Hello, welcome to the Pacific Smiles Group half-year result presentation conference call. I would like to advise all participants that this call is being recorded. I'd now like to welcome Phil McKenzie, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director to begin the conference. Phil, over to you. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Phil McKenzie, the Chief Executive Officer of Pacific Smiles, and I'm joined today by Matthew Cordingley, our Chief Financial Officer. Together, we'll be taking you through the presentation that we posted to the ASX earlier this morning, outlining the company's results for the first half of the financial year 2023. This period has seen a welcome return of many of our patients to Pacific Smiles Dental Centres, who had, because of the pandemic, not been able to or elected not to see their dentist for a number of years. This increase in patient attendance has translated to an improved operating and financial performance for the first half of the 2023 financial year, which we'll take you through in detail as we step through the results. It's important to point out, though, that the performance in the first half steadily improved through the first and second quarters. At a more modest rate than we'd expected. There was a slower reduction in cancellations rates, and while patient disposition to attend a clinical setting certainly improved, it was not at the rate we'd foreseen. As we've previously stated, Pacific Smiles kept our field workforce intact as much as we could during the pandemic, with a view to the future in mind. Improvement in operating leverage or labor efficiency therefore lagged a little, considering the slower than planned for attendance increases. We're now starting to see that improve, and I'll come back to the outlook for the business later in the presentation. I'll now briefly touch on the events of late last year and the Section 249D notice brought about by the company's founder and the ensuing Extraordinary General Meeting. While this was an unwelcome distraction for the company and our people, coinciding with the busiest months in our financial year, we did appreciate the opportunity to engage with all our investors and many of our stakeholders. We've heard your feedback and are determined to continue to grow this special business, providing not only strong returns for shareholders and a positive and fulfilling environment for our practitioners and employees. Following the results of the Extraordinary General Meeting, Non-Executive Director Andrew Knott was removed from the Board. We appreciate the contribution Andrew made to Pacific Smiles during his tenure. The company has now commenced a search for a new director. We will update the market as the search progresses. Moving to the presentation now, I'll provide a general business overview with highlights of the results. Matt will discuss the results in more detail, and I'll finish with an update on the outlook of the business and key focus areas and opportunities for the business in the second half and beyond. As usual, we'll be happy to take questions at the end of the presentation. Turning to Slide 3. Those of you who've been following the Pacific Smiles story closely would well know our stated true purpose: to improve the oral health of all Australians to world's best. There are three value pillars that underpin this purpose. Firstly, we respect the dentists that choose to partner with us to manage and grow their practice. It is important that they know we'll support them in every way in delivering professional dental care. Secondly, our patients. We appreciate and value their trust in us as their local dental experts. Their dental health is our priority. Thirdly, our team members. They matter. Without them, we can't deliver services to our dentists and, through them, care to our patients. Their work is important. It makes a difference. These core values in our culture continue to guide everything we do. Culture underpins every single successful enterprise. For Pacific Smiles, it means ensuring our people share our purpose, enjoy what they do, and operate together as a seamless unit. Pacific Smiles measures its dentist-employee engagement twice a year via a market-leading engagement platform. The most recent survey has just been completed. While we're still in the process of evaluating the results, both dentists and employee engagement remains consistent with our previous results. Our positive culture translates to strong dentist, patient, and employee experiences, ultimately, accretive shareholder returns. Turning to Slide 4, I'll start with the key points in the first half results. Patient fees across the Pacific Smiles Dental Centres network of AUD 133.3 million were up 22.5% on the prior half-year. This was predominantly driven by same-center growth of 17.3%, as well as a return towards a more normalized ramp in attendance and fees in our newer centers. Underlying EBITDA of AUD 9.1 million was up 84.4% half-on-half, we recorded an underlying net profit after tax of a AUD 500,000. We've provided a reconciliation of our statutory to underlying earnings towards the end of the presentation materials and would make note the underlying result excludes just over AUD 500,000 of expenditure related to the December extraordinary general meeting and responding to the Section 249D notice advanced by Dr. Alex Abrahams. We expanded our network by two centers during the first half, finishing with 129 dental centers, excluding the HBF-owned centers. These two new dental centers at Endeavour Hills in Victoria and Chermside in Queensland are in high-quality locations and well-positioned within our broader network. The pace of further network expansion, as we guided the market previously, is being sensibly managed in FY 2023 as we focus on adding capacity in existing centers and focus on their performance as operating conditions continue to stabilize post-pandemic. I'll go into that in more detail later, but make the point that patient fee growth will reflect the moderation of our new center growth program. A fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.0035 per share was declared, consistent with our previously stated commitment to restore dividends in line with the Board's dividend policy. Our business is now very well positioned to benefit from the increased demand for dental services as Australia continues to emerge from the pandemic. Turning to Slide 5. Total patient fees increased by 22.5% to AUD 133 million, reflecting a return to more stable operating growth environment. Pleasingly, it's evident that the worst of the pandemic is now behind us. Patient attendance patterns and practitioner rosters are returning to normal. However, we've not experienced the same level of surge volumes that the business experienced in 2021 after the first COVID outbreak. Cancellation rates did not fall as much as we'd expected in the first half, impacting appointments, fees and labor efficiency. While cancellations have certainly tapered, they're not yet back at pre-pandemic levels. In general, though, we're experienced a month-on-month improvement across nearly all of our financial and operating KPIs. Performance in some of our larger CBD location, located centers has not returned to pre-pandemic levels yet, given the related shift in working patterns or the greater proportion of the population now working from home. This spare capacity in these centers provides an opportunity to attract new patients to Pacific Smiles and is a key focus of the business going forward, as well as recapturing existing patients as they return to the CBD over time. Other top-line indicators of performance are showing signs of improvement, including fees per appointment, which is due to a higher mix of restorative work being performed by our dentists. This reflects the growing maturity and experience of our dentists, as well as the needs of their patients who have not undertaken as much preventative care over the last few years. Underlying EBITDA is up 84.4% to AUD 9.1 million, driven by increased patient fees following a return to more stable trading. Impacting profitability in the first half, though, has been a higher staff to practitioner ratio than pre-pandemic levels. As mentioned earlier, this is due to a slower reduction in cancellation rates and a slower return to normalized practitioner schedules than expected, making efficient rostering of staff challenging. With the benefit of this experience, though, we're adapting our operating and rostering practices which, combined with the expected growth in appointments in the second half and continued maturation of our new centers, will contribute to improved operating leverage. Turning now to Slide 6 to recap on the operational highlights for the half year. As I said, we opened two new Pacific Smiles Dental Centers during the first half, Endeavor Hills in Victoria and Chermside in Queensland. New openings continued to be strongly supported by our pre-booking campaign, and forward bookings were strong for each of the new centers. As well as two new Pacific Smiles Dental Centers, we added one new HBF Dental Center to the network, taking the total of these to seven at the half year-end under our managed services agreement with HBF, who are an important corporate partner and a shareholder in Pacific Smiles. I'm also thrilled to say that the Pacific Smiles opened its 130th dental center two days ago at Maroochydore in Queensland, with well over 500 pre-booked appointments. As well as opening new dental centers, adding to the volume of dental chairs in operation across our established network gives us the capacity to service growth and demand at lower incremental cost. For the half, we've added nine new dental chairs, including three in existing dental centers. By the end of the half, we had more than 925 dentists practicing with us, with a retention rate above 85%. The patient experience at PSG Dental Centres is a critical measure of our ability to retain our patients and support dentists. We achieved a net promoter score of approximately 90 for the first half, a very pleasing result for the group. Our total network size comprised of 651 surgeries and 539 installed dental chairs. Our employee retention rate is just over 75% for the half, which has been holding steady since the full year. At Pacific Smiles, we offer our employees long-term vacation advancement opportunities and a career pathway that engenders a loyalty to PSG. Our employees matter to us. I'll now hand over to Matthew to take you through the financial results in more detail. Thanks, Phil. Good morning, everyone. Turning to Slide 8 in the summary income statement, I'd just remind everyone that these results are expressed on an underlying basis and exclude the impact of AASB 16 leases. The underlying 2023 half year result excludes the impacts of once-off severance payments, the executive LTI plan, finalization of costs associated with the closure of our flood-impacted Lismore center, net of insurance recoveries, and legal and consulting costs incurred in respect of the December 2022 extraordinary general meeting in responding to the Section 249D notice advanced by Dr. Alex Abrahams. We have also included in the appendix reconciliations of the underlying and statutory results. Group revenue for the first half was up 21.9% to AUD 81.6 million, reflecting an increase in patient attendances and a more stable trading and operating environment post-pandemic. In terms of earnings, EBITDA has also improved, up 84.4% to AUD 9.1 million, in line with increased revenue. As Phil outlined earlier, the realization of labor efficiencies in centers has been slower than expected due to the more modest growth in attended appointments, higher cancellation rates, albeit much lower than during the peaks we saw in the pandemic, and changed practitioner operating patterns. Pacific Smiles made an underlying net profit after tax of AUD 0.5 million for the first half. Given the return to underlying profitability, we resumed the payment of dividends as we previously said we would do. A fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.0035 per share has been declared. Turning to Slide 9 on the EBITDA bridge, which depicts movements year-over-year on both a dollar and margin basis. These charts show the drivers of the movement in both underlying and EBITDA and the margin between the first and second half, first half of FY 2023 and the first half of FY 2022. Same center performance being heavily impacted during the pandemic reflects the majority of our performance improvement. Our total FY 2022 new centers EBITDA declined by AUD 0.3 million half-on-half. This was driven though by the timing of the opening of several new centers in this cohort late in the half two of FY 2022. We're very pleased with the performance of these centers, and they are ramping per our expectations. Corporate costs were down 1.2% as a proportion of patient fees. This was achieved notwithstanding expenditure on one-off items such as the GROW 22 Employee Conference held for the first time in three years, which is a hugely important event, bringing together all of our national field leadership. Furthermore, there's been a reduction in capitalized labor compared to prior years, and that's associated with the slower rollout of new centers year-on-year, and that's reflected in corporate overhead in the P&L. On a gross basis, Pacific Smiles support office and corporate overhead has been streamlined, and while higher than in half on 2022, it's expected to be lower for the FY 2023 relative to the prior year. Turning now to our cash flow and balance sheet on Page 10. Pacific Smiles has a strong balance sheet with ample capacity to enliven our new center growth in FY 2024 and beyond. Cash flow from operations has improved in line with the increase in patient fees. Net capital expenditure was AUD 7 million, primarily related to new center build costs, CapEx on existing centers and equipment and technology upgrades, including the finalization of the rollout of our 3D scanners, which are an excellent tool for our dentists and their patients. The reduction in property, plant, and equipment on our balance sheet reflects a slowdown in the rollout of new centers this half year, with depreciation and amortization expense greater than CapEx. Increases in other current assets reflects an increase in receivables, primarily relating to an AUD 5.8 million tax refund receivable. That relates to the temporary loss carryback rules associated with COVID-19. That refund has now been received in the second half. Net debt at 31 December is AUD 5 million. Drawn borrowings are AUD 18.5 million from our AUD 40 million facility. As highlighted earlier, an interim fully franked dividend of AUD 0.0035 has been declared payable in half two. I'll hand back to Phil now to take you through the remainder of the presentation. Thank you, Matt. We'll turn now to Slide 12, where I want to touch on the initiatives underway to ensure ESG principles are embedded throughout Pacific Smiles. We are a purpose-driven organization and continually focused on driving our operating practices to be more sustainable, efficient, socially responsible, and cohesive. We also want to ensure that our business reflects community expectation around commitments to sound environmental management, social equity, gender diversity, and good governance. We've previously advised the market that 25% of our energy purchased by direct contracts with energy retailers will be from renewable sources for three quarters of 2023. This initiative took effect from the 1st of October 2022. We're also introducing field-led improvements to our environmental standard operating procedures that permeate all our dental centers, including initiatives such as a reduction in our plastics use. We're also trialing reusable high-speed evacuation tips and have committed to change from plastic to paper water cups for patients by the end of calendar 2023. Inclusion and diversity is an important focus. Over 90% of our field workforce and 75% of our support office is female. Female role models in our executive leadership team include our Chief Operating Officer, Ciara Rocks, Executive General Manager of Marketing, Alice Telford, and Executive General Manager of People and Culture, Louise Hayes. Our board has made a commitment to continue to refresh and augment its members in accordance with best practice in the year ahead, with a particular focus on diversity and tenure. With respect to governance, we continue to review and update our corporate policies and procedures to guide appropriate behaviors and build transparency through our board subcommittees and dental advisory committee. Turning to Slide 13, I'd like to update you on the progression of our relationship with HBF under our Managed Services Agreement to build and run dental centers for them in Western Australia. HBF is the largest health fund in Western Australia and is a fixture in that state's healthcare landscape. Our contract with HBF to build and operate HBF dental centers on their behalf is accretive and capital light for Pacific Smiles shareholders. We're not required to invest capital in the center's bricks and mortar, and simply speaking, our returns grow as patient volumes grow under our operatorship. We opened one new HBF dental center in the first half, bringing the total number of HBF dental centers to seven, with 45 dentists practicing. HBF Dental provided over 18,000 appointments, and the NPS was greater than 80 in the first half. Another new HBF Dental center in Floreat is expected to be open in half two, bringing the HBF Dental center network to eight centers. HBF Dental centers performed strongly in the first half, and patient attendance growth broadly reflects a similar trajectory to Pacific Smiles Dental centers. All HBF Dental centers are accredited under the Quality, Innovation, and Performance program, which verifies operating standards against national safety and quality health service standards. HBF dentists are included in our Pacific Smiles Insight graduate development programs and have access to online learning, leadership, and mentoring programs as well. Turning now to Slide 14. Consistent with the information that Pacific Smiles released ahead of the Extraordinary General Meeting last December, we've updated our disclosure to provide consistent detail and insight into the performance of our dental center cohorts going back to 2014 when Pacific Smiles first became a publicly listed company. This provides investors and followers of the Pacific Smiles story with a more transparent representation of operating performance, reflecting the evolution of our business model since IPO into a sophisticated, agile, and national scale player in the Australian dental landscape. I'd like to draw your attention to some key overall performance insights from this analysis. Top line performance across our cohorts has improved following the impacts of the pandemic. The business is now in a strong position to capitalize on this momentum with a continued focus on improving operating leverage to deliver margin growth. While our total EBITDA margin has been impacted by the pandemic and recent significant investment in new centers, in the first half of 2023, every single cohort has demonstrated increased pro-profitability relative to the prior half year period, except for our FY 2010 and earlier cohort. This cohort contains several large CBD-located centers where patient volumes are not yet back at pre-pandemic levels, given the change in social and work-from-home patterns that continue to prevail. We're of the view that this represents an opportunity for additional growth in both new patients and to recapture existing patients as the urban population and workforce shifts back to CBD office locations over time. Finally, there remains significant latent growth capacity in the Pacific Smiles network. Across every cohort, there's an opportunity to infill new chairs with new dentists to service growth and demand for dental services across the network. I'll now turn to highlight Pacific Smiles' focus areas and opportunities for the second half of FY 2023, which will contribute to growing returns for our shareholders and the fulfillment and enjoyment of our dentists and employees who practice with us. Firstly, notwithstanding the slowdown in new center rollouts this year, we're focused on achieving growth through attracting new patients to our centers and inviting existing patients who have chosen to avoid the dentist during the pandemic. The planned increase in patient attendances provide the opportunity to add capacity into our network with the infilling of chairs and the improvement in our labor efficiency. Secondly, our dentists are our customer, the reason Pacific Smiles exists, and we're committed to continually improving our service delivery to them. We're enhancing our communication pathways, creating a national continuing professional development community, and working to provide clear clinical progression and development opportunities so they may grow their skills and their practice scope. We continue to invest in our people and our culture, Pacific Smiles' greatest asset. In the second half, we're rolling out new tailored onboarding plans that are better suited to the level of dental experience of our new starters. Combined with that, we've updated key learning materials and introduced new content aimed at core elements of our dentist support staff roles. For our patients, it's one thing to attract them, but it's the experience they have with us that will contribute to them returning. Convenience and then securing a Pacific Smiles appointment close to home with a practitioner they trust is paramount. That's why we've developed industry-leading patient experience initiatives, such as an emergency appointment finder tool, fast and easy online booking, the Find Me My Nearest appointment feature, and different payment options for our patients. Pacific Smiles has completed a period of significant investment in our infrastructure and IT system over the last two to three years. We're now focused on capitalizing on this investment through scaling it efficiently to deliver improved patient and dentist experience at lower cost to the business. The single view of our patient increases focus on personalized care and communications with them. For our dentists, it improves their experience by a reliable technology platform. Finally, the maintenance of the health and stability of our relationships with our key long-term partners has been fundamental to ensuring the collective wellbeing of all stakeholders in Pacific Smiles. We're excited about continuing to grow our business servicing HBF under the HBF Dental Management Services Agreement. Our partners with HBF, nib and other health funds, critical suppliers, landlords, and our financiers buttress the strength of our own organization to grow shareholder returns over time. Slide 16, I'd now like to offer some insight to the outlook for the second half and full year 2023 financial year. Year-to-date, Pacific Smiles has generated patient fees of AUD 169.7 million, which is an increase year-on-year of 21% on a total basis and 15.8% on a same center basis. This is a pleasing result despite the uplift not being as robust as we'd hoped and expected. The ramp in our performance in the first half, while pleasing, was behind where we forecasted to be. Our fees and earnings were higher in the second quarter of the first half compared with the first quarter. While some of the outlook can be attributed to seasonality late in the calendar year, there was a lag in the first quarter performance, especially in earnings, as COVID-related business interference abated at a slower rate than we'd expected. We experienced a lift in both fees and earnings in the second quarter. This performance improvement is continuing into the third quarter, with business KPIs improving month-on-month. Forward-looking appointments and practitioner hours are higher. We're also seeing increased fees per attendance half-on-half, reflecting an increased proportion of restorative work being performed. The confluence of these factors is forecast to result in a greater release of operating leverage in the second half as we improve labor efficiency. Consequently, Pacific Smiles is updating its guidance for FY 2023 based on the aforementioned factors. We expect FY 2023 patient fees and underlying EBITDA to be at the bottom end of previously advised guidance range. That is, patient fees of AUD 270 million and underlying the EBITDA of AUD 24 million. This updated guidance includes AUD 3 million of EBITDA drag from loss-making new centers and our FY 2020-FY 2023 cohort. We have laid out the basis and assumptions for our revised guidance in Slide 16. It is underpinned by operating tailwinds forecast to lift performance throughout half two, with increased patient attendances and practitioner availability, as well as higher fees per appointment. We're also forecasting improved labor efficiency and lower corporate overheads. We've also clearly laid out risk factors to meeting our revised guidance. Finally, in respect of network growth, we will have opened four centers by the end of FY 2023, bringing Pacific Smiles Dental centers total number to 131. In HBF, a new center at Belmont was opened in H1. Floreat is expected to be opened in H2, bringing the total HBF Dental centers to eight by the end of FY 2023. In closing, on behalf of the executive leadership team, I wanna say thank you to the entire Pacific Smiles team for their dedication and commitment through this exciting period of renewal. Your effort, energy, and support of the company's strategy and with what we're working together to achieve is incredibly important and very much appreciated. To the dentists who practice at Pacific Smiles, I'd like to say thank you. We value the trust you place in us by choosing to operate in our network and appreciate your contribution to delivering on our true purpose. We hope today's update has given you a comprehensive insight to our business. I'd now like to hand back to the operator for any questions that may come. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Shane Storey from Wilsons Advisory. Your line is now open. Good morning. Good morning, Phil. Good morning, Matthew. I'm gonna start maybe with the revenue guidance, please. It looks, the second half looks conservative to me, given what you've booked in the first half, and I wonder, you know, I guess, if it is conservative, is that simply a function of, say, maybe not having got the result you wanted in November and December? Maybe if you could give some reflection on what you've seen so far in 2023. Do you feel like you've got, you know, reasonable line of sight on like-for-likes? Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, Shane. Matthew. Good question. No, we don't think it's conservative into the second half, and it's reflecting what we're seeing in January and February. November and December trading was particularly pleasing relative to what was a slower Q1 and probably what we'd anticipated. What we're seeing in the second half, and we called this out in the presentation, is more appointments in the second half, and we're also seeing a higher fee per attendance at the moment with higher restorative work. We're seeing patients come back and seeing dentists and getting more complex work done. That's leading to top-line growth in the second half as well. Bear in mind, you know, there's traditionally been some seasonality in Pacific Smiles business between first half and second half. Generally, we're a first half, business is a little better than second half, but that's obviously skewed this financial year just given the ramp-up out of COVID. We do have a slower April, just given the Easter period. We have a yearly period sort of through late May and into early June. That's, I mean, the basis for the outlook is solid and it's based on what we're seeing in January and February to date. Yeah. Okay. Those first half, second half dynamics are I guess I understand them a lot better now. When... Yeah. When I sort of, you know, notch, go down, notch to the EBITDA guidance. I mean, what we've worked out, say, for your second half, like if we give you the revenue, send what we seem to find, you know, maybe a AUD 5 million cost out, say, on OpEx versus the first half to get there, assuming that AUD 2.5 million sort of the headwind in the second half. I mean, is that how you're seeing it? If so, maybe if you could give some more detail on where you think the cost savings can come from. Thanks. Cost savings coming from two places. From labor efficiencies, Shane. You recall at the, at the full view, we said we'd kept our workforce intact, and that was in the expectation of increased patient attendances coming back into the business. We didn't wanna have a position where we couldn't see patients. The ramp back was a little bit slower than we expected, so the operating leverage of the business wasn't quite as strong in the first half as we'd hoped. We've adapted to that certainly into the second quarter and in the first quarter. We expect savings in the second half to come from labor efficiency. I also called out that we streamlined the corporate office as well, so there are some savings coming from there. That's really reflective of a more modest, growth rollout. When we were building 15 to 20 centers, we needed, the staff to support that, and we've just tapered that a little bit, as we move into the second half and beyond. Yeah. On that, I mean, back in the sort of prepared comments part of the presentation, Matt, sorry to keep on you. You said re-enliven was the word you used for the, you know, for the rollout phase from FY 2024 and beyond. I mean, maybe it's a question for Phil, but I know that strategically, I mean, that's been a contentious issue in the last, say, six to 12 months. I mean, strategically, what is the thinking now about the, you know, the right level of rollout, say, for us to be m odeling in FY 2024 and beyond. Yeah, any thoughts there would be very, very helpful. Thanks. Hi Shane, Phil. Fair question and a good question. We as Management and the Board still consider Pacific Smiles a growth engine. In the short term, we'll use the invitation of new chairs into existing sites to deliver that through the growth of patients as well. We certainly put to the market at the end of last year in conjunction with the EGM some longer term targets that we'll be seeking to achieve, and we're not stepping away from them at all. I don't want to guide on 2024 at this stage, I would suggest that management and the board will be having a healthy look at the trajectory in the second half and producing a set of recommendations to the market as to where we're going. We still firmly see Pacific Smiles as a growth entity and growth engine. That's all I had. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you, sir. Your next question comes from the line of James Bales from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I guess firstly, is the fee for appointment improvement that you mentioned driven purely by mix, that is the mix of restorative, or is there some like-for-like price growth in there as well? There's a little bit of like-for-like price growth in there as well, James, but predominantly it's due to the treatment mix. Got it. What's the magnitude of the like-for-like growth? Has that been negotiated with the health funds, or is that for patients outside of those arrangements? The health funds aren't giving us a lot. They never have. It's always been incumbent upon the business to try and grow our top line through increasing and improving our treatment mix. Look, I'm not gonna disclose what the growth is, James, in terms of fees per appointment, but it has been evident, certainly into the third quarter. That's not unusual. We'll see. We saw a lot of patients come back to Pacific Smiles in the first half. A lot of patients who hadn't been to the dentist in a while for a clean and check, especially during the early period, and they've come back to do restorative work, you know, not having seen a dentist for a little while. Okay. Got it. Maybe could you speak to the details on the improvement that you're seeing in the cancellation rates in January and February? Yeah. They're not down at pre-pandemic levels yet, but they are trending down. The gradient down is not as steep as what we'd hoped. Month on month, they are coming down. Are we talking, basis points or percentage points there? It's sort of, basis points per month. It's not percentage points. Okay. It's a bit stubborn, to be frank. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks, James. Your next question comes from the line of, Craig Wong-Pan from RBC. Your line is now open. Thanks. Good morning, Phil and Matt. I'm just wanting to focus on the same center of patient fee growth. There was a sort of decline there, I guess 17.3% in the first half and then 15.8% year- to- date. Just to understand, is that due to seasonality, given that you have a strong November and December, or is there something else that kind of causes that slowdown there? Seasonality, correct. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. Just checking. The next one, next question, just about the change in practitioner operating patterns. I was wondering if you think that's a permanent change and does that have, like, an ongoing impact on earnings? I think that's the AUD 64 million dollar question, Craig. We're certainly seeing it stabilizing. I think, similar to patient patterns, we saw an impact on practitioner attendance. We're seeing that stabilize. We're seeing it, maybe a new normalize. The trends that we're suggesting are positive to us from a performance perspective. We believe it's our job to enable them to come back and make sure that we continue to give them all the tools to continue to build their practice. We see it as a positive thing. Just to clarify the timing for that positive change, that sort of stabilization, was that from Q2 onwards? Yeah, I think that's the best way to describe it. I think, we were seeing some of that latent hangover from Omicron or what have you, as it tailed off the end of the last financial year into the first quarter. We saw the sensible, steady return to normal business practice. The best way to think about it, Craig, the sort of the trend line for interference from, you know, sort of practitioner absences and schedules and patient cancellations is around about the same. It's a steady improvement throughout the year. Okay. Then just the dividend, that was the value there was a bit of a surprise. Could you just remind us the, I guess, what you base your payout ratio on? Because yeah, that came in higher than I expected. The dividend, just to be clear, is AUD 0.0035 per share, so AUD 0.0035, and that's, you know, a bit in excess of half a million dollars in total. The Board-approved dividend policy is 70%-100% of underlying net profit after tax. We had an underlying net profit after tax of about half a million dollars for the half, so the dividend aligns with that. Okay. My last question, just on the improvement around better rostering practices that you talked about and trying to align labor hours to practitioners. Could you just outline some of those initiatives that will that you're sort of implementing there? Yeah, a detailed center by center partnership to look at practitioners, both old and new, their needs, their requirements, the patient attendance, and then ensuring we've got the right staff to practitioner ratio. It's not done simply with a formula. It's done with communication, consultation, and really sensibly looking at the performance of the center and the potential performance of the center. It's quite analog, but it's really important work and vital to our continued performance improvement. Okay, great. Thank you. Thanks, Craig. Your next question comes from the line of George Morrison, from Lang. Your line is now open. Thank you. Good morning to Matt. Congratulations on the results. Just to zoom out a bit, considering Pacific Smiles' compelling share of practicing dentists in Australia, how is the group leveraging the scale of the representative body to partner with federal and state governments to raise the general awareness to the importance of oral health, considering that two-thirds of Australians hadn't visited a dentist in the last two years? Great question. We work with member bodies such as the ADA. We have various contacts through our professionals that choose to practice with us for avenues of doing so. Really the peak body is the ADA or the Australian Dental Association, both at a federal and state level. Our activities to perhaps lobby at a government level has not been a foray that we've gone into it at this point. Moreover, because of the impartial nature of the membership bodies being probably the best place to educate government at a state and federal level. When it comes to attracting children, to Pacific Smiles, I see that sort of 40% of the CDBS subsidy, is successfully allocated to children, eligible children each year, which is quite poor performance, in terms of just federal delivery. How is Pacific Smiles sort of attracting children? I guess considering the correcting influence on parents and their own dental habits, how is Pacific Smiles sort of prioritizing children's oral health? Children's oral health or pediatric oral health care is obviously paramount, but there are stringent rules through APRA and others that limit the way that a business such as ours can approach that sector of the market. Really it's the education of parents that sort of funding is available, the Child Dental Benefits Schedule, making sure the ability to ask questions and be educated and centered. Not so much the promotion or the driving of a dental service, but more the education to the parents that this government assistance is available for their children and great oral health. I think you're dead right. More effort to educate at a federal and state level, the importance of the program would be roundly received and well received. Okay. Thanks, Phil. Thanks, Phil. Thanks, George. Your next question comes from the line of Weim in Xie from MX Capital. Your line is now open. Hi. Good morning, gents. I have three questions. The first one is you mentioned you received a AUD 5.7 million tax receivable in the second half. can I confirm. That's right. Yeah. You say your net cash now is actually higher than your gross debt, you are in the net cash position? It's about the same. It's about the same. Yeah. Okay. We've got AUD 80 million in gross debt. Yeah. It's similar to that. That's right. We only just received that amount of money. Okay. In the last week. Great. That's good. The second question is the CapEx. Your depreciation, before the AASB 16 was AUD 7.9 million in the half. The actual cash CapEx was AUD 6.5 million, we've seen that about AUD 7 million were expansion on new chair, new center and so on. Kind of what's actual maintenance CapEx going forward required? If you really taper your growth rate, does it mean that your cash conversion or your free cash flow generation should be substantially higher than your accounting impact? Yeah, that's correct. M aintenance CapEx on an ongoing basis is about AUD 1 million-AUD 2 million per annum. If you remove growth CapEx from that equation, then yes, you would have a higher cash conversion ratio and lever down the cash flow. Did you say AUD 1 million-AUD 2 million per year or? Maintainable CapEx. Yes, correct. That's right. Like if you're including all the like, the dental scan, all those latest toy which used to. Oh, scanners and tools and then and, yeah, I mean, to be honest. Yeah. Those are Yeah. Those are growth, right? Yeah. No, no, they're a dentist tool. Correct. That's right. Scanners. We've completed that program now. Right. Okay. Cash should be a lot substantially higher. I I mean, that is a big number. Your depreciation per year is AUD 16 million, and you'd be spending, say, AUD 4 million or AUD 5 million. Now you have AUD 10 million cash higher, which is probably your impact, right? Well, it's not the impact, but the cash conversion. Your math around the cash conversion sounds right. Yeah. The cash conversion should be AUD 10 million or higher if you don't grow a lot to the center. Last question, just on the fee increase. My understanding is the actual dentist set their own fee schedule and then they can charge a gap. The fact that they are not putting the price up, is it because they don't want to charge a debt? If they charge a gap, it doesn't matter what the health insurance is paying. If that's the case, would there be a point that the inflation pressure just force everybody in the industry to actually put up the price no matter what the health insurers are paying? I think you make a fair point that dentists may choose to operate outside the health fund preferred provider agreements if, similar to GPs and Medicare, the dentist were to find themselves unable to provide a service at a rebated rate. Yes, for sure. The dentist has their own sovereignty to set their fees, of course, other than when they're following under a preferred provider agreement with a health fund. An answer to your question, in short, yes, they could, should they choose to do so. What have you been seeing in the sector? Like, all the independent little dentists, are they not putting up the rate and just, like, working more for less? I mean, why are they not able to do it? They're independent and good service and so on. I think like all medical professionals, there's a sensible view taken by any practitioner as to what is the right rate to charge. We're obviously fortuitous in the relationship we have with the health funds, to be well embedded with preferred provider agreements. As we've stated, we're seeing good attendance volumes. We're seeing good efforts to take on more restorative work, so we're seeing a price improvement via that. At this stage, it's not a well, it doesn't appear to be a huge topic of conversation amongst the Pacific Smiles dentists. Right. What portion of, just the last question, what portion of your dentists actually charge a gap? Well, I would suggest, all of them have the capacity to do it. It depends whether they're operating with that particular patient under the preferred provider agreement. The easy answer is all have the ability to do it. Most, if not, many, many have got a relationship with the health fund. It depends on the particular patient, and it depends on the particular circumstance of that patient's relationship with the health fund. All have the capacity to charge a gap. You don't have a, like, kind of soft guide. I think a soft guideline by some industry associate, how much is the standard fee and everybody stick to that kind of thing, right? Yeah. the guidelines include that? We provide Yeah, we provide a guideline from the Australian Dental Association with regard to fees for those that are uninsured. Then each health fund has obviously got their prescribed fees relative to item numbers under the preferred provider agreement. It would be fair to say that there would be a high degree of gap charged in some circumstance, and in others, no gap. Right. Okay, understand. Thank you very much, Phil. No worries, Skip. Thanks for your questions. Bye. Your next question comes from the line of Craig Wong-Pan from RBC. Your line is now open. Thanks. Just a follow-up question. There was the comment you made about the slower recovery in CBD-located dental centers. I just wondered if you could provide us with help and for us to understand what your mix is, like how many, what exposure you have to CBD-located dental centers, like what sort of split might there be? In Sydney, we've got the nib center on Hunter Street, and we've got the Pacific Smiles center in Town Hall. Down in Victoria, we've got the nib on Collins Street, and we've got the Pacific Smiles Dental on Bourke Street. They're obviously considerably larger than our more traditional now shopping centers of centers of five chairs. Those centers have got, you know, upwards of 10, 12+ chairs, some higher relative to the CBD base and the office people that they were servicing before. We've also got Eagle Street, nib Eagle Street up in Brisbane. Those are considerable exposure sites for us, given the scale of business they've done historically, and the reliance on CBD workers. Okay. Then my last question is just around cost inflation. Could you talk to what you might be seeing there, if there's been any acceleration of that? We're not immune to inflation just like any other business in the current environment, Craig. We are seeing some of that. We are able to I mean, our biggest cost is labor, and labor is pegged to the annual review of awards. We have typically paid a little bit above the base award. There was an increase at the beginning of the financial year, which was relative to those award decisions. In other areas like consumables, we are seeing inflation. In the main, we can offset that through product substitution. We manage that. The cost of new chairs have gone up a bit, probably in line with the current inflation rates. Short answer is yes, we're seeing it. Managing through it. Okay. Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, if you would like to ask question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. There are no further question at this time. I turn the call back over to our presenters. Just wanted to thank you all for your time this afternoon or this morning, and I look forward to seeing you all in the near future and speaking to you again at the full year. All the very best. Have a great day. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.