Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's first half 2024 results briefing by Regal Partners Limited. Today's results will be presented by the Chief Executive Officer, Brendan O'Connor, and Chief Financial Officer, Ian Cameron, and the briefing is being conducted by webinar and phone. As shown on slide six, the agenda for today is that Brendan will start with the result highlights, Ian will then cover the key financials and hand back to Brendan for a business update and outlook. This will be followed by a short question and answer session. We'll provide more details on how to submit questions over the phone at that point, but for those online, please feel free to submit your questions at any time during the briefing so that we can lead with those. Please note, we may have media in attendance today. I'd now like to hand to Brendan. Thanks very much, Ingrid, and good morning, everyone. As Ingrid said, I'm Brendan O'Connor, CEO and Managing Director of Regal Partners Limited. I'm joined today by Regal's Group CFO, Ian Cameron, and our Head of Corporate Affairs, Ingrid Groer. We will take the next 20 minutes to present Regal's first half 2024 results, and then we'll be available for questions post that. This slide shows the highlights from the half. Our normalized NPAT was AUD 59 million, up materially on the prior corresponding period. Our normalized EPS was up strongly, and our interim dividend up 60% to AUD 0.08 per share, fully franked, reflecting the strong organic cash generation of our business model, our surplus capital, and excess franking credits. FUM at 30 June 2024 was AUD 12.3 billion, but is now AUD 16.5 billion, post the completion of the acquisition of Merricks Capital and Argyle Capital Partners. During the periods, we had strong revenues of a hundred and forty-eight point five million, driven by nearly AUD 60 million in performance fees. From an outlook perspective, we've had made a significant increase in Regal's investment capability, as well as experienced an acceleration in the diversification of our FUM by asset class and investment strategy over the last twelve months. Regal Partners Limited, RPL, is Australia's leading alternative investment manager. Today, we have a team of over 90 investment professionals, who manage AUD 16.5 billion for a diverse range of clients across four key asset classes: long-short equities, credit and royalties, real and natural assets, and private markets. Post the integration with PM Capital and Merricks Capital, our investment team and capabilities have never been stronger. As a founder-led business with a strong growth mindset, our investment team is led by like-minded individuals with an unwavering focus on generating attractive risk-adjusted returns for our clients. Importantly, complementing the investment team is a highly experienced management team that is executing Regal's growth agenda and strategic priorities. I'll now dive a little deeper into the composition of our first half results and hand to Ian Cameron, our Group CFO, to explain the financials. This chart simply highlights the strong contribution from FUM made by net flows, positive in each half over the last 12 months, and strong investment performance, as well as the material additions of the acquisitions of 100% of Merricks Capital, which were completed last month, and 40% of Argyle. Argyle being a specialist water manager. The net flows in the half, of AUD 745 million, have previously been released to the market, and this table helpfully summarizes our FUM today on a pro forma basis by asset class, post the acquisition of Merricks Capital and Argyle, summing to over AUD 16.5 billion. Importantly, we have a significant and growing proportion of our fee-earning FUM above high water mark, a distinct and positive trend over the last twelve months. The FUM above high water mark has never been more diversified, increasing the likelihood that, in our view, of crystallizing performance fees in future periods and enhancing the intrinsic value of Regal's performance fee-earning capability. Today, we have over AUD 1 billion of FUM in closed-end capital vehicles within 10% or thereabouts of high water marks, with the 15% performance fee share over a zero hurdle. We believe that we will see the real power of our operating model over the next twelve months as we grow our performance fees. I'll now hand to Ian Cameron, who will take us through our financials. Thanks very much, Brendan. It is a privilege to be here today. I will now spend five to 10 minutes of your time running through our financials. Turning to page 12, which shows our normalized or underlying P&L. At 30 June, we had spot FUM of AUD 12.3 billion. That excludes the Merricks Capital and Argyle Capital Partners acquisitions that were completed after 30 June. Average FUM of AUD 11.7 billion at 30 June, at an average management fee percentage of 1.04%, and that is after the benefit of the staff rebates, reducing from 100% to 50% from 1 January this year on funds managed by Regal Funds Management. That equates to management fees of AUD 60.6 million. Performance fees were AUD 59.6 million, which were primarily driven by the Regal Small Companies Fund, the Regal Resources Long Short Strategy, the PM Capital Global Strategy, the Regal Tactical Opportunities Fund, along with our multi-strategy funds. Other income of AUD 28.4 million, that relates to our mark-to-market and change in fair value gains, as well as the cash received as dividend distribution income from seed investments. Total net income, AUD 148.5 million, up 212% versus the PCP. Employee benefits expense of AUD 46 million for the half. That includes both fixed staff costs as well as discretionary bonus costs payable in cash. The deferred compensation grant amortization of AUD 2.9 million, that relates to the prior year STI bonuses that amortize over the one- and two-year vesting periods. Interest expense of AUD 1.0 million, that's, that's the interest expense on our HSBC debt facility. So total expenses for the half, AUD 63.5 million. Profit before tax of AUD 85 million, adjusting for corporate tax, as well as our non-controlling interest in Taurus Funds Management, Kilter Rural and Attunga Capital of AUD 2.5 million, you get to a normalized NPAT for the half of AUD 59 million, and a cost to income percentage of 43%. Turning to page 13, which shows our pro forma normalized P&L, inclusive of Merricks Capital and Argyle Capital Partners. So what we're trying to do here is show what would our 30 June results have looked like if we had owned Merricks Capital and Argyle Capital Partners from 1 January this year. You can see there, they would have contributed a normalized NPAT of AUD 15.2 million. The performance fees that we've included for Merricks and Argyle, that's on a crystallized basis, so same as the approach of Regal. At 31 July, total ordinary and convertible redeemable preference shares equate to 390.5 million shares. Turning to page 14, you can see there that we've got a strong balance sheet at 30 June, of cash and cash equivalents of AUD 78.1 million, trade and other receivables of AUD 87.2 million. That largely relates to the management fees and performance fees that crystallized at 30 June, where we received the cash in July and August. Investments in financial assets of AUD 134.5 million, that's our seed investments in both listed and unlisted funds. Our intangible assets of AUD 371 million, that has increased due to the acquisition accounting for the acquisition of PM Capital. Other assets of AUD 63.8 million, largely relates to the equity accounting for Taurus Funds Management. You can see a bit further down the page, corporate credit facility, AUD 22 million, drawn at 30 June, and net assets of AUD 621.9 million with surplus franking credits. Page 15 is a new slide that we've included to show the strong net cash position after the recent acquisitions of Merricks Capital and the Argyle Group, as well as our proposed dividend payable on 1 October. You can see there that after adjusting for our corporate credit facility, at 30 June, we had AUD 278 million in net cash, receivables, and financial assets. We've collected the cash from management fees and performance fees that were receivable at 30 June, where we now have got the cash in our bank account. We've used AUD 3.5 million of that to repay the HSBC facility, which now sits at AUD 18.5 million drawn. And we've paid cash consideration or net cash consideration of AUD 51.2 million for Merricks and Argyle, and adjusting for the 1H dividend, we get a net cash receivable and financial asset position of just under AUD 200 million. I'll now pass back to Brendan. Thanks very much, Ian. I'll finish now by highlighting in a little bit more detail some of the financial highlights and business highlights over the last six to 12 months. Importantly, our FUM up to AUD 12.3 billion, as I said, at 30 June, but on a pro forma basis, is now AUD 16.5 billion, including the benefit of Merricks Capital and the Argyle Group. Revenue increased materially on the prior corresponding period. Obviously, performance fees have been a key driver of that and provides us confidence around our outlook for performance fees going forward. The strong momentum that we've experienced in net flows continued, and we had AUD 745 million in net flows during the half. Importantly, we are experiencing heightened interest from a number of institutional allocators, who are seeking our uncorrelated alternative strategies across a range of asset classes. We have growing investment capabilities, as well as further diversification of our FUM by asset class, strategy, and channel. And finally, we continue to execute on our growth ambitions, supported by a highly credentialed investment team and corporate platform across the group. I've mentioned before that we are a founder-led business, and delivering attractive risk-adjusted returns for our clients remains a key focus across all our investment strategies. However, as we all know, investment performance alone does not translate into net flows and FUM. This chart here shows how we have grown our firm and evolved materially over the last two years since the merger with VGI Partners. Importantly, while our disciplined approach to attractive and accretive acquisitions has helped grow our firm to AUD 16.5 billion today, it should not be lost that we have achieved AUD 1.9 billion in organic net flows post the merger with VGI in June 2022. The strong momentum that we've re-experienced in net flows continues, with key allocator interest across a diverse range of strategies. Our growing distribution and marketing team are executing a client-focused sales approach, which is driving net flows, including the creation of tailored structures for clients such as SMAs, Funds of One, Cayman structures as appropriate. We are encouraged by the growing number of offshore institutions, including some of the world's largest sovereign funds, who are actively reviewing our investment strategies today. Importantly, we see ourselves, and we're starting to, as one of the largest providers of capital to Australian companies, and we are starting to observe the power of being one of the largest providers of capital to Australian corporates across equities, debt, and royalties. Scale is critical in asset management across both public and private markets, and with a highly skilled investment team, scale assists deal origination, which increases our relevance to corporates and ultimately leads to delivering superior performance for our clients. We truly are a differentiated Australian asset manager in that regard, and focusing on our one of our most recent acquisitions, the acquisition of PM Capital, that completed in late December 2023. Eight months on from that acquisition, we are pleased with the progress of integrating the business and delighted with the performance that Paul and his investment team have delivered. The PM Global Companies strategy is up over 22% post fees over the last 12 months, and while strong investment performance has been a mainstay of PM Capital, through integrating with Regal's distribution and marketing capabilities, we're starting to see an acceleration of net flows across the business. Almost half the growth in funds since the acquisition of PM Capital has come from net flows, including the money recently raised for the listed fund, PGF, the largest equity raise in our LIC for over 5 years. I'll finish by talking around our growth-focused strategy, and it remains unchanged. We believe that we have a diversified, scalable, and growing platform, and I think the results that we've delivered today really bear testament to that. I think the attractive market tailwinds that we've previously highlighted around investors, whether they be institutional investors, family office investors, high net worths, or retail investors, remains the same today. Increasingly, investors are looking for more alternative strategies to diversify their portfolio and create better risk-adjusted returns. I think we've demonstrated the strong economics of the business model with very much a performance fee element to the strategies, aligning the investor's outcome with the manager's outcome. And finally, we continue to observe multiple opportunities for growth, and as we've done previously, we'll take a disciplined approach to make sure that any transaction is not only accretive to the RPL shareholder, but culturally is aligned to the growth of our business. I'll finish there and see if there are any questions. Thanks, Brendan. Just as a reminder, for questions today, if you are online, please submit your question through the Ask the Question box. For those on the phone, please press star one to register for a question and star two to cancel your question in the queue. I might start with a question online. Just in terms of the dividend, Brendan, there's quite a bit of cash on the balance sheet. Can you provide any thoughts on how the board came to the AUD 0.08 dividend? Yeah, the board, post the merger with VGI, committed to paying a minimum of 50% of normalized profit after tax. So that provided a great starting point for assessing the dividend for the interim period to six months, 30 June, 2024. Obviously, with strong organic cash generation in the half, a strong balance sheet and excess franking credits, we've put a 60% increase in our interim dividend forward. I think it leaves room for the board to reconsider the final dividend in the second half of the year. Great. We might go to questions on the phone now. Could we start with Lach, please? Good morning. Lach from MST. My first question is in relation to the confidence in net flow outlook. If we sort of go back six months, one of the key features of the presentation, results presentation, was your confidence on the outlook of the net flow environment, and you talked specifically to some institutional mandates. Can I just check, are you still equally confident that you still have a positive net flow environment outlook over the next couple of years? Yeah, certainly over the next couple of years, the nature of those institutional mandates that I've talked about and the active review that we're under means that the timing of those mandates being awarded will be lumpy. So whether it falls in this quarter or next quarter, frankly, again, as a founder-led business, we're not really obsessed about that. We're really just focused on making sure that we can actually prosecute those opportunities well, and they'll fall as they fall. But no, no diminished confidence around those net flows maintaining. ... Okay, and just moving to capacity for further transactions. Of course, we can look at your balance sheet, in large parts and sort of work that out from that perspective, but, you know, often with these transactions, it's one thing to see the fund combined on a presentation, but could you talk a little bit more about how the integrations or parts of the businesses that are being integrated or worked through, where are you at with that? And do you have capacity to be doing further transactions later this year, or how should we think about it? Yeah, certainly. The prospect of further acquisitions remains very real. We're looking at other possibilities. You know, again, remind you, we'll take a disciplined approach to executing those, and only do so when I think it's culturally aligned and sort of accretive to the RPL shareholder. However, one of the slides we've put in here in this slide deck is to sort of highlight the investment capability we've got, but the complementary management team we've got now. I like to think that we are match fit to look at further acquisitions as well as bedding down what we currently have. Slide 22 is a good summary of some of the success that we've had with the PM Capital team. We've now brought on board the circa AUD 2.5 billion of equities within PM Capital onto our corporate platform. That gives them immediate access to our dealing team, our risk management capability, and it will help us unlock some of the risk management, compliance and back office functionality of the system as well. That will then allow us to ensure that we can extract the right synergies from the business over time. Got it. That's it for me. Thanks, Lach. Thanks, Lach. Thanks, Lach. We might now move to Liam from Morgans, on the phones. Morning, guys. Just two quick questions. Just on average management fee, what can we sort of expect that step up to be once you've got full allocation from Merricks? And then secondly, just on the 3-4 million of expense savings that you flagged in 2024, what sort of contribution happened in the first half, and what can we expect in the second half? Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So from a margin perspective, if you exclude Merricks, just to focus on that for a point, I think you've seen a trough in management fee margin. Management fee margin in first half 2023 was 110 basis points. It's gone to 104 basis points. Excluding Merricks and Argyle, I think you'd see that rebound to sort of around a level of management fee margin that's sort of closer to the 110, the 100, than the 104. And then obviously, with the addition of Merricks, the average management fees we're presenting there is basically bringing in a very accretive fee structure relative to management fees. The nature of the Merricks business is it has less from a performance fee contribution, but a higher element of management fees, as well as deal origination and loan establishment fees. So the overall fee take from that coming through what we see as our average margin will be accretive to RPL's management fee margin going forward. Sorry, you asked another question there. I'll just ask you to remind me of that, like, second half? Sorry, Brendan. It was AUD 3 million-AUD 4 million of expense savings in 2024. What did you sort of achieve in the first half, and then what's the second half contribution to that saving? Yeah, we've probably experienced around one and a half to two in the first half. We're on track for sort of achieving the additional one and a half to two in the second half as well. What we've noticed is obviously the action to extract those expense synergies will occur in the half, but obviously there's probably a six-month lag between experiencing the expense benefit in the P&L, that'll pop through in the second half. But, you know, we've one and a half to sort of two is probably the figure we've probably realized in the first half 2024. That's correct. Perfect. Thank you. Thanks. We might now move to Oliver from Evans and Partners, please. Hi, guys. Can you hear me okay? Yes, Oliver. How are you? Yeah, I'm well, thanks. Just on performance fees, so obviously, you know, really nice trend there of getting your funds back up to high water mark, and you've already seen that kind of pay off in the first half. Like, the VG1 funds, how far away are they from being in that, you know, duck egg blue or whatever you want to call it, color, on chart ten? I'm just conscious that obviously the fee structure is very attractive for the generation of performance fees. You've been reading some Dulux color charts recently, Oliver. Yeah, they're roughly within 10%. So, VG, VG1 is roughly 10% away from high water mark. RG8 is about sort of 2%-3% away, so they're close, and underscores my comment previously, that I think we'll really see over the next 12 months, some of the performance fee generating capability from an earnings perspective being delivered. Yep, perfect. And then, so just PM Capital, was that... Did that fall under the, the Regal schemes, kind of short-term incentive bonus structure, or was it, was it all paid out as cash under the old structure? No. So it's broadly consistent with us, although there's not the deferral into RPL shares. So, there's broadly a cash element to it, and there's a deferral element to it once bonus is above a similar amount, and it's close enough to effectively what Regal has been doing and what you're used to from a Regal perspective. ... Okay, but there wasn't as much benefit, I suppose, from the deferral in FY, in the first half of 2024? Is that the way to think of it? No, it's broadly the same. The Regal and PM Capital are broadly the same in relation to the deferred component. Okay. Okay, thanks. Okay, we might now move to Nick from Ord Minnett. Yeah, thanks, Ingrid. Morning. Morning, guys. Just a couple of quick questions. Firstly, perhaps a question for Ian. I was wondering if you could help us out with a bit of a breakdown of the components of other income across the half? Yeah, sure. So the other income of AUD 28.4 million, strong contribution from the Small Companies Fund, the Australian Long Short Fund, VG1 and RG8. So that includes any share price gains as well as dividends and distributions, and Taurus Funds Management as well. Are you able to say- Yeah. Yeah, I was just gonna say, are you able to say what the actual cash received or distribution was as a component of that 28? The Small Companies Fund was about AUD 5 million. The Australian Long Short Fund was about AUD 3 million. VG1 and RG8 was about AUD 8 million-AUD 10 million in total, and Taurus Funds Management was about just over AUD 10 million. Yeah, but just trying to get a sense of what the actual cash distribution versus any- Yeah, so off of that- Fair value mark to market moves. Yeah. Yeah. Of the AUD 28.4 million, about a third is... Well, about AUD 12 million has been realized, whether in realized seed investments as well as cash distributions. Okay, that's helpful. And just on seed capital, it looks like it's taken a step down over the half. Would we expect that to rebuild over the next sort of six to 12 months, or you're happy with seed capital levels at the moment at around, I think, it's 134 or something? Yeah. I guess that's simply a reflection of being able to realize some of the benefits of the successful investments we've made. We won't leave it sitting in cash, is probably the best way to give you an exam- an answer, Nick. We'll continue to invest that. So that will move up, but with strong organic cash generation in the second half, you'd expect some of it more than to be realized to pay a final dividend. Yeah, makes sense. Okay, thank you very much. Great! We might now move back to questions online. We've got a couple of questions on Merricks, so I might combine them. Just broadly, I know Merricks have only just completed the acquisition, but could you just give an update on how the integration is tracking, any product pipeline, and do you expect a significant change in assets in that strategy based on what you're seeing in terms of early flows? Yeah, you're right. So the acquisition of the Merricks Capital business completed around mid last month. We're delighted to have the team that Adrian Redlich has led and built a wonderful business there as a hard asset specialist, lending across infrastructure assets, agriculture, as well as real estate. You know, Adrian has taken on the title of sort of leader of, or CIO of Regal's income strategies, and looking forward to working with him as we look to sort of broaden the his focus across the Regal group growth as well, while maintaining obviously attractive returns for investors in the Regal product, so in the Merricks products. So no new product initiatives to sort of talk of at this stage. They have recently moved into new offices at 35 Collins Street. That has been great for the Regal Group, because it's enabled us to be able to put some of our distribution and other investment team, alongside them as well, in Collins Street there. And I think we've been sort of being fairly cautious and just sort of as we look to integrate the business, working out opportunities to collaborate with that team to generate further revenue synergies for Regal overall. Great. And just related to that, there was a question regarding facilities integration, so I think there was a brief mention of PM combining with Regal in Sydney. Can you just more broadly talk about facilities and logistics like that? Yeah, certainly. From a Sydney perspective, I'm pleased to say that, we've secured level 46 of the Gateway building here. So at some point next year, call it mid next year, we'll have the ability to be able to co-locate all Sydney staff into the one office location across level 47 and 46. Not only is that obviously a rationalization of a number of otherwise leases that we have across the Sydney premises, post the acquisitions of VGI Partners and then, PM Capital, but obviously enormous cultural benefits of co-locating all our investment team, distribution, and back office into one location. Thanks, Brendan. And another question related to the product pipeline more broadly beyond Merricks. On one of the final slides, there was mention of the partners fund launching a Cayman vehicle. Could you just talk about that and anything else that's coming up? Yeah, very exciting there. So the proof of concept around that multi-strat was really delivered through the success of our ASX listed fund, RF1. A lot of people will be familiar with RF1. It has just celebrated its five-year anniversary with around 19% return for investors compound over that period of time, and providing retail investors with access to some of Regal's best alternative strategies. That gave us the confidence in respect of launching an unlisted version, called a partners fund, late last year. That launched for Australian investors on 1 December. That fund has gone extremely well with returns of over 15% since 1 December last year. It provides investors access to 11 of Regal's best strategies. And then through growing client interest, and the ability to secure seed capital, we are launching a Cayman version of the partners fund next month, on 1 September. That's getting a lot of interest from some of the big allocators, offshore, in particular through North America. And looking forward to talking about more about flows and ultimately the closing of that product over the coming years. Great. And, we're just coming up to time, so I just would remind people, if they want to lodge a phone question or online, please do so now. But if not, the last question I had was just, in addition to talking about product pipeline, can you just talk about how the distribution team has been evolving over time, and any further thoughts on that? Yeah, the distribution team has been growing out from a headcount perspective, and I'd say a geographic perspective. We've been, post the integration with PM Capital, we've made a couple of new hires within that team there. And, you know, the team is working well with the team here in Regal, led by Rebecca Fesq and Rob Saunders. We've got more client-facing sales staff today than we've ever had in Regal's history, and we're pleased by the opportunities we're seeing, and we expect to be able to sort of highlight that to the market over the sort of coming months, as some of that sort of additional sales force translates into high net flows. Great. So I think that's the end of questions. So I'd now like to hand back to Brendan for closing remarks. Well, thanks very much for your time today. It's been great to be able to present Regal's first half 2024 results. I think a very strong result, which is a wonderful position to be in, because obviously it's been a team effort, and look forward to providing you with further updates as we continue to grow the business. Thank you. Thanks. That now concludes the call.