All right, ladies and gentlemen, the time has come. First of all, I'd just like to apologize for the hassle of some people trying to get in here. That lift is very small, and fortunately, they've just opened up the goods lift, so we're right to go. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Washington H. Soul Pattinson's 120th Annual General Meeting. I'm Rob Millner, and I'm Chairman of the company. I'm advised that there is a quorum present, and I formally declare the meeting open. It's a pleasure to see so many of you here in person today, and welcome to those viewing on the webcast. Just waiting for the slide to come up. I would like to now introduce you to my fellow directors, Mr. Michael Hawker AM, Josephine Sukkar AM, Tom Millner, Joe Pollard, David Baxby, here's your... First time you've seen him, Tiffany Fuller, and our CEO and Managing Director, Todd Barlow, our Chief Financial Officer, David Gribble, down the end, and sitting next to me is Pamela Longstaff, our Company Secretary. Also in the room, we have our Chief Investment Officer, Brendan. Where's Brendan? He's up the back. The Chief Operating Officer, Jackie Virtue. Jackie's down the front. And also, we have some senior staff, which will be more than happy to have a chat with you after the meeting. Ryan Fisk from EY, our company's auditor, is also present. Where do I find Ryan? Oh, right in front of me. Thank you. Ryan's available to answer questions shareholders might have concerning the conduct of the audit, preparation and content of the auditor's report, the company's accounting policies, and the auditor's independence. To allow those who have attended to vote at any time during the meeting, I now formally open the poll on all items of business set out in the notice of meeting lodged with the ASX on the third of November. Voting will be conducted by a poll on all items. If you are eligible to vote, you would have received a yellow voting card at your registration. If you believe you are entitled to vote and have not received the correct voting card, please see the Computershare registry staff. Now, is there anyone in the room that hasn't got a card that would feel as though they, they need, should have a card? Just put your hand up, and we'll get someone from Computershare to come and help you out. All right. Okay, that's good. Computershare is the Returning Officer for this meeting. To cast your vote, simply complete and sign the back of the card. You may submit your voting paper at any time into the box alongside the registration table, or by handing your voting card to a Computershare representative at the end of the meeting. They'll come round with a box and collect your cards. The final results will be released to the ASX and posted on the Soul Patts website later today. Following the presentation, which has been lodged this morning with the ASX, we will then consider formal items of business. Today's AGM is an appropriate time for shareholders and their representatives to ask questions. Shareholders in the room and those shareholders viewing online will have the chance to ask questions. This includes those questions that were sent ahead of the meeting, unless they have already been addressed. Shareholders in the room with a yellow voting card or blue non-voting card may ask questions. To ask a question online, type your name and your question into the text box provided on the viewing platform. Questions sent online will be moderated to avoid repetition, and if questions are lengthy, we may summarize them. Turning now to discuss the changes of the board. As announced this morning to the market, Tom Millner has provided the board with his notice of intention to retire, which will take effect at the end of this calendar year. On behalf of my fellow directors, I sincerely thank you, Tom, for your significant contribution to the board since your appointment in 2011. Tom has performed an important role on the board, providing intergenerational leadership as a fifth generation of the Pattinson family to work with Soul Pattinson. Tom has also supported the company's long-term vision and values. His investing knowledge and energy has made a lasting impression to all those who have been involved with him, both at a board level and also at management level. Tom served on the Nomination Committee, the Risk Committee, the People and Culture Remuneration Committee, and I know our shareholders will join with me and my fellow directors in thanking Tom for his outstanding contribution to the company over the previous 13 years. On the topic of changes to our board, in February this year, we were fortunate enough to have David Baxby join us. He's standing for election today. David is a very experienced senior executive investment expert and public company director. He has held executive positions with Wesfarmers and the Virgin Group. At Virgin, David was CEO to the group's $6 billion family office. We are highly confident David's contribution will continue to make since he has joined the board since last February. Tiffany Fuller and Josephine Sukkar are both up for re-election today. Soul Patts is very fortunate to have independent directors of this caliber and the valuable contribution they continue to make to this company. Tiffany joined the board in December 2017. She's an experienced public company director with a background in chartered accounting, private equity, and investment banking. Josephine joined our board in 2020 as an experienced entrepreneur and business executive. Josephine founded the Buildcorp Construction business over 30 years with her husband. As a whole, the board reflects an appropriate and complementary set of skills and experience to effectively govern Soul Patts. All directors have confirmed they have time available to fulfill their role, and the board supports directors' re-elections at today's meeting. Finally, I would like to thank all our staff at Soul Patts for their effort in delivering the result for 2023. The dedication of Todd and his senior management team means Soul Patts can continue to grow shareholder capital and make consistent dividend payments. I would also like to thank the management and staff of some of our investee companies. Without their success, Soul Patts would not be the company we are today. And to you, our shareholders, thank you for your continued support of this company. Now, I'll now hand over to Todd, and he'll give you his address. Thank you, Rob, and good afternoon. Thank you very much for being here at today's annual general meeting. I want to start with some exciting news. Today, we unveil a refreshed look for the company, which you all know as Soul Patts. We've not changed our registered company name. This remains as Washington H. Soul Pattinson and Company Limited, but we have embraced a shortened and more familiar version. For more than a century, Soul Patts has generated enduring success for shareholders. In 1903, our company was incorporated and publicly listed on the Sydney Stock Exchange. The Soul Pattinson Chemists soon became a retail empire in the Australian market. Today, Soul Patts is a large and highly diversified investment house. Our portfolio holds hundreds of different companies and assets, both public and private, across all kinds of industries. Though far from our retail origins, we've always maintained our values and ways of doing business, grounded in more than 100 years of experience. The Soul Patts way of investing is a long-term commitment to businesses that can be enduringly successful. It is our strength of conviction and our belief in common sense, doing what is right, and backing our people. It is unconstrained opportunity, which means we don't have constraints on investment opportunities, the growth of our business, or the potential of our people. Our flexibility is a key competitive advantage. While there is no change to our registered name, we've shortened it and refreshed our look and feel. We are, and always have been, Soul Patts. It was important to us that we maintain the trust built with our shareholders over centuries, and it was important to continue the spirit of our founders, Lewy Pattinson, Caleb, and Washington Soul, who are represented to this day through our Chairman, Robert Millner, the fourth generation of the Pattinson family. We believe the name Soul Patts crystallizes our long-held belief that success comes from truly understanding what we're investing in, which is people. Our new website, soulpatts.com.au, showcases our team of professionals, our growing portfolio, and our approach to investing. What hasn't changed is our commitment to our shareholders and plans to continue generating enduring success for centuries to come. So as you can see, our brand is extremely important to us, and we're very excited about this refreshed look. I encourage you to visit our new website, soulpatts.com.au, which we believe really improves the user experience, gives a more accurate overview of our current business, and contains relevant information for shareholders. The financial year 2023 was another strong year of performance for Soul Patts. We measure our performance against the three key investment objectives. Firstly, we increased cash generation, with net cash flows from investments increasing to AUD 424 million, which is 22% higher than the prior year. It should also be mentioned that the net cash flows from investments increased 28% in the previous year, and that increased cash flow is supporting higher dividends for shareholders. Secondly, the portfolio grew by AUD 900 million to AUD 10.8 billion as at year-end. It again outperformed the market with net asset value on a per share basis after adding back dividends, delivering a total return of 12.3%. This outperformed the All Ordinaries Accumulation Index by 1.2%. That is another strong result on top of a 13.8% growth in net asset values per share in the previous year. And thirdly, and importantly, we achieved all of this while managing investment risk. During the year, we actively rebalanced the portfolio towards more defensive asset classes and increased our cash available for new investments, which we think is a prudent decision in the current environment. Cash at year-end was AUD 911 million, an increase of 87% throughout the year.... During the period, our team conducted AUD 3.1 billion in combined acquisitions and disposals. We believe that the portfolio is better positioned to withstand any volatility in markets, and I'll come back to this point in a little while. Our performance provided your board with the confidence to materially increase the FY 2023 dividend. A final dividend of AUD 0.51 per share, fully franked, brought total dividends to AUD 0.87, which is 20.8% higher than the prior year. We pay dividends to shareholders out of the cash that we receive from our investments, measured by Net Cash Flows from Investments. In FY 2023, we paid 75% of the cash that we received from the portfolio back to shareholders as fully franked dividends. As I mentioned on the previous slide, we've experienced strong growth in cash flows since the acquisition of Milton, and this has resulted in a step up in dividends over the last two years, which have grown on average at 18.5% per year. We are proud of our track record of delivering dividends to shareholders every year since 1903, when the company listed, and increasing them every year since 2000 at a compound annual growth rate of 9.6%. We are the only company in the All Ordinaries Index with this track record of increasing dividends every year for 23 years. Our goal is to provide better-than-market returns over the medium to long term. This graph reflects total shareholder returns for shareholders over multiyear periods, as benchmarked against the ASX All Ordinaries Accumulation Index, which includes the reinvestment of dividends. Over 20 years, the total return for Soul Patts shareholders has been 12.5% per annum, or 3.5% better than the index. The compounding effect of that outperformance means the Soul Patts shareholder has seen their original investment increase by nearly 9.5 times, which is more than double the return from the index. The continued market outperformance across multiple time periods is particularly pleasing in the context of a diversified portfolio that has consistently protected shareholder capital through periods of market volatility, while we employ very little leverage and less risk. We currently have a headcount of over 50 in our direct operations. This includes a large and growing team of professionals across investments, finance, and operations, 23 of whom were recruited during the last 12 months. This included an executive appointment, with Jackie Virtue joining as Chief Operating Officer. Jackie is leading operational risk, governance culture, and fostering people and culture initiatives that support our overall strategy. This growth and capability is also necessary to support the significant increase in investment activity, which over the last 5 years has amounted to AUD 8 billion, and that doesn't include the Milton acquisition. During FY 2023 alone, the team transacted AUD 3.1 billion in total, rebalancing portfolio weightings towards private equity, credit, and cash. AUD 1.4 billion of equities were sold, helping us to accumulate a cash balance of over AUD 900 billion at year-end to invest in the best opportunities that we're seeing in FY 2024 and beyond. During the year, we deployed over AUD 900 million into private equity and private credit. This involved 7 new bolt-on acquisitions across our top 4 private equity investments, and 23 new investments in the private credit portfolio. Turning to the FY 2024 start of the year, in the first quarter, ending 31 October. The portfolio was well positioned at the start of the year for market volatility. During the first three months of our financial year, the All Ordinaries Accumulation Index fell by 7.3%. Meanwhile, our portfolio reduced by only 0.4% in that period, which again shows the resilience of the portfolio and its ability to protect capital and perform better in difficult periods. Resilience across our major strategic assets has contributed to this outperformance. Our cash balance now sits at AUD 694 million at 31 October, having continued our strategy of deploying cash into private markets. During the first quarter, we made another acquisition in the private equity portfolio, adding one of the most advanced fruit packing and processing plants globally to our agriculture portfolio. We've continued to add to the credit portfolio, and we also made a significant investment in the emerging companies portfolio into NexGen Energy, which is developing the largest low-cost producing uranium mine globally. We believe it is prudent and opportunistic to have cash on hand in the current environment and are expecting another reasonably high level of activity in FY 2024. As always, our approach to portfolio construction will be disciplined, targeting high-quality businesses that bring diversity and strong cash generation. We continue to see good quality deal flow and currently have nearly AUD 470 million in committed but undrawn investments across the portfolio. An example of this is the recently announced proposal to acquire Perpetual. We're obviously limited in what we can say about this proposal outside of what has already been disclosed in our announcement on Wednesday afternoon. But to give you a little bit of history, Soul Patts has been a shareholder in Perpetual for many years, and recently, we saw an opportunity to increase our position during a period of particular weakness in the share price. We had a view that the sum of the parts was worth more than the market capitalization. Not only did we accumulate a significant interest, up to 9.9%, we turned our minds to whether there was a value-enhancing opportunity that we could provide to the company. We subsequently approached the company with a proposal which involves Soul Patts acquiring 100% of the business for an implied equity value of AUD 3.06 billion, or AUD 27 per share. It proposed that there would be a simultaneous demerger of Perpetual Asset Management back to existing Perpetual shareholders, leaving Perpetual Corporate Trustee and Perpetual Wealth Management to be owned by Soul Patts. Soul Patts has proposed that it acquires these two businesses for a combined AUD 1.885 billion through the issuance of AUD 1.06 billion worth of Soul Patts' scrip, and taking on debt and other corporate costs. Soul Patts believes this proposal provides a unique opportunity for Perpetual shareholders to unlock value in a tax-efficient structure while retaining exposure to each of the Perpetual's three existing businesses. The acquisition would further provide diversification to Soul Patts' portfolio and increase our exposure to financial services, and it demonstrates our ability to unlock value through a creative, flexible, and long-term approach. That concludes my presentation for today. I'd like to thank the chairman and the board for their support and guidance throughout the year. I also want to thank our employees for their hard work and dedication to the achievements of FY 23. I want to thank you, our shareholders, for continuing to put your faith in us to manage your wealth. It's truly an honor and a privilege to give service to this company and its shareholders. Thank you. Thanks, Todd. Another excellent presentation, and I'm sure you'll all agree over the period of time since Todd's been in charge, you've seen this company really leap ahead. So to you and your team, on behalf of all shareholders, thank you very much, sir. Particularly the increase in dividends that we've all seen. So well done, guys. Now, let's move to the formal part of the business. I will take questions when we finish the formal part of the business. The formal items of business are set out in the notice of meeting. They include: the financial report, no resolution is required. However, questions will be welcomed. The election of David Baxby, the reelections of directors Tiffany Fuller and Josephine Sukkar, the Rem report, the granting of performance rights to the CEO and Managing Director, and the increase in the aggregate of non-executive directors pool, fee pool. Now, if we have a look at the proxies, I'll just remind you, as I mentioned earlier, if you are voting, you are able, eligible now to vote at any time. So before we move on any further, I'd just like to ask David Baxby, followed by Tiffany Fuller and Josephine Sukkar, just to say a few words. Is this on? It is. Great. Thanks, Rob. Look, I'm absolutely delighted to be here with you today. I'm fortunate in my career, I have managed to work with some great entrepreneurs and, and some great shareholders in, in Wesfarmers and, and a number of other organizations. And I, I suppose the one theme that's been woven through each of those roles is it's always been about applying capital and producing, you know, hopefully above average returns. And I think when I was given the opportunity to come and join Soul Patts, I jumped at it because of the reputation that this organization's built up over, frankly, centuries. Hopefully, I can add a little bit of value to the group as we go forward. For the last six months, I've been really impressed with the quality of the team, the decision-making that is made at an executive level, and also the collegiality that we as a board enjoy. And I think that's reflective of the returns that the group have been able to generate this year. So I thank you all for your support, and thank you. Thank you, Chairman, and good morning, everyone, afternoon now, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. It's been a privilege serving on the Soul Patts board for the last six years throughout the transition, heightened activity, and growth in size, complexity, and maturity of the business as it's become an ASX 100 company. It's an outstanding team to work with, and it's also been a privilege to work with the Millner family, Rob and Tom in particular, and to be part of a founder-led culture, which is both humble and high-performing. My career, as Rob said earlier, has been both multidisciplinary and multi-industry, primarily in chartered accounting, corporate finance, investment banking and funds management, management accounting and private equity, both here in Australia, the U.S., and the U.K. So I bring to Soul Patts deep financial and accounting literacy skills in M&A, transaction support, corporate strategy, business transformation, and risk and governance, which are all relevant to the business of Soul Patts. At Rothschild, I was involved in both raising and investing private third-party capital and in-house balance sheet and the management of listed and unlisted funds for wholesale investors. I'm an experienced company director in various sectors, with a focus on financial services, investment management and funds management, technology, retail, and property. I've been on public boards for over 10 years now and have extensive experience as chair of both risk and audit committees. As announced today, the board continues to focus on an orderly board renewal program, and as a continuing director, I provide important continuity on the board as we work through this transition. I'm currently on the boards of Computershare, Vicinity, Australian Venue Co, and the Royal Children's Hospital Foundation in Melbourne. I'm delighted to offer myself for re-election today, and I thank you for your support. It's great to see so many of you in the room. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today. I'm Josephine Sukkar, and I joined the board in 2020 during COVID. My interview was online, so I didn't get to meet a number of members of the board until, you know, I was actually a director. I bring 13 years of listed company experience to Soul Patts, but I come to that with 33 years of experience of owning my own private business with my husband, Buildcorp. We started that business 33 years ago. It turns over around AUD 800 million now, and I've got deep experience in the private sector through Buildcorp as a vehicle and property more broadly. My other listed board is a real estate investment trust, Growthpoint Properties Australia. I've also got deep experience on government boards, interestingly, but the broad investment mandate of Soul Patts aligns with my broad business interests and capabilities, and also, through my professional life that I began as a scientist, talks to Rob Millner's desire to have a really diverse skill set around this board, and that's what we have. I'm entrepreneurial by nature and enjoy the diverse nature and opportunities of business opportunities that come to Soul Patts through the board. I hope to continue to keep pace with the organization that's, as it evolves and aligns with continues to align with shareholder expectations, and will support management through things like my directorship at the Green Building Council of Australia. I've got deep experience in the environmental science, and I'm enjoying watching Soul Patts' involvement in the transition of energy and, and how we're investing there in agriculture, telecommunications, and other contemporary issues that this board and business is steering into and investing into heavily. I'm excited to offer myself for re-election and confirm I have the time and ability to fulfill my duties as a non-executive director, should I be re-elected today. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll now turn to taking some questions. Questions sent in advance of today's meeting will be addressed first, before opening questions to the floor and to those shareholders online. Now, I have Courtney standing over there on my right. I have five questions, Todd has five, and Mike Hawker has one. So we'll now take those. Thanks. Courtney? Thank you, Chairman. The first question I have is from John and Raylene Porter. They had quite a long comment around this question, but the crux of it is: Do we need an annual report containing 188 pages? Definitely not. Interesting, we did a roadshow 18 months ago, David? And David, being quick-witted as he was, he brought a 1981 annual report, and there was 18 pages in that. So we are considering, and I know Commonwealth Bank does it, we may put out a concise annual report next year because it's, it's a nightmare for people trying to understand a modern annual report. Thanks, Courtney. Okay, next question, Mr. Chairman, is from Ms. Vera Last. She says, "When I was a Milton shareholder, the final dividend was paid two and a half months after the year end. Why does it take so long to pay Soul Patts' dividends? Well, I think that dates back a bit. Some of you older people here would remember that we used to have it as a motion on the agenda to ratify the dividend. And you'd be surprised, some years, some people used to vote against it. So, no, we'll certainly take that online and try and bring the payment forward. Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. The next question is similar from Roger Degenhardt: Again, I request consideration to implement a dividend reinvestment plan or entitlement offer of share purchase without brokerage. All right. Thanks again. The board will consider that question. Thank you. The last question for you, Mr. Chairman, is from Neil Cook: Was there any money given to any side of the Voice referendum in October? No. I think it was absolutely appalling that some of our leading companies actually stuck their neck out and voted in particular ways that they did, and some of them actually even donated money, which is even worse. So, no, we do not adopt political views. So on that, I'm done. Todd? Thank you, Todd. The first question I have for you from Mr. Anthony Soon Ti Yu is: What is the next move in 2024, as in continuous improvement to make Soul an attractive, diversified, and sustainable company? Yeah, I think we received that question before we announced Perpetual on Wednesday. So I guess that gives you a little insight into some of the things that are going on in the business. You know, we're constantly looking for undervalued opportunities that we can bring our creativity, flexibility, capital, and long-term thinking to bear. And I think that, you know, our view certainly is that there's going to be more and more of those sorts of opportunities that emerge in the next year and for a few years to come. It's been a pretty easy 10 years to invest in equity markets where everything sort of goes up. It has a few kind of interruptions, but if you hold your positions, they eventually just keep going up. I don't know that that's necessarily going to be the case forever, and I think that the more discerning investor, you know, the good quality value investments, are going to be the ones that are going to outperform. And this is the kind of market where I think that we are well positioned to take advantage of some of these opportunities. Thank you. Next question is from Thomas and Susan Evans: Why is Soul sitting on so much cash? The Milton merger is now bedded in. Is Soul looking to replicate this strategy with other listed investment companies? Yeah, I think the cash at the end of the financial year was a point in time. It certainly had built up over the year, deliberately to be more defensive. We could see markets were getting more expensive, and it was perfectly timed. If you look at what happened August, September, October, as I said in my presentation, the market fell by over 7%. We've been deploying that cash, so, you know, we're AUD 200 million less already. We've got a number of undrawn commitments that we've made, over AUD 400 million, so we've got uses for the cash. And I would say that, you know, while it sounds like a reasonable amount, you know, in percentage terms across the portfolio, it's actually not a huge percentage. So it's not a drag on our performance, but, but, you know, certainly we think that it's very, wise to have available liquidity, in this time, of the market to take advantage of some of the stuff that we're expecting to see.... Oh, sorry. And then the second part of the question was, are we looking to replicate, the Milton experience? Yeah, Milton was extremely strategic for us. It solves, the access to liquidity that we needed to pursue the further diversification of the portfolio that we've achieved over the last couple of years. Now that we've done that, it's not a strategy that we need to continue to, roll out. Thank you. Next question from John and Alice Turnbull: "What percentage of the group portfolio is held in assets outside Australia? And what percentage of the Australian portfolio is held and operated outside New South Wales? So it's a little hard to pin that down because, obviously, all businesses tend to operate across borders. And certainly, even if it's a domestic company, it probably operates more than, you know, in one single state. But if we look at the international aspect of the business, about 5% of our businesses are wholly owned outside of Australia. And if you look at the strategic portfolio as an example, we have Tuas, which is a Singapore mobile business. We also have Apex, which is a Malaysian-listed healthcare business. And then if you... We've recently done an analysis of our large cap portfolio, which is about AUD 2.5 billion worth, and over 60% of the revenues from that portfolio come from offshore. When it comes to the private opportunities, we're increasingly looking abroad, and, you know, we are not arrogant enough to think that we can turn up in foreign jurisdictions, get great deal flow, and avoid getting given some bad investments. So we are looking to partner with some very high quality people who think and act like us, and we're starting to invest alongside some good private equity managers in the U.S., and good credit managers across North America and Europe. We think that those allocations will grow as we develop out those relationships. Right now, we've got $200 million allocated across those buckets, but I think that will grow in time. Thank you. Next question from Bindy Gove: "Will the company be seeking to increase investments in coal and gas, given the sustained customer demand and the fact pricing is holding up for these commodities? Well, we're very comfortable with our investment in New Hope. It's a large position in the portfolio and one that we've been happy to hold through, you know, periods where a lot of people were calling for us to divest from coal. You know, one thing we are absolutely certain of is that the energy transition and the demand for energy is gonna be a very important theme for investing over the next couple of decades. So we see that as broader than just coal, although we think that coal will be a very important part of the energy mix. There will be, we are starting to deploy, I mentioned in my speech, capital towards uranium. We think uranium will be important. We also think that renewables will be important, and Ampcontrol is an important part of our private equity portfolio that can benefit from the energy transition and helping people to decarbonize. So I don't think that this is a you know, either/or question in terms of what's going to be the solution for the energy crisis or the energy demand that we're going to have. It's going to require a huge effort across you know, the industry to supply the increasing demand for electrification, the increased urbanization of the population, and population growth. So energy demand will go up. There will be dislocation as the friction happens with the transition, but we think that that creates opportunity. Thank you, Todd. And the final pre-submitted question for you is from J.R. Dennett. "Pengana Capital, does it remain an attractive investment for Soul Patts and Tuas? What are the reasons behind losses for the past two years, and what are its prospects going forward? Well, Pengana is not immune from the challenges facing all fund managers in the current environment. But, you know, we are very confident in the management team and the board and the strategy that they're employing to diversify away from straight equities management and into more alternatives. And they've done a very good job in providing access to Australian investors to global private equity managers, and they're doing something similar with credit. We've supported them by investing in those credit managers. So we're selecting the best quality credit managers from across the globe and then bringing that opportunity to the Australian public. So, I think that they're moving in the right direction, and that's providing that company with some exciting upside. Tuas, you know, is loss-making, but it's in its ramp-up mode. It is a growth company that is quickly stealing market share in the Singaporean mobile market. And it's building CapEx, a significant piece of infrastructure, so we wouldn't expect it to be making profits now, but you know, we're very confident in the progress it's making and the trajectory it's on. Thank you, Todd. That's it for you. And there's one more pre-submitted question for Mike Hawker, which was from Mr. R. Haradet Soxi. Apologies for not pronouncing the names properly, but the question is, Mike: "Who will be the next chairman of Soul after Robert Millner? ... Well, we sort of see Rob very much like the Warren Buffett of Australia, and we're expecting him to go on for a number of few years to go. So we've got backups if Rob, unfortunately, is hit by a bus. But we don't feel that with his experience and his knowledge and representation to the Millner family, he's been a very strong. He is a very strong part of the organization. He's been also a very strong shareholder group within the company at the present time as well. So I don't think there's a better person and more skilled person to be able to run this company, and I think the history has demonstrated that, and I think shareholders have understood that as well. So it's unusual to be able to have someone stand on and sit on the board for over 35 years, but, if there's one person that deserves to be here, that's, Rob Millner, and all the independent directors thoroughly believe in that. Thank you. Now, we're gonna open the questions up to the floor, and I'm hoping Todd's gonna get more than I am, so that's why he's standing on my right. So we've got a microphone here. So if you could come up one at a time and tell me who you are and show me your whether you're a shareholder or not. If you're not a shareholder, we won't be taking any questions. So if you'd like to come up and ask your question, we'll do our best to answer it. I need to go. I did. But there's two. There's another one over there. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Can you come into the microphone so people can hear you? Certainly. I read recently that, Soul Patts was one of the financiers of Stanmore Coal's acquisition of 80% stake in BHP's Mitsui Coal and was considering financing Whitehaven Coal's acquisition of the Blackwater and Daunia mines. Is this a strategic decision by the board of Soul Patts to lend to companies like Whitehaven and other undiversified coal companies, when major domestic and global banks are backing away from coal? If so, what assessments or due diligence has the board done to understand the risks of lending to a company which has plans to mine coal out until 2120? Can the board please advise what Soul Patts lending exposure is to coal companies at this time, and will this information be disclosed in reporting to shareholders in the future? Well, what I would say about coal is it's something that we know pretty well, and we have a big exposure, obviously, through the equity that we own in New Hope. So, so, you know, in terms of the strategy and the analysis that we're undertaking around investing in other coal businesses, we feel very comfortable in the knowledge that we believe that coal will be needed for some time to come. But, you know, when you talk about the life of some of those assets going out to 2100 plus, you know, we are not making equity investments in those names that you mentioned. We're looking at them from a debt perspective and the... A typical debt instrument would last no longer than five years, and in fact, you know, often quite less. So, so we really only need to take a view on, on a very short time term for that business being profitable and, and able to repay its, its debt. And, and that, of course, is something that we're very comfortable with. Okay. Thank you. I note your comments about your history with coal and your knowledge of that market. When I left home this morning, I wore a jacket. I brought a jacket and that was clearly a bad decision on the day-to-day. Mm-hmm. I notice a number of people in here have also relinquished their jackets. I made that decision on the basis of past habits, clearly inappropriate for the circumstances of the day. I suggest to you that lending to Whitehaven to acquire coal, further coal mines is also another case of that, making decisions based on past experience and not appropriate for the circumstances today. We're not gonna get into- Yep. Into a debate on coal here, so just keep answering the questions and not making statements, please. Well, my point is that you haven't really answered the question, particularly about disclosure of financing to coal in future financial reports. Well, yeah, what I would say to the question around, you know, do we are we making our investment decisions based on past information rather than future information? Absolutely not. I mean, across the board, you know, we pride ourselves on being unemotional and rational decision-makers, looking at the facts as at the time that we invest, but also taking a long-term view around the future of, you know, the industries that we invest in. You know, I invite you and everybody else here to have a look at the sustainability report that New Hope releases to the ASX. I think it captures very well our belief in the future of coal and, you know, the work that we've done to understand the future demand. Okay. Could I ask one further question? Sir, you've had a couple of questions. We've got a couple of other people over here- Okay. Would you sit down for a minute? We'll take the next question from the Shareholders Association. Thank you very much. Peter Gregory is my name. I'm here as a shareholder, and as Rob says, so representing the Australian Shareholders Association. This is an organization that's a not-for-profit, and is largely operated by volunteers, and we represent the interests of individual shareholders.... I'd like to thank Soul Patts for their, for their engagement during this year. It's been very good and very open, so thank you for that. Today, I have proxies for 232 shareholders who have a collective holding of just over 1 million shares. So this is equivalent to about the 19th largest shareholder on, on the, from the, from the, annual report. My question, first question is, Soul Patts has a proud record of steadily increasing dividends, and shareholders value this, particularly the increases we've seen in the last couple of years. However, the media keeps telling us about cost of living increases, and we believe that some shareholders are deciding between equities such as Soul Patts and many other companies, and other safer, but safer investments that deliver better returns. We ask that the board consider, given the, the level of, regular impact that you have, increasing the size of dividends, possibly through special dividends. It appears that Soul Patts has the ability for this, to do this fully franked. I think, well, Todd's already mentioned that we've, we've increased the dividend by 20% this year, and also, we paid a special dividend. But we're interested in growing the company as well. And we'd all love a bigger dividend, but we'd all like the company to grow as well, I'm sure. So is that a no? No, no, we're at an appropriate time, and as I said, we've increased the dividend by 20%. It's a big jump in one year, and we, and we paid a special last year, so shareholders should have been very well rewarded. My next question, and first of all, I'd like to say thanks for the introducing your key team on the new website. It's absolutely fantastic to be able to look into the organization and see the depth of people that are there. My question is, in response to Soul Patts increasing scale and business tech diversity, there have been 23 people join Soul Patts this year. We welcome these people and look forward to their great contribution, but we recognize that an increase of 43% can have an impact on an organization, and we'd like to understand how this is being managed so that these people integrate very effectively and very quickly. Yeah, thank you. It's an excellent question because it's one that us as a management team and the board are very, very focused on. We talk about it all the time. I mean, it's not just the simple act of bringing a new person on, making them an effective part of the team and contributing to the performance of the business. That in itself is a task that every company has to face. And we're doing it 23 times in a relatively small business. So, that was one task that we had to focus on. But the more important thing for us is we have a very unique culture in our business that needs to be preserved. It's a culture that comes right from the top, and it's been introduced to the company by Robert Millner. And it's something that makes us successful. It's about focusing on the shareholder. It's about chasing every dollar. It's about value investing, long-term investing, getting rid of the noise, and being happy to be a little bit different. And that's really important to us. And so what we're extremely focused on is making sure that the philosophy and culture of the business is maintained despite new people coming on. And, you know, I'm happy to say that, you know, if I reflect back in the last 12 months on whether we've done a good job of that, I can say it's been very, very good. Recently, we did a culture survey just to check in on whether people were happy, whether they were aligned with the strategy and the culture of the business, and we had overwhelmingly positive results. So we instinctively knew that we were on the right path, but we were... That was confirmed by the survey results. But it's something that, you know, is not a done job. It's a task that will be ongoing for a very long time to make sure that we don't lose the very thing that's made us successful. And just on that, I think we're probably one of the only businesses in town where everyone wants to work five days a week. You think? No, it's Todd and his team have done a wonderful job making it a happy environment for people who want to come into work. Peter, I shoved this other chap off after a couple of questions. I'm happy to come back to you, but- Can I come back? You've got someone else behind you. Okay, thanks, Mr. Millner and Mr. Barlow and the board for allowing me to make a comment, not a question. First of all, congratulations on your 120-year anniversary on the ASX. Second of all, I may have to say that I may have to disagree with Mr. Michael Hawker in regards to Mr. Robert Millner being Australia's Warren Buffett. Basically, I think he is more like a Charlie Munger. And a live one. But the thing is, I know. And congratulations on the turnout as well. I'm hoping this can be another Berkshire Hathaway meeting in which we need Mr. Miller's bluntness and also his clear vision and kindness. And also, another thing as well, basically, I'm surprised at the amount of people who are against the remuneration report. I feel that it was a good assessment, especially when you base it on net cash flow from investments per share and adjusted net asset value per share as well. So that's pretty good, and keep up the good work and like the report. Thank you. Thank you very much. ... Todd, just a question about the agriculture portfolio. Could you give us a bit more detail on returns that you're seeing there? And if ever you're seeing more deals than you want to allocate capital to, maybe is that—could that be separately listed in the future and fall up into the strategic portfolio? Yeah, that's an interesting one, because it is growing quite rapidly. We're deploying quite a lot of capital. I think four of the bolt-on acquisitions that we did last year were in the agricultural portfolio. That was unexpected, because when we set out accumulating assets in the agricultural space, we didn't anticipate that we would find so many that reach our hurdles. And our hurdle rates are quite high, particularly for this investment class. As it turned out, the manager that we have there just kept finding good opportunities. And then, I suppose, once you get to a certain scale, new opportunities arise that are synergistic, that get you to your hurdle rate more quickly or more easily. So, the latest acquisition, as an example, in the packing is a great acquisition for us because of the way that it fits into the broader portfolio. So right now, you know, I think we're at sort of circa AUD 600 million in assets in the ag portfolio. There could be a time where that gets to a scale where we think that it warrants being a separately listed company, or alternatively, we could raise other funds to invest alongside us if we wanted to kind of diversify, but keep growing that business. So there's lots of optionality in it, but it's certainly surprised us with the amount of opportunities that we found where we can get our hurdle rates. And some of those are yet to prove up because, you know, there's a bit of a J-curve effect in agriculture, particularly the nature of the assets that we bought, where we're repositioning them, and that will only be proved out over a few years. But, you know, we're very happy with the performance, and that's why we keep allocating there. And I think you raise a good point that, you know, when these businesses get to scale, we're very happy to invite other shareholders along with us to keep growing the business, rather than stop investing in it. I mean, could you just talk to the hurdle rate? Is it, like, better or worse than 10, given you're carrying it at directors' valuation? Yeah. I mean, I think on private assets, because of the lack of liquidity and, you know, a little bit more work and administration involved, you know, we sort of have hurdle rates at mid-teens for private businesses. But the reason why we've been willing to keep going is we're finding deals much better than that. Do we have any other questions? Peter, and we'll take another one from you. Yes. Just hang on, Peter. I'll take it from this lady here. Hi, can you hear me? It's short. There we go. You can just- Hey, I'll do it that way. Is that all right? Sorry. I'm a shareholder, small shareholder. What's the opinion of Aeris Resources? It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. It goes that way, and then we get a note. Yesterday, a few days ago, they want to raise money. I thought, what's your opinion? You have a fair holding in it. Please. Yeah, I think that it's not the only business that is a copper gold developer that is struggling at the moment. Our fundamental thesis is that copper is a transition metal, and as I spoke about, the electrification of so many things is going to require particularly renewable energy. It's gonna require a lot of copper demand, and all of the experts are suggesting that the demand for copper will far outstrip the available supply. That's got to be good for prices, but right now, prices are a little softer. That's impacted the valuations across the whole sector, and Aeris is not immune from that. They need, needed a little bit more money to keep continuing doing what they're doing, but, you know, we're happy to invest at these prices, and we followed our, our rights. And we just think that it's one of those cyclical things that at the right time, you know, if they, if they can perform, they'll take advantage of some much higher copper prices in time. Thank you again. One further quick question, if I may. Our company has progressively reduced its shareholding in New Hope over the last several years, particularly during times of low coal prices. 2022 and 2023 saw exceptionally high thermal coal prices. I was just wondering if you could explain why Soul Patts did not increase the stake in New Hope, given a bumpy year for coal? Thanks. Yeah, I think it's a function of both, where the share price is versus where the earnings are and what our view of long-term earnings are. I mean, we don't take a one or two-year view when we invest. We take a much longer-term view than that. Certainly, coal prices were very high for the last year or two, and that was, you know, particular world events. But, you know, we don't think that, excuse me, that coal prices need to remain at those prices for the company to be very valuable and keep generating good cash. So we're more focused on the long term. Okay. Thank you. Peter? Within the private equity portfolio and emerging companies portfolio, there are, I would expect, some companies, some investments that could turn into future strategic investments for Soul Patts. Can you please describe how and if with these companies, you're mentoring them, assisting them? Do you have specific involvement with them to help them succeed? ... Absolutely, absolutely. We, excuse me. We have a lot of oversight from a governance perspective. We think that there's only really two things. Thanks, Rob. There's really only two things that we can contribute to the businesses that we own outright. One is capital, and secondly is governance oversight and a governance model that assists them on their growth journey. And that's important to us, that we show them the pathway to performing like a big business so that they can become a big business. And so we actively engage with them on best practice around, you know, all sorts of governance, regulatory, legal, risk, but also how do we implement a culture that is enduringly successful? So that we show them, you know, what they can achieve with the right support structures in place around capital and a long-term vision for growing a business. And so often we buy these businesses, and we talk to them about our strategy and the philosophy around building a business over the long term. And they're so engaged and liberated by the idea that they don't have to manage for the short term, and that they can spend the money to make the business more resilient. They can put in place the systems that they need to put in place to make sure that the risk is managed, and we support them on that journey every step of the way. Okay, now, thanks for that. I have two more questions that probably go to Rob rather than you, Todd. At every AGM, shareholders vote for the people they will entrust to the leadership of their company to. The brief CV in the Soul Patts notice of meeting provides a little bit of information, and the board skills matrix doesn't show us the skills and experiences of individual directors. I think this is an opportunity for Soul Patts to provide more information on each director's achievements, and through listing the skills of each director, give shareholders the ability to make a more confident decision when they vote for directors. Thank you, Peter. Yeah, when we met, well, it was a couple of weeks ago, we said we'd take that on board and look into it in the next annual report. Yep. My final question is to do with board renewal. With retirements from the board coming up, and with your increase in directors' fees, you indicated a provision for a possible two additional directors. Can you give us some flavor as to what the-? Mm-hmm ... what the plans are in terms of future board? Well, we actually had a board meeting this morning, and it was one of the topics that we discussed. And obviously, going forward, we've got quite a few balls in the air at the moment, but I'm sure the competent board we've got here will make the right decision at the appropriate time. Okay? Thanks, Peter. Yep. Thank you. Now, we do have some questions online. I hear Courtney, correct? One more here. Well, okay. Kerry Bible. Just wanted to ask a question about your swim schools. How's it going? And, any plans to extend it? Are you building your own centers? What's happening there? Yeah, it's growing. I think we made two acquisitions of size in the last 12 months. So you know, certainly we're seeing really solid recovery post-COVID in terms of people returning to teaching their kids to swim. We bought a big portfolio of schools in WA called Kirby Swim, and many of you in the room will know Carlile, which is the New South Wales swim schools, which is probably one of the more prominent brand names in the industry. So we are now easily the biggest swim school operator in the country. It's still a very fragmented cottage industry, so there's lots of opportunity for us to continue to grow. We're also building our own schools, so we're agnostic about whether somebody wants to sell their school to us or we build it ourselves. But, you know, we think that they're very high-quality, cash-generative businesses that are recession-proof. You know, people are always gonna teach their kids to swim. You know, there's a lot of benefits that come from the program that we've developed and the, you know, the quality that we can deliver in terms of technology and interfacing with the customers. So, you know, I think the quality of our product versus, you know, everybody else is second to none. Thank you. I've got some questions on the line that I'll read through now. The first question is: In order to fund the continuing search for investment opportunities, is it not prudent to reduce the dividend payout ratio to, say, 50%? Is the company's policy to maintain its dividend aristocrat status by maintaining its high dividend payout ratio? Yeah, look, I think you need to find the right balance between, you know, growing the capital of the business and giving shareholders dividends. We've tried to maintain a discipline where we pay out between 75% and 95% of the cash that we generate from our portfolio to shareholders. And we continued that this year, and I think we'll continue that into the future. I don't think that saving money by not paying dividends gets us very far. You know, there's plenty of liquidity in our portfolio. There's plenty of access to liquidity elsewhere. We've got, you know, undrawn debt lines. We've got, you know, significant listed liquid equities portfolio. There's plenty of places for us to be able to find cash to make new investments, and that's not gonna slow us down, without having to deprive shareholders of their dividend. ... Thank you. I have a question for Tom. Tom, there's a shareholder who would like to hear from you on your reasons for stepping down after such a long tenure, and more broadly, your observations on the positive changes that you've seen at Soul Patts during your tenure, and also, thank you for your efforts over the years. Yep. Well, thank you for the question. Reasons of stepping down, I think as you emerge from a smaller business into a larger business like Soul Patts has, you find you go up the chain, and we're in the ASX top 100, and now in the top 50. With that becomes more focus on corporate governance, which is a actually a good thing. It's to protect the wealth and the longevity of a business like this. So, we've introduced a policy where directors will step down after a 12-year period. Very, very healthy, because otherwise you could do get a very stale board, and you do have directors hanging around for too long. Having said that, I'm only 46, so I've hopefully got a few more years left in me. I'm not eighty and looking to play golf four or five times a week, so I'll keep myself busy outside of the Soul's boardroom. But key observations for this business, it has grown significantly, and I think the team that we've got, the board we've got, it's in good hands. Thank you, Tom. Could I just add my thanks to Tom and everything that he's done, not just for the business, but for me and the management team? He, you know, his involvement in this business goes beyond his time as a director. I'm in my 20th year here, and many of the senior management team have been around a similarly long period of time, and Tom's been with us every step of the way, taking us from, you know, what was a much smaller, less active business to the business that we have today. He's been a great supporter, and he's really helped to instill that culture and philosophy that's been enduringly successful into the business and across the management team and the new employees. So, it's a loss at the board level, but I'm confident that our engagement with Tom is going to continue, and we won't lose any of that. It's already been embedded in the team, but you know, I'm sure he's got a lot more to give to us, so thank you, Tom. Todd, the next question is about the acquisition of the fruit packing plant that was mentioned in your presentation. Will Soul Patts be the operator of that business or simply the landlord? No, that's a business that we acquired. So we own the assets as well as the operations. That will be operated by the management team that were in place as well as the management team that looks after our entire agricultural portfolio. And so, you know, it won't be me there packing boxes, but the people there are very high quality. Thank you. Next question: Is management still surprised by the resilience of the Aussie and global economy on the back of significant rises in interest rates? Does the private credit market look less attractive if rates begin to come down, or is this a long-term area of investment for Soul Patts? Yes, we have been surprised by the resilience of markets, given the rapid rate rises across the globe. All of the evidence that we're seeing is that, you know, the economy is still doing quite well, both, you know, globally and domestically. So, you know, the soft landing that everyone thought might be elusive, might be the case, and in fact, people are even stopping talking about recession at all. So, you know, I mean, we're not macro experts. We're not gonna be able to call the economy. I probably have as much insight as anyone else in this room, but our view is that we just make sure that we're prepared for whatever might come. And so, you know, even during markets that were very strong and roaring along, we tended to outperform, despite the fact that we tend to have defensive assets that should underperform in those markets. So we, you know, we know that we can do okay when markets are going very strongly, but we know that we do better when markets are doing poorly. So I think that, you know, we're very well positioned in that regard. In terms of our allocations to credit, and is this an enduring part of the portfolio? No part of our portfolio is enduring. It's there for while ever it serves a purpose. You know, and we will happily reduce our exposure to something if it's not the right time to invest in it. You know, our strength is being able to get ahead of the market and being able to see trends coming. You know, if it gets to the stage where credit is not attractive for us anymore, or other asset classes are giving us better risk-adjusted returns, we'll just shift our focus. Thank you. The next question is: Could we expect a full takeover of Brickworks by Soul, given that Brickworks appears to trade below its net tangible asset value and given the long history between the two companies? Well, there has been a long history between the two companies, dating back to 1968. Lindsay, is that right? Sixty-eight. So, you know, that, that's been a symbiotic relationship that's served both companies very well. You know, over those several decades, I'm sure there's been times, certainly in my time, there's been multiple times where we've looked at whether there's a value-enhancing transaction that could be done. But, you know, there's times where it might be attractive, other times where it might not be attractive. But, yeah, the reality is that for that entire time where both companies have owned each other, they've both performed extremely well and the relationships worked extremely well. Thank you. The next question is: What metrics or key performance indicators are you prioritizing to measure success in the upcoming year? Well, it comes back to those three key objectives that we have. So we want to increase the cash because that, that's what supports our shareholders' dividends. We want to, we want to increase the capital of the business, and we want to do that better than what you could if you were to put it into an ETF or into the market. But more importantly, and the one that sort of has a lot of people can't put a metric around it, is managing risk. And so it's one thing for us to go out and employ a lot of risk and take some, you know, put our money into some high growth assets and get lucky and show you that we've demonstrated a massive outperformance. But we don't wanna do that because we wanna protect capital on the downside. We wanna have a diversified portfolio of assets that will perform in any part of the market. And we wanna make sure that, you know, we can just grind out those little bits of outperformance year on year, that when you compound them over a long period of time, add up to a lot. So as I said in my presentation, you know, the 3.5% per year, I mean, is pretty fantastic on its own, but over 20 years, you end up with, you know, much more than double what you would have got if you just put your money into the index. Thank you. That's all we have on the line at this point, so I'll hand it back to Rob. All right. Any other questions? All right, if there's no more questions, I'll just ask you all, that those who are intending to vote, before I close the poll, to make sure you have voted on your cards, please. I'll just give you a couple of minutes to do that before I get the guys from Computershare to come around, and then I'll close the poll. So just bear with us for a couple of minutes while people are making final adjustments to their voting card. All done? Mm-hmm. Fairly harmless. Does anyone need any more time? Well, I'll now officially close the poll, and with that, I'll now close the meeting. Thank you all for your attendance. The board and the senior management will be here if anyone would like to come up and have a chat. So thank you very much.