Welcome to Steadfast 2026 half year results. Following the formal presentation, there will be a Q&A session for investors and analysts. Participants can ask both text and live audio questions during today's call. To ask a text question, select the messaging icon, type your question in the box towards the top of the screen, and press the Send button. To ask a live audio question, press the Request to Speak button at the top of the broadcast window. The broadcast will be replaced by the Audio Questions screen. Use the dial-in number and access PIN provided to ask your question via the phone. Alternatively, for those on a home or personal network, you can ask your question via the web by pressing Join Queue. If prompted, select Allow in the pop-up to grant access to your microphone. If you have any issues using the platform, dial-in details can also be found on the homepage under Asking Audio Questions. Press the Documents icon to see today's files and platform instructions. Select a document to open it. You can still listen to the meeting while you read. Text questions can be submitted at any time, and the audio queue is now open. I will now hand over to Robert Kelly. Thanks very much, and thanks, everybody, for joining us for the half year, and I hope this will be clear and unequivocal from the way we present to you. Again, in line of what we started last year, in about March last year, that the CEOs will report on their various cash generating units. I refer you to Page 4 of the deck, and actually to point 4, where the FY 2024 and 2025 EBIT, EBITDAs have been restated in line with the way that net we're now reporting the CGUs. We're very proud of that Slide, but the bullet points down the side at the bottom of the notes will give you a bit of an indication. If you move to Page 5, this is what we're in business for. I'd like to show you the NPAT, AUD 127 million. Puts us up considerably over what we did last year. Our underlying earnings, NPATA, up 6.3% to AUD 161.5 million. NPAT, up 7.3% to AUD 137.5 million, and EBITDA up 12.6% to AUD 293.6 million. The diluted EPS NPAT is AUD 0.124 CPS, up 7.2%. On the right, the things to point out here is basically how we performed on our acquisitions. In first half, we did 238, and they were all EPS accretive leases, with 195 acquisitions planned to be completed in the second half. Hannah will give a lot more color to that. I won't go down and try and spoil her thunder. We still maintain a discipline in our acquisitions, and that's an interesting time at the moment because of the rerate that's just occurred over the past week. I don't think anybody knows what a reasonable EBITDA multiple will look like in the future at the moment. We still are able to complete in Australia around 10x EBITDA. Watch this space, because I can tell you, there's a hiccup going on all around the financial services that we're working in with around the world. We also continue to optimize our capital allocation in a disciplined way, evaluating our portfolios, and we will look at potentially releasing capital. To explain what that might look like, if we've got an asset now that we bought really well, and it's giving a return, which is okay, but we think we could turn that existing hard asset into cash, and deploy that cash in another way to get an uplift, then we'll certainly look at how we may realign our capital in our non-core assets. Our expense management, we talked about this and how we started doing it. It's really reaching fruition, and you can see the numbers there. We've been able to slice AUD 7 million off our head office. Interestingly, with the way we're reporting now, head office costs are really clear and unequivocal, and I think Hannah can elaborate on that further. Our subsidiaries also have been very diligent in trying to work with us. It's a little bit like the Titanic when you've got nearly 70 subsidiary companies sometimes to make them change, I must say, they've all taken along what Tim's implementing at the moment. I think that we've got a saving of about AUD 4 million. I think in the second half, the compounding effect of what we do will start to be realized all the way through. Again, a reaffirmation of our previous FY 26 guidance and scope for improvement over the medium to improve EBITDA. Medium, for us, we reflect as being 3 years. If you go to Slide 6, the dividend is up 5.1% to AUD 0.082, and that's up 5.1%, I should say. The dividend reinvestment plan will come into place. There'll be no discount on that. If I'm to be candid and frank about that, we're probably trading at a very attractive rate for somebody at the moment, if they want to take advantage of the IP. Our ex-dividend date will be 2nd of March, and the record date will be the 3rd and 4th of March, and payment date will be the 25th of March. Just on the right, you can see the bar charts there reflecting how we've strived, driven in this organization from 2013 to make sure the dividends went up in line. Sometimes we're criticized, particularly some from international investors, as to why we actually do convert so much of our net profit into dividend, but we said we'd do it, and we continue to do it along the line. If you go to Slide 7, the reason we put this in here is probably to explain to you how the premium rates vary, and we've taken a look from 2000 all the way through there, and you can see it looks like mountains and valleys, and mountains and valleys, and mountains and valleys. What I'd like to point out to you, if you go to 2012 and 2014, you'll see that when we floated this business, it was on its way down. The premium cycle had been hard, it was on its way down. In fact, if you look at the valley, the at around 2015, you'll see it went down to +1%. If you then look at the way we climb up and down, and up and down, and up and down, and then realize that if you like, put a line through our earnings and see how accretive they've been and how compounded we've done, we are able to handle peaks and troughs in the premium cycle. Insurance brokers know how to do that. I mean, there's some speculation about whether the markets, the markets continuing to go soft. hasn't been our experience at the moment, but if you have a look at 2023, it was not plus 9.2. If you have a look at January 2026, and I know we're only reporting on the up to December, but it's important to reflect on January, that we're up 2.7%. When you saw that the cascade and the catastrophic points of view that were put out, we went from 9.2 plus to 2.7 plus. You can see there was a 7% differential over a period of time when people said the industry is in chaos and the pricing was chaotic and going to fall below. During all these times, we, as others in our sector in Australia, have been able to maintain our guides, maintain, and what we're putting out and continue running the business. Just before we get out into our CGU CEOs, if you go to Page 8, we've done a lot of work on developing the network, okay? Really, the amount of professional development that Steadfast does is outstanding. You know, we get on our webinars, sometimes we get 3,000, 3,400 people look at our webinars. We in our institute meetings that we have around Australia, we get great attendances, and the team of people that runs our professional development explains what's going on in the industry, are experts, are absolutely long-standing industry stalwarts, and that's part of the DNA that allows us to grow the network. Tim will talk more about that. Our we're also looking at the New Zealand market because it's very low at the moment, struggling, everybody's struggling to get their numbers. It's a great buying opportunity because it's a very stable market in terms of the consumers wanting to buy over there. We're looking at that market. We're upgrading some equity that we've got in some of our businesses over at the moment at a good price. The development of Singapore and into Asia is also on our wavelength, and Sam might speak to this. We have a very close eye on India at the moment and the way that business has matured for insurance brokers in other parts of Asia. We also continue to support our authorized rep network of authorized reps, and we are the leading network of authorized reps in Australia. We've got through our desk, I think 3,600 authorized reps operate under financial services licenses that we control. Again, that's a really different way of looking at how insurance broking has developed. If you go think about 3,600 individual businesses that are operating under somebody else's license, in days gone by, before the advent of the AI networks, they may have attempted to get their own licenses. The consolidation of distribution into ours is here, it's dynamic, and we're one of the major players in it. Looking at the Underwriting Agencies, Mark will reflect upon this. Our focus is on the retention and new business and all the time on pricing adequacy. We, you know, our MGAs in Australia do about AUD 2.5 billion, and that means somebody gives us AUD 2.5 billion of their cash to deploy to the market and to give them a profit on it. We are very cognizant of that responsibility, and we're very cognizant of maintaining long-term relationships we've been able to do. We do have a diverse portfolio and commercial and retail brands, and we've also been able to step into a couple of areas, and I think with the Sure purchase, it gave us the opportunity to expand around the market. With the advent of Castle, that has reached fruition, and Mark may talk a little more about that as we get there. Also the fact that we have consolidated and our MGAs, and certainly that's been a really a difficult but terrifically powerful job that's done. I'll let Mark talk about that a little bit further when he talks to you. Also new products, new markets, you know, we're about to move, but we will start to write cyber in North America in the next three months. That's just the start of what we may do into the U.S. market. The Novum platform gives us the opportunity to be able to bring MGAs in and get them out, and in some cases, to 1,009,000 potential agents who plug into that network. I guess what we've done, and I think with Mark coming into the stewardship of the MGA is to continue to build the relationships we've got with carriers all around the world at a very high level and on a sophisticated level, where when they talk about us distributing their product, they know our track record is one of consistency and profitability for them. I'll leave that to Mark. On the technology side, I think this is interesting, the advent of what we've done with the SCTP, bringing on Insurebot, and some new products. It has absolutely started to streamline quoting processes. I mean, and then our investment in Steadfast Apps, and I'll let David talk in more detail into that. It has been our movement over the last couple of years into how we use AI contained within the business. I think the development of our reporting capabilities means that not that we do every day, but we have access to our GWP and our profit lines basically on a daily basis. We're not looking at trends six months in arrears or three months in arrears. We're looking at trends of what's happening today, where movements are occurring, so we know. I guess the involvement of the IT in our data analytics gives us market-leading information. When I speak to you about numbers, they're not hypothetical numbers that we pulled off a blackboard. They are actually factually numbers, actual numbers based on tremendous data capabilities that we've got built up really over the last decade. It's very exciting, and I think, I think that the the frightenedness that came out of AI is it really is, it knocks us for six, because, I mean, what AI is going to do to the processing of internal business, where we have to move digital data around and give it to people, and where we've had FTEs doing that, now that will be replaced. David can talk a bit further on that when he does it. It's astounding when you see the way the market's reacted, that about a small insurer in Spain with a little product that couldn't really do anything like what we do now, and the whole market got put into a turmoil. AI is going to be a disruptor, and yes, there'll be people who will enjoy speaking to somebody that's been made out of digital analytics, as opposed to ringing up their local insurance broker and saying, "Hello, Jack. Hello, Jill. Can you fix my 18-year-old's car that I can't get insured?" Or, "I," that their house has partly burnt down, "Am I in trouble?" Data analytics and the capability of AI are the DNA of growing insurance brokers. Not the fear about insurance brokers, but the facilitation of getting rid of and streamlining a whole lot of processes. Then, I guess, just on our subsidiary performance, it's a long, long-going process. It's not something new. We have done what not a lot of people have done, I guess, in our industry, is to put finite CEOs and CFOs in charge of our main CG, cash generating units, to make sure that the accountability sits into certain pillars of income that comes to us, and that we and that they report up to Hannah. That there is several people working on the constant revenue that we're generating and how we can save and how we can improve. This we started implementing this last year. We thought we'd implemented the FY 27 year. We were encouraged by the market to actually implement it clearly. Just because I'm difficult to deal with, I asked our finance team could they actually do it for the half year, which made everybody work night and day to do it. We did. We put out the reaffirmation of what it looked like. There you have clear and unequivocal view of what our brokers, our Underwriting Agencies, our International, our technology, and head office costs. When you want to do a comparison, you don't have to guess. You can have a look, and we're fully accountable for each one of those sectors at any one time. I think the work that's been done, headed up by Tim and Mark, have been outstanding, and I'll leave them to talk further about it. Well, I'll stop talking and push you over to the key people that make the business hum and run. Tim, thanks very much. Tim Mathieson. Thanks, Robert. Good morning, everyone. We might start over on my team, if we can, please. I'm really pleased to report the Australasian Broker network continues to grow despite the softer premium cycle. In the first half, our network gross written premium increased 4.4% to AUD 6.4 billion. It's been a very active period for our M&A team, who completed 23 step-ups, 9 step-downs, and 17 new acquisitions, 16 of which will be bolted into existing equity brokers. At the same time, we have enhanced revenue with growth of our broker network fees and professional service fees in line with budget. We continue to see strong engagement across the network, as mentioned by Robert, now with 414 brokers and over 3,000 authorized representatives, providing diversification for our group across products, industries, and geographic regions. It's important to recognize that 86% of our gross written premium is in commercial lines, which is much more resilient to direct online and potential AI offerings to the micro SME and retail markets. Our technology platforms provide a clear, sustainable advantage to our business model. There are now 247 brokers live on INSIGHT, with almost 8,000 users. More than 13,000 individuals use our Steadfast Client Trading Platform, which uses API and automation to gather and present policy information and quotes more efficiently. AI will no doubt further enhance this, particularly with the significant amount of data and reporting we can provide to our network. This is further evidenced by the significant increase in Insurebot transactions we are seeing since acquiring the business earlier this year. Continue to see great opportunity between broking and technology. You'll have the opportunity to hear from David Gillespie, our Chief Technology Officer, shortly. Over to Slide 11, please. Been good to see the network has achieved solid underlying earnings growth of 13%. Overall, EBITDA has grown AUD 21.5 million on the PCP. 11.7% of this growth is a result of our recent M&A activity, including the 17 acquisitions mentioned, providing a good run rate into the second half of this financial year. At the same time, we've increased effective ownership of EBITDA from 79% to 83%, with a number of step-ups into existing equity businesses. Organic growth continues, albeit more moderately, in line with the expectations we communicated at the last investor update. We've implemented a number of cost-saving measures in the first half that will be fully realized in the second half. We have also committed to increasing broker fees by 2.5% in the second half to support our organic growth target. Continue to remain focused on subsidiary performance, including hubbing to improve operational efficiency. At the same time, our brokers remain focused on delivering sustainable organic growth and margin improvement, with a continued focus on top-line renewal retention and new business performance. Slide 12, please. Just briefly about AI. With over 8,000 individual users on our INSIGHT broking system and 13,000 individual users on the SCTP, we're extremely well-placed to use AI to the broker's advantage, and we hold the data to make this possible. Having said that, our brokers are much better than AI at making judgments, building relationships, being accountable for service and advice, providing risk management, claims advocacy, and general insurance expertise. This will only be enhanced as the surrounding workflows, data capture, and placement mechanics are increasingly automated with AI. Our Director of AI and Emerging Technology, Stephen Tuffley, has recently published a report on AI chat-based insurance apps and the implications for Steadfast. The summary of the strategic recommendations and our approach to AI is provided on this Slide. For Steadfast, to summarize, the path forward is not resistance, but adaptation, embracing AI as a channel, automating what we can, but strengthening the human connection that AI cannot replicate. I'll now hand over to Mark Senkevics, CEO of Steadfast Underwriting Agencies. Over to you, Mark. Yeah. Thanks very much, Tim, good morning, everyone. Let me just start by saying that at a high level, the strategically important role of underwriting agencies in the Australian market continues and continue to expand in terms of market footprint and in providing excellent service to clients as well as innovation. There's no question it's been a challenging market for the first quarter of this year, and in particular, in the strata and specialty sectors. Robert's spoken to our actions in this regard. I'll touch on those in a little more detail later. We're very much focused on our strategy to diversify the portfolio and to improve efficiencies and foster both organic and acquisition growth. A few key points here. Firstly, Robert's mentioned it, the success of the Castle brand, launched as part of Sure. We've launched a number of new products within our MGAs and taken action in Q2 FY26 to address the moderating market that we observed in the first quarter of last year, the financial year. Our ongoing investment into tech, into data, and actuarial capability continues, including the addition of native AI solutions in a number of the tech platforms that we're implementing at this point. It also supports us, and Robert touched on this as well, in respect of our carrier relationships. Our ability to deliver data is second to none. On the operational side, you'll see a case study where I've touched on the consolidation of a number of our businesses and the value that that brings to investors. The challenging market sees GWP under some pressure, but on a like-for-like basis, we're seeing 3% growth in GWP. I do want to emphasize, this is very important, that the agency revenue footprint, including profit commissions and margin, tends to skew to the second half of the year. Can't overemphasize that point, I'll talk a little more to that a little bit later. We're really anticipating improved outcomes for half two and, by extension, for the full year. Just a quick word on balance sheet activity, and it's modest, but the sale of Blend, Sterling, and Steadfast Re allowed us to cycle capital into step-ups on higher-margin businesses, and again, modest, but demonstrates our capability in doing that with our assets. Just touching on a few operational highlights and focusing on the revenue side. I mentioned Castle Insurance, and when we purchased Sure in 2023, we flagged the opportunity to launch an Australia-wide proposition. Since its go-live in October 2025, Castle has exceeded all of our expectations, including that of the Sure team, to the tune of about 50%-52% in first half, and that continues into the first months of the second half. It offers brokers choice. This is not just about a price proposition, but a choice proposition for our brokers out there, and we've seen brokers flock to the Castle offering. Importantly, the Castle team also implemented a new tech stack. That allows easy API access into third-party trading platforms and, of course, provides us with greater analytics and the opportunity to implement AI at a future date. Mark, the Castle brand, grew out of the opportunity we got from QBE. That's correct. to do its renewable kindness broker business. How's the retention looking on that? Both, retention and new growth, actually. New growth, new business has exceeded the portfolio that we inherited from QBE, Robert. It's interesting then, when you reflect on when a focused distribution network gets hold of a product and has distribution, how quickly that product can grow, and if you get the pricing right and the algorithms agreed between us and QBE, then it opens up an unbelievably cheap way for an insurer to get their capital into the market to a broad range of people. I think this will be a something that maybe the whole market will look at it as what it is. I think the market's already looking at it. I think they look pretty hard. I remain confident into the second half we'll continue to see the growth trajectory of Castle. Also, I just want to comment briefly on some of our other MGAs. In the Slides, I've captured a couple of examples. For CHU, they've actually launched 5 new products. I've mentioned a couple there. CHU have read the cycle very well and adjusted their go-to-market strategy. Their December and January numbers, albeit that they're smaller months, are showing improved retention and new business growth, and I think that's very important. We anticipate that that trend will continue. Also, the increased capacity that we have now from QBE and from reinsurers offers an excellent opportunity to grow into an expanding market in strata, which is new overstation developments in capital cities. I see some good growth opportunity there. Likewise, some of our other agencies, MECON, Emergence, and Coast, all have new product offerings, and we've launched Unity Trade Credit, a new underwriter in the trade credit space, which is actually quite a narrow market. That's only that the smaller end, isn't it, I think, Unity? Unity Trade Credit. Yeah. That's correct. Yeah. Facilitates quotations almost instantaneously, isn't it, on an automated basis? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Finally, our acquisition pipeline continues to grow. We had 1 acquisition in the first half, and we have several other opportunities under discussion. Just moving to Slide 15, some of the financial highlights: Revenue's up 2.7% to AUD 240.9 million. EBITDA, more or less flat year-on-year. Sorry, Slide 15. Thank you. EBITDA, more or less flat year-on-year at AUD 112.7 million. Again, I want to reinforce, the book's skewed to half 2. Revenue is historically greater, as is the recognition of profit commission, which is actually only calculated after the end of the calendar year for many of our binders. I'll touch quickly on fee income. It's increased as a number of our MGAs have sought to restructure their remuneration. It's not as big a mover for us as it is on the, on the broker side. Nonetheless, we've seen fee income increase for underwriting agencies overall, and we've maintained our expense discipline, and which will continue into half 2. Equity ownership remains at 88%. I mentioned some step-ups earlier. We've also had a couple of management buy-ins overall. Then on to Slide 16. I mean, this commercial agency consolidation case study, really the headline here is that aside from a more effective broker and client interaction, we anticipate this will create an uplift of over AUD 5 million in annualized EBITDA across the group, following implementation from the fourth quarter of this year. The announcement on the commercial agency side is imminent. We've already executed this initiative in consumer agencies, and the more ambitious project with commercial agencies brings 8 underwriting agencies into one and narrows the number of AFSLs from 5 to 2, just to give an example of the expense management that will come from this. When will you get that in the second half? It will come on board in. Yeah through May and into, then subsequently. Subsequently into 2027. 28. I touched on the underwriting platform investment. It allows these businesses to operate on a single modern tech stack with unified underwriting claims, policy, admin, and as well as improved analytics, which of course lends itself to the native AI applications that come with these platforms. This consolidation has provided us with a unique opportunity to use our scale and leverage to consolidate our binder purchases in London, with significant rationalization of binders, brokers, and this creates significant savings for us and improved commission outcomes. We're also in the process of transferring binders progressively to HW, bringing revenues back in-house for the international division. With that little headline for Sam, I'll pass over to you. Nice segue. Thank you, Mark. If I could please move on to Slide 18, I'll run you through the first half 2026 operational highlights, which have been significant in our continued development of the international expansion. For ISU Steadfast, it's performing strongly and has exceeded the first half 2026 budgeted EBITDA. We've had 22 new members, which is a record amount of numbers attracted to the group in any first half, and we've had 13 net of terminations. We've also piloted the new advantage membership tier, which we had touched on in our December update, which is basically the ability to attract quality independent agents that were originally too small to qualify for our membership. It is a gap in the U.S. market with networks at the moment, and it's a very large and growing segment of the U.S. insurance landscape, which will be a new opportunity for us to continue to grow our membership numbers and create scale. Really pleasingly for ISU Steadfast, we've embarked on our first Trapped Capital scenario, with the first investment in a network member scheduled for completion on March 1. We also have an intent signed for a second investment. That's a super exciting development for international expansion to have gone down the Trapped Capital route. If I move on to HW Specialty, again, another business performing strongly and exceeded the first half 2026 budgeted EBITDA. We've really had significant progress in this first half of diversifying the business into new and expanded specialties to cater to our global network requirements and product lines, and we've done this through some really strategic recruitment. I would like to emphasise that, we are building the business, but we are also incredibly conscious of cost containment. If you just look in CY 25, we had 13 new starters, but we also had 12 leavers, and some of those were intentional, to bring new, exciting, talent into the business and to continue to grow that business. We are conscious of the cost containment you know, component of building our HW Specialty. We're also really focused on the organic growth of the existing specialties that we have, with strong new business wins in marine cargo, and also a new specialty area on growth in U.S. transportation. Novum, which was our latest baby in the first half, where we acquired in August 2025, and that's had incredibly strong performance in just the four months since post-completion. In the finished calendar 2025 year, GWP we had was at $114 million, which was 60% organic growth over the prior year. We're extremely pleased with that business, that acquisition, and we're excited by the possibilities that lay ahead. We've had really strong engagement with the ISU Steadfast to focus on increasing that submission flow and the strategic alignment and opportunities that will come by having a distribution network in the US market alongside an MGA in the US market. I'd like to draw your attention to the right-hand side of the screen, which is just basically a little snapshot of international since acquisition. Two years ago, since acquisition with ISU Steadfast Network, we've had 13% net growth in members and 26% growth in profit sharing from carriers. For HW Specialty, in the first year since acquisition, we've had strong organic growth, and we've also had four really significant recruits to build the capabilities we've always said we needed in the product lines of property, casualty, and delegated authority to really capitalize on the global market opportunity and also the London market opportunity. That has now stabilized our business to really move it forward. Of course, Novum, only four months into the acquisition, we've had organic growth beyond acquisition expectations, and we've had 300+ policy submissions from ISU Steadfast members into that MGA already in that first four months. I think this shows that we have a great track record of acquisitions to date. All businesses are performing well, and capital has been spent well. If I can move to Slide 19, please, and I'll take you through the financial highlights of the first half. The financials demonstrate continued strength of Steadfast International. We've delivered underlying aggregate EBITDA of AUD 9.5 million, growth of AUD 10.1 million over the prior corresponding period. The strong organic performance is driven mainly by the growth in the ISU Steadfast network and the cost synergies we've realized from consolidating Steadfast's London office into HW Specialty. Acquisition growth has been driven by the acquisitions of HW Specialty and Novum Underwriting Partners. We've had really strong organic growth since acquisition of HW, with the significant new business wins in marine cargo and US transportation, which has been represented under the acquisition growth. The first four months of solid contribution from Novum, with 60% growth over the prior period and submission flow from ISU also gaining traction. These results reflect the high-quality earnings, as well as our disciplined approach to scaling the business. If I could move to Slide 20, please. This Slide is all about the strategic opportunity and the momentum ahead for the second half 2026 and beyond. We're looking forward with optimism for that period. If I look at ISU Steadfast, and I look at our 4 strategic pillars there of network growth, market access, agency perpetuation, and technology, we're really looking forward with a lot of excitement and momentum behind those. Even if I go back to network growth, you know, our improved value proposition, plus the new membership tier we have with marketing commencing in March this year to drive and attract attention to build on our network numbers. In the market access, not only do we have the enhanced strategic carrier relationships, but we now have that ability to drive Novum and HW Specialty 'cause we now have those in a position where we can drive that forward and service the network. I truly believe we are just at the beginning of realizing this opportunity. Agency perpetuation, the ball is rolling now. I just explained we had the first one signed and an LOI with another, plus we have a pipeline there of other opportunities. This has been a result of two years of building relationships and building trust, and we're now realizing that, and that ball will continue to keep rolling, which we're really excited about. Technology, data. Data is key. We have something that we have in the business at the moment with ISU to collect the data network, but it is not sound and to the point that we want it. We have now engaged with a third party, only signing up at the end of this month, to be able to capitalize on true data insights, which will build momentum in having discussions with carriers, improving consolidation of business that goes through them, creating new programs of work that can go into Novum and into HW Specialty. We will be making business decisions on true live data insights, which will be fabulous for our opportunities moving forward. If I move to HW Specialty, we will continue to leverage the strength of the existing specialty products, but we will also expand on our capabilities and solutions, and we now have the recruits in place to be able to do that. I'm really excited to also represent that. Our reputation now in the London market is really growing, so the recruits that we are attracting who want to be part of HW Specialty are true quality, and I think that speaks volumes for what our strategic plans are and opportunities are in that market and our brand. If I move on to Novum Underwriting Partners, you know, we'll continue to scale the existing programs and establish new programs. There's a lot we can do, in building out wholesale and E&S carrier appointments, but there's also a lot we can do with the Novum Online tech system that we have, which is a true advantage in the market. We will continue to implement a lot of automation into the business and underwriting processes, saving time, allowing us to have more time to write more business. I think, you know, we will continue to grow that agency distribution, especially through the ISU network, but also the external broader market by creating that brand awareness of not only Steadfast ownership, but the Novum brand and the opportunities and the strengths that it has. If I look finally into, you know, even with the scaling of the new programs, we're launching several new programs, including entry into the Canadian market with a surety offering, which has just occurred at the beginning of this year. You know, in conclusion, based on the strong momentum in the first half and significant opportunities in the second half, we continue to be excited about the future of Steadfast International. It's an important growth area for the group, and we are well-positioned with complementary businesses and geographies to recognize the opportunity. On that point, I'll hand over to our CTO, David Gillespie. Thanks, Sam. Technology is at the core of our business, and we continue to invest and support our networks. Page 22, please. You've heard Tim, Mark, and Sam talk about their business units, and we work closely with them in ensuring that we are supporting their business strategy. In the broker area under Tim, we have the market-leading Insurtech platforms with SCTP and INSIGHT. Coming from one of the major insurers, I was aware of those platforms, but seeing in detail what capability they have and talking to brokers has made me even more impressed. One of the reasons I was excited to join Steadfast was the opportunity to build out the next generation of those platforms with Steadfast Apps. I've undertaken similar programs at Fidelity in the UK with FundsNetwork and at TAL Life with Cover Builder, now with the opportunity to embed AI where appropriate and equally making sure we're more agile as insurers upgrade their platforms. I'll talk a little bit more about that in coming Slides. In parallel, we're continuing to onboard new brokers, new products, and new insurers. Last year, we acquired Insurebot, that was for 2 reasons. Firstly, to provide rapid automation of broker to insurer integration with INSIGHT, equally for their entrepreneurial approach to act as an incubator for innovation. Last week, I saw a showcase of new capability they've built for a broker in New Zealand, which will go live in the next couple of weeks and will deliver significant efficiencies for them. This is an approach I've used in previous roles. We're now replicating here in Steadfast. In the underwriting area, Mark spoke about the uplift that is underway there, and it's a great example of how we leverage partner products with AI embedded to improve and accelerate our capability. For example, in our claims processing, where AI agents will guide the claims staff with prompts and execute routine tasks. With our international business, you saw from Samantha's update how Novum fits in. When we looked at it from a technology perspective, we saw a great platform with Novum Online, which in many ways is similar to INSIGHT. One of the capabilities we really liked was their automation engine, which Sam talked about there. Where we see opportunities to cross re- leverage, we'll use that. Lastly, we want to ensure our staff are fully literate on AI. We actively encourage them. We have internal and external training available. Where we've deployed AI, it's not just a set and forget. We track usage, and when it's not as high as we'd like, we support staff in leveraging it. How we use it is continuing to evolve as AI continues to evolve as well. Moving on to Page 23, on one platform. We tend to talk about InsurTech as just being about SCTP and INSIGHT, but it's broader than that. In the next couple of months, we'll start deploying Steadfast ID, which serves two main purposes. One is around uplifting our security posture. Secondly, to start consolidating the entry point for brokers and insurers to a single storefront, which is a real enabler for future capabilities and uplift. Showcases the additional services that Steadfast can provide. I spoke about the uplift and re-platform we were seeing with our insurer partners. Our product configurator engine is a new middleware layer, which will enable easier integration as they upgrade. This will be going live by June. Will then allow us to reduce our onboarding time for insurers and new products from over 3 months to less than 1. We have regular meetings, as you would expect, with our insurers to make sure we've aligned roadmaps where it makes sense. You've already seen some examples of our reporting using the data platform. That will only get better as we introduce a conversational AI overlay. Rather than configuring reports, we can just ask the questions. The team have been testing it, trust me, it's pretty impressive. Most companies spend 80% of their time getting data, 20% analyzing. We are flipping that, the majority of time will be analyzing for insights. Steadfast Intelligence is for internal use, for comparison and performance perspectives, for brokers, operational and analytics reporting, and equally for insurers and underwriters to undertake deep dives on their product performance across different segments. In addition, having that rich data is fundamental to creating accurate and reliable AI systems. Steadfast Apps is where we bring much of this together, let me talk about that on the following Page 24. As I said, we have great broker platforms, it's important not to be complacent. We're constantly in dialogue with our brokers. In fact, many of the insurTech team come from a broking background. Taking their inputs and where their pain points are, how we can optimize the existing processes, how technology is evolving, and opportunities we have with AI, we have been developing Steadfast Apps, our next generation platform. We really believe in user-led design, so we build working prototypes and test with brokers to make sure it delivers the benefits and improvements they need. We're using AI to augment the broker, not replace them. At our convention next month, insurTech team will be showcasing some of the new features that we will be bringing to the platform. As I said earlier, through the year, we'll continue to add new products and insurers. As well as making the brokers more efficient, one of our aims is to reduce the total cost of software ownership for them by embedding CRM, document management, et cetera, into the platform, which will, with the benefit of removing handoffs and optimizing processes, and in some cases negate the need for additional software. We want to widen the jaws with increased revenue as more brokers come on and have a more efficient platform. We're already seeing stronger financial discipline around our cost, our cloud costs, and that will increase next year as we complete the roll-out of the new platform. Lastly, we also see AI as a new acquisition channel, and we're now embracing generative engine optimization as much as the traditional SEO. I will now hand over to Hannah, our CFO. Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining today. I'll be guiding you through the group's financial performance for the first half of FY26, with a focus on our earnings delivery, balance sheet strength, and cash flow generation. Can you please move on to the next Slide? For the first half of FY26, the group has delivered a solid result, especially given the moderating pricing environment. This outcome reflects proactive expense discipline, subsidiary performance improvement initiatives, and a solid contribution from acquisitions. Key highlights for the first half include: underlying revenue increased 14.6% to circa AUD 1 billion. Underlying EBITDA increased 12.6% to AUD 293.6 million. Underlying NPAT increased 7.3% to AUD 137.5 million, with diluted EPS of AUD 0.124. Underlying NPAT was AUD 161.5 million, up 6.3%, with diluted EPS of AUD 0.146. The reported stat NPAT for the period was AUD 127 million, compared to AUD 106.4 million in the prior corresponding period. The seasonal distribution of NPAT in the first half of FY 26 was originally guided to be circa 44%-45%. However, as Robert has already addressed earlier, the material expense savings are expected to be realized in the second half. Hence, the earnings seasonality is now expected to be broadly in line with last year, close to circa 43%. Can we move on to the next Slide, please? This page breaks down the drivers behind the 12.6% growth in underlying EBITDA. Growth was supported by a combination of 2% organic growth, reflecting a moderating pricing environment, and 5.7% acquisition growth, excluding the Rothbury step-up. We have continued to be diligent on acquisitions, including transactions involving increased stakes in existing businesses. As a result, these transactions do not uplift EBITDA directly. Rather, the benefit flows through to NPAT by reducing non-controlling interest, which is addressed on the next Slide. We have also shown the Rothbury impact separately. While Rothbury is consolidated at 100% basis at the EBITDA level for accounting purposes, we have only stepped up so far 3%. Accordingly, the uplift NPAT from Rothbury is modest at this stage from a financial perspective. Can we move on to the next Slide, please? This Slide highlights the different mix of organic versus acquisition growth between EBITDA and NPAT. As mentioned earlier, organic EBITDA growth was 2%, closely aligning with organic NPAT growth of 2.3% shown here. The further uplift in organic NPAT growth to 4.5% is primarily driven by 2 factors. First, savings from amortization expenses as certain acquired businesses reach the end of their accounting useful life of customer relationships, including CHU, UAA, and BCB. Second, reduced amortization following business asset impairments recorded in FY25. On the acquisition side, EBITDA growth of 5.7%, excluding Rothbury, broadly aligns with a 7.5% acquisition growth at NPAT. However, higher amortization and borrowing costs means less of this growth flows through to NPAT, explaining why the mix differs from EBITDA. Overall, the group delivered a solid underlying NPAT growth of 7.3% for the first half. Next Slide, please. The group continues to maintain a conservative balance sheet, providing capacity to fund future growth while preserving financial flexibility. As of December 2025, total borrowings were circa AUD 1.2 billion, with a gearing ratio of 33.4%, comfortably below the board-approved maximum rate of 40%. This gives the group capacity to borrow a further AUD 382.2 million while remaining within the gearing limit. During the period, the group also increased its corporate debt facilities to circa AUD 1.3 billion, including accordion and share facilities. Total potential debt capacity reaches at circa AUD 1.7 billion. This positions us well to fund our acquisition pipeline while maintaining balance sheet discipline. Next Slide, please. Finally, conversion of the profit to cash flow. The Group has delivered adjusted net cash from operating activities to AUD 164.7 million in first half of FY26, reflecting continued stable conversion of earnings into cash. You'll note the post-tax cash flow from operating activities was lower compared to the first half of FY25. This was primarily driven by higher financing costs, reflecting interest rate headwinds and increased utilization of the facilities to support our acquisition pipeline, as well as redundancy costs paid during the period. While this redundancy costs are a cash outflow, they are excluded from our underlying earnings. After dividends paid to shareholders and non-controlling interests, free cash flow was AUD 34.7 million, up from AUD 32.5 million in the prior period. Together with the debt flexibility of AUD 382 million, total available funding of AUD 450 million provides ongoing capacity to fund dividends, support organic investments, and pursue disciplined acquisition opportunities. Thank you, and now I'll hand back to Robert to talk through on the FY first Slides. Thanks, Hannah, I'll refer you to Page 32 in the outlook. Just that on behalf of the board, I want to reconfirm guidance. Our NPATA AUD 365 million-AUD 375 million, NPAT AUD 315 million-AUD 325 million, EBITA AUD 650 million-AUD 665 million, and undiluted EPS NPAT growth of between 6% and 10%. I think that during this period of time, you saw us realign and restate our FY 24 and FY25. In February, we advised the market of these changes through its segment disclosure, and that they would be reflected in FY 26, as I alluded to before. The refinement of the calculation of the group's underlying EBITDA and NPATA. These changes are presentational in nature, and they don't reflect any changes to the underlying performances of the business. They're designed to give you clear and unequivocal view of how we make our money and spend our money. The guidance is subject to just a few assumptions. We're achieving 2%-3% increases in insurance premiums. As I say, January 26th showed 2.7. We reviewed to 1%-2% under Andrew Buncombe's guidance before Christmas. The trend that came through for November, December and January proved that that conservative 1%-2% was out, and that will definitely do 2%-3%. At the moment, it's trending more towards 3%, but it's a volatile period in insurance at the moment, we're still again showing 2%-3%. The key risks that exist on Page 50 and 52 of the pack here. The waterfall chart there shows you FY26, FY25 is 26.7, and if you look at the 6 and 7 guidance on the right, that's the increase we expect to be. Net acquisitions, we're showing you, and net organic, we're showing you there. It's a pretty solid position to be in. At a time when the market was guessing what would occur, we put out a strong guidance, and we're confirming that guidance at this stage. On Page 2033, we're resilient, we're adaptive, our business model works. We had challenges in FY26. I think the first half of 26 was a bit of a gestation period. I mean, the waterfall and pricing from June to July and August was predicted. I think we took a little while to react to it. We have reacted to it, and those reactions will be presented in the second half. We continue to accelerate our growth, and we continue to look at underlying strong earnings versus period to period. They adapted to market conditions. The expense reductions will come through and we completed the AUD 240 million acquisitions. Technology, David's just spoken much more, more eloquently than mine. What I can do about it, all I can say is that we were ahead of the pack when we introduced INSIGHT and the Client Trading Platform, and 5 or 6 years ago, we brought Stephen Tuffley into this organization with a master's of AI on a predicted basis that we were going to have to move in that area very quickly, and we've been looking at that. David's entree into this business has been sensational, with his international experience and the vast amount of major companies he's worked with. We, as I say, we reaffirm our guidance. We'll continue to prioritize our capital. We will look at rearranging our capital. I mean, we've been around 13 years. We've been diligent at what we've bought, and I won't be frightened to look at assets that we've got and see whether they're worth more money in cash and being applied somewhere else. Don't get fearful that we're going to do something silly. Everything we do on our capital management is well thought out, and we'll make sure that we keep our discipline on our acquisitions and continue to do the portfolio rationalizations, as Tim and Mark have eloquently stated before. Over the midterm, we see continued margin improvement. What I'm saying to you, it was a tough first half. We accepted it, we worked on it, we executed on it, and the second half will be better. Thank you, everyone. I'll hand you back to. Thank you, Robert. If you have not yet submitted your text question or joined the live audio queue, please do so now. I will introduce each caller by name and ask you to go ahead. You will then hear a beep indicating your microphone is live. Our first question today comes from Andrei Stadnik, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good afternoon. I think we've just gone into the afternoon. Can you talk a little bit more about the second half earnings bridge? Like, some of the things you outlined should support second half growth. Like, I think the cost out seasonality from the recent acquisitions. Can you help just investors a little bit of second half earnings bridge? Okay. I think probably the best way to do that is to start with you, Tim, in terms of the time lag it takes from the time you start doing something and the success you're having in that area. On the top line, firstly, we've started plans to re-review the fees across the business. We'll look to implement some changes to those over the second half. Looking more to the operational costs, we had met late last year with our subsidiary principals. There's 63 of those now, with some guidance around the need to use natural attrition where possible to improve on employment expense costs. They've put those into play before Christmas. They'll start to wash through into the second half as well. We'll see some real improvement to the employment expense rate there. I think both of those 2 factors combined will get us to where we need to be. I think also we were a little slow off the mark of looking at the fee structure that we had in, and I think people got a bit complacent, and I think the second half will reflect on the fact of the increased fees that you've been able to push through from that point of view. Mark, I mean, you, I guess you and Steve all turned the underwriting agencies upside down when you said, "We're going to consolidate these. We're going to move more into HW Wood. We're going to employ some people to do some stuff. We're going to shuffle it around." Are you ready to produce a better second half than the first half? I emphasised that in my opening remarks, and I'll continue to do so. Andrei, thanks for the question. For us, we have a footprint of revenue, which is biased to the second half. That's because of the weighting of renewals into that period. Secondly, we've got the growth initiatives underway. I spoke to Castle, CHU are looking at their pricing and product. ... and a number of our other agencies have really taken on board this sudden shift in pricing in the first quarter of the financial year and are reacting to that. I touched on profit commission. That has a second half footprint to it, very much biased towards that. While it is an at-risk component, simply because of weather, it does have a longer time duration footprint to it. So we're seeing profit commissions emerge from five years earlier. As Robert just alluded, the operational changes that are playing through, we'll start to see those emerge in the final couple of months of the year and into FY 27. Hannah, you've got the responsibility of the second half. I mean, what's your view in what Andrei said? Improvements from both broking and underwriting agency segments on the revenue line and in conjunction with the savings that we have mentioned, Andrei, AUD 7 million from the head office and AUD 4 million from subsidiaries, that will bridge the gap between where we are today, to the guidance. We're pretty confident, Andrei. Thank you. Just to double-check, did you imply the acquisitions in the first half were skewed towards the end of the first half? I guess that's true, acquisitions, but we did a lot in finalizing towards November and December. Yeah, to answer that absolutely correctly, and I don't know whether it was because of the fear of the ACCC. People will probably think it just happened to be. I mean, the ACCC had agreed all our acquisitions. It was just a, I think, a bit of a time constraint of getting through and making sure we got them completed. There's nobody from the M&A department here at the moment, so they were probably lazy and didn't get them done quicker, so. Yes, it was skewed. Sometimes people think we do this deliberately, the ramifications of getting documentation done and getting people agreed and getting it absolutely compounds sometimes. We struggled to get it all done by Christmas. I think everybody could go away. Yes, it was weighted towards that. The impact of that, of course, means you're not getting the revenue uplift, because in most cases, December's a benign period anyway. It's not the most exciting period. January is not the most exciting period. You won't feel that impact on those acquisitions till more or less in the February, March, April, May, June period. Thank you. If I can ask just one more question. Just around the gearing target, I think it went up from 30%-35% a year ago, and it's gone up to 40%. Can you explain a little bit about, like, you know, the reason and why you're comfortable with that? In theory, we do have bank covenants requirement up to 40%, so we always have the flexibility. We thought it's a great time to leverage our balance sheet to fund for the acquisition. That was an increase there. Yeah, we always ran at 40%. All our covenants were at 40%, okay? In fact, we could have had covenants at 50% if we wanted to because of the nature of our balance sheet and the perspective and the long-term relationship we've got with the Australian banks, who've seen the growth of this business very strong. I mean, with the market the way it was, we just relocated and used more of our capacity. Didn't hurt anybody. Thank you. The next question comes from Julian Braganza from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, all. Just a first question from me in terms of just the acquisition multiples. Just want to understand exactly where you're at at the moment across the different jurisdictions. If I look at your half-year report, I think you flagged about 11.5x EBITDA on acquisitions over the period, but I think, Rob, on the call, you'd mentioned 10x. I just want to understand if it was driven by Novum and ISU that then led to the higher multiple. Yeah, just understanding where the multiples are at at the moment and your expectations from here. Thanks. Yes, in Australia, we're mostly around 10 x. Okay. That's a mixture of what we've bought overseas and with Australia, bringing it back to about 11.7. In most cases. We believe with that, we have the ability of bringing savings, and historically, it's proved when we've paid a little bit more for it, we think there are savings, that we've achieved those savings. I think, I think that, as long as you're going to ask me to predict what the multiples will be next week, because I have no idea what the international share prices will do, but when you watch $4.5 billion get knocked off the market cap of the biggest insurance broker in the world because somebody gets frightened about some AI implication, then I can't tell you what the multiples will be going forward. I can tell you the multiples we'll be paying going forward will reflect our capacity and will reflect our view of getting EPS accretion for doing that acquisition. Okay, got it. That's clear. Maybe just touching on just the broking organic revenue. It was about 1%. Actually, that's actually about 2%. Julian, it's about 2%. Okay. Okay, now, thanks. 2%, is it? Is that across the group or is that- Organic growth, yeah. isolated? If we unpack organic growth and take away a couple of things that we threw in there, yes, and that, and we're predicting 2% for the second half. 2% for the second half. That's driven by the fee increases that you're planning to put through into the second half? Yeah, Julian, that's Tim. Just to provide some more context around that, the core broking business has performed really well so far to budget. I think the biggest variance that we've seen is in the New Zealand market. We've called that out already with some of the underperformance there. The other one was in the professional lines businesses, that's really had some challenges. If we look at those two parts of the business in its separate from the core Australian broking business, we're performing much better and closer to the 2%. As we said before, we're still very interested in the New Zealand market. It's a great market, it's just in a bit of freefall at the moment, it's interesting when you think about it, that professional lines is one of the ones that is taking hits in competition at the moment. If you've got a professional lines broker, it's, you know, D&O premiums for period, 8.4% alone. It's very difficult to if you're a specialist in that area, to not struggle to get organic growth when your product line is being discounted around. That will come back eventually. Got it. Just to understand a little bit better, the levers here around that organic growth, from both commissions and fees. Your one of your peers is talking to some fairly material upside potential that could come through if they were to sort of maximize these levers. I just want to understand, in the second half and into next year, more holistically, have you had a bit more of a look and a sort of quantification around how meaningful this could be, in terms of upside for organic growth on the commissions and revenues? Thanks. I won't put a dollar number on it, but just to give some clarity around that, commission rates remained very stable throughout the first half. We did see a slight improvement to the fee rate, about up 0.5%. Moving it, even at that rate, has a significant dollar value increase. We're now targeting to increase that further by 2.5%. That'll achieve further organic growth for us. Okay. Okay, that's clear. Maybe just margins. Last question on margins. It'll be very clear, expectations for margins here for both broking and agency, versus PCP, just into the second half versus PCP and into 2027. I think in agency, for example, you're flagging continued investment there on your platforms, but you've also got cost start coming through. Just to be very clear on the margin trajectory into the second half and into FY 27 as well. Thanks. Should I Yeah, go on. For the margin? For broking, and agencies both, I think for, particular for agencies, we've started including profit share into the segment of agencies. Excluding that, both of the margin seems to be quite steady, broadly in alignment between FY 25 and FY26, based on the new segment disclosure. For FY 27, we will be able to give you an update as we speak FY 26 results. We used to take profit shares- Okay, you still... We used to take profit shares into head office, okay? In reality, what we've done with the realigning of the revenue, as Hannah's just said, if an underwriting agency owned the pro-profit share, it goes into the underwriting agency's income. Okay, got it. Just to clarify, the only cost that goes through the FY 27 numbers is that AUD 5 million of savings that was flagged in agency. Is that the only one? The AUD 7 and AUD 4 is all this year, in the second half, just to be very clear. Sorry, are you referring to the AUD 7 million head office and AUD 4 million savings from the speed reads? That's right. That's second half, the $5 million in the agency from combining businesses, that's flowing through FY20, FY27. Yes, Julian, we'll start to see that emerge in the last couple of months, but it won't be a significantly impactful shift. However, in FY26, FY27 rather, I think we'll start to see the full emergence of that. If I add on to that, Julian, sorry, the AUD 7 million from head office and AUD 4 million from speed reads, we're expecting circa half of that to fall into FY27 as a run rate savings. Got it. That's clear. No, thanks so much for that. Much appreciated. The next question today comes from Andrew Buncombe, from Macquarie. Please go ahead after the beep. Hi, team. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from me, please. The first one, you're obviously running a cost out program at the moment. It'd be useful to get some color on what your intention for these sorts of programs are going forward. Is this a one-off, or is this business as usual? Thanks. I think Hannah, you can handle that. I think the restructuring that we've done, okay, is a one-off, but- Certainly, I completely agree with Robert. Any restructure that we have done is certainly a one-off. When it comes to continuous margin improvements, that's BAU for us. Excellent. The next one: Are there any businesses in your group that you would consider to be non-core? The new disclosures have obviously given investors a lot better visibility into how much is going on in the group. Would you consider anything to be non-core? Thanks. Well, Sarah Thompson from the AFR considers IQumulate to be non-core and not really germane to our income. I guess I'd, I'll reflect on that statement and see whether she's right or not. In reality, what I'm looking at is businesses that we've got and developed that are making profit, and if we think there are other businesses that we could buy that would make more profit, then we'll I was going to say liquidate, but I'm, I stay with a KPMG liquidation partner, and he gets annoyed with... He calls it restructuring rather than liquidation. We'd probably look to consider restructuring those businesses by amalgamating them, or indeed, ultimately maybe sell them and see what we could do with the capital in another area. You know, I think we're pretty clever about knowing where businesses we can invest that could give us the best return. If we're not getting as good a return from a slice of capital we've got somewhere, and we think we can get rid of that, turn that business into liquid cash and apply that liquid cash elsewhere for a better reception, a better return, then we will certainly endeavor to do that over this next six months period. I guess always we'll look at recycling our capital anyway. I mean, we look at that all the time. I mean, technically, we look at that and before we do an acquisition, I mean, we get shown a lot of acquisitions, and we look at it and go, "Well, if we did put our capital into that, what are we going to get back out of it?" Many of them that we don't. I mean, there's one that we've just rejected, which somebody else will buy, but we just couldn't make it work on the numbers that they, that they put forward and the asking price that they wanted to have. We're not afraid to turn away and not do that. Great. Just the final one from me, please, in relation to international, so maybe for Sam as well as you, Robert Kelly. You're going into Canada, you're talking about India, you're investing more in the US. There's a lot of stuff going on for you overseas. With how quickly technology is changing globally, let alone in the insurance space, is this the right time to be pursuing so many different offshore opportunities? Thanks. Yeah, Andrew, pretty easy answer to this. Our focus is the U.S. and the U.K., without a doubt. We are exploring opportunities in India just because it would not be prudent for us to do so. It's such a huge part of the world and the economy, and we've had interest reach out to us rather than us to them. We will, like our ethos of everything we've done in Steadfast, we will keep our eyes and ears open to everything and look at everything before a decision is made, but our clear focus is the U.S. and U.K. market. Thank you. The next question comes from Siddharth Parameswaran from JP Morgan. Please go ahead after the beep. Hi, good morning, everybody. I just had a question just on your acquisition strategy from here. I think, Robert, you've been quite clear that you're, you know, you will be. Any acquisitions you do have to be EPS accretive. I was just keen, given where your share price is, whether it makes sense more to deploy the capital into your own, into your own shares rather than, you know, new acquisitions, particularly overseas, where the multiples tend to be higher. I think, Sid, that it's a good question, and it's not something that we don't look at, but in reality, every time we look at it, we think, "You know what? We can deploy this money much better than what we can buying our own shares. I think that's an easy thing for a company to do, is to buy its shares back if it's in the doldrums a little bit or if it's what. We're not. We're very happy with what we're doing, and we're extremely keen to deploy capital 'cause we think we know how to deploy capital. Our track record would support that, but to answer you honestly, we do look at that, and part of prudent capital management is to actually make that evaluation. Until such time as the pendulum turns, and we don't think we can turn, to put capital out at a better rate than buying our shares back, then we won't buy our shares back. Can I just add one? Go on. Yeah, good. You did all the work on it, so I'm stealing your glory. Go on. Sid, I think, share buyback's certainly an option, from a capital management perspective, but we management strongly believe the selective M&A opportunities that we've got and long-term margin improvement initiatives that we have will definitely provide a better long-term, value creations for the shareholders. In a short term, that would be an option, but we want to focus on a long term. Yep. Okay, that makes sense. Okay. Okay, just to ask a second question, just around AI and just, you know, your strategy. It seems very much that you're being a little bit more cautious than your peer in terms of how you think the customer may seek to adopt these tools. I was just keen to get your perspective on whether you've also considered a ChatGPT marketplace, and, you know, what do you think this will mean to broking and individualized advice models? I'll let David answer this, but in reality in a broker's business, 30% of his business usually comes under pressure each year. They want to change it. Of that 30%, my experience is, and I think I've just completed my fifty-seventh year. I speak with authority over many, many cycles, is that the true broker client will come back and say: "I've got a good deal. Can you match it?" Probably 10%-15% of the broker's clients will take the view: "You should have given me the best price, and I've been screwed," and they move out. If AI is going to answer that question, then I think definitely from dispute, from being disrupted, a percentage of our business could be. Our businesses are advice businesses. Our businesses are where people want to be able to talk to somebody, and I can't see that AI that is going to interrupt that. What it may do for us is internally, and David will speak more authoritatively on, is absolutely allow us to expand our businesses without expanding our FTE cost base. David, I don't know. Yeah, I think, you know, it was interesting the night before that app was released, I was actually doing my own car insurance, and you go through that form, and basically, that app was a front end to the form. At the back end, you still had to have a core platform, and that's where we talk about our moats, that you need a highly available, secure, and compliant core platform. We've got those integrations, deep insurer integrations with our partners that we talk to on a regular basis with that multi-product hub with SCTP. Could that be replicated? Yeah, it could. It's those relationships we've got with the insurers, and it may well be that we put a chatbot onto the front end to support our brokers to be able to do that quicker. We talked about that innovation hub. That's one of the things that we're looking at. At the moment, that front end is basically a chatbot compared to a form. We see that evolving over time. We're adapting to that, and I think we've got, as Robert Kelly says, a broker is much more about relationships. We'll support them to make them much more efficient in using AI. Within those sort of core platforms which we have within INSIGHT, we'll embed AI agents to make them much more efficient for the brokers as well. Yeah- I think it's about making us and our broker partners much more efficient. I listened to Mike's call yesterday. I always do, in case I can steal some ideas that are better than mine, right? I'm not fearful to do that. I didn't think it was. I thought that was logical, the things they, the, what they were talking about, and they, what they were going to investigate and go forward. I don't think we'd be any more different to them in how we've been investigating and looking what we want to do, so I don't know. Yep. Okay, great. Just one final question. I think you flagged AUD 200 million of acquisitions in the second half. I was just keen to understand, just the new ACCC regime, whether any of them have actually already been lodged under that, and just what the, you know, what has anything been approved so far? Maybe if you just give us some idea how that's going. I guess I can answer that. That we did 20 transactions with the ACCC, step-ups and acquisitions, they approved every one of them. In fact, the timelines went down to dramatically. They went from sort of 6 weeks initially, down to basically 2 weeks and 3 weeks to get them done. Anything that we've got signed term sheets on at the moment had been through the ACCC's regime. We've found them to be cooperative. We've found them to understand the sector we're in now. We've found them to want to see Australian businesses grow by acquisition, we know the dictum they put down about merging or acquiring businesses, it's pretty simple. If you're going to restrict access to the consumer for a product or a service, or you're going to increase the cost of that product or service by doing the merger or the acquisition, well, you'll be in trouble with us. Luckily, I think they understand our plans. They understand the way we go about doing it, the independence we give our assets to operate. As I say, we've done 20 transactions with them in the last 12 months, successfully. Thank you. The next question is a text question from Jason Palmer. Jason asks: In the past few months, since the MCAP has materially reduced, has activity of interested parties, perhaps looking to take control of Steadfast, increased? How many inquiries have you received? Have any non-binding offers come in, and what price? Okay, no price, no non-binding offers. Nobody's knocked on the door, and we're not in discussions with anybody to sell. However, if somebody came at AUD 750 or AUD 780, I'd certainly return their phone call. Thank you. The next question comes from Richard Amour from CLSA. Please go ahead. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I've just got a clarification question regarding the covenants. I'm referring specifically to the total leverage covenant, net debt not to exceed 2.5 x EBITA. Can you confirm if that EBITA number is in reference to consolidated entities, or if that's after taking in the share from associates? I've got a net debt figure for the end of the half of about AUD 1.4 billion. I'm just trying to confirm that you're reasonably close to that covenant and what the implications are for that. Nowhere near it. We're nowhere near it. Nowhere near. Go on, Hannah. It's calculated based on the underlying EBITDA, and we monitor that covenants every single month. I can guarantee it's nowhere close to 2.5. If I'm looking at, please correct me if I'm wrong, I've got trailing 12 months, EBITDA of around AUD 600 million. Did you buy-. 2 at 2.9. Did you by any chance? Sorry? Sorry, did you, by any chance, include a premium funding? Premium funding's ring-fenced from the bank covenants requirement. Okay. I might take it offline if you guys are very comfortable, that's fine. Perfect. I can see clarification offline. Thank you. No worries. Thank you. The next question is a text question from Jake Ward. Jake asks: With the de-rating of the share price towards multiples similar to businesses you are acquiring, how do you intend to, A, meaningfully drive EPS growth, and B, fund further acquisitions without increased dilution or hearing changes? We have a, I guess we have a position that we don't buy non-EPS accretive businesses. Okay? With the re-rating, I guess, of the whole, I'll just take the brokers, not the insurers, because they also got re-rated, then that puts a different perspective across everybody who wants to buy in the market. At the moment, we are not in a position where there's anything that we've got in our sights that would not be EPS accretive right at the very moment. Thank you. The next question is a text question again from Daniel Wood. Daniel asks: Is it Steadfast's view that, generally speaking, the soft or softening market has turned? If so, when, and some of the why, if you can. What indicates that apart from your historic base premium cycle chart? Thanks. The only thing we can say is that we chart carefully all our product lines. If you look at our product lines that were in the red over the first half, D&O was in the red, ISR was in the red, okay? Bloodstock was in the red, construction was in the red, cyber was in the red, travel was in the red, accident and health was in the red, aviation was in the red, and life risks were in the red. All of those are a very small percentage of the... For instance, if you look at our the other side of the chart, then liability management liability, professional risk, BizPac, strata, contractors, plant, machinery, rural, farm, motor, commercial, statutory risk, business, financial, machinery breakdown, marine cargo, information technology, and business property, and home and contents, landlords, motor private, motor commercial, and strata residential, and parametrics were all positively period to period. They all went up. When we manage our portfolio and we see what happened, that we moved from +3.7% in June of 2025, and you see it drop to 2.4% in July, and then go to 2.1% in August, and then flatten in September to 2%, and stay flat in October to around 2%, and then in November, you see it go to 2.1%, and then in December, you see it go up to 2.4%, and then you see it in January, go to 2.7%. If you look historically over trends, you'd have to say that there's potentially that the market has bottomed and now is starting to go back to what is realistic, in other words, I would call inflationary increases. Maybe I would expect to see the 3% be set over this next few months and maybe even potentially go past it if the trend continues. If we settle into a cycle where the total GWP that we handle is inflationary baked every year, let's say between 3% and 4%, then that would be a static way of doing business. It would be very accretive to our bottom line. Yes, Danny, I think there's a potential to say that the cycle's not gonna drop because we're not seeing any fresh other than what's coming out of London and in some lines that we're being included. Yeah, I think statistically, the potential is there that the cycle has bottomed, and we'll slip back into a more a rational way of pricing, which means it'll cover inflation. Thank you. There are no further questions. Okay. Thank you, everybody. I'm not going to do a summary of what we said because I think everybody here has given you a really fair and clear understanding. I hope you like the new way we report, where the CGUs are responsible, gives you the ability, if they do like to like, I welcome any one to ones we're having and look forward to meeting you there with the team. Have a good day, everybody, and thank you for participating.