Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Steadfast Group Limited FY2023 results. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Robert Kelly, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, and welcome everybody to our tenth anniversary. It's been an exciting decade for this business, and I think the most exciting part for everybody who participates in this business is that what we said, going back 11 years ago and put into the market 10 years ago, we've stuck diligently to. We haven't moved away from what we set up in the beginning, I'll just, I'll refer you to page four, if you can put page four of the slide up. slide back up. Is it up? Is it up? I can't see if it's up. It's not on the screen. I can't see the screen. Sorry, everybody, I can't see the screen. It's not much good to me if I can't see the screen. Okay, we'll get the technology right in a sec. Okay. If you have a look at page four, if everybody can see it, I hope. We can't. Just bear with us for a sec. Please, moderator, can you put it on the screen so that we can look at what we're actually. What the people that are dialed in are looking at? Okay, great. Thank you. Page four. Sorry for the delay of doing that. Disappeared now. That's. I'm not going to go through that in chapter and verse, but that's what we've that's the Steadfast DNA of what we've done. I'm just going to call out some numbers. 11.6%, 22.5%, 15.4%, 22.7%, 26.5%, 20.5%. They're just some of the numbers that we have written in the last 12 months over the last 12 months. As I say, I won't bore you by going through what they all represent, but that's what we run the business on: to maintain that status quo and make sure that, make sure those graphs work in that direction. That they work, by the way, from left to right, in case anybody was worrying that they may go from right to left. I'll then go to page five. Okay. This is the DNA of Steadfast. I mean, and I guess it's a brag to say, but we have achieved 498% total shareholder return since listing. I guess it's incumbent on you as a listed company to make sure that when you actually go to the market and take capital, that the people that give you that capital expect a return. That's what we've delivered in the 10 years we've been together as a listed entity. I mean, I. Part of what we set up in the beginning, back 27 years ago in Steadfast, was pretty simple. We set up to design the best network of insurance brokers in the Australian insurance market. Not the biggest, not, not to, not to dominate in any way, but to be assured that if you went to a Steadfast insurance broker, you got the best possible advice, and you got the, the, the, the best available policies, and that you maintained some sort of status to get reasonable pricing that was effectively, the way you could run your business or your personal life. How we, how did we do this? I mean, it's pretty simple. This, this is a, a metrics of what we did. We, we started on the left-hand side by saying, if we're going to endure as a network, we have to have strategic relationships with our insurance partners. We've got to understand what they need to achieve. They've got to understand what we need to achieve, and we've got to work in unison to make sure somehow we can carve a pathway to do that. We've done that very successfully. If you go down the left-hand side, the next thing we set up in the beginning was errata. We, we broke the back of, of, I would say, sums insured for errors and omissions programs in Australia. We set our first link at AUD 50 million. We now carry AUD 100 million coverage for any error or omission that the group may make. We've diligently had that insurance with the same provider since 2004. It's almost unheard of in the insurance industry that a, that a high-risk area on advice, as insurance broking, has been, has, has had the same supplier for its, for its program since that period of time. We're very proud of that. Next to that, you'll see Gold Seal, and that's a company we worked in cohort with and worked many, many years to make sure that the programs they developed for audit and for compliance were accepted by the group. Then latterly, over the last two years, we've acquired that company, and it no longer works for the general public. It, because of our network, and its size, it works exclusively for us. It conducts audits for us on compliance, it conducts operational audits for us, it works HR programs, it makes them our external supplier, that we actually own, that works independently on the network to make sure that anything the network's got to do from a regulatory point of view, we get oversight on. Underneath that, the first thing we did was we formed an underwriting agency. We had experience in the board with people that, who had done underwriting agencies, and we built the underwriting agencies back up to 29, 100 niche products and AUD 2 billion+ in turnover during this period of time, and indeed, to our net profit, a 44% contributor to our net profit. Below that, we had to put business support into the network brokers. The network strength was designed to make sure that a small to medium enterprise broker, somebody at a country town with five or six employees, could get the best information about how they should act for their clients and not. We built this by a whole lot of business support programs. We helped with marketing, we helped with the broker services. We built a technical operating service manual, which was the envy of, of the market in 1999. It was unheard of in those days, the diligence that we put into the small to medium enterprise broker, to lift them up to a situation where they were on the same level as, as basically, an international broker. Then wonderfully, we, we were able to get on board some lawyers that had great experience in policy wordings, and we built Triage. Now, Triage is designed where if there's an issue with a claim, we're not saying it's designed to get claims paid that shouldn't be paid. It's designed to give, if there's a quantum issue or denial of a claim, a pathway of excellence for the SME broker to be able to take his client into another area, which analyzes what should or shouldn't happen and give him impartial view. It's now so well thought of by the general insurance industry, that Triage people come to us and say: What does Michael White, who heads up Triage, think about this problem? Ask them, okay. Underneath it, to anchor this in, to be the best network we could possibly be, we made a decision to build our own back-office underwriting system, our own back-office CRM, our own back-office software. It was a risk that we took 15 years ago. It was a risk that we brought into the public arena when we floated in August 2013. It was against everybody's advice. Everybody said, "You are wasting your time." We now have the best software program available for insurance brokers anywhere in the world. On the back of that, we built the contestable platform, a client trading platform, allowing one piece of information to go into as many as 10 insurers to provide within 18 to 20 seconds, absolute quotations on a comparable basis where they compete. Nobody knows what the pricing is, nobody pays extra money, nobody gets more commission if they do business with insurer A or insurer B. We built that at a time when the whole market was against that. Insurers didn't want to be put into a comparable basis. The incumbent electronic system in the market wouldn't allow that to happen, okay? We built this, now it's doing AUD 1.2 billion in turnover. Then on the technology side, the back office system inside, it was brought into the 2025, not 1925 syndrome, and it, and it stands alone. On the right-hand side, we moved into selective reinsurance advice through Steadfast Re. They, they were a company that was that was. The participants in Steadfast Re had a, had a, a wide-ranging reputation in the reinsurance industry, worked for a, another reinsurer. They dominated in Asia Pacific, a lot of the information that they had, and we went to them and said, 'These people would like to come,' and we bought them out of that business. Now, we didn't steal them. We didn't pay them more money. We didn't go and come in 12 months time. We went to the people they worked for and said, 'We want to do this,' and we made an equitable and amicable arrangement to take those people out of that business so that they could start day one with us, and not having to worry about whether the clients would come. Everybody knew it was going to happen, and that's gone on with helping sidecars, helping people fill gaps in treaty, and is well respected. What we felt was, and the third button on the right there was, we had to do something about alternative risk. We had to build alternates to the traditional way of insurance was being done. As insurance was climbing in cost, as, as, as risks were opening up wider, as there was more pressure on capital around the world, we had to come up with our risk division. Our risk division, Steadfast Risk Group, now is the envy of the market. It can cover from, from, surveys to client, to client engineering help, to mutuals. We, we, we do, we do, a captive, we, we, we run, valuation programs through it. It's the full risk analysis that you would want at any level, and I mean any level, from the largest mine to the, to the, to the smallest operating system, somewhere where somebody has problem because they've developed something, and they need advice about what can be done. It, via us, has invested in an in a system of fire retardant, which is now being run out. It's, it's, it's available very shortly through one of the major hardware stores, okay? It, it allows the ability to put a coating over-. It's flammable material, and make sure that it does not burn. It's, it's a fantastic program. two or three of the international insurers are very interested in it, and one and a couple of our domestics are looking at it. This is what Risk Group does. This is what differentiates us, our network. This is what makes where we go forward with what we do, different. When people look at us and say, "What differentiates you from your competitors?" The fact that we run the network to service the network's clients, to be ahead of what's going on in the market, to make sure that risk mitigation is what we do, not just how much you're gonna pay for your next premium. Below, below that, of course, succession came in play. What should we do? Okay, how should we develop the business? People were selling outside our network because they were scared. They'd worked for many years to build up this asset. They were frightened about what they were gonna do. They were frightened. They would sell, then they would go: I wish I hadn't sold. That's where we morphed into the public company to provide capital to these people. I'm very pleased to say that the people who joined Steadfast back 27 years ago and paid AUD 360 a share for their shares, those shares that they bought in the beginning, those five shares, are worth today AUD 570,000. The people who supported us in the beginning have done very well out of it. We've been able to do the acquisitions to keep people contained, still in our network, still stay and de-risk themselves from the point of view of when I wanna sell, I wanna have a friendly person there. Then we moved into premium funding. We have the second-largest premium funder in Australia. We have a premium funding network, which has been fantastic to allow people that want to amortize their premiums over a period of time, the time to do it at, at an acceptable rate of interest, which is, which is off balance sheet lending to them. Then we run a series of complementary services, helplines, tech helplines, legal helplines, compliance helplines, training days, webinars, our convention, the largest in Australia in insurance. A range of buying services that allow people, when they have to spend money on something, to be able to go somewhere where they can get a pricing mechanism that's as if they were one of the major companies buying it. Of course, in recent times, we've been able to develop our ESG program so that we can uplift it and put it into a small company in a small area that says, "This is what we do for the environment and where to go forward." That's the Steadfast Network. That's why 10 years later, we're still here. That's why 10 years on from when we started it, we're the market leader in distributing intermediated in business. It's not because we did a lot of silly things, it's because we stuck to what we said would work and what we said has worked, and the people who invested with us got an increase of 498% on total shareholder return during this 10-year period. Can you go to page six? If I seem passionate about it, I'm sorry, but I am. Page six. The numbers speak for themselves, okay? EBITDA, up 26.5%. We did AUD 340 million last year, we did AUD 430 million this year. NPAT, up 22.5%. We did AUD 190 million last year, AUD 207 million this year. NPATA, again, AUD 205 million last year, AUD 252 million this year, up 22.7%. Diluted earnings per share for an NPAT, up 14.6%, okay? From AUD 0.175- AUD 0.2015. Diluted NPATA, up 14.9%, from AUD 0.2137- AUD 0.2455. Final dividend, AUD 0.09. Total dividend, AUD 0.15, up 15.4% year-on-year. Just to keep the financial review happy, our statutory earnings were ahead of the year before, okay? Not a lot of people understand statutory learning, a statutory earnings, just to make sure that everybody feels happy, we're able to explain that there may be a loss for a silly accounting error. We are able to say that we went from 171 to 189. Go across to page seven now. Thank you very much. This is our trapped capital. This is what we've worked on. This was why we formed Steadfast IPO, Steadfast ASX. It was the ability to allow people who built good businesses, strong businesses, the ability to be able to come to a friend and take some of that money off the table. Okay, this FY2023 acquisition, we, we acquired a brilliant business, Insurance Brands Australia, okay? We paid AUD 286 million for it, and we got 21.2 EBITDA for it. Our 57 completed trapped capital acquisitions during the same year, we picked up AUD 30.1 million and AUD 287 million in acquisition costs. We've got a fabulous pipeline. We've got three completed acquisitions that give us just under AUD 750,000 of EBITDA. We've got 13 term sheets out there, which could, which could result in a further AUD 11 million. We've got 13 other term sheets that are, that are in due diligence and 23 other opportunities. The future looks really good. You'll see we've put there, there's AUD 445 million in pipeline activities. You'll see that, that, that, the future and the runway are, are, are where we are. We are nowhere through this. We are, we are. We have years of potential to go forward in our acquisition program. Go to page eight. We complete accretive, accretive earnings acquisition. We are, we are not a company that looks to buy broken and, and poorly performing businesses and show what skill we've got. We want to buy quality businesses that get EPS growth, and that when we work with them and show them systems, and show them how to get organic growth, we will get organic growth out of those businesses. I say that in particular reference to organic growth, because we've all been one could say that a drover's dog could have made that could have made money in the insurance broking issue over the last few years. I'd probably argue that and say, "Not quite." Maybe the drover, but not the drover's dog, could have made money out of it. The reason being that eventually there is going to be a tailing off of this, this accretive yearly, year-on-year compounding growth of insurance premiums. Our job, from the beginning this started, was not to sit back and say how clever we were for making more money, but to say, "This increase is going to ease. It's going to drop one day. Our job is completely to make sure that when it starts to plateau, and it's not gonna start in the next 12 months or two years, I can tell you, there's still a long way to go. When it starts, we wanna make sure that the organic growth that we've been able to shake out of those acquisitions, shake out of those, of the capital we deployed, makes up for that difference, so that when the plateau starts to occur, the growth of this business will, will be made up by the increased organic growth that will shake out of that business. That's, that's page eight for you. Basically, that's, that's in summary, it gives you a, it gives you the bar chart showing what we've done. Please reflect on that. If you go to page nine, this is pretty exciting. With 2013 on the left, we acquired equity positions that gave us AUD 1 billion worth of turnover, and AUD 2.9 billion that, of that, we didn't. Were networked. If you run forward to today, the network's doing 11.6 for FY23. It's increasing past that as we head towards September now. If you have a look at that, 48% of our equity brokers do AUD 5.6 billion turnover. There's a further 7% there in that little piece of pie at the bottom, which allows our trapped capital to fire up and go forward. Then on the other side, there's still AUD 16 worth of network brokers. We, we have a very delicate thing when you look at our acquisitions and our, our sell downs. I'll just, I'll just for a second, bear with me. When we do a sell down, which means somebody who works in the business, we, we sell them a percentage of our EBITDA. We're very keen to do that because our model says: "Hey, have people involved with you that are partners and, and work with you in the business, and share in the capital value of the business." That's why we do it, okay? When we do that, sometimes we sell down AUD 10 million, AUD 15 million, AUD 18 million worth of EBITDA. It's a fantastic thing to do. All of a sudden, Stephen Humphrys has got to turns around to me and says, "Well, if you're not AUD 18 million off last year's EBITDA because you sold it to people, you have to make that difference up." When you see what we've sold down, and you see that we've still had great accretive growth, and we've got past 10% or 12% growth, we've had to overcome those sell downs as well. That's a fabulous picture to be in on page nine. I'll, I'll just, I'll just finish with a couple at the moment. Go to page 10. This is an analysis of where we are on, what our view is of the market. If you look at insurance and reinsurance, the, the lack of cats hasn't, has not made much difference whatsoever, okay? The impact of non-catastrophe on, on whether people are taking more risk or not taking more risk, or whether premium is going down, is being obliterated by the attritional claims, which keep going forward and keep escalating and keep coming up. I'm sort of... I look and people say, "Oh, well, the whole world's gonna change now, and now El Niño is coming because there won't be any more cats." I hate to make reference to it, 'cause it's really sad. Maui is a classic example of what-- we, we're not getting flooded, we're not getting hot windstorms, although we will get windstorms as a result of the heat. People are saying: "Well, hang on, the insurance cycle is gonna change." It's not. The wildfires are berserk all around the world. You've got major insurers not insuring houses in California. That's, that's a dramatic move, okay? Maui, heaven forbid, and the, the, the, the loss of life is horrific and terrible, is absolutely a microcosm of, of what, what is happening around the world with climate change. The potential impact on reinsurance, it's interesting to watch the debacle of Vesttoo, okay? This is, this is a, a, was a, a, a reinsurance company set up that, that when I was at Monte Carlo, the reinsurance wonder Rendez-Vous last year, everybody was talking about this incredibly agile new reinsurance company that had come around. In many cases, it wasn't using capital. It was using a letter of credit, which is fine, except that just recently, in the last three months, one of those letters of credit was, in fact, tested. When a letter of credit was presented, that was backing up a reinsurance program to the bank, the bank said, "This is not a letter of credit. We know nothing about this." How that rolls out, I don't know. What that may put on further pressure to the reinsurance market is, where there is a whole lot of capital supported by letters of credit, there may be some more diligence that's put into that area. There may be some pressure put on people to say, "Well, are you backing this with capital, or are you backing it with letters of credit?" It's going to be an interesting time. It's gonna be fascinating to see how that plays through the whole reinsurance market, because it may realign how capital is allocated for reinsurance. If it does, that will mean cost of reinsurance and cost of capital, as you see around the world, is going up. It'll be interesting. Okay, the next, the next thing is, I went through regulation. I'll give you a summary of that, okay? In reinsurance commission, people think it's the best way to do it for distributing general insurance, okay? The retail client, the definition stayed as what it should be. There's some subjectivity about that, about whether the retail client is being served, and in a way it should be. It's still up to a little bit of interpretation, but the one thing that came out of home, the one thing that came out of Michelle Levy, the, the thrust that we're getting from regulators is the transparency of REM should be omnipotent when dealing in any general insurance transaction. Overlying that, that's something that has to underline everything we do. Steadfast Technologies. We put in that first thing there, somebody facetiously said to me, "How do you say you're the dominated automatic composing, comparative quips, system?" Basically, because we travel the world looking at what we do, and we look at every other automated system around the world, and we can't see anyone that does $1.2 billion worth of turnover through it. That's why we made that statement. It's not made because we had a few drinks one night and decided to throw around with a bit of largesse, that's what we thought. It's based on several years investigating, of going through meticulously what we want to do. We, we, we've done well with our back office, the slowdown, and we're getting out more automated stuff. It's due to the fact that most of the insurers are struggling to get API connectivity. We're working with ACORD out of New York to develop a universal API connector. Cyber has been a massive issue. I mean, it makes me worried when people go, "Oh, you're increasing your costs of your head office." Yeah, we did. We increased our costs in head office by AUD 3 million to put in further Cyber protection of this organization. Which if you want to have a look at what, what's happening in the cyber world, there, there is, there is a change happening every day. With the responsibility we've got, we, we have invested very heavily in profit that we could take to our bottom line and put it into our cyber protection. Lastly, there, we, we, we, we sold off our MGA underwriting agency to JAVLN. They're a slick group out of New Zealand. We'll work cooperatively with, with them. I think the blending of, of their young guys and our young guys could look, could look interesting over time. Go to page 11. Succession. Yeah, nobody likes anybody in succession, I, I agree. I don't know who they're modeled on, but they're not very nice people. This is about our succession. Sorry. Okay. The reality is, we have spent the last two and a half years making sure that this organization is well-placed if any of us walk out the front and the tram runs us over. We found that we had a great team. We found that we had mostly good people. We found we had the odd gap, and we filled that, and we needed to do some training. Also, we were able to bring on some people. You know, you'll meet at the half year, Nigel Fitzgerald, who's coming to COO. You know, we got him, having known him for nearly 14 years and doing business with him in all forms of life, in but, in other iterations he had. We've moved Samantha Hollman, our COO, into our international assets. Succession is something that we, we were front of mind, well ahead of people started asking me how old I was, and whether I was gonna hang around, and whether I could still manage to get out of my car and get into our office unaffected. Well, I can, okay. Between you and I. I'm also smart enough to realize that this, this, this juggernaut that we've created at Steadfast, needs people smarter than me coming through to take it to its next level. Hopefully, hopefully, that you'll when you meet the people that are doing this, you'll be very impressed with what we've done there. On international expansion, we've been looking for five years at where we should take the systems that we've done well in New Zealand and Singapore and, and, and other places, too, okay? We, we made, we made a, a, a conscious, a conscious decision not to use Unison Steadfast to do that, because Unison Steadfast does what it does well, and we'll keep working that, and that's part of Sam, Samantha Hollman's remit, is to, to run through that. We've looked. The place we think that is very simple for us to move into is the U.S. Everybody goes, "Oh, be careful in the U.S." I've been working on distribution in the U.S for the last 14 years. I've been, I've been on the ACORD board for over 10 years. So we understand the nuances of distribution at all levels, from, from the internationals down to the small, tide agent in, in, in some backwater that nobody's ever heard of. We have designed what we want to do in the U.S market. We had six targets to look at over the last two years. We've refined that down to, to a couple, and we will, by the AGM, be in a position to tell you about what we're doing on the international expansion. Lastly, ESG is a very important position for this organization. It's crucially important that we work hand in hand. We've promoted Joanne Rees, one of our who, who was our, our, a senior person with us, to actually take part of that as an AGM. We've put, we've put resources into it. It's there, it's clear, it's unequivocal what we're doing. We're not saying it for the sake of opening our mouth. We've actually got programs to, to fit into it. The most exciting part about that is that we can uplift these programs and put them straight into the network. funny enough, we're getting, over the last 12 months, a huge amount of our brokers are being asked: "Hey, can you help us with ESG? We're being asked about it." Okay, then the last couple of slides here. I'm running out of time. I better get better, speed up. Okay. All right, go to page 12. This is pretty simple. This is our insurance broking network. Go to the right-hand side. GWP, okay, AUD 10.3 up to AUD 11.6. Organic growth, 9.8%. Our AR network still continue to put in the mid 2.5% range. New brokers, 0.4. All up, our total growth, 12.8%. Okay? Down there, you can see the number of brokers in our network. You can see what our client trading platform is. You can have a look at the EBITDA that we produce, okay? This is all the sum of what we do. Okay, go to page 13. The underwriting agencies continue, okay? We've used robotics to cut back costs in some ways, not to cut back people, but to give more efficiency. Our long-term strategy means we have to work hand in hand with the capital providers to produce a profit for them, okay? It's not much good giving money, getting a delegated authority and not producing a profit. They don't want to talk to you, okay? With the higher premium rates have helped us. The inefficiencies of some of the insurers to respond quickly to that has allowed us the opportunity to, to gain more people that want to deal with the underwriting agencies. The ability to get them on the Client Trading Platform has been fantastic, and our in-house data analytics is now starting to become absolutely germane to a negotiation with an insurer. They want to know what it looks like. They want to know what we can give them, want to go through, and we continue. We've got over 100 of these agencies. Then finally, on our Insurtech, okay, we've got AUD 1.2 billion going through it. We've got 205 brokers on it. We've done about 220 broker conversions, with amalgamation. We've got 6 million plus users using the system. We've got a swathe of brokers that are lined up to join us, okay? The situation on the right is pretty clear. When we started in 2016, we had nothing going through it. We're past the AUD 1.2 billion mark on the Client Trading Platform. Then if you go to the sweet spot that you, that you've all put up with me talking about how good we are and what we've done. Number page 15, isn't it, I mean? 15. Page 15. Dividends are up 15.4% to AUD 0.15. That's we set up in the beginning. We said: "If you back us in the public arena, we will guarantee to give you around 75% of our net profit back by way of dividends, and we'll guarantee to accretively increase our dividends each year to you, and hopefully, you'll get capital gain," and we've delivered. Thank you, everybody. It's time I hand it over to the sensible part of the submission from Stephen, who will give you the facts and figures to say to you that everything he said probably could be right, because this is where the money comes from. Thank you. Thank you, Rob. I also just want to reflect a little bit on the last 10 years, if we can, just before we get into the numbers. This is the tenth consecutive record result that the team at Steadfast has produced. When you look at all the underlying metrics, be it revenue, EBITDA, NPAT, they've all grown CAGR growth of 20%+. EPS is 15%+, for the CAGR across this 10-year period. We've always hit the guidance or exceeded it or upgraded, which has been fantastic to be able to report to you. Even things like COVID didn't stop our momentum. 498% TSR over that 10-year journey. If you look at just the growth in 2022 and 2023, which is AUD 38 million, that's actually in excess of the AUD 27 million we took to the market in the first place in FY13. We told the market upfront that the initial return on capital, when you referenced to NPATA, was 6.85%. That's now at 12.7% and looking to build another 100 basis points for next year. We took to the market really two key strategies, that we would continue to acquire further businesses, we would also, just as importantly, seek to get that organic growth. If you think over the last 10 years, we really have outlaid AUD 2.5 billion for businesses, of which AUD 1.1 billion has happened in the last two years. If you just compare the aggregate EBITA of all our businesses compared to what we what they were doing when we bought them, they're now delivering 81% EBITA on top of what we originally bought. If you think that, if you just look at the first eight years of acquisitions, because the last two years, obviously, they haven't had that much opportunity to grow, they're doing close to 100% better than when we first bought them. I think that that actually does prove our record of buying astutely in the first place. It proves that co-ownership model that we have, and it also evidences our track record of organically growing the businesses throughout the insurance cycle, be it soft market we had originally or the hard market that we've had in the last few years. The network really does, as Rob outlined, is the solid foundation upon which all the other revenue streams have been built. We have always invested significantly back into the network to ensure we retain that significant, and I would say, unique competitive advantage. When we floated, we had 276 brokers distributing AUD 3.9 billion of GWP. That's now up three times. We bought a stake in about AUD 1 billion of it. That's now up 5.6 times. We've expanded into New Zealand, Singapore, and of course, we've also bought a couple of other networks in Australia in that time, let alone accessing into UnisonSteadfast globally. The agency portfolio, we believe, is the strongest in Australasia. At IPO, we had a stake in two agencies, now 29, with over AUD 2 billion of GWP. The technology suite is the envy of the Australasian, indeed, the worldwide market. We have constantly invested to ensure it is at the forefront of the brokering market. That development of the risk management tools is also powerful for an SME broker, who on their own would struggle to develop any of that, but it's available as part of their Steadfast membership. They are the investments that keeps the network not just solid, but growing, and was the reason why we got those brokers in New Zealand, Singapore, etc. It is the base upon which we spring the volume to other revenue streams, be it the agencies, the premium funders, the technology, the risk management, the complementary businesses with confidence. We've always had that mindset of delivering not just short-term results, but always looking at the medium and the longer term as well. With that, let us now look at the 23 results. Again, we go through what do we do to reconcile the statutory underlying results on slide 17. As per usual, we remove any gains or losses on the Johns Lyng investment. For some of our recent acquisitions, we actually paid a little bit more than what we expected upfront. That's because they performed better. That's AUD 17.8 million that we had to put through the P&L, but of course, we reversed that for our underlying purposes. Not the worst AUD 17.8 million we've ever spent. There was AUD 1.4 million, where the estimate we had was a little bit too high. We wrote that back, of course. Just specifically for Insurance Brands, it did deliver the EBITA that we expected at the time of acquisition, the earnings mix was a little bit more biased towards profit shares, and we negotiated not to be paying for any uplift in profit shares when we did the acquisition agreement. We'll actually end up paying AUD 7 million of that AUD 25 million earn out, which means we adjusted both the carrying value of that liability as well as the carrying value of the asset, and there's about a AUD 500,000 adjustment, net adjustment in the balance sheet for that. Of course, there's always a few other minor amendments here and there, but they effectively neutralize out. Slide 18, if I could. Headline, underlying results for 2023. A further significant uplift in earnings over FY22. We came in at the top end of our guidance range. With the interest rate increases, our EBITA actually went slightly over. That interest received goes into our EBITA calculation. Of course, the interest costs on our debt facility brings the NPAT back into that top end of our uplifted guidance range. Total revenue is over AUD 1.4 billion, representing a 24% increase. That flowed in through the EBITA, which has come in at AUD 430 million, a 26.5% increase. NPAT up 22.5%. Earnings per share up 14.6%, reflecting the equity raise that we had to fund the various transactions during the year. That was at the top end of our 10%-15% guidance range. Cash earnings up AUD 47 million, increase of 22.7%. Cash EPS up 14.9%. Our equity brokers actually experienced a further uptick in volume. They were actually about 3%-4%. Of course, the hard insurance market did continue in the second half. This was a record year of acquisitions with over AUD 570 million outlaid, led by IBA and complemented by the trapped capital program. If you exclude IBA just for a second, the average multiple we paid was 9.6x, just under that 10 times standard multiple that we have for trapped capital. We exceeded the AUD 220 million of trapped capital acquisitions. We had a net AUD 242 million spend when you net down some equity sell-offs that we, we muted. That actually contributed to a further 1% of EPS growth compared to our expectations a year ago. Let's just have a quick commentary on 2023. We finished with a strong 2nd half, as we did predict, with revenue uplifts flowing through the bottom line, meaning we actually did get the margin expansion that we predicted in February. Our bottom line results topped in the guidance. The premium increases in SME have remained strong as we forecasted in February 2023. Interest revenue and expenses, unsurprisingly, were both up, correlated the interest rate rises throughout the year. We have more money on deposit than we have in borrowings. That, together with the hedges that we had up to January 2023, in particular, for AUD 150 million, meant that we had a net AUD 4 million tailwind before tax on the interest. Given that, that hedge is now finished, we think the FY2024 will see the interest rate increases, give or take, matching the finance cost increases. We still enjoy a AUD 62.5 million hedge. Just a quick commentary as we just thinking of FY2024 going forward. We do forecast that those premium increases will continue at similar rates into FY2024, give or take that 7.5%-10% sort of bracket. We are looking at investing additional resources, particularly in our agencies, be that systems and people, as well as more broadly, that expanded cyber protection for the group. We've also dialed in additional costs as we continue to review those North American opportunities. Whilst the outlook has got organic growth doing the heavy lifting, it is complemented by AUD 280 million of acquisition activity in FY2024, given that continued pipeline of opportunities in front of us. If you think 12 months ago, we'd said to you there was AUD 400 million of potential opportunities. Six months ago, we said that's actually now uplifted to AUD 500 million. Now, we're telling you it's closer to AUD 750 million, and of which we've completed roughly AUD 300 million. We anticipate fully funding those from debt or the, or our free cash flow. So for anybody thinking there was an equity raise about to happen, that's not on the cards at this point in time. Not this month, anyway. The seasonality of earnings in FY2023 came in with that slightly higher bias for second half than we did predict, 44%, 56% for second half. That's, at this stage, what we would expect to see in 2024 as well. Going to slide 19. Our 26.5% EBITA growth for last year was roughly half each between organic growth and the acquisition growth. Both of them were ahead of our original full year guidance expectations, and both of them are ahead of our first half metrics. As forecasted, that seasonality of sales, with a fairly consistent cost base across the year, means you get higher leverage of that sales growth through that bottom line. The organic growth was 17.3% in the second half alone. The amount of IT capitalized on our balance sheet was a little bit down in prior years. There's a little bit more that gets expensed, but it's in line with the amount of the that we amortized for the year. They pretty much are netting each other off. We continue to expand the SCTP sales, and of course, the rollout of the INSIGHT is progressing as we expected. The acquisition growth obviously contains the results of Insurance Brands, which has delivered the underlying results in line with what we purchased. That acquisition has embedded really well into the group and has now become one of the potential hubs to place some of our businesses into, along with a few other hubs that we have in our group. In fact, they've already started to embed two of them already. Slide 20. We now show the results of the broking and the agencies as if we own them all 100% and removed any impact of profit shares. For the brokers and the network combined, our blended average ownership is now 77%. 73% is for the pure broking. Of course, we own 100% of the network. For the year, there was 12.7% organic growth in revenue. That reflects that hard market conditions, as I said, as well as that continued volume growth. The premium increases were across, of course, most property lines. They've continued with the average premium rate rises being spread all the way through the year. We're about 70% leveraged to, on the commission side, so that kind of gives you about 10% revenue growth, of that 10% price increase, and give or take, 4% organic volume growth with 2% from bolt-ons. As foreshadowed, we knew there would be some additional costs coming back in the business post-COVID. Partial return to normality in FY2022, and a further progression, of course, to the, what you might call the new normal in FY2023. The war on talent was certainly evident 12 months ago, when most wages were set for the year ahead. That war, it's not as feverish as it was 12 months ago, but there's still the need to ensure that staff are appropriately remunerated and those salaries being adjusted, of course, where merit does require. In addition to those significant acquisitions, y- you have that, particularly in the broking space, they added 11.2% to the bottom line. slide 21 on the agencies, who we own about 90% of the earnings that you see here. For the fifth year in a row, they really did trade ahead of expectations throughout the year, with solid performances across most of the businesses there. Growth rate for the second half was about 15%, down from 19.3%. Rob and I have been saying for many, many years that it, the 19.3% was com- absolutely stellar, and it'll need to, it, it will come back a little bit. It has come back a little bit to that 15%. Still not a bad result. It's pretty, pretty outstanding. We think those revenue growth rates might moderate a little bit further. As I said, we're going to invest a little bit more on people and systems there. We do expect margin in that business to reduce a little bit next year, but still deliver some further earnings to the bottom line. slide 22, on the cash flow. Our businesses convert profits into cash. As done every, every year, this year is no exception. We've collected all the profit and then some. All our NPAT A converts into cash. Our debtor days continue to be equal or better than our historical levels. Our premium funding arrears also continue to be below the pre-COVID levels. We believe the SME is continuingly robust. There's been concerns in things like the construction sector, no surprise there, but the overall impact on SME is minute. It's holding up really well at this stage. Our AUD 168 million of free cash flow, of course, we invested that in, as you know, as we talked about, into the ongoing acquisition activity. Balance sheet, I wanted to highlight particularly, we've literally, this last week, have reset our debt facilities. We've increased it a further AUD 200 million to AUD 860 on the corporate side, up from AUD 660, at competitive margins. We continue to retain that at AUD 300 million accordion on top, should we need to activate that. Those facilities now extend, some of them all the way up to November 2028. The three and five years, if you like, has been reset. We've shown you the metrics on the slide of what they are. As of today, we actually have AUD 378 million that we could draw upon the facilities, excluding the accordion. Given that we've forecasted AUD 280 million of acquisitions against that AUD 445 million of opportunities, you can see why we make the statement, we expect to fund those opportunities from the free cash flow and the debt. Unless further opportunities were to present themselves, it's debt funding here. We are currently 19% geared. It is conservative. We have that 30% maximum. If we were to go to that 30% maximum, we could borrow AUD 440 million on our corporate facilities to get to that point. We are actually happy to stay that relatively conservative and nudge our way up towards that 30% as time progresses. Obviously, given we've got more cash on deposit than what we borrow, we've talked about the impact of our interest rates onto our P&L, and we'll continue to enjoy that AUD 62.5 million hedge while we've got it until January 2025. I'm gonna hand that now back to Rob. Thank you, Stephen. For an accountant, you can see he's effusive about the results, which I'm very proud to support. I'd just like to say that we, when we came together just under 12 years ago, we were two different characters, but, but, but with the same dedication to what we wanted to achieve. Our, our ability to work in the trenches with next to one another, without any ego between the two of us, but just with the common good of, hey, we've got a big responsibility with this capital that public are giving, has been a great pleasure for me in the last decade, to be able to turn to Stephen and ask him a question and rely absolutely emphatically on, on honesty and, and expertise in that answer. From my point of view, thank you, Stephen, for being on my right hand during this period. Did in return. Okay, guess of the guidance for 2024. Our EBITDA, okay, we're predicting between AUD 500 million and AUD 510 million. Our NPAT, AUD 230 million to AUD 240 million. We think our EPS diluted will probably be in the 10%-15% range. People often say, "Why do you give that range?" We give that range because of the variations that can happen in general insurance, okay? Our underlying NPATA sit between AUD 277 million and AUD 287 million. They are, they are good numbers. We always tell you that the low range is what we can guarantee. The other range, up above, is where the variables in our industry could lead us to with our expertise. There's a few subjects of the following guidance, those four points down there. From our point of view, that's the presentation, and I'll hand you now back to the moderator so that if there's any questions that have come in, we're very happy to take them at this time. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the headset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Andrei Stadnik from MS. Please go ahead. Good morning. Can I ask a couple of questions? My first question, can I ask around the guidance? Just thinking through, it seems a bit conservative, you know, given we're seeing maybe around 10% pricing, and then in addition, you have quite a strong pipeline of M&A-driven growth. Without any, you know, share count dilution as well. Just thinking through that guidance in the 50% range, does seem a bit conservative. Like, what's holding you back? If I can just give a couple of points. First of all, our, our revenue growth, we're thinking more on that 7.5%-10% bracket, so that might just dial a little bit down your expectations perhaps. The share count is just slightly up because of the weighted average going through the year from that last year's capital raise. There's about a 1% dilution that happens on, on that front. The key thing is we are factoring in, let's say, that additional AUD 4 million of interest that we didn't have to pay last year because of the hedge, but are now factoring in for this year. We've also targeted the fact that we're putting a little bit of extra spend into our agencies to make sure that they stay at the cutting edge on their service proposition, their systems, the people, etc., just to make sure that they retain that competitive advantage in the market. They're probably the key things that we have consciously held, held our results back to make sure that we have that sustainable proposition going forward. Thank you. My second question, can I ask around the SCTP? What is the opportunity to expand into other products? If open banking and open finance ever gains traction, is that a further opportunity to expand the SCTP? It certainly has the flexibility to do that, and, and it certainly was designed 15 years ago with the anticipation that that could occur in the future. It's also been designed, designed that when certain sectors of the market may seem to not become unintermediated, okay, then this would fill that role if in fact, the self-service arrangement suits the consumer. Yes, it, it has the flexibility to, to do that. It's not so much the product lines that we have to expand in the client trading platform, it's the automation of the existing product lines and the integration of more insurers in that, in that contestable platform from that point of view. That's the thing that holds you back. You have to have some empathy for the insurers. Their back office systems carry, carry so much data that they have to churn through, that many of the systems that are indeed antiquated, you can't change them. You know, the whole U.S. system bogged down by the fact that there's so much data contained in there, that it's really difficult to do. There's a few things that hold you back from that point of view. Thank you. Your next question comes from Andrew Buncombe, from Macquarie. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. also congratulations- We've got no choice, Andrew. Hang on, hang on. We've got no choice.[crosstalk] You come on. Okay? We'd love to hear from you, Andrew. No, congratulations on a fantastic 10 years of being listed as well, hopefully many more. The main question that I have is just in relation to trapped capital. Can you give us some color around how you're structuring those deals? Do any of them have deferred consideration, or are they 100% cash? Just some color on the structure would be great. Thanks. It really is a case by case, Andrew, where, you know, if someone is, for instance, retiring, then you want to make sure you have an earn-out mechanism to protect any downside risk from our perspective. Sometimes the broker will have a such confidence in the year ahead, they'd like to, you know, see if there's some upside as they stay around and build a business. It is a case-by-case negotiation, sometimes risk mitigation, sometimes opportunity. Yeah, I think, I think arrogantly, I'd say our, our understanding of who we're buying and the networks that we're getting into and what we're doing, allows us to be very sophisticated in decision-making processes about where we take risk and where we don't take risk. Thanks. My other question was in terms of trapped capital, again. Given the M&A thesis has been such a big part of the group for so long, can you give us some color around how you get synergies out of your acquisitions? Are they primary, primarily on the cost side or the revenue side? Just some color there would be great. Thanks. I think what you've got to do, Andrew, is look at the historical performance of how we've increased our organic growth and say that that's something we know how to do, and that's private to how we make our money. I'd love to share it with you, but unfortunately, you'd probably, other people would hear how clever we are about doing that, and that is commercial in confidence. I'm happy to say it's on both sides. Yes. A lot of people think that synergies only comes from costs. We actually have, as we've tried to spell out, quite a few different revenue streams, and allows to connect a lot of more dots along the way. There is actually opportunities both on the, the revenue and the expense line to get those benefits through. You've seen obviously, plenty of times where we've had businesses. We bought 150 businesses now on the broking side, and yet we, we tell you we've got, what? 67. Percent equity brokers. Yeah. That's a lot of businesses that have come together and hub together, where you can typically get a lot of cost saving, for instance, on particularly on the back office, rent, et cetera. There's a number of tricks in the trade that we, we pull to, to get those synergies out. Yeah. I think, I think while others, others are selling part of their network. We're actually selling part of our network to, to ourselves, and we're amalgamating them and bringing them together. We're, we're, we're looking at how doing that means that we get the ability to reduce costs. Yeah. Then the final one from me is just in relation to acquisition multiples. How confident are you that that 10x multiple that you quote for trapped capital is sustainable over the medium term? Thanks. A year ago, I would have said it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out. That's when you didn't have to pay anything to get your money. Risk money coming out of New York, 13% at the moment. I can tell you that's taking a different perspective over a lot of people that were borrowing money to put great largesse into the multiples they were offering. I think that there is a big chance at the moment that 10 is gonna look really good in another few months' time. Stephen, you've been on those trips. Yeah, no, I do think for the multiples, for what you might call those much larger businesses, where they were paying north of 15 times, is not the multiple that you'll see going forward. The 10 times for, let's call it a, a smaller brokerage, does seem to be the market, and there's still plenty of evidence around that that's give or take the number. Yes, your funding mechanism has to be considered to think through what is the right multiple all the time. Yeah, I mean, there are some aggregators in the market there that have, that have slowed dramatically over the last 60 to 90 days. Great. That's it from me. Thank you. Thanks, Andrew. Your next question comes from Kieran Chidgey from Jarden. Please go ahead. Morning, Rob and Stephen. A couple of questions, maybe just starting on the premium growth in the broker network. I think you call out organic growth of around 10% for the year, but it seems to have moderated a little bit from what you showed in the first half, 11.5%, down to around 8.5% in the second half. I was a little bit surprised, just given the strength of the rate environment, just wondering if you can provide any comments as to sort of what was driving that slight slowdown. There are a couple of lines, more, not in the property lines, that are kind, starting to flatten a touch, and that just gives you the overall blend of, you know, coming down just, just that notch. Property lines, which, you know, represents hard assets, is two-thirds of what we sell. They are still very much going forward. There's just a couple of areas. I mean, you saw people like Marsh talking about maybe it's slowing, but that's probably more the corporate high, very high in corporate end. SME is still really going quite strongly. It seems like pressure for the insurers to continue to increase is still very much there to, to push rate rises through. Yeah, I. Bottom line, we're looking to. Yeah, I think, I think the, the avarice, greedy grab for D&O, although Nigel Fitzgerald's in the room here, and he was part of that when he was at AIG, so he may be offended by that statement that I've just made. Our D&O came down from just over AUD 4 million to just under AUD 3 million. We had about a AUD 1.1 million drop in D&O. People are going, "Oh, the D&O market's collapsing." I, I would say that something we paid AUD 700,000 for and are now paying just sub AUD 3 million is not a collapse. It may become a rationalization that people just won't, just won't buy at that stage. There's a couple of areas, but I mean, D&O is not the, not the main game. Property is still very, very difficult at the moment all around the world to write. In fact, the shadow over cyber at the moment is gonna be an interesting transition from readily available, we want to write it, to, "Yeah, we'll write it, but you've got to do this, this, and this, and we'll restrict that, that, and that." I think that there is some movement around, but by and by, 7.5%-10% growth in GWP over the next 12 months is conservative, but not ridiculously conservative. Okay. In our view. A second question, just on the agency costs. You know, my calculations, the organic cost growth was a little bit under 20% year-on-year, and you talked about sort of compliance and claims staff. I mean, relative to what you've seen in 2023, I'm just wondering how significant that additional investment is in those areas, in the agency business into 2024? You know, and whether or not, despite that sort of the margin, we should expect still holding around that 50% mark. Yeah, as I tried to put on the, the commentary, within the 50%, we'll, we'll come back on. Obviously, 50% is an extremely good number that all our competitors would only dream to have, right? coming back a couple of points while we invest, you know, we, we think is the right prudent long-term solution. yes, those cost increases, we expect to push through. There is some elements of, you know, APRA, you know, obviously being heavier on insurers, and then there'll because you're the sales agent for the insurer, there'll be some extra work you've got to do on compliance, et cetera, around that. it is particularly on. claims handling, and that we really want to make sure that we are at the forefront of the market, and it, it is one of the competitive differences that we think our agencies can have, should have, and ought to have, and continue to, to be number one in. Absolutely, I mean, we are probably one of the most regulated, some would argue, over-regulated financial sector anywhere than anywhere in the world. People come in to this market and have a look at it and go: "Really? You've got to do that sort of compliance?" We unfortunately, with the delegated authority, have to have the same rigors as the insurer, basically, in how we operate. They have to check that we have those rigors. We have to check and make sure that we're that all of those 29 agencies have them as well, there's a non-cost to do that, okay? That's why. We're, we, we tend to be proactive on that and making sure that we're at least up with the game, if not ahead of the game, so that we're not creating problems for our capital providers in terms of the, as Stephen said, APRA's laying down rules for what they should do to their, quote, unquote, 'outsourced capital.' That's how we're classed now by APRA, is an MGA is an outsourced capital for an insurer. It's interesting times, but you have to, you have to work with legislation, you have to work with regulation, and we're prepared to do that, and we do do that. Smartly enough, Stephen's allocated some costs to that this year. Yeah, particularly in the first half coming, is where we expect to see it. We are still are looking for, you know, what, what I call a double digit EBITDA uplift for that group. You know, investing heavily but still looking to get that a good bottom line. I have to fight the, the rigors of, of the, of whoever the, the, the musties are, that keep changing accounting standards and tell, and, and tell us, "Well, if you think you're if you're putting on more claim staff, even though those claim staff are in your, in your budget and their expenses allocated, you better take some of their money and, and allocate it towards us. Yeah, we actually had to put AUD 3 million aside. Three, three large, we had to put aside. Additional claims handling provision, which normally would have been called revenue. However, that's accounting standards. It is what it is. Just let me explain that. We had to put AUD 3 million into our expenses for people that are already in our expense budgets for the EBITDA that we're predicting for the next 12 months, over the top of what's in the budget. That's the accounting standard. It's great, c'est la vie. That went straight from bottom line. Well, I might have to take that one offline. Then the third quick question, just, I know you've flagged, you'll make more comments around the AGM on this, but offshore expansion. Just wondering if you could provide now some very high-level commentary on how we should think about the size of that and, obviously, given the funding relative to your current capital headroom? Firstly, that's a lovely question, and please wait for the AGM. Secondly, we have plenty of funding. All right, internally- Debt funded. Funded. Debt funded. Okay. Debt funded. They're debt funded internally, yeah. Yep. Yep. All right, perfect. Thanks, fellas. Okay. Your next question comes from Siddharth Parameswaran from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Good morning, gentlemen. A couple of questions, if I can. Just the EBITDA growth guidance into FY2024. I was just keen to know if you could just split out the contribution from acquisitions and organic, and also just the timing of the AUD 280 million spend. Is it actually, I mean, is it even through the year? Is it, is it front-end loaded? Yeah. Thanks, Sid. If you look at, at an EBITDA line, then the organic growth is probably circa 8%, and acquisition is, you know, 7.5-10 sort of number. If you look at perhaps some breakdowns of that, the AUD 280 million, there's a slight bias of earnings of buying more upfront rather than back-ended. You get a little bit of run rate into 2025, maybe perhaps a 3% sort of run rate, EBITDA growth into 2025, but a heavier, slightly heavier, contribution this year. Obviously, next year's budget has some rate, run rate of what we bought in 2023, going into 2024, as well as the impact of the AUD 280 million. Then, as I say, some of that AUD 280 million flows on into 2025. Okay, thank you for that detail. Just keen to ask a question, just also on interest rates. I mean, you made some comments around just some of the impacts of, I think, some of the hedges rolling off and that impacting your, your guidance on. And, and, and, and I suppose just your just your result from from interest rate costs. But just on the revenue side, within your broking business, I was wondering if you could just help us understand how much of a contribution there was from this margin income you make on the just from the client funds? Yeah, if you're very, very astute, you might actually get a term deposit rate that starts with a five, a lot of them start with four at the moment. Obviously, that's progressed during the year to get to that point. Yes, the hedge itself, we probably had around about a AUD 3 million advantage in FY2023 that we will no longer enjoy into FY2024. Good while it lasted. As I said, net-to-net across the whole business, be it broking or agencies, there's roughly a AUD 4 million tailwind that we enjoyed in FY2023. Sorry, that's from just deposits-- Just from interest that you're getting on deposits, is it, at, at your brokers house? Yeah. Brokers and agent house? Brokers, yeah. Okay. Agencies have it as well. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Okay, okay. Fair enough. Just by the way, we, we did put, we did put some extra details on the interest in the, in the appendices, just so you can see how the interest line, interest received and interest paid, does both work its way through in the numbers. If you go to the appendices, you'll see more detail there. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Comments later today. Thank you. Thanks, Sidd. The next question comes from Scott Hudson from MST. Please go ahead. Good morning, gents. Just a couple of questions. Firstly, Stephen, are you able to give us any sense of what proportion of the organic growth delivered through FY2023 was as a result of the uplift in volume coming through the SCTP? It's. If you think of, well, we have roughly AUD 200 million odd worth of extra revenue going through the SCTP, you know, that's for the whole network. Let's say there's AUD 100 million circa, that relates to our equity brokers. There's probably AUD 2 million of extra revenue that comes out of, AUD 2 million-AUD 3 million sort of revenue that comes out of that SCTP. No margin? All right. No, because- Oh, sorry. Yeah, it's just difference in commission rates. Obviously, every year, the more brokers put onto it, the more efficient they can get in terms of having to process that. That's a question they have to answer every year as they look at their staffing resources. Yep. That's a harder one to charge as to exactly how many people. Yeah, fair. Then just to clarify, you'd decide that you would be able to fund any, or you're expecting to fund any US expansion utilizing your debt capacity? that's right. What we're looking at the moment is a, is through debt capacity. Yep. Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. The next question comes from Jason Palmer, from Taylor Collison. Please go ahead. Thanks for your time, and good morning, Rob and Stephen. Just two from me. First of all, the CHU binder renewal. Are you able to sort of, comment on, on how that renewal process is going? The, which binder renewal? Sorry, Josh. CHU? It's, it's not in negotiation at the moment. It's an April fifth. Yeah Five, is the drop-dead date at the moment. The, the only thing I think you could do is if you want to put a question to Andrew Horton at QBE, who, who said, who said when I had a very extravagant lunch, which was a chicken paneer and a glass of water with him at lunch yesterday, was: There is no way that we would want to see CHU and QBE parting company. It's been a long-established relationship, and we're very happy with it. Okay. Thank you for that. Just one question on that sort of U.S expansion. When you think about- Hang on, Jason. Jason, weren't you listening to the call a little while ago? Okay, ask your question. I didn't hear you, sorry. Okay. I haven't heard you. I didn't hear you, sorry. The U.S expansion. Yes. Page 5, you talk about the the Steadfast DNA. When you look at the two targets that you've narrowed it down to, how does that differentiate from the Steadfast DNA that you've built over the last 30 years? How does the different targets in U.S., not surprisingly, will reflect our business strategy we've adopted today? What we've looked for in the U.S., okay, is we've looked for established targets that would benefit greatly from our established network and what we've done for the network, and how we could keep their existing management team, their existing network, and enhance it so that the people that were participating in it would go: "Wow, this is fantastic!" That other people who considered joining that network in the future would go: "Wow, if we went there, we'd get that." Does that help you a little bit? It does, Robert. It just that, you know, you spent a lot of time going through slide five. It was great to sort of hear the story of how you sort of put together the Steadfast network. I thought there must be a bit of a gap between what's in the U.S. market at the moment and what you've delivered in Australia. I was just trying to draw out a response there. There's a considerable gap to the way aggregation's been done in North America and the way that we've built a network and grown externally into aggregation of that network. They are like chalk and cheese, okay? I guess, if you sat at the table and you had the choice between chalk or cheese, you'd probably take the cheese. Thank you for your time. Appreciate it. Well, it's a pleasure, Jason. Please put another one. Okay? Next question comes from Siddharth Parameswaran from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Thanks for taking my question again. Just, Stephen, I just want to clarify your comment about the extra detail on the interest income that you're showing. So just to be clear, am I to take away that there's about an extra AUD 20 million that we've earned on just on client balances for FY2023 versus FY2022? That's quite a large contribution from higher interest rates, which I suppose changes the picture on organic earnings. Am I reading that correctly? Is that, is that the line you're, you're referring to? Yep, that's right. Look, if you, if you think across where we started the year, interest rates were pretty much zero on term deposits and obviously have ridden their way up. There's about, you're right, about AUD 20 million uplift on EBITA that comes from that, and then the interest paid has also then had that AUD 14 million expense going through the year as well. The differential. Yeah. Sure. I mean, when we look at your results, you know, you show us the organic trends, et cetera. With that in there, I suppose if we want to strip out something you're not in control of, I mean, is it, is it right to strip that out in terms of thinking of how your business has organically grown? No, no, not at all. It's intrinsic of how a broker runs their businesses to get those premiums. Yeah put on their, their trust account, invest, et cetera. We always have counted as being part of their core, whether interest rates are going up or interest rates are going down. If you look at, you know, the results that we've got, yes, some of the organic growth has come from that, no doubt about it. You know, as I said, spread across both agencies and brokers, so just be careful as you think through that analysis there. That's why the EBITA actually went ahead of the guidance range, because the interest- You've got to take it out. is in the EBITA, but then the NPAT obviously has to decline back interest expense as well, so. It's a true revenue stream. Always was very important in broking, not so much in the MGA side, but it was always a great income stream, and now it's starting to come back in again as a very viable income stream. Yes, you couldn't take it out. It's, it is part of revenue. Just, I mean, given that we had such a strong cycle as well, I'm just trying to understand, you know, we're getting low digits EBITA underlying growth. Sorry, low, low double-digit underlying growth in EBITA that you flagged, but a lot of it seems to be from, from interest income. Is that? Yeah. What with- Well, that don't, don't forget, on the expense line, as we said, we had to put around about 8%, you know, wage increases through for the year, plus we had the return of COVID expenses. Those things are always gonna go work against us. And yes, the interest rates on the EBITA line works for us, as does the premium rate. When we flag all that up front, yeah, we've, we've always been pretty transparent that the costs would be a, you know, substantial increase, which we had to mitigate. Okay. Just in your guidance, what you're assuming for expenses into expense growth at a broker level and, I mean, you, you flagged what's happening on underwriting agents, underwriting agencies, but just on- Look ... the broker level, are you putting in double increases again or what's, what's in the guidance? Interest rate increases? Yeah, look, we have- Not, not interest, sorry, expense. Okay. Expenses. Oh, expenses? Yeah. For the broking side of things? For the broking. Let me just. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's fairly consistent. There is, as I said, still wage rises to go through again, this year, given the war on talent and rewarding merit, et cetera. That's, you know, that's got to come through. It's, it's probably just a touch under this, you know, a little bit less than the 23 increase going into 2024, because you've got some of those, what I would call COVID expenses, have now been, you know, starting to normalize a little bit. You know, it's, it's a broadly, it's a high single sort of digit, sort of expense increases we still have to expect to come through. Right. Okay. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, Sid. Okay. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back the call to Mr. Kelly for closing remarks. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, everybody who stayed online. Appreciate your interest. I hope we've been clear and unequivocal about where we're at. Just before I go, we have a fantastic team that runs this SDF, the public company, and I just want to thank them publicly for what they've done. Keep, keep the faith, and we look forward to the next 10 years. Thanks very much. That conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.