Okay, good morning, fellow shareholders, and welcome to the Plato Income Maximizer Full Year twenty twenty-four Results conference call. We appreciate you dialing in on a Friday morning on what looks like a very spring-like day, and here in Sydney anyway. We thank you for your time this morning. My name is Chris Meyer. I'm a director of PL8. I'm also an employee of Pinnacle Investment Management. We are the distribution partner for PL8, and we handle a lot of the investor relations for the company. I'm joined today by Dr. Don Hamson. Many of you know him. He's the portfolio manager of your portfolio in PL8. He's also a fellow director on the board of PL8. And the main event today: So, you know, there's two parts to this presentation. Results for the twelve months to June of the company, but really, I think what most of you want to hear is Don's view on the market, and I guess in particular, the results season from the ASX 200 companies that we're sort of in the middle of, maybe at the tail end of, so it's hot off the press. We'll flick through some slides. These slides are available also to you on the PL8 website and the ASX. If you wanted to grab them from there, and we will endeavor to also get you a replay of this presentation by the end of today. If you do have a question, please punch it into the Q&A box. I can see some of you have already put in some questions there. Okay, so without further ado, let me get straight into the presentation just on the company. As I said, it's the twelve months to June of this year. The market was up a bit. The portfolio, as a result, was also up a bit, about as much as the market. You can see in the middle of that table, portfolio and market up about 13.6%, including franking. That drove a pretty substantial profit for the company, which is very handy in terms of the profit reserve, in order to, you know, which is relevant in order to pay a distribution out of the company. And on the far right-hand side, you can see there, we have paid dividends at a pretty steady rate of just over that half a cent per month, at AUD 0.0055 per month, which translates to AUD 0.066 per annum. And if you convert that to a yield, it's 7.8%, including franking. So a very healthy level of income, which is, I'm sure, why the bulk of you are invested in PL8. And those final two bullet points really is a good reminder of the twin objectives of PL8. The first one being to beat the benchmark or beat the market, from a total return standpoint. And you can see there for the year we equaled the benchmark, but since inception, we've been slightly ahead of benchmark. That's the first objective. The second objective is to beat the income of the benchmark, and you can see there, reasonably substantial 2.3% outperformance to that benchmark since inception, and a pretty good year, 2.6% outperformance, for the financial year end of June. Some of that can be seen graphically here. So this is the NTA differential between the start of the year and the end of the financial year. So we went from $1.04 to $1.08. I think it's just worth reminding investors that for most listed investment companies, the light blue bar is the change in the market or the change in the portfolio, plus any outperformance, and the gray bar, the big gray bar, dividends paid. Those are the two major impacts on an NTA at any given year. You can see there, as I've commented previously, we had an up year, which drove the light blue bar, and we paid a reasonable amount of that performance out as a distribution to shareholders, which is the gray bar. You can see that graphic on this table over here, and so probably the most relevant are the two columns on the right. I don't think we need to focus too much on short-term performance, but over one year, and this is now to the end of July, just because we're at the end of August, so it's more relevant than showing you something to the end of June. For the one year to the end of July, the total return of the portfolio has been 15.2%, and that compares to the benchmark total return. You can see there of 15%, so that's that slight outperformance from a total return standpoint. But you can see the income of 7.8% is 2.7%, that second row from the bottom, 2.7% ahead of the benchmark's income over that period. And if you look at since inception, that income performance of 7.6%, very similar to the excess income performance for the year, sort of 2.3% outperformance. And there again, you can see in terms of total return, 10.1 against the benchmark's 10.1, in line with the benchmark since... Or slightly ahead of the benchmark, as we showed in the prior slide, since inception. This is a bit of a graphical representation, just for the last 12 months to the end of July. Again, the dark blue bar is the cash dividend, and the light blue bar is your franking, and that's on the right-hand bar is PL8, and on the left is the market. And so again, you can see the income outperformance of PL8 is driven in part by a higher cash distribution, and in part by a higher franking credit that they distribute, that we distribute to you. Over the very long term, we have discussed the fact that the dark blue bar, which is the portfolio's performance, compared to the gray bar, which is the gray squiggly line, which is the market. I think what's probably just worth indicating here is there has been a bit of outperformance, but it's really, you know, the portfolio is very well correlated to the overall stock market. I think that's what shareholders want from the portfolio is, you know, no surprises, if you like, relative to the market's performance, and then the bottom two lines, the dark one being PL8's income distribution, including franking, and the bottom one being the market's distribution, including franking. Really just shows that the bulk of the additional return that PL8 has been able to generate has come from that income outperformance over time. This is really a graphical representation of the distributions you've all received on a monthly basis, and so I suppose you can see there over the last, what is that? Two years, just in excess of two years, we've been paying income at that AUD 0.0055 per month. It's pretty metronomic at that level. I think it's a big benefit of a listed investment company. We're one of the very few listed investment companies or trusts paying monthly income, and we're the only one that's an Australian equity-based listed investment company paying a monthly distribution. So it takes a bit of time for one to be able to produce such consistent monthly income. PL8, given such a long history and the strength of its balance sheet, can now do that for shareholders, and you'll see we have in on the light blue bars on the far right-hand side committed to pay the next two months' worth of income at that same level. Finally, just on the NTA and the share price relative to its NTA, which is the light blue squiggly line on this chart. You can see it seems to have settled down at that 10% premium to NTA. I think it's an indication of the fact that PL8 now has a very strong track record of delivering on what it has set out to do. So more buyers, I guess, than sellers means the stock is trading at a slight premium to its NTA. I think that's frankly a better outcome for shareholders who want to buy additional shares to, you know, to pay a 10% premium is better than paying a 20% premium. So the board, I think, are very happy that we're still trading at a premium and probably frankly a more realistic premium than those 20% plus premiums that we were trading at two or three years ago. So I think that's it from me. We thank you for your shareholding. Obviously, the fact that you have enjoyed your experience in PL8 is represented on this chart where, you know, we're trading at a premium to NTA. It's one of the few LICs in the market still trading at a premium to NTA, and I think that's credit to, particularly to Don and his team for the management of the portfolio. So Don, with that segue, let me hand over to you to give us a bit of a market update. Thanks. Thanks, Chris, and good morning, fellow shareholders. Before I go into the market update, I thought I'd just do a little segue and talk about one of the reasons for being of PL8. You know, primarily the target, I suppose, audience is retirees or self-funded retirees who are looking to live off the income from their investments. They no longer have a monthly salary or weekly salary, but PL8 pays a monthly dividend. In fact, you probably should have got an email in your inbox this morning with the details of the August dividend that should hit your bank account today. And the good thing about if you're retired and you have superannuation, then investments, or at least the first AUD 1.9 million of investments, are tax-free in super, and you get a full refund of franking credits. And I suppose our philosophy is, 'cause the one problem you do have with being retired is you have longevity risk, but if you can generate enough income from your investments to fund your retirement, and you don't have to sell anything down, then that's a good place to be, and that reduces your longevity risk. Just to highlight the tax differences on the next slide. You know, we primarily focus on self-funded retirees who are tax-free, and you can see the value of a fully franked dividend is actually worth... Excuse me, I'll just have a drink. Sorry, a bit of a frog in my throat, but the value of a fully franked dividend, you get a full refund of the franking credits, so AUD 1 cash dividend is actually worth about AUD 1.42. That's why we generally talk about the gross dividends of Plato and the gross yield, because you do get those franking credits back. And franking credits are worth more than any other form of income, so it's great to have that, but if you look at the value of that income, it's very important. The next slide I think highlights the value of those franking credits, and in fact, the value of income from Australian shares. I've taken 19 years of data, not because it's a round number, but because the index I'm using here, that's an S&P index, which includes franking credits, and it started 19 years ago in the start of July, basically 2005. So we've got 19 years of history to the end of June this year, and interestingly, if you just look at the price index of the ASX, I've used the 300, but the 200 is virtually the same. Australian share prices have only grown about 3.2% per annum for the last 19 years. That's not actually all that exciting, and in fact, if you just look at the capital growth of, like, a unit price or what have you, of an investment, that would have been an index fund, these are using index returns. AUD 1 unit price would have actually grown to not even AUD 2 over those nineteen years, so you haven't even doubled your money on a price terms. But that does not count. Share prices don't count the income that you received. When you look at the accumulation index, that includes cash dividends, and that's a much healthier number. It's a 7.6% compound return over nineteen years, so it's certainly better. But that excludes the franking, and the gray line at the top of this chart here includes the value of franking that's sort of reinvested. And that turns the return to 9.1%. And importantly, if you actually sort of look at that chart, one dollar is now accumulated including the franking to about five dollars. And that looks a lot healthier to say you've gone one dollar and now it's worth five dollars over those 19 years. So the income and franking credits are incredibly important for there. Now, I'm not sure what happens to our slides, but we'll see if we can get those back. And the slides are also- Give me a sec. I'll try and get them back out. You just crack on there. Yep, yep. The slides are available. They have been sent out, and they are available on the ASX website. We released them this morning, so you can actually go there and look at them as well. But it's interesting. If you look at the returns on Australian shares, our income levels are much higher than global shares. So, if I were to do the same charts, and I have them there, we'll get them in a minute. But the global shares have a much lower yield, but they have had much stronger capital growth. So if you actually go over the same time period, the MSCI World, which is an index of ex-Australia index of global shares, has actually generated about 6.8% price growth, which is substantially more. And thanks, Chris. Slight technical error, but we'll get there. If you look at this chart. Go back to the previous one, please, Chris. This is just the price, comparing price growth of the Australian market, which is in black at the bottom there, that 3.2%, same 3.2%. The MSCI World, which is up 6.8% compound, and that's just as price terms. I've also thrown in US shares, which obviously recently the Magnificent Seven, and before that the FANGs, et cetera, has had magnificent, yeah, fantastic growth, is up in price terms, 9%. So Australia looks pretty pathetic really when you compare that. If we go to the next chart and we start adding in income, this is where the Australian market starts to stand out. Australian equities have a very high yield, partly because of our franking system. It encourages companies to pay dividends, whereas in the U.S., for example, their tax system discourages companies from paying dividends because they have double taxation. So the yield on U.S. shares is less than 2%. The yield on global shares is only around 2%. So you can see when we add cash dividends in, Australia in the black line has not quite, but almost caught up with global shares, although it's still a fair way behind U.S. shares. But you only get franking credits in Australia, and so when we put through the next chart here, what we find is that once you allow for franking, over the last 19 years, Australian shares have actually outperformed global shares. So, the income that's generated from Australian shares, and I think you're probably in PL8 because you know that, is very, very strong, and that income, and particularly that icing on the cake, I call it, the franking credits, has actually made the total returns of Australian shares higher than global shares over the last, well, let's call it twenty years, but it's actually nineteen years on the chart. I think it's just reinforcing probably the raison d'être of PL8 is, income is very important. It's extremely important in Australia, and so are those franking credits, and we've been able to generate much higher income and franking than the market. So, I'm probably preaching to the converted, but I think it's an interesting challenge because I have had some people say: "The share price hasn't gone very far." Well, that's because the share price doesn't include all that income, great income that you'd be able to fund your retirement with. So moving on to the market update itself. These are preliminary numbers. They're up to yesterday, so they're very much hot off the press. They are our estimates of the current reporting season, which is the August reporting season. And by and large, I've got dividends up, but dollar value down. It might, doesn't make sense, maybe, but if you actually look at it, the average company did increase dividends, and both at the average and median levels, so at the dark blue and the light blue column suggests that the average dividend increase was reasonably healthy, as was the median. But the very last column, the total dollar value of dividends actually fell by about 1%. For it went from AUD 35 billion last year to AUD 34 billion this year. This is up to yesterday. And the main culprit for that fall at the dollar value level has been the fact that companies like BHP, which I'm going to talk about them a little while later, and Woodside, some of the bigger companies in the resources area, have actually trimmed their dividends because iron ore prices have been down and energy prices have been down a bit as well. But it's been a very mixed result. A lot of the companies that we've been talking about for a while, the insurers, have done very well. Insurance Australia Group, a pure play insurance company, increased its dividend by 89%, increased its profits by 100%. QBE, a strong dividend increase as well, and Suncorp. The electricity generators, AGL and Origin Energy, have bounced back, and that's because electricity prices are higher, so you're feeling it in the pocket. But if you're an investor in those companies, you're making better profits, and you also had substantial increases in dividends. The one, I suppose, bright spot in the resources sector this year has been gold stocks, where we've seen, in the likes of Evolution and Ramelius, 150% increases in dividends because coal prices have continued to go up, whereas most commodities, iron ore, lithium, nickel, have gone down. And indeed, that's one reason why some of the bad news in the resource sector is some of Pilbara Minerals, a lithium miner, didn't pay a dividend, didn't pay in February, didn't pay in August, so it's a 100% reduction. Mineral Resources also has some lithium in the bag, and Whitehaven Coal dropped its dividends by 69%. There were some ordinary results in some of the other sectors. Tabcorp, down 70%. Magellan Financial, down 49%. They continue to have fund outflow. Orora's made a pretty shocking takeover. It cut its dividend by 44%. Seek, starting to get tougher in the job market, down 30%. But overall, 58% of companies actually increased dividends, so it's not too bad. 9% were flat, and 33 reduced, which is a bit above average. But, you know, it's sort of a mixed bag there. If I move on to some of the individual results, I'm gonna start with what is now the biggest stock in Australia. It overtook BHP. CommBank reported a slightly lower but almost flat result, generated about AUD 10 billion in cash profits, which is not bad, by any stretch of the imagination. And while their profits were actually slightly down, management was confident enough to actually increase the dividends from AUD 2.40 last year to AUD 2.50, their final dividend, which is a 4% increase. Basically, I think the reason they've increased their their dividend payout ratio to around 80% is because that flushes out all the franking credits, and historically QBE has been able to actually do buybacks to return excess franking. That's no longer allowed, so I think they're trying to pay out all the franking that they have, and hence they increased their payout ratio. The other thing is, all the banks have excess capital. It's only CommBank and Westpac that have excess franking, so they're able to sort of increase dividends. Westpac did it, especially in May. Whereas ANZ and NAB are actually returning capital via buybacks because they don't have excess franking. I think the one most important thing to note about the CommBank results, the very last line there, their bad debts were only nine basis points. That's actually less than last year, and that is, you know, there were a lot of doomsayers around talking about mortgage cliffs and people not being able to fund their mortgages. There would be all sorts of problems. There'd be huge bad debts, there'd be foreclosures, et cetera. That has not eventuated. Bad debts across the main big four banks are actually very, very low, and I think it's one reason why the bank stocks have rallied very strongly, because, those bad debts have not eventuated, but the problem with the share price have gone up means the yield, the yields on these stocks have actually fallen. So, you know, CommBank is now looking pretty expensive, but it still pays a good chunky dividend. Another thing I think to note, and this is a slide straight out of the CommBank result. I think it helps explain why there's a lot of negativity in the Australian marketplace, but also why things aren't as bad as... You know, I went - I lived through the recession we had to have, and it doesn't feel like a recession in Australia at the moment. But it is a tale of two halves and, or in the way CommBank calls it, cost of living impact, impacts are unevenly felt. If you look at a couple of the slides there, in the middle, there's some spending numbers from CommBank. They split it up into essentials, and everybody's spending about 3 or 4% more on essentials, because that's what the inflation rate is, and you have to pay your electricity bill. You have to buy your food and pay your electricity bill, so people are spending around 3-4% more this year than last year on essentials, but it's the discretionary items that have tell the tale, and there is a case of younger people who are probably feeling the brunt of mortgage increases and or rental increases if they're renting homes, because we've seen big increases in rentals across Australia. They're cutting back on discretionary items. They're not going out as much or they're trading down. They're actually going backwards, probably about 5% in real terms. So these numbers, in nominal terms, are down 1% or a bit over 1%, but if you add inflation in, that means people are probably spending 5% less in consumer discretionary items. On the other hand, older people, probably a lot of shareholders in PL8, are actually spending more, and indeed, their savings are still looking very strong. Older people who have paid off their mortgage, have money in the bank, have share portfolios which have generally gone up, it's been a pretty good year, and they own their own house, which has gone up, are feeling pretty good, and they're still spending. Half the economy is still spending well, and the other half are battening down the hatches a bit. Interestingly, though, if you look at some of the results of the retailers, they haven't been as bad as people thought. You know, one of the headline ones there is JB Hi-Fi, which we've been overweight for some time, actually. They seem to have done very well over the last three or four years. Whilst their earnings were down a little bit, they are actually about 4%-5% above what the market expected, and well, if you look at the total dividend that they paid, they actually increased. They paid a final dividend of AUD 1.15 last year. They paid a total dividend this year, final dividend plus a special, of AUD 1.83. Now, AUD 0.80 of that was a special. Their ordinary was actually a little bit lower than last year, but they're again flushing out franking by paying that special dividend. And interestingly, they noted that the outlook, or at least the early results of their July sales, they reported them for the first three or four weeks of July, were up about 5.6% here in Australia and up a very healthy 12% in New Zealand. So the outlook's looking a bit better. We've got, obviously, tax cuts coming through, which might have been one of the reasons why the Australian sales are a bit stronger than they were last year. Moving on to the insurers. I've already talked about them, but some pretty good results there, particularly the pure play IAG. As I mentioned, 100% increase in earnings, 89% increase in dividends. It's only 50% franked, but it's still a pretty healthy dividend. You know, we've been backing the insurers. I know it's, it's a bit of pain when you, open up your insurance policy and you're paying a higher premium, but if you're a PL8 investor, you can at least say, "Well, at least I own some of those insurers, and actually their profits and their dividends are growing, and that's helping pay the PL8 dividend," and so, the PL8 dividend is gonna be, you know, where it is because you're getting some good, good dividends out of the insurers. Next slide is BHP. Now, BHP is probably, you know, wasn't the greatest result, but how can you say that, I mean, its impact, it reports in US dollars. It made $13 billion, or, you know, nearly $14 billion USD. That's AUD 20 billion. That's actually double what CommBank made. But CommBank's actually capitalized higher than BHP. That's a pretty good result, I think. It's trading on a yield close to 8% when you include franking. And it's got some growth options coming there. It's been investing heavily into potash, which is one reason why its payout ratio is not as high as it maybe could be, because it's investing in the Jansen Potash Project. That's 52% complete, so in a couple of years' time, we'll start to see some contributions, hopefully from that. And it's also looking to significantly increase its copper output going forward. And copper is actually probably one of the stronger commodities at the moment. We need copper for everything, not just EVs, but everything, and copper prices have held up pretty well because there isn't a lot of new supply coming on, and BHP hopefully will bring some on. There's always a few laggards, though, and you know, a couple of fund managers, our fellow fund managers have struggled. Perpetual and Magellan are seeing fund outflows. They've cut their dividends. They were stocks that we had predicted would cut their dividend. Pilbara Minerals, I mean, obviously, lithium miner, lithium prices have fallen dramatically, so we knew they weren't gonna pay a dividend, and these are some of the stocks that we avoided. 'Cause it's not all about getting, you know, buying the stocks that are good, but it's also avoiding the stocks that are bad. And finally, as an outlook slide, I think this is quite good because... And I've shown this slide for a little while. Part of our process is we, you know, obviously, we buy stocks and trade stocks for dividends. We buy stocks usually a couple of months before they report. So we're taking - when we buy a stock, we are actually taking on the risk of owning that stock, that it might have a poor result. So it's very important for us to try and, you know, sort the wheat from the chaff. And one of the ways that we do that, to avoid what I'd call dividend traps, like the Magellan's and Perpetuals and Pilbaras, is we actually have a model which forecasts the likelihood a company will cut its dividend. And this comes out with a probability. The probability varies between zero and 100%. Now, on this slide, think of it: probability of cutting your next dividend, that's what we're forecasting. A high probability is bad. So in this chart, high is bad, low is good. You can see that the pandemic year, well, it's four and a half years ago, believe it or not, when the pandemic hit. This thing went ballistic. It went to the highest level ever, 45, over 45%. But remember, four and a half years ago, APRA told the banks not to pay a dividend, told the insurers not to pay dividends. The likes of Harvey Norman and Qantas cut their dividends completely. We think Qantas will be in a position to pay fully franked dividends next year, so it's taken about five years for them to come around. But things were really bad five years ago. They've improved a huge amount. It didn't take long, though, that model peaked out, or that, that probability peaked in about March, April of 2020. By 2021, that line, that black line dropped below the long-term average, the flat line there, which is good. A low number is very good, which means dividend increase, and we saw big bounce backs in dividends in 2021 and 2022. What we have seen in the last couple of years is this little line, the black line, has snuck up and actually been a little bit above average, but only ever a little bit above average. Nothing like the pandemic, nothing like the GFC back in 2008. Interestingly, as the numbers came out in August, the latest reading of this, which is pretty much the current reading on this probability of cutting dividends, that line is now back. The worm, if you want to call it that way, is back to the long-term average. So we think the outlook for dividends is okay. I know the last two years, dividends have basically flatlined in dollar terms in the Australian market, mainly because BHP has cut its dividends, so we've actually seen a plateau in dividends. But hopefully, if we see interest rate cuts late this year or probably more likely early next year, we might see things improving in twenty twenty-five. That's sort of where I want to leave it, and we'll take some questions if there are any. I think there are a few. Yeah. Great, Don. Thanks for that. Just 'cause it's a Friday, I'm gonna first, one of our shareholders, Ankur, says, "That's just a magnificent ficus plant behind Don." Hopefully, it's an easy one. So, to break the ice. But Don, maybe the first question, and it's actually not the first question, but it's relevant because you've got the slide up here, is, you know, obviously, you're commenting using the slide, that the probability of a dividend cut is gone down a touch. But, you know, what's the probability, if you like, of dividends going up? And therefore, and also, I guess, what are the conditions, he asks, Paul asks, where we might see an increase in the dividends paid out of PLA? He's saying he likes stable dividends, but he's sort of asking, what are the conditions that are required in order for us to pay a higher dividend out of PL8? Yeah. PL8 gets its dividends by investing in Australian stocks, so what we need really is dividends at the market level to start increasing. And as I sort of mentioned, if you actually go back over the last two years, dividends have plateaued. They fell heavily in twenty twenty. They actually rose very strongly in 2021 and 2022, and basically set a new high in terms of dividends at the market level and went to basically above trend. In the last two years, we've basically seen dividends, total dollar dividends at the Australian market plateau. In fact, if anything, they've actually fallen about AUD 1 billion a year in the last couple of years, mainly because you've seen BHP, which made a massive dividend a couple of years ago, has cut back, and that's because iron ore prices have come back to around $100. They were around $130 and have been higher a few years ago. So what we really need is for Australian companies as a whole to pay bigger dividends. And part of that, I think, will be the economy starting to rebound, because the economy... We're not in recession, but the economy is sort of very flat. The latest GDP numbers were only very slightly positive. We do need the Australian economy to start growing again and companies that are as a whole paying more dividends before I think we could see an increase in the PL8's dividend, because we're only able to pay what we can do. We will be trying to rotate and aggressively move between stocks to get as much dividends as we can. But if the pie isn't growing, it makes it hard for us to grow that dividend. And now, hopefully, we'll see some interest rate cuts next year. I know Mr. King at Westpac thinks there'll be cuts, two or three cuts next year, and hopefully that will start to see the economy growing again. Hopefully, we're at the bottom of the price cycle for some of those minerals, and we'll see those coming back as well. The outlook for gold and copper still looks pretty good, but you really need iron ore, I think, to start to kick up as well, because that's a big dividend drive for BHP, Rio, and Fortescue. Don, just talking about minerals, there's a question here about Mineral Resources. I think you touched on it in your comments, you know, cut its dividends to zero, share price fell nearly 50%. Was that one you owned, didn't own? Did you pick it up as a dividend trap? Maybe just if you could comment on that. MinRes. Oh, Don is frozen. Maybe while we get Don back, there's a couple of questions here I'll answer for shareholders. One is: PLA trades at substantially above its NTA. Other listed funds struggle to maintain a price close to their NTA. Why is that? I think Rod asks that question. It's not, it's a little bit more art than science, but I would say a couple of things. One is, generally, in my experience, listed investment companies that have strong investment performance - Don's arrived in the room here, so we're gonna do this together. That's great. We'll improvise. Don, I'm just answering the question here from Rod about PLA trading at a premium to its NTA and why that might be the case while others struggle. Yeah, sorry. Apologies, my internet connection, my technology went down. I don't know why, and yeah. It's okay. But, we can do Yeah. Chris and Don show now. Back on track, Well, why is it trading at a premium? I was about to answer it, but you go. I'm interested in your answer. I mean, clearly, it's an LIC. There's at any point in time, there's a limited supply of stock unless the company issues new shares. And so it's very simple. I think there are more buyers than sellers. And I think one of the reasons is, it's an income play. It gives that regular monthly dividend. If you're an investor and you're happy with it, you put it in your back pocket, you get that income every month, and you're probably not looking to sell it. Yet there are other people who don't own it, who are looking, like, you know, they want that regular income. So I think the reality is that it's quite popular, and yeah, it's that limited supply, because people probably don't trade it as much as maybe other stocks. Like, you think about it in sort of what we do, but like, if you're in an LIC that only pays dividends every six months, and you're looking for more income, you might say, "Well, I've got the dividend here. Maybe I'll move on to something that's gonna pay dividend shortly." Well, you get a dividend every month with Plato. So there's no incentive to sell after you get a dividend, because you're always gonna get the next one. Whereas in other stocks, often people will say, "Well, I've got my dividend here, I should move on," and, Yeah, no, I would. Thanks, Don. I would maybe make a couple of extra comments there, Rod. One is, this feels like there's been a bit of a flight to quality in the market overall, not just in listed investment companies, but, you know, Don was even talking about that just with regards to stocks in general. And if you think about PLA, because it's large, at sort of AUD 800 million market cap, and therefore quite liquid, and it's been around for a long time and doing what it says it should do for a very long time, that tends to put it in the sort of higher quality bucket in people's minds and perceptions. And so whenever there's uncertainty, whether that's uncertainty about stock markets, uncertainty about the economy, often you get this flight to quality, and we've seen that in the bond market, the stock market, and I guess to some extent, PLA is benefiting from that, with its premium to NTA, while other LICs that maybe haven't been around for as long or maybe are a little bit smaller, a little less proven, aren't attracting the same level of interest. And then the second thing I would say is, if you think about, the benefit of a listed investment company and its ability to pay fully franked dividends on a steady basis, that's just not true for listed investment companies that have global equities in their portfolio, because they don't earn the same level of franking credits from their portfolio. And so some of the discounts to NTA that are prevalent in the market are global equity portfolios that just can't use the Listed Investment Company structure in the same way to benefit shareholders as an Australian equity portfolio like PL8 can. So thank you for that question. There's a lot of questions here, Don, about are we gonna have another SPP this year? Do you want to comment on that? Well, one of the things that we have is that we don't have unlimited capacity in this strategy. We are very actively trading it. So I remember we have an unlisted fund as well, and in fact, the history that Chris showed us of the unlisted fund, which has now been around for coming up to thirteen years next month. PL8's been listed for seven and a half. So what we don't want to do is, you know, be too greedy and run too much money and not be able to deliver on the income and total return objectives. So we think there's finite capacity, and we're pretty close to that capacity, but we don't want to exceed it. So that probably reduces our ability to do an SPP. I think the other thing is, you know, when the share price was at 20%, that was almost a ridiculous premium, and clearly that meant there was a lot more buyers than sellers. So, I think the SPPs we've done have helped reduce that back to that 10% mark. But I think we'd rather directors would rather have it a small premium than at a discount, which can cause problems for companies. I think, you know, just to answer some of the specific questions about will there be one? Obviously, we can't say for sure, but I think shareholders should assume that it's unlikely that we have an SPP this year, unless something significant changes in either the capacity of the manager or, frankly, the income levels between now and when we anniversary the authority to do a share purchase plan. Yeah. I mean, we do have a couple of institutional clients in our income strategies that they may not be there, that might release some capacity, et cetera. But at the moment, we don't have a lot, so I, you know. But directors ask this every meeting. We have robust debates about it. Don, here's one on just how often you rotate. Do you want to give us a feel for the turnover of the portfolio? Well, at a percentage turnover, our turnover is between 150% and 200%. But if you actually look at it, when we're going through the dividend season, which we are now, we're basically buying, selling shares every day. And indeed, we, you know, because as soon as the stock goes ex-dividend and, you know, we're there just for the dividend, we look to buy another stock that's coming up to its dividend period. So, our trading is very extreme and, you know, quite extensive. I'd say that, roughly, about 50% of the portfolio is turned over about between three and four times a year. Right. Okay, so it's a very actively managed portfolio for that reason, you- Yeah, I mean, I think compared to a lot of other LICs, a lot of other active managers, we are actually more active than most given that turnover, and that's how, though, we can generate much higher income than the market, but not take aggressive bets because the positions, the. 'Cause the only other way that you could do that would be, if you're just trading in share or owning shares, would be, have very, very high overweights to banks and other high-yielding stocks. And whilst banks have done well in the last twelve months, the previous four or five years, they were pretty tough years. And if you go back right to the start of Plato, when we were raising the great income stock at the time, Telstra, was cutting its dividends. While it's slightly increasing at the moment, it's still substantially lower than it was seven years ago, and I suppose that's the reason but, you know, to me, benefit of PL8 is it's a diversified portfolio of income stocks, not just one or two, and so you're not relying on just Telstra or just, you know, BHP for your dividends. We do trade around, and we own stocks in all sectors, and so it gives you a much smoother ride, and hence we can pay smooth dividends. Maybe that's a good segue to Peter's question here, Don, which you can see is just around resources stocks. If they do continue to have a tough time, I mean, you showed us gold was pretty good and BHP wasn't so bad, but if resources have a tough time, can we still maintain our distributions? If you go, this is before the PL8, but if you actually went back to 2016, when we were running the fund, the underlying fund there, which is, and PL8 actually invested to that fund, we were able to maintain the yields and distributions out of the underlying fund in 2016, even though you saw a disaster, I suppose, in the resources sector. So the beauty of our approach that we're very active is we will move to where the dividends are. And so, and also, you think about it, the market's sort of self-correcting. If BHP and Rio and other stocks their profits decline, their market cap goes down, and the other things goes up, so we'll be buying more of the other things and less of those. But I would say at the moment, you know, the yields on stocks like Woodside and BHP are still pretty healthy. Like, BHP- Mm. -is almost an 8% growth yield. Yeah. So yes, its dividends have come down about 19%, I think. It's always a bit interesting because BHP reports in US dollars, but you know, I think we all think about the A dollar, and I converted the dividends to A dollar equivalents in the slides there, if you, when you looked at it. But it's still a pretty good deal, and same on Woodside. It's mainly lithium, which is a small part of the market. Yeah, lithium is such a tiny part- Yeah -of the market that it doesn't really count. Really matter. I mean, we had small holdings in Pilbara last year, none this year. Yeah, yeah. Okay, Don, maybe this, the last question is, let me just see if it is the last question, is, maybe there's two more. One is, level of profit and franking reserves. I'll take that. Profit reserves really aren't a major constraint. The company's in very good shape. Having had increasing markets over the last while, we've been able to bank some profits. In terms of franking reserves, I think we've quoted the number in the annual report of about nine months worth of dividend cover. So it's certainly adequate, sorry, franking reserves to cover the current rate of dividends. Yeah, and that's a reserve that, like, at a point in time... Remember, we're always getting new franking credits as we get new dividends, so, that is a profit reserve. I think it's a little bit lower than nine now, but, it's still reasonably healthy. And then this final one is: Will there be any further PL8 share acquisition off-market? I presume that's off-market buybacks, what the question is. Yeah, yeah, I would interpret it that, and the answer, well, probably is no, because the government has sort of outlawed them. Interestingly, though, that legislation hasn't been passed. I mean, none of their taxes and the legislation on superannuation funds over AUD 3 billion, none of those have been actually passed by Parliament at the moment. But because they announced that they were gonna crack down on them, no companies have done an off-market buyback. They wouldn't get the approval. They've got to get ATO approval anyway, and the ATO wouldn't approve it, given the government said it's not gonna happen. So at the moment, they're off, and that's why I think we're seeing some special dividends from the likes of JB Hi-Fi and- Mm. that they're or the increased payout ratio from CommBank, because they realize they have to distribute to shareholders or the franking credit to shareholders, they just have to pay more dividends. Yeah. They can't do that buyback, sort of thing. Okay, so I guess there might be a situation where even if the economy doesn't really come roaring back, we still have more income or more dividends because of these, you know, specials or higher payout ratios. Yeah, there's still a few companies that have got excess franking, so, although, you know, a classic one there is Harvey Norman, that's got a big franking account balance, but they probably really need to... They need the cash to pay it out, so they probably need to sell a few of their properties- Right ... before they could afford to do that. But there are certainly some companies with some franking credit hoards that could still be paid out, and there's still a lot of companies that are, like CommBank, that are making great profits and paying a lot of tax, so they could pay fully franked dividends. Mm-hmm. Okay, I think let's leave it at that. We are at 11:45 East Coast time, so we thank you all for your time and participation. It's always super interesting to see the questions that come through from shareholders, and we, you know, you, you're a very active participant, so we love these webinars with you. And, Don, thanks for joining me for the Q&A. Maybe it was a good thing you were completely unmuted. I think it might work better. Yeah, maybe we'll try this next time. But again, thanks for your time and attention. Don, thanks for the market update, and we'll, as I said, get this replay off to you sometime today, together with the slides. Thanks for your shareholding and for your participation this morning. Have a good day.