which has lower quality iron ore, cut its dividends. I mean, one of the benefits of BHP is a diversified player and it benefited largely from increased coal prices. It has been actually a pretty good, you know, last financial year, the one just gone was a very good year for dividends. The other thing which is a highlight of the last 12 months was things like tax effective buybacks, and we've just got one here. We participated in the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund, and so essentially with PL8 in the Westpac buyback. For tax exempt investors, for retirees, et cetera, that buyback was worth about 12.4% and we participated in that. It was one of many buybacks in the last 12 months. It's actually been a record year for buybacks across the market, and we've participated in many of those. I think it's still the case though that if you actually look at the Australian market, it's still highly concentrated. We need to look out there because the top 7 stocks represented around two-thirds of the dividends of the whole market. There are 4 banks, and there are 3 iron ore miners, although BHP and Rio are diversified miners there, they still represented most of the income. We still have a very concentrated market, with 60% of the dividends coming from just the top 7 dividend players. Just again, this is sort of a bit of history, but how did we get a lot higher income than the market in the last 12 months? Well, it's because we got more dividends from some of those stocks. We did participate in some record, you know, some great dividends from the likes of Fortescue and BHP in the last 12 months. Even Telstra, which just recently increased its dividend in the latest reporting period, had a pretty strong dividend, and we're overweight Telstra when it went ex-dividend and Woolworths and some of the banks. You can see there's a broad contribution, even stocks like JB Hi-Fi, which is continuing to deliver very strong results. The one at the bottom is the biggest, actually. There were a large number of these buybacks and also a special dividend or spin-off dividend from BHP, which I think we've included in the buyback period as well, because when BHP spun off its Woodside assets, it's actually treated as a fully franked dividend. That was another little fill up for shareholders in terms of franking credits. Overall, a very strong year for dividends. I would say there's always a few dividend traps, and Kogan has continued to deliver that. It cut its dividend by 100%, dropped it out 12 months ago and had another poor result this year, actually. It's gone in for losses. Lendlease has been struggling. I think, you know, some of the problems we are starting to see and emerging with inflation is the costs are going up, and it's certainly hitting building companies and developers such as Lendlease. There were a couple of others. That's part of our process to avoid dividend traps. You know, we actually try and avoid the stocks like Kogan.com and Lendlease, so we're out of them before they announce poor results as much as we can. Now, just looking at the market and, you know, it has been a bit of a tough time, but we've been showing this chart for a number of years now, and if you've listened to some of these results or Plato presentations, you've probably seen this chart before. The way we avoid dividends is we actually go try and predict the likelihood that individual companies may actually cut their dividend. Then we can aggregate that up at the market level, and that's what this chart is here. We look at the individual probabilities of companies cutting their dividends, and then we average that essentially across the market or actually weighted average based on the size of the company. This chart was very helpful for us because, you know, that process is very helpful because when the pandemic hit COVID 2.5 years ago, we very quickly determined that dividends would be massively cut across the market, and they were. This model also quickly showed that things improved a lot, and in fact, we had a period where dividend cuts were much below expectations. Now, it has ticked up a little bit. We obviously got the uncertainty of inflation, which is increasing company costs. We've got Ukraine war, which is a negative for some companies, but actually a positive for many Australian companies such as the energy stocks and even a GrainCorp, which can benefit from higher grain prices due to the Ukrainian war. This probability is ticked just above the long-term average, but it's nothing like, you know, the GFC and nothing like the pandemic. I don't think it's anything to worry about at the moment. It's clearly there are a few, you know, dark clouds on the horizon from the Ukrainian war. We are very and forever vigilant. In fact, we rely on this predicting the dividend traps to try and avoid stocks that may disappoint. I've probably said enough. I mean, you know, what's the sort of summary at the moment? Obviously, well, I should say interest rates were at, like, historic levels in 2022, but they now have risen. They have risen dramatically in the last four months. Term deposits are rising, but they're not and interest rates are rising, and that's challenging all asset prices. We've seen housing prices come off here in Sydney and Melbourne, and certainly it's affecting the prices of shares. I think the good news was we saw record dividends in 2022, and we're still seeing some pretty good dividends even in the current reporting season. The Plato dividend cut model has risen, but it's within the normal range. It's only just above average. We're still seeing some very good dividends out of the energy iron ore miners and banks. Commonwealth Bank has just reported an increase in its dividend. We're forever looking for those tax-effective buybacks, which were at a record level last year. You know, there's a lot of uncertainty, but we're still probably relatively positive for the outlook for income over the next 12 months. Happy now to take some questions, should there be any questions. Great. Awesome. Thanks, Don, for that. First question actually follows on a little bit from what you've just said. Sally asks, "Thanks for the run-through of the February dividend season, but we're now nearly through the June reporting season. Any notable observations from this reporting season? And what does it mean for the income in the portfolio? Yeah. Well, I mentioned a couple of stocks already that have done well, which is BHP and a record full-year dividend from BHP. And almost depending on how you cut it, a record profit for BHP. BHP actually spun off its oil and gas assets, so it's actually half the company. You know, not half the company, but it's less of a company than it was twelve months ago. And yet its profit was only just shy. Its total profit for the year was just a whisker lower than its sort of peak in the last cycle. That was a pretty good result, I think, from BHP. Given the, you know, CommBank result was good. We think rising interest rates are positive for banks. I know some people are worried about bad debts and in recessions and other things, but I think there's a bit of scaremongering there. I mean, the reality is, if you look back through previous cycles when interest rates have risen, banks are generally able to increase their net interest margins. They're slower to raise the rates on like term deposits and deposits they pay depositors. But they pretty much straight away increase their mortgage rates. You tend to find a rising net interest margins when interest rates go up. There is some, I think, some. I actually think, you know, we're still gonna do the analysis on it, but I think the August numbers will still look very good. I think we'll have a good dividend period when we finish up in the next week or so. I think the real issue is what are companies talking about looking forward? That's where the storm clouds are. We certainly are starting to see the impact of inflation. Some companies are concerned about rising interest rates, whether that will dampen, say, consumer discretionary spending, which it quite likely will. Having said that, though, but so far the results have been pretty good. You know, there's an air of caution, but I think I'm still fairly optimistic looking forward. I think, you know, the RBA will move rates up a few more times, but then I think it will stop and some people are predicting the interest rates will be going down by this time next year. Great. Just a reminder, if you do have a question, just drop it into the Q&A box there. Don, there's a couple here. I'll group them together. Steve and Nathan both ask, "Are there any plans to do a further capital raising, this year or this financial year, FY 2023? Well, you know, that's something that, you know, the directors may have discussions about, but they can't really signal to the market about anything that happens. I mean, you know, directors are always looking about what they may or may not do, but it's not something that we can flag to the market. I think I'll have to pass on that one. Chris, I mean, you're a director as well. You can maybe say it as well, but I mean, the reality is, you know, we can't talk about what we may or may not do. Look, I think it probably is fair to say, Don, that we are conscious that shareholders are keen to potentially put more money into the company, and that the premium to NTA can sometimes be an impediment to that. The board is well aware of that. Keith asks, "What is the dividend reserve?" Don, you know, and if you don't know the numbers, I'm happy to take that. Always, I think the franking balance is probably the most important constraint, if you like, on dividends. Last I checked, Don, it was the franking reserves of PL8 enable us to pay a fully franked dividend of just over AUD 0.06 a share. You know, I think. The way I think about it is almost like a year's worth of dividend cover from the franking reserve. Obviously that balance is building all the time as dividends come into the portfolio. I don't know if you had any other comments on that. Yeah. Well, I think you sort of answered it. We did have a record year for distributions or income coming into the fund last year, and we didn't pay it all out. We actually have built up excess reserves, which as you said, can virtually pay out a franking. From a franking point of view, virtually a year's worth of dividends. Directors are keen to have that kitty in there because that gives us some, you know, if things get worse than we expect and some companies cut their dividends, we'll be able to, you know, maintain it. Of course, when Chris says there's a year's worth of dividends, but we'll be receiving more dividends throughout the year. It's not like we're gonna run out in a year's time because we'll keep replenishing from the dividends we receive. You know, it's been a pretty good reporting season so far. There is a substantial, I mean, you can go to the annual results and look at our retained earnings and the franking account balance that Chris has mentioned. We have built up fairly substantial reserves. That's good because we don't really wanna have to cut the dividends. Directors would like to pay a continuing, you know, a constant stream of dividends and certainly wanna maintain paying a regular monthly dividend. We are the only listed investment company, to my knowledge, in Australia that pays a regular monthly dividend. Indeed, we'd be the only company in the world that pays a regular monthly fully franked dividend. Okay. The questions are coming in, thick and fast as they were, so we'll try and get through them. Maria asks, "Don, your chart on probability cut of dividends is interesting, but I suppose, how have you actually fared in reality, you know, versus those predictions? Well, I think this model, I've just flipped back to that, this, has been actually pretty accurate at calling dividend cuts. The two peaks of it were in the GFC and in the pandemic, and that you know, reality was very similar to this chart. Similarly, you know, when the probability of dividend cut is below average. It's when dividends increase significantly. It's almost like a you know. So the higher the probability of dividend cut, the lower the likely dividends are going to be, but the lower the probability of dividend cut, the higher they are. So it's actually been a pretty good model, and it's also been a very good model for avoiding stocks like the Kogan.com of the world or the AGLs, or going back a few years ago, the AMPs when they cut their dividends. It has actually been, I think, you know, a very good protector of capital, and that's, you know, if you're chasing high yield or, you know, trying to invest in companies with high dividends, you do need, you know, the one risk and the big risks you face is that, the companies that pay the highest dividends may actually have, you know, if they've overpaid dividends or if things change and, you know, sometimes stocks with the highest yield are really the stocks you wanna try and avoid. It's been a great model pretty much since the start of the underlying fund. It has helped save our bacon on a number of occasions. Don, Peter asks, and those on the line who don't know this, PL8 invests in the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund. I think Don may have mentioned that during the course of the presentation. The question from Peter is: Are there any advantages for shareholders in PL8 for PL8 being invested directly in the unlisted fund? Well, you're essentially getting the same investment. I would say one of the advantages at the moment is that, if you invest directly in the fund, you always buy it at the basically NTA of that fund. Although you do actually include. You actually have to pay for the franking credits that are embedded in that fund or those that are, you know, if it's pregnant with franking credits, you include that in the asset value. At the moment, it's always gonna be at basically NTA, whereas at the moment, PL8 is actually trading at a premium. What you don't get is you don't get regular monthly income. That is certainly a feature of PL8, is that regular monthly dividend. The fund actually pays out quarterly distributions of income, and you know, so if you want monthly income, you'll only get it in PL8. If you don't care about that and you know you have a new investment, well, you can actually buy it cheaper in the fund. That's, you know, it's just the way it is. The managed fund is unlisted. You need to fill out the form. You can't buy and sell it on the market, whereas in PL8, if you've got a stockbroker or a broking account, you can very easily buy it and sell it without filling out all that quite long paperwork, actually. Okay, Don, last one, just to prove that we don't only ask the filtered questions, if you know what I mean, Gaetano, I hope that's the right way to say the name, asks, "Morning, Dr. Hamson. Any plans to reduce the management fees for PL8 in the future? Yeah. Well, on that note, I'd say, unfortunately for shareholders, no. We believe the fee, which is at 80 basis points plus GST, is actually, you know, very fair and it's actually less than what we charge in the managed fund. The managed fund fee is actually 90 basis points. There are no performance fees like there are in some other ones. And we have actually seen, and whilst there are some listing costs, et cetera, we have seen in the year the sort of, well, I call it MER, but the actual total cost of that investment has come down because there are other fees on it because the fund has grown a little bit, or the PL8 has grown a little bit. The actual total costs as a function of the vehicle have actually fallen during the year, and that's one of the benefits of actually doing a capital raise, is because there are some fixed costs. If you raise more money, you actually lower the total sort of costs of running the vehicle. At this stage, there is no plan to cut the management fee. As you say, Dr. Hamson, your performance numbers are all after fees anyway, and the objective is to beat Yeah. the markets after fees, so, okay. Well, I think that's all we have time for, Don. Thank you very much for your time, Don. To the audience, thank you very much for listening in. As I said, if you do wanna get a replay, just watch your inbox today, and we'll get a replay of this session off to you. We just thank you very much for your support, continued support of PL8 as a shareholder. Yes, I would echo those words. Thanks, shareholders.