Thank you. Welcome everyone. As the moderator said, thank you for joining us at our half year results briefing. I hope that wherever you're listening that you're safe and well in this current environment. I'm actually in Melbourne today and joined by our interim CFO, Tom McKay, and together we'll take you through the presentations that we've lodged with the ASX this morning. Also on the call is our investor relations team, and please, if we don't get to your questions or you have further questions, follow up with that team. Presentation, as always, should take about 40 minutes, and then we'll leave as much time as we can for questions. Hopefully everyone's seen the results presentation, and we'll walk through that. I'll begin today by starting with some of the strategic highlights for the half. If you turn now to page four. As we set out almost five years ago on a very large delivery phase, it's been a very important period. I think it was my second month at Transurban, we announced the unsolicited proposal. We started the framework for NorthConnex, really pleased after a very long development period, to see it opening and doing so well, that opened in October. With the M8 in July, we also commenced at the same time when we opened the M8 tolling on the M5 East. Just before Christmas in December, we announced the formation of Transurban Chesapeake, which is a partnership between Transurban, AustralianSuper, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and UniSuper. Now our North American business is positioned for its next stage of growth, and we're working on a significant pipeline of opportunities, and we're hoping to get some positive news in the very near term on one of them. I'll talk about that in a bit more detail shortly. Finally, I guess obviously the core of everything we do, we've seen a positive traffic trend through this period, finishing the calendar year with average daily traffic of 2.1 million trips in December versus where we were at 1.8 million in July as restrictions, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland and some of the easing of restrictions in Victoria were changed, and we'll talk a bit more detail. Going to the results highlight on page five. Obviously, COVID-19 has continued to play a big impact on our performance for this half year, and then Tom will also talk about it from a debt perspective because obviously this is the first full year of most of the impacts that flow through to the group. We had for the half around an 18% decrease in traffic volumes across the portfolio, and that translated into about a 16.5% decrease in proportional toll revenue. There was a large focus on managing our cost through this period, and the underlying operating costs decreased by 7.2% excluding FX, and the spend on strategic projects, and Tom will give you an update on that. We obviously had a big period of spend on the projects that we're currently either finishing or pursuing. The boards reaffirmed the intention to pay a full year distribution in line with free cash, excluding capital releases. Our interim distribution of AUD 0.15 per security was actually 114% covered by free cash flow, which equates to around AUD 0.17 per share. Turning to slide six. 2020, again, was a period of uncertainty for us all. Looking back, I'm very proud of all the decisions that we made at Transurban to balance the need of all of our stakeholders. We ensured that the business emerged through this challenging period in a very strong position, and we received a lot of support from both debt and equity markets, which were crucial to us to withstand the significant impact to the earnings. During this period, we raised almost AUD 10 billion of debt throughout 2020 to support the delivery of projects and various funding initiatives and refinancings. With all this, we were able to support our people, our customers, and the communities where we operate. We grew actually our workforce through 2020, which was essential given the span of opportunities that now sit in front of us. We expanded our customer and community initiatives. We granted over 10 million of toll credits to frontline workers and people who have been impacted by COVID-19. In Sydney, Melbourne, and the Greater Washington Area, we kept construction going at all times, and we progressed six major projects in addition to the two which were completed and opened in the half. Turning to slide seven. Our environmental, social, and governance considerations as part of this are integrated into all our decision processes. Pleasingly, we're engaging on these issues more and more with the investment community as well. During this period, we made some very important achievements. We increased our commitments to climate change action with a net zero by 2050 target. This extends our previous and existing 2030 targets and is underpinned by a strategy including the move to renewable power, reducing energy and fuel consumption. We have a clear path to reach our target. We have also made important expansions to our customer hardship program. 2021, our toll credit support is designed to help people experiencing hardships for a range of reasons. It's no longer tied just to COVID-19 impacts. We are collaborating and partnering with the financial counseling, legal assistance, and community welfare sectors on these initiatives. We know we don't have all the answers, we continue to evolve our programs, but we're committed to continuing action to support our customers experiencing hardship. We've included a more detailed summary of our integrated approach to ESG in the appendix of this presentation. I'll turn to slide eight, and I know something that gets a lot of attention, and we provide an update here, and I can talk about a little more in the Victoria section as well. Significant works are continuing on two of the three major sections of the West Gate Tunnel project, and for those of you who drive the route, you'll see new pedestrian bridges, lane widenings, significant noise walls, particularly on the western section and on the eastern section, the launching gantry for Footscray Road and the piles for the river crossing. We've completed almost 22 million construction hours and AUD 2.6 billion of CapEx has been employed to the project to date. We continue to work towards tunneling commencement as quickly and safely as possible. However, the builder's tender process to select a disposal site is still ongoing, participating disposal sites are at various stages of achieving the required planning and environmental approvals. At this stage, we have completed a detailed project schedule review, taking account now the new availability for the disposal sites to potentially start receiving spoil. Unfortunately, a 2023 project completion is no longer considered achievable. We appreciate this is challenging for the communities alongside the project and the motorists who desperately want to see this road complete. Again, we are doing everything possible to work through these challenges with the state and our JV partners. Again, despite the challenges, it continues to be transformed and the four new lanes taking shape and the pedestrian bridges, as I talked about, are now fully open to the community. There are also more than 150 locally manufactured bridge beams and around 1,000 new noise walls panels that have been installed, as I said. Closer to the city, again, more than 50% of those foundations across the river that connect CityLink and the Port of Melbourne and the CBD has also been completed. I just want to touch on slide nine. I know we announced the Transurban Chesapeake transaction just before Christmas and it was a very busy time. I think it's worth highlighting again the strategic rationale and the importance of this transaction for positioning Transurban for growth. That's highlighted again on slide nine. We've agreed to sell 50% of the greater Washington area assets to three very strategically aligned and well-known partners for gross sale proceeds of approximately $2.1 billion. We're entitled to an earn-out of another $70 million U.S. if the assets outperform. Forming the partnerships with investors who can follow their money has been a very successful and key strategy for us. We're looking forward to continuing that strategy with these partners now in North America. The process of recycling this capital will allow us to accelerate growth by going after a larger pipeline of opportunities that are materializing in both North America and in Australia while they support our credit metrics and facilitate long-term distribution growth. We're targeting to reach financial close of the sale by the end of the financial year, subject to approvals, and will reflect the new ownership stake in our FY 2021 accounts. I'm sure everyone's looking to that, including the accounting team across from me presenting that. Looking at slide 10. Just to always, as we do, a recap of our long-term strategy, and that is to provide transport solutions that offer real and lasting benefits to the cities and communities where we work. I think one of the things that we did with the board, particularly coming into October, and one of the things that's been tested this last year is our strategy, and we believe even during the pandemic, that our strategy has proved resilient and has positioned us well. I'm going to move to slide 11. There's been a few changes toward the end of last year and some announced just prior to the end of the year, and this will be the team that is going to deliver on our strategy. Just again, highlight a couple of changes. Excuse me. During the half year, we welcomed Simon Moorfield to the newly created role, combining Group Executive, Customer and Technology to combine our capability from both teams and to ensure that we're at the forefront of this rapidly evolving space. I have to say that both the customer and the technology team are doing a fantastic job, and we've already seen benefits of bringing the ingenuity and the capability of those two groups together. We also welcome Hugh Wehby to the new role, Group Executive, Partners, Delivery and Risk. Hugh is overseeing our delivery agenda while ensuring that Transurban is preferred partner in our industry. Hugh's role reflects the importance of these strategic partnerships, including the newly announced Transurban Chesapeake. We're also delighted that in March, Michelle Jablko will join the business as Chief Financial Officer, including responsibility for corporate affairs, facilities management, and other things. Michelle is bringing deep experience in capital efficiency, capital allocation, and M&A, the experience is a great fit for Transurban given our business scale and ambition. We thank Tom McKay, our group treasurer, for aptly stepping in for the role in the interim period. Finally, we welcome Pierce Coffee to her new role as President, North America. She'll be taking the reins from Jen Aument. Pierce has more than 11 years of experience with Transurban and has played an integral role in the expansion of the business in the U.S. and Canada, as well as she spent significant time based here in Australia. We're delighted that we could promote her from within for this opportunity and this role as we deliver on that growth strategy in North America. These changes ensure that Transurban is positioned well with this executive committee to drive forward our strategy and our next phase of growth. Again, as I touched on, and I'll move to slide 12, we believe our strategy has proven resilient during this past period, and we want to remind everyone of our investment proposition. As I mentioned, the impacts of COVID-19 have provided an important test to the business, and here's what we have learned during this period and a summary of that. One is that our roads are obviously essential, clearly illustrated by the resilience of the large vehicles throughout even the periods of significant government restrictions. The essential nature of the assets underpin our cash flows and our ability to pay distributions to security holders, even through the deepest parts of the pandemic. Traffic has recovered quickly in markets where restrictions have been lifted. The best examples are obviously in Brisbane and Sydney, where you see a clear recovery profile between August and December as restrictions were lifted and community transmission of the virus was contained. In fact, on Friday the 11th of December, we recorded an all-time high daily traffic number in both Brisbane and Sydney, even when we exclude the new assets. We've seen changes in mobility that the trends are dynamic and often offsetting. We're continuing to monitor our customers' views on transport and mobility in the light of COVID-19. Today we've released an updated research report on this topic. The findings from the report at the highlight, which we put some of them here, include that the health and safety is obviously continuing to dominate travel behavior. This has resulted in currently 5% of the respondents expect to use their cars more, and 21% expect to use public transport less, even in a post-COVID-19 world. I think we see this sort of data elsewhere where car sales are up 14% in December 2020 on the prior period. Now while the majority of the survey respondents expect to return to the workplace, 70% are calling for greater flexibility as an incentive to get them back to work. We think there are some important policy ramifications here, including for peak hour spreading and diversity in the workplace. I'd encourage you to read our report for more detail. Just some interesting and anecdotal parts of the survey that 60% of the respondents are expecting to travel domestically or internationally in 2021. Of those with current travel plans, a vaccine would make a third of those respondents more likely to travel. Sentiment around travel, though, is continuing to impact our airport exposed roads more directly, with those numbers pointing to stabilization and growth in traffic volumes on those assets throughout 2021. Longer term organic and portfolio-wide traffic growth will be driven by the core fundamentals of our assets, with stronger growth coming from those assets which were more impacted during COVID, so a bigger recovery, as well as from the new assets that are in the ramp-up phase. As those individual assets in the portfolio mature, we have the opportunity to inject proportionally more debt and liberating capital. Over the last few years, everyone knows we've made around about AUD 700 million of capital releases from the portfolio, which have been largely distributed to security holders. Looking forward, the capital releases will continue to provide a material and flexible source of funding for Transurban, particularly for our growth pipeline, and we expect that over AUD 2 billion of capital releases will potentially be available from the portfolio out to FY 2025, including those coming from WestConnex. Again, I think we talked about during this development phase, a lot of our pipeline was being funded by equity, and now we have the ability to put debt against those performing assets. The organic growth, again, will be supplemented by new growth opportunities. If I talk about those opportunities now, moving to slide 13. Many of these, again, you'll be familiar with. Nothing comes up, obviously, in our world very quickly in the world of infrastructure. You see we have a balance of large-scale greenfield and asset enhancement opportunities in the pipeline. Some of the highlights are we're currently in Stage 2 of the unsolicited proposal for the M7 and M12 project, and we're working with the New South Wales Government to define the potential size, scope, and funding sources. As the M7 concessionaire until 2048, Transurban and our co-investors are uniquely placed to deliver the M12 interchange, which will connect the M7 with the new M12 motorway. I'd like to move now to slide 14 and talk a little bit about WestConnex, which has been in the news recently, and the New South Wales Government has kicked off a sale process for a portion of its stake in the WestConnex portfolio. Transurban, alongside with our co-investors and Sydney Transport Partners, are looking to participate. We have the right of first offer over the 49% stake, which is being transacted potentially in two 24.5% tranches. As the current operator and substantial owner of the business, we believe we are best placed to understand the value inherent in the WestConnex portfolio. Again, we've been preparing for this process since we bought the asset, and we're going to show up and be competitive, and obviously, we need to show value for money to the New South Wales Government. On page 15, a bit more detail notwithstanding the results of the transaction, STP, Sydney Transport Partners, will retain operational control of WestConnex through the end of the concession in 2060. Since acquiring the 51% of WestConnex in 2018, we've worked hard to achieve excellence across all the disciplines, leveraging the skills and experience right across the Transurban organization. Obviously, with this, we try to make all this look easy, but let me confirm that it is a complex portfolio of assets. It comprises over 450 kilometers of motorway, including 10 separate tunnel tubes, to which a number of new assets will connect over the next 10 years. To date, over 2.4 million customers have traveled on WestConnex during the half and Linkt, the preferred tag retailer run by Transurban, is the preferred tag retailer for WestConnex. Obviously, all the assets operate on our back-office tolling and operation system. The last 12 months have given us an opportunity to stress test these assets, and those learnings have been incorporated into our long-term investment case moving forward. Now that was a high level of some of the key issues we're dealing with. I'll just touch on very quickly some high-level points across the markets, and we'll start with our largest market in Sydney, where toll revenue grew by almost 8%, including revenue from the additional M5 West interests, the M8 and M5 East and NorthConnex. Excluding all these new assets, toll revenue decreased by about 5% for the half. Including these new assets, traffic was up close to 9% during the period or down 7.1% on a like-for-like basis. During the period, we constructed significant research in Sydney, which showed a significant improvement in sentiment towards WestConnex, with more than half the people in the greater Sydney area feeling positive now about the projects and the benefits that it's bringing to Sydney. Our community engagement team has worked hard with these communities since we've been involved in the project, and we're proud of this progress and steady improvement in the feelings toward the project. On slide 18, you would see on the front cover of the presentation, is a section of NorthConnex, which opened on the 31st of October. We're extremely pleased with the performance of the asset to date since it came online, with average daily traffic of 37,000 trips, including taking more than 6,000 large vehicles a day off of Pennant Hills Road. Our expectations for this asset were obviously set in a pre-COVID-19 environment, this performance speaks to the value that the customers are seeing this asset and the long pent-up demand and requirement for this type of infrastructure. In addition, our other assets, particularly the M2, are benefiting from NorthConnex with traffic volumes enhanced since the asset has come online. Just as important as the performance of the asset, we've received an overwhelmingly positive response from the community since NorthConnex opened and residents immediately benefiting from a quiet and much safer Pennant Hills Road. We've got the normal pipeline in our portfolio on page 19. You can see there's still a large opportunity set over time. Moving to Melbourne, I've touched on the West Gate. Again, happy to take questions. I'll talk a little bit about the traffic. For the half toll revenue fell by 39% and traffic volumes by 47% on CityLink. Again, we're very pleased to see the traffic improve once the restrictions started lifting in October. As I said earlier, traffic on CityLink was down 19% versus the prior corresponding period, and we've had a few days better than that in February so far. The Western Link was impacted more significantly by the government restrictions, including by lower levels of airport-related traffic. Overall, large vehicles showed much more resilience, declining by 12.8%. Remembering that in Victoria we classify the light commercial vehicles as large vehicles as well. If you actually look at the heavy vehicles, they only decrease by 6.1% which is consistent with the heavy vehicles right across all our portfolios during the pandemic. Update on Brisbane on slides 22. We saw toll revenue decline by 3.4%, average daily traffic decline close to 6%. With the lightest of the government restrictions of any of the markets, Brisbane was our best performing market underlying and perhaps gives us the best insight into what a normalized traffic profile will look like. As I mentioned earlier, December saw record-breaking traffic in this market with Logan and Legacy Way all recording their highest ever traffic during this month. Skipping now to North America, which has obviously and continues to be more heavily impacted by COVID. Traffic declined by 29.5% and toll revenue declined by almost 55%. Again, driven by the lower than average tolls for both the 495 and 95 Express Lanes. The residents in our core markets there in Virginia, Maryland, and as well up in Montreal, continue to experience significant impacts compared to the situation in Australia, and we feel for the colleagues there and the time they've had to deal with these issues. We appreciate their effort under a lot of duress. We've seen this reflected in the traffic volumes which deteriorated in December and January. In positive news, though, for these markets, the vaccine rollout has now commenced in all three locations, and we hope to see some resulting stabilization and recovery in traffic through the rest of this year. In Virginia, we continue to progress our development projects, including the FredEx and the 495 North Extension project, as well as discussions with the Virginia government as we move towards reaching a development agreement for what we call the Capital Beltway Accord. Just an interesting note, in January, we announced the expansion of our mobile tolling app, GoToll, not only from Virginia, but to North Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. GoToll, which is same as LinktGO here, allows drivers to create a profile and get quickly on the road without needing to wait to receive a physical transponder or prepay arrangements with your retailer. On slide 25, you have a little bit of the market there. As I mentioned, we're very focused on the pipeline of opportunities in North America and feel we're well-positioned, particularly given the recent introduction of our strategic partners in that market. Again, we hope to hear something soon on one of the assets. With that now, I'll let Tom take us through the financial results for the period. Tom? Thanks, Scott. Let's begin with the statutory results on slide 27. Today, we're reporting a statutory EBITDA of AUD 792 million and a statutory net loss of AUD 448 million for the period. EBITDA was down largely as a result of the significant decrease in toll revenue due to restrictions in travel movements related to COVID-19. While cost increased overall, we saw strong underlying cost performance. Higher costs were a direct result of the higher spend on strategic projects given the company's significant opportunity pipeline, which I'll cover shortly. The statutory loss was driven by the significant impact of COVID-19 on EBITDA, as well as the impact of higher net finance costs. The increase in these net finance costs was primarily due to outcomes from remeasuring balance sheet financial instruments at period end, covering foreign exchange movements, derivative financial instruments, and our shareholder loan notes with the STP joint venture and the NorthWestern Roads Group. We have included more detail on the drivers of these increases in the appendix at slide 15. I would point out, however, that these costs are largely non-cash. As a result of contractual close being achieved on the sale of 50% of the Transurban Chesapeake assets, their results are represented as a discontinued operations within the group income statement. We expect that Transurban Chesapeake will be deconsolidated from the group and recognized as an equity accounting investment within the full year FY 2021 results, assuming we have reached financial close by that time. We again have included a summary of the transaction impacts on our accounts in the appendix at slide 62. Moving on to the proportional results on slide 28, which we believe provide a clearer view of our financial performance for the period. Proportional EBITDA, excluding significant items, decreased by AUD 254 million or just over 23% year-on-year to AUD 840 million. Proportional toll revenue was down 16.6%, a decrease of AUD 231 million, again, primarily driven by the lower traffic as a result of COVID-19, partially offset by the impact of new assets. Our new assets included a full six months contribution from the 395 Express Lanes and the additional ownership in the M5 West, as well as the M8 and M5 East, which opened in July 2020, and NorthConnex, which opened in October 2020. The COVID impact to revenue was severe in Melbourne, as Scott mentioned, where government-mandated restrictions on movement severely impacted traffic for much of the period. Toll revenue on Sydney was down by almost 40% year-on-year. Importantly, much of that impact came in the first quarter, with traffic increasing in line with the progressive lifting of restrictions. North America was also significantly impacted, with revenue from our express lanes impacted by both reduced traffic volumes and lower prices due to the nature of the dynamic tolling regime. With less restriction on movement in Brisbane, the impact of the virus was less severe. In Sydney, new assets, including the M8, M5 East, NorthConnex, and the additional ownership of the M5 West increased revenue overall. Additional costs from new assets totaled AUD 28 million for the half. Moving now on to slide 29, which I'll discuss the costs in a bit more detail. Headline cost growth was influenced by the incorporation of new assets into the cost base, as mentioned. Outside of the impact of the new assets, operations and maintenance costs decreased by 7.2% for the half. While this was partly due to a reduction in volume-related costs such as roaming and transaction fees, operating costs also reduced as a result of a disciplined approach during the period. As Scott has discussed, we are looking at a material pipeline of development opportunities, and as a result, our investment in strategic growth projects has increased by AUD 25 million year-on-year, which was flagged at the full-year results. This spend includes costs associated with the significant pipeline of opportunities, including spend on the Maryland Express Lanes project, the recent Transurban Chesapeake transaction, our bid for the Elizabeth River Crossings, as well as preparing for the upcoming WestConnex transaction. We continue to record costs relating to the integration of WestConnex and the M5 West. Moving now to slide 30, where we talk about the EBITDA margins. Margins across the group were generally impacted as a result of decreased traffic levels resulting from COVID. The Sydney margin was also negatively impacted by the ramp-up phase of the M8, M5, and NorthConnex, as well as liquidated damages received in the prior period for the delayed opening of the M4 tunnels and the M8. In Melbourne, the margin was particularly impacted by mandatory travel restrictions in response to COVID-19. The Brisbane margin was supported by the recent insourcing of tunnel operations. As previously mentioned, the impact of reduced traffic flow on dynamic pricing amplified the impact on the express lanes in the Greater Washington area. The North American result was also impacted by the accrual of the annual transit payment due to the Virginia Department of Transportation, which started in FY 2020 at service commencement of the 395 Express Lanes. Moving now to slide 31 to talk about some free cash. Free cash, excluding capital releases for the period, decreased by 34.7%, again driven by the impact of COVID-19 on EBITDA. Distributions from non-100% owned assets was AUD 12 million higher than the first half in 2020, primarily due to the release of distributions held back in FY 2020, including from the Eastern Distributor, the partial deferrals from Transurban Queensland, and the M4. The release of these funds at this time is a testament to our confidence in the strength of these assets, on which we have seen positive trends through the half-year period. We had an AUD 31 million reduction in tax paid year-on-year, which was a result of the M5 West joining the Transurban corporate tax group in October 2019. Net finance costs decreased overall due to the capitalization of TIFIA interest on the I-495 Express Lanes, providing liquidity support and also demonstrating the benefits of Transurban's diversified funding strategy. This more than offset higher interest costs due to the completion of the 395 Express Lanes and lower interest generally received across the group. As flagged at the full year, we anticipate that finance costs for the group will increase over the medium term as we continue to fund our development opportunities, including commencement of interest payments on the April 2020 EMTN and the September 2020 Rule 144A issuances. We also saw a favorable movement of AUD 9 million in our working capital, primarily driven by timing of operational payments, including the I-395 Express Lanes transit payment. This is expected to reverse in the second half. Overall, free cash for the half was AUD 467 million, providing distribution coverage of 114%. The guidance from the board remains unchanged in that it expects the FY distribution will be in line with free cash, excluding capital releases. Looking to the second half, our free cash will continue to be heavily influenced by COVID-19. Distributions from our non-100% owned assets are decisions taken by subsidiary boards. Although we would note that distributions from the NorthWestern Roads Group and WestConnex are paid in arrears, and that we are not expecting distributions to be paid from WestConnex relating to the M8, M5 East in the second half. Post-financial close of the Transurban Chesapeake transaction, free cash contributions from the Washington area assets will be recognized through distributions from non-100% owned entities. These assets are currently in lockup and are not expected to pay distributions until FY 2022. Turning to slide 32, which outlines the highlights of our financing activity during the half, all of which has supported the group to not only withstand the impacts of COVID-19, but to ensure that we are maintaining our workforce and continuing to deliver our project pipeline. Once again, during this period, we successfully extended the average maturity duration of our debt book and also reduced its overall weighted average cost from 4.4% at June to 4% at December 2020. Due to the impacts of COVID-19 on free cash, FFO to debt at 31 December was 5.5%, below our long-term target of 8%. Financial close of the partial sale of the Chesapeake assets is expected by the end of FY 2021, which will provide immediate support for Transurban's credit metrics and take the FFO to debt metric to be above our target levels. Our capital management strategy remains unchanged, and we will continue to balance our three fundamental objectives to maintain high investment-grade credit metrics, efficiently fund our development pipeline, and provide distributions for security holders. Thanks for your time. I look forward to meeting with many of you over the next couple of weeks, and also to working closely with Michelle when she joins us very soon. I'll now hand you back to Scott. Thanks, Tom, and thanks for a great job over the last few months. As I said, Tom will be around till the end of March, and then he'll be around a lot longer than that as well. To the whole finance team for putting the results together, again, in difficult working circumstances from home. Just turning to slide 34. As I said, the results heavily impacted by COVID-19. Despite these challenges presented by the pandemic, we remain focused on delivery, cost discipline, and positioning the business to emerge strongly from this period. I think we've all seen governments focus on now continuing to managing, obviously, the health crisis, but looking at economic recovery and infrastructure is likely to play and continues to play a big role in that. Traffic is improving at various rates across our assets, but in the markets where the restrictions have been lifted, we're seeing a strong recovery profile. In fact, if we look at some of the survey results, we could even see those above pre-COVID levels as people seem to be moving more to private transportation. Of course, we remain very much alive to any potential or further government restrictions in our markets, and we realize that they can come fast to deal with health initiatives. We're focused on the pipeline of opportunities that we see continuing to materialize in our core markets. I think, as I said when we talk about doing the Spring transaction, it's been as large as we've ever seen it in Transurban. This obviously has always been core since I've been at Transurban, and I know the board and the executive team is very focused on balancing the distributions for our security holders and creating long-term value creation, which is what this is all about. It's not acquiring and developing assets, but creating long-term value and be able to continue to grow those distributions. We will maintain our capital discipline in all situations. In wrapping up, I'd like to thank again the whole Transurban team who have worked extremely hard during this very, very difficult period to contribute to these results, to our security holders who continue to support us, and for those who showed interest in attending today's call. Now happy to open up to questions. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Anthony Moulder from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, good morning, all. If I can start with traffic, obviously in the supplementary slide, you've given the monthly traffic performance by asset, but at the group level, as well as it looks like across the east coast of Australia, traffic came off in January. Yeah. Is that more because you saw a lot more people taking extended holidays through January and that's not representative of perhaps what you've seen since Australia Day? No, Anthony, I think that there was a couple of short, sharp restrictions around a couple of the COVID outbreaks, Northern Beaches and a few other things. That had to do with a couple of quick responses that government had, and then they have since come off, and that's why we've seen recovery coming through in February. Right, okay. The AUD 2 billion of capital releases over the next four years, it's obviously significantly up on that AUD 700 million since 2017. How do we think about the skew of that? Is that more skewed towards the latter years? Is it going to be more evenly spread? Can you give any indication as to what the expectations are for the next few years on those capital releases, please? Look, I'll give my overall comment and I'll let Tom provide some more detail. You would anticipate a lot of those capital releases, and I mentioned WestConnex, comes from not wholly owned assets. Some of it has to do with the timing and the working with other partners on releasing that and the ramp up and getting the right amount at the right time. Yeah, not a lot of it's going to come this year, but it'd be more skewed toward the back end. Tom, you want to make any comments? No other than to say we do the timing of those things to the extent we can manage closely. We try and spread them out over time. As Scott said, there's certainly nothing that we're expecting in the very near term, but we'd expect to see that come through over the next couple of years. Yeah. We're not spreading them out over time because at this point, as the board has given guidance, it's paying out the distribution is based on free cash, not these capital releases. I think Tom's talking about spreading out over time in a capital sense. When you come to refinance it, we've managed the refinancing risk. Does that also suggest that some of that capital releases will be used for distributions as opposed to going into some of the growth pipeline that you've got? Look, that's always an option for the board. As we sit here today, the board's only guidance is free cash flow, not capital releases. That is always an option that they have. If I sit and look at the potential pipeline for Transurban and the opportunities we have, not only in the potential public transactions that we mentioned in our report, but we always have some ideas or things that we're looking at on our existing roads or with our government partners. I think I'd be disappointed if we didn't find a way to use that opportunity to create value for our security holders in growth projects. Sure. Related to that, obviously, Maryland's Managed Lane Stage 1 probably due any day. I think it was early February or it was expected early February. How critical is that piece to your overall growth project through that part of North America? Yeah, look, obviously we're trying our best to win, but nothing is so critical that it has to be value accretive and it has to make sense for us. We'd love to win. We think it's a great project and a great opportunity. We put our best proposal forward that made sense for us and our security holders, and hopefully we'll be successful. Obviously that's up to the government. We see a lot other opportunities. Some of them are public and some of them aren't, Anthony. Nothing is that strategic or critical in a sense that it's got to make financial long-term sense for us, because all those projects in the U.S., they're 60, 70 years, so we've got to get it right up front. Sure do. All right. I'll leave it there. Thank you. All right. Thanks, Anthony. Thank you. Your next question comes from Ian Myles from Macquarie Equities. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Hey. Just on the macro side, if we think about the U.S. transaction with the other partners, do you consider roads like M2, Lane Cove Tunnel, and Cross City Tunnel potential for other partnerships, or is it really you've created the partnerships in the existing portfolios? I guess you look at every option, Ian, again, no asset is sacred. If someone came along and offered us a price well above what we thought the asset was worth or the potential for the asset, we would all consider all options. I think though when you look at the reason for Transurban Chesapeake was to position the company to take advantage of the opportunities going forward. Would we use the M2 as a vehicle to bid for other assets? No. It doesn't seem at this point to make any sense to bring partners into those assets, and they're all fairly mature, generating significant cash flow. I can't see it at this point in time. It's not on the agenda. You never say never if it makes sense. When you have something like WestConnex where it's growing and it's huge or Transurban Queensland at the same time, then there's different rationale and reasons. No, I don't think so. We picked up the other half of the M5 West over the last two years. There's portions of the existing assets that we don't own. It may not be divestment, it may actually be acquiring the remaining, depending on the situation. If we think it's a good return for our security holders, then we could pick up percentages of the existing assets. Okay. On macro factors, we're seeing RBA talking about really limited population growth, actually negative population growth. We've seen regos being pretty weak of late. How are you looking at the broader macros? You're obviously reporting Brisbane doing better, is it running below what your normalized models would be suggesting? We're back to Brisbane and Sydney are close to pre-COVID levels. We've lost a year. If you were thinking if the trend was continued, yeah, they're back to pre-COVID levels, but that's then 2019, as opposed to what 2020 or '21 might look like. I think when you deal, and we can talk about this at Investor Day, Ian, when you deal with our network and traffic modelers and forecasters and the economics and all the specialists we have in there, they just talk about this as noise around a 50- or 60-year profile. A few years you're above, a few years you're below, but this is just what you expect to oscillate around the long-term trend line. With all the trends, whether it's population or connected autonomous vehicles or mobility as a service or whatever, still the long-term trend line we're comfortable with. We see that as still the best indicator of where we're going. Although there'll be oscillation around that, and we need to make sure that the balance sheet's prepared for shocks and other things that occur, like the pandemic. We know these kind of things tend to occur at least on a decade basis for whatever reason. We're still think things will get back to the long-term trend line for different reasons. There'll be more flexible working and more working at home, but that leads to more logistics and more people wanting personalized transport. Still the long-term trend line we're comfortable with. Okay. Finally, just because I don't want to ask too many. West Gate Tunnel. You've obviously deferred it post-2023, and I assume you're talking calendar year, not fiscal year? Correct. If you can clarify that. Secondly, if every month is delayed before the boring machines start, do we just add a month to the timeline for when this tunnel can actually open? It's not that simple. As always, in construction, nothing is simple. You got to think about a Tunnel Boring Machine isn't just the boring header at the front. The Tunnel Boring Machine, in this case, they're not road headers, obviously, this is a machine, is effectively a train. The train has lots of interrelated parts. All those interrelated parts that could cause issues are being produced, stockpiled, and ready to go. In Benalla, we've got 40%-50% of all the segmental lining is already done. The train set up to remove the road headers from the other end. The boxes are being built and almost complete. It doesn't necessarily mean for every month it's a month-to-month delay. The train might be able to be completed quicker and faster. Can you clarify, you're talking fiscal year or calendar year when you- Calendar year ...talk 2023? Yeah, it's calendar year. Calendar year. Excellent. Thanks. Thanks, Ian. Thank you. Your next question comes from Anthony Longo from CLSA. Please go ahead. Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Tom. Just following on from Ian's question on the West Gate Tunnel. Are you perhaps able to give a bit of an update as to what the lead time is for some of those disposal sites in getting those environmental approvals for that spoil? Anthony, some of them can be imminent, but it's in the hands of independent third-party regulators. We don't know is the answer, but the material that they need to make their assessment, and they could always request more material. I believe they have all the material they need to make their assessments, but the timing is in their hands. Some of it could be, there's three different sites, some of it could be imminent, but we just can't confirm. We're comfortable that the three parties putting forward submissions have put forward very robust submissions, and that at some point it will get approval. We're just not sure when. Yeah. Understood. Second one from me. Look, appreciate the survey that you've put out looking at trends. My understanding is, you've mentioned before that people typically use your road network to cross the city and get around rather than, or a less proportion directly accessing the CBD. In the context of maybe more flexible working arrangements and maybe personalized transport, as you mentioned, how do you ultimately expect that behavior to change? Do you actually see a benefit to accessing both cross-city travel and into CBD travel going forward as things change? Again, as we talked about in the mobility report and as everyone knows, you look at school holidays, and 5% or 6% of traffic makes a big difference to average speed time. Two things that benefit Transurban, if we can have faster travel times and make transport more efficient and convenient, that means people might choose that mode of transport. If we can use more of the peak spreading of the shoulder periods, and more of that capacity on the road that's not being utilized, it's a great outcome, not only for Transurban, it's a great outcome for the networks. At some point, with a lot of these roads, and particularly when you have tunnels, you can't really expand a tunnel, as people here in Melbourne know with Burnley and the Domain Tunnel, when it's congested. It's just a logical outcome in what we're trying to suggest that maybe as we've had to work through the pandemic and a lot more flexibility has been put into the workforce with technology and others, is could we grab some of that in flexible work practices when we come back, which seems to be, again, the survey suggests that people do want to go back, particularly for relationships and collaboration, to try and capture some of that, which benefits everyone, including Transurban's security holders. Right. Sorry, last one from me. In terms of the cost, that underlying cost reduction of 7.5% or so, are you able to give a bit more color as to what costs were ultimately taken out? Appreciate some was activity, but perhaps some of the other key buckets that went into that. You happy to make comment, Tom? Some of it was definitely just the variable cost that came down as a result of the traffic flows. It wasn't actually a cost to us because as Scott mentioned, we actually kept the workforce intact and, in fact, have increased the workforce. It's not a cost-out exercise. It's really just more an efficiency. Obviously, travel's been down. With less traffic, some of our maintenance work's been down a bit. It's more across the board, but it's certainly not a cost-out issue for us. We very deliberately kept the workforce intact as we go forward. Yeah. We're pleased with the outcome. Of course, the cost in our business because it's the way the tolling works in a high margin business because it's a high capital business, it's impossible to get the cost down at the same level as the revenue. To Tom's point, and the board and management made a decision very early on that we thought what is happening was likely to happen, and then we wanted to keep investing in our people and capabilities so that we would be positioned on the side. That's great. Thanks very much. Appreciate your time. That's okay. No, I okay. No, I appreciate it. Thank you. Your next question comes from Simon Mitchell from UBS. Please go ahead. Good morning. Hey, Simon. Just circling back on earlier question on traffic. If you look at slide 38, Melbourne in January was down 24% versus 19% in December. It just seems like it is much worse than what was expected despite the lockdowns around the country at that time. Are you definitely sure that traffic trend has recovered in February? Are there any issues we need to. Yesterday- ...talk about in January? Yesterday, the day before yesterday, where Henry, we were at 16%. Henry's in the room, Mr. Victoria. I think we were at 16%. Look, it's just very sensitive, Simon, to request masks to be worn back in the office, and not a lot of people enjoy wearing masks in the office, and it makes it harder and less likely for people to come in. The government had announced that the workforces, at least in the public sector, were being, I think 75% was supposed to be last or this week, and obviously that's been postponed. Yeah, it's just very sensitive to restrictions. Okay. Thank you. Just on West Gate Tunnel, I just noticed you've spent AUD 2.6 billion already out of a budget of AUD 4 billion for your spend. Obviously not an expert in construction cost modeling, is AUD 1.4 billion enough for the tunneling given you haven't started that yet? Well, we have a fixed time, fixed price contract, Simon. Yeah. Okay. ...a legal process says otherwise, then that's what we have bought with that amount of money. That doesn't mean that eventually we won't participate and help find a solution with the joint venture and the government, We're trying to find various different solutions, They're legal process, and we have a fixed time, fixed price contract with the contractor. Yeah. I guess as you mentioned, it comes down to what the eventual legal outcome is. Completely there's a potential of a cost overrun there, a significant cost overrun for somebody to bear. Yes, there is. Obviously we don't believe we're liable for that cost overrun. Yeah. That being said, we're still willing to try and help find a solution. Yep. Okay. Just on interest bill, perhaps a question for Tom. Net finance costs, cash costs up about AUD 70 million, so I think about AUD 470 million, and looks like that's largely through WestConnex through project completion. Is that a clean number that we should extrapolate into the second half, or are there any timing issues in that number? No, Simon, there was a one-off. There was a refinancing that we completed for WestConnex in December, which was just over an AUD 4 billion refinancing. As part of that, we actually reset the interest rate swap book on that facility. There actually was quite a significant closeout cost that was associated with that refinancing. Of course, we then put in place much lower interest rates associated with that refinancing. The majority of that WestConnex was really a one-off. We brought that to account, but going forward, we'd expect the WestConnex interest cost to go down with longer than your interest rate hedging. Okay. Great. Just lastly on capital issues. The proceeds from the Washington asset sales, do we assume that gets repatriated back to Australian dollars, or is that going to be held in U.S. dollars? Well, we've got some projects in the U.S. obviously with NEXT and a few other things, so the combination of both, Simon. Yeah. Hopefully we'll have some finalized commitment shortly, so we'll leave that in US dollars. A large portion of that will be brought back to AUD. The majority will be brought back. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Simon. Thank you. Your next question comes from Rob Koh from MS. Please go ahead. Good morning. Morning. If I can ask another question on the West Gate Tunnel, you mentioned that the legal dispute is a clearly sensitive topic, can you just remind us about the timeline on any key milestones in that process? I guess, a factual question. I wish you could put milestones on a legal process, it has a kind of a mind of its own. There's several processes going on, Rob, there's nothing where we can put a specific date on it, unfortunately, they're just a long, winding process. Yeah, there's no specific timing I can give you. The most important issue for us is getting a spoil site activated, commencing the tunneling to minimize to the project the impacts of the delays. No, can't really give you an update on the timing of the legal process. Yeah. Okay. No worries. If we try to think about the potential cost overruns there, would it be fair to say that the longer it's delayed, the more the cost overrun goes up because of construction resequencing and cost of carry? Is that a fair comment? That's a fair comment. Yeah. Okay. Sorry to hear that. But again- Okay Remembering that the project is sort of split into three components, two of the components are progressing. Again, it's not a proportional cost issue. You don't say, well, if the project was X, then you just add X every month. Again, as everything in construction, it's not easy, but yes, every month it's delayed, there's additional cost. Escalation costs. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. All right. Next question. I guess you've repeated that the Sydney Transport Partners are interested in the sale process for WestConnex. Do you guys get your bid covered under that process like other bidders? My understanding is that we get the same treatment as the other bidders for the first 24.5%. Yep. Okay. All right. That seems fair, I guess, for that tranche. We like to be treated fairly. Yeah. That helps. Last question from me. The headroom for further potential capital releases, the AUD 2 billion, could you give us a steer as to which assets you might be thinking about for those? WestConnex, the assets in the U.S. Tom, you want to? There'd be no surprises. Those are assets that are ramping up, will create headroom. Tom? I think that's right. It's only those two, and certainly the larger ones, given the size. Certainly Transurban Queensland's looking at potentially something over the coming years. They're probably the biggest three in that group. Okay, great. Thanks, Tom. That's it for me. Thanks, Rob. Thank you. Your next question comes from Nathan Lead from Morgans Financial. Please go ahead. Good day, gents. Just a couple of quick ones from me. Just sorry to keep on sort of going at the West Gate Tunnel project, but to me, the biggest value kicker for that project was the concession extension to CityLink and the 4% toll escalator. Is there any risk still that that could get taken away as a result of what's going on? We have a contract with the government for the 4% and for the CityLink concession agreement. We have a contract with the government, so I guess if the government doesn't fulfill their obligations in the contract, we're pretty confident that we have the escalation and concession extension. Okay. Then in the contingent liability note in the accounts, it talks about you having advanced AUD 265 million odd to the builder. What's the risk if the project completely stalls about being able to recover that capital? Again, under the contract, there's a schedule of which the cash flow is drawn down against completed works. In recognizing that the contractors have had some level of difficulty, we've advanced some of that contract works to help them out. It's under the contract. It's monies that the contractor was going to be entitled to. They're just getting it a little bit early. We obviously have significant bonds and other collateral under the contract that we could call against that money if there was an issue. Okay. Just a little detail one from me. Just the amount of interest that was capitalized that sort of sits outside of that, the numbers going through the operating cash flow. I think in the accounts it says there was AUD 26 million that was capitalized for the period for controlled assets. I suppose on a proportional consolidated basis, just for how much interest was incurred that sort of sits outside that net interest paid that you disclosed? No, it all sits within that number we disclosed. It's just how we treat it. It's all disclosed. It's just whether we capitalize it or not. It's in the disclosed number. I thought there was amounts that sort of some goes through operating cash flow, some gets capitalized into PP&E. The proportional number that's capitalized is AUD 29 million. Okay. Thank you. Is that it? Thanks, Nathan. Thank you. Your next question comes from Cameron McDonald from E&P. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Just one question from me following up on some of the interest discussions. Just on page 52 and 55 of the presentation, you've got the proportional interest expense of AUD 707 versus the AUD 445 of interest paid. There's a pretty big benefit and discount unwind and valuation line item of AUD 227 with AUD 196 coming from corporate. What's the explanation for that, just given the quantum versus what we've usually seen is that differential is much smaller? Yeah. Look, thanks, Cameron. We have put quite a bit of data around that in our statutory accounts, but we've had a couple of big movements in that area. Some of it's been driven by the strong appreciation of the Australian dollar. We've had to mark to market effectively some cross-stapled intercompany loans that have gone into the U.S., so there's been an FX component which we've taken the interest cost. We have a component of our cross-currency interest rate swaps that are ineffective. It's only a small component, but given that that's- Sorry, from an accounting perspective. ...from an accounting perspective. From an accounting basis. Economically, they're effective. Economic hedged. Yeah. That is also going through net finance costs as well, and we've actually, as I talk of this, some of our loan notes that we put into some of our joint ventures, we've had to mark to market those on the balance sheet, and that's again, that movement actually comes through net finance costs. Again, all non-cash, but you're right, it has certainly increased the The net finance cost. It's quite a lot. If you get a chance, Cam, to look at the accounts, there's quite a good explanation, a lot of detail because it is confusing. They are economically hedged, but from an accounting basis, we've had to take. Yep ...a different position. Yeah. Okay. There's a lot of notes in the actual accounts. Okay, excellent. Thank you. Thanks, Cameron. Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Butler from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Good morning. Hey, Paul. I just wanted to ask about whether you're seeing a change in traffic patterns with the recovery in terms of higher peaks, lower troughs, sort of both during the day and across the week. You made reference to you seeing different patterns, I think, in Brisbane where you've got the recovery coming through. Is that the case? Can you just sort of explain that, and does that create a risk to growth going forward from here? Thanks, Paul. No, look, if you get a chance to look at our mobility report on the, I think it's the fifth page there, shows the peak travel patterns month by month. You can see November in Brisbane looks almost identical to November last year. Yeah. It's coming back largely to the peak pattern. It's a bit different though, say for the M7, a lot more, if you will, tradie traffic and logistic traffic, which is a little bit different. Largely what we're starting to see is coming back to more traditional patterns which, again, our suggestion is that's probably not what we'd like to do. We'd like to see some peak spreading with flexible work times. Yeah, we don't see in those markets that recovered, and again, if you get a chance to look at the mobility report, suggests they're coming back pretty much in line with prior to COVID. Okay. If I can just ask one more. Could you just explain how the right of first offer works with these two tranches of WestConnex without the sale? I think it's in the presentation, but in effect, the government's running a sale process for one of their 24.5% shares. They've, as we understand it, and this is just from public information, they've gone to the market to seek interest in buying that. They'll run a sale process for that. At the same time, they have to offer us that tranche under the investors' agreement. They will come to us at some point, assuming they get expressions of interest and enough interest to run a sales process, give us notice that they would like to sell that. We have the right to make an offer. I think the way it's being run is that our offer will go in as the same time as the competitive process on the sale side. The government will have people submitting offers in their process. At the same time, we'll submit an offer for the 24.5. In effect, there'll be competition for that 24.5, and I assume they'll pick the highest bidder. At the same time, we're being offered then, in addition, to submit another offer for the final 24.5 Under the ROFO if we would like. Obviously they have to decide whether it meets their value for money hurdle or the reserve price, whether they accept that second offer as well. In theory, Paul, in theory, we could win both. We could lose the first tranche and win but then get the second tranche because we're the only one participating in the second tranche if it meets their value for money or the reserve hurdle. In theory, we could lose the first tranche, and then our second tranche doesn't meet the reserve price and we end up with nothing. There's sort of three different outcomes here. Right. Sorry, just to be clear, does this right of first offer give you any advantage? I just am not clear on that. Well, first of all, we're the only ones allowed to bid for the full 49. Yes, we think it gives us advantage. It's just a different process for us that we're going through. Look, does it give us advantage or not? It doesn't really matter whether it gives us advantage or not. We have to show value for money to the state. We have to put a competitive price up. That's what we'll do. We think better than anyone as the operator of the asset, we believe we'll know the true value of this asset better than anyone. Thanks very much. Thanks, Paul. Thank you. Your next question comes from James Nevin from RBC. Please go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, I just had a question on the funding of future growth projects and particularly development projects. I suppose, yeah, with the change in treatment of capital releases, have you landed on maybe a changed approach to funding growth projects where previously maybe you'd raise all the equity upfront and maybe the debt over time? Maybe you don't need to do that anymore. Potentially if you are successful under the likes of Maryland, then you won't need to raise that equity upfront anymore and you're just going to match us with the timing of capital releases over the few years of development? Yeah. Well, certainly when you look at projects like Maryland or the M7, M12, and unsolicited proposal because both of them are development projects. The capital goes in over a longer period of time. That's certainly an option with the capital releases. So, again, I think it'd be a combination of both. Something like WestConnex, where there's a potentially a substantial acquisition, we do potentially like we have always done, is obviously flag it well in advance to the market of what we may potentially look at. And if we need capital, hopefully the security holders will continue to support us. Yeah, certainly, those longer-term development projects, and when we get out to the Logan widening and the Gateway widening in Brisbane and other things like that, then certainly, yeah, the ability to use those capital releases to fund the growth projects as opposed to going back to the markets is something that the board, I think, and management are looking at pursuing. Thanks. I suppose just in a similar vein, just the debt with those types of projects. I think on West Gate Tunnel, all the debt wasn't locked in upfront, required to fund the project. I suppose what we saw last year with traffic volumes going down and maybe the debt markets kind of closing or the prices going up in debt markets, for future projects, would you need to look at locking the debt in early in the project, once you know you're going ahead with it? Go ahead, Tom. Yeah. We approach it, we actually carry quite significant bank facilities on the balance sheet to give us that flexibility and certainty as to how we fund those things. When we commit to fund something over time, we will take a very prudent approach and put in place facilities, particularly on the balance sheet from bank-type things, and then look to access capital markets over time. That would be our general approach to commitments over time. Having said that, you were right, Tony, last year, the markets were volatile, but we did access the markets twice last year, both in Europe and the U.S. Whilst there was some elevated pricing involved, we still got great support from our investors, and were able to raise the funding that we required. We remain confident that the markets will continue to support us. However, when things are volatile, prices do move around. Well, I think when we make our-. Right. Thank you. Thank you. When we make our investment case, we take all this into consideration about where we think the rates are and where they're going and what we can do to lock in or how we look at that volatility. I think that's on a development case is certainly something that we look at. And in some of the development cases, I know in the U.S., our partners actually share that risk. The government partners share that risk because they ask us to potentially take some of that risk over a period of time so then they share the interest rate movement risk with us before we can lock in the debt. Different ways for us to look at it and mitigate it. Thank you. Is that? Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand back to Scott for closing remarks. Great. Well, thanks, everyone. Again, thanks for your attention. I know it's an incredibly busy day. Appreciate everyone's interest. Again, investor relations team or Tom or myself are available to take further questions. Hopefully it's not too long before we can get around and see everyone in person. Thanks again for the investor relations team for putting this all together. Speak to everyone soon. Thank you.