Thank you for standing by, and Welcome to the Transurban Half Year Results Conference Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There'll be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I'd like to now hand the conference over to Mr. Scott Charlton, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us at Transurban's Results Briefing for the first half of financial year 2022. I hope that everyone is safe and well. Today I'm joined by our Chief Financial Officer, Michelle Jablko, and together we'll take you through the presentation we've lodged with the ASX this morning. Also on the call is our investor relations team who will follow up with any questions if we can't reach them today. Today's presentation should take about 40 minutes, followed by time for questions. Now, I'll kick off today's presentation with some of the highlights for the period, and I'll move to slide five on the presentation that was lodged with the ASX this morning. In the second quarter, we saw traffic recover in most markets in line with the easing of government restrictions. I'll cover this in more detail later in the presentation. In Sydney, we increased Transurban's ownership in WestConnex to 50%, and that transaction now has extended our weighted average concession life to approximately 30 years, which we're very happy with. In Melbourne, we reached agreement to resolve disputes on the West Gate Tunnel, and we're now looking forward to tunneling getting underway in the next month. The TBMs have recently been turned on as part of the testing and commissioning process. We achieved an outstanding result in our safety performance with an improvement in all of our metrics, highlighting our continued focus on achieving excellence across our operations. We completed tunneling on the M4-M5 project in Sydney, and we continue to progress our projects in the U.S., including pre-development work for phase I of the Maryland Express Lanes project. Finally, as I talk more on the next slide, Transurban is positioned well in an environment characterized by rising interest rates and inflation. I'll turn to that slide on six, and it's been another interesting start to the year with supply chain and COVID-19 disruptions playing a role in an elevated inflationary outlook. Certainly, economists are also widely predicting interest rates will start to increase at some point this year. Again, to us, it's no surprise, and it's something that we've been planning for the last three to five years. I guess what the surprise is, it's probably taken so long for interest rates to start rising, given that they were at an all-time low in the cycle. As you've heard Michelle and I both say before, we take a conservative view on interest rates and inflation to inform our strategic planning and our investments. However, in an environment where both inflation and interest rates are rising, we are well positioned as we show on the slide. In the near term, Transurban's interest rate exposure is very low as a result of our hedging policy, with 99% of our existing debt book hedged at December 31, 2021. The majority of our expiring debt over the period from now to FY 2025 is above our weighted average cost of debt. In addition, as shown in the pie chart, almost 70% of our revenue is linked to CPI price escalations as part of our concessions. We've tried to illustrate the combined impact of these factors in an environment where both interest rates and inflation are rising. There is a positive impact to our revenue more than offsets the expected impact of interest rate increases, as you can see on the chart on the right in the near and the medium term. Now, if I move to slide seven and talk a little bit about what's happening with, traffic. Most of the impact in the first quarter due to the government-mandated restrictions on movement to curb the Delta outbreak, particularly this time in Sydney and continuing in Melbourne. Historically, we have seen traffic bounce back quickly in line with the easing of restrictions, and this again was evident in the second quarter performance, and particularly in Sydney, where the restrictions began easing from October. In Melbourne, traffic increased year-on-year, mainly due to fewer days of strict lockdown in the previous period. In Brisbane, which had relatively few restrictions, we continued to see steady traffic volumes supported by additional capacity on the Logan Motorway. Finally, in North America, the positive trends continued through the period. Schools have reopened in Virginia, Maryland and Montreal, and we're seeing a continued uptick in leisure travel. Now we've provided on slide 8 some of the weekly traffic data 'cause we appreciate it's a bit confusing with all the volatility of the lockdowns. This shows the performance across the past year across the portfolio basically on a weekly basis. The emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant in December was obviously a setback globally, and we saw restrictions such as mandatory mask indoors, as well as density limits reintroduced in several of our markets. In each of our markets, you can clearly see, though, the recovery trend when limitations on a movement are eased and through January and into February, a week-by-week increase in traffic volumes now that we seem to be passing the peak of this wave. We've tried to illustrate that on slide nine and giving the current status of COVID-19 restrictions in our markets. Pleasingly, in Queensland, the government is now encouraging people back into the CBD, and in Sydney, the indoor mask mandate is expected to be removed in the next few weeks and looks like Victoria may be doing similar. That's very happy about that and obviously very happy that there's been a fall in hospitalization rates in each of our markets that you can see on the chart on the left that's leading to the recovery. Today, we've also released, and we've highlighted on slide 10, some of the data on our latest mobility trends consumer research, which helps us understand key trends in current and future mobility. We undertook the latest round of this research in late January, early February, so just coming out of the Omicron variant, and independently surveyed more than 5,000 people in Australia and North America. We continue to see the trend and preference towards private vehicle travel over public transport, with daily private vehicle travel is expected to be on average 16% more than pre-pandemic, which that number has doubled since July 2021 in our survey. Public transport use is expected to be 22% less than pre-pandemic, which has remained flat across our survey over the past two years. Again, mainly due to health and safety concerns, with 44% of people feeling unsafe on public transport in Australia. Flexible working arrangements will likely continue for most people. However, 87% of people expect to do most of their work at their workplace. On average, most people expect to work under two days a week at home, which is down from closer to three days from the survey in 2020. The trend to e-commerce continues with 53% of our respondents saying they expected to shop more online, which is an increase of 8 points compared to when, again, we asked that question in July of 2020. The resilience of commercial traffic points to this ongoing demand for e-commerce. Finally, respondents. Sorry, respondents' demand for domestic and international travel continues to build, with 67% of people continuing to travel in 2022, up 7 points from our survey in 2020. We just highlighted again on 11. I know this is a slide that you see all the time. We think it's important because our investment proposition continues to remain unchanged. We now have 21 assets in five markets, all supported by, we think, long-term positive growth drivers. Having a diverse portfolio has proven very resilient to the impacts of the pandemic, and our long life assets have also allowed us to look through the impacts of COVID. Again, with WestConnex, as I said earlier, that extends our weighted average concession life to around three years. We continue to progress the seven projects we have in development or delivery, both in Australia and in North America. Of course, our relationships with governments and strategic partners are fundamental to progressing our opportunity pipeline and the government's infrastructure plans in our markets. We're very confident that the fundamentals of our assets will support traffic growth. This will allow us to deliver on our investment proposition of building value over the long term, while balancing distribution payments to security holders and efficiently funding our development pipeline. Just on slide 12, again, we think it's important to look at the sustainable business model we think we have built and continue to prosecute. The growth in our business is a clear demonstration of our investment discipline, as well as the value that we can create in our assets through active management and operational excellence that enhances our customer's experience. In just over 20 years, Transurban has grown from a single purpose entity with the average daily traffic numbers around 200,000 a day to the business that we are today. We now have, as I said earlier, 21 assets with 14 of those added in the past decade, and our customers are taking more than 2 million trips a day across our five markets. By executing on our long term strategy to deliver value to all our stakeholders, we believe we've proven our capability as a partner of choice, and we look forward to continuing to get the best out of our current assets, as well as continuing to position the business for the next stage of growth. As part of that, we've outlined on slide 13, as we normally do, what remains a significant pipeline of opportunities in each of our five core markets. These range from enhancements to our own assets to potential acquisitions and large scale greenfield projects. These are development opportunities targeted for the next decade, and we'll assess all of them in our usual disciplined way, and there might be even more that come available in the market. I would like now to go through some of our environmental, social, and governance highlights on the next slide for the period. You will see in our corporate report that we released with our annual results, quite a range of things the company does. It's very hard to condense in such a small analyst presentation. ESG considerations are embedded right across our business. Our business purpose to strengthen communities through transport reflects our understanding of the significance of these areas. Over the last few years, we've made substantial progress at Transurban to formalize the processes by which we engage with and measure the value we create across all our full set of stakeholders. We undertook our first stakeholder listening program in 2016. This year, we've evolved it into a continuous campaign to better understand their issues on an ongoing basis and to ensure that when we do future initiatives, we achieve the greatest social impact. During the period, we've implemented the first of our power purchase agreements and renewables now supply just under 60% of our electricity requirements in New South Wales. Our first PPA in Queensland came online in January, and renewables are expected to supply around 80% of our electricity needs in that market. I'll talk a little bit about some developments in Victoria later on. In September, we launched a promotion to encourage COVID vaccination take up among our millions of Linkt customers across Australia. We've recently launched our booster competition this week, and the campaign has served a dual purpose as well as promoting the vaccination. It is promoting electric vehicles with an EV as the main prize. We also built on our extensive support for those most impacted by COVID, as well as progressing a number of community initiatives, including road safety education with our partners at Kidsafe and Neuroscience Research Australia. On slide 15, you'll see that over the past decade, our customer base has more than quadrupled to 9 million people under the Linkt brand in Australia, Express Lanes and GoToll brands in the USA and the A25 in Canada. Over the past three years, the number of accounts has increased by more than 15%. Customers rely on our roads for travel time savings, safer journeys, and more reliable travel, and our focus is making their interactions with us as seamless as possible on both and off the road. Along with our roadside data, each year we analyze around 250,000 pieces of customer feedback, and this informs our continuous improvement approach to the customer experience. Our pay-as-you-go apps continue to gain momentum. 4 million trips in Australia have been taken using our LinktGO, and GoToll in the U.S. is now available on 86 roads, tunnels, and bridges across a few states. Now, one of the other things as part of what we look at, and I know as a recent hot topic, we do look as a long-term partner investor at the future of transportation in our markets and the need to rethink our current road funding model is something I know everyone knows I've been talking about for some time. As most of you are aware, the model is under increasing pressure as fuel excise receipts continue to decline due to more fuel efficient and zero-emission vehicles. Now alongside this, the real cost of private transportation to consumers is predicted to fall dramatically as electric vehicles become mainstream over the next decade, further exacerbating the road funding issue. We do believe and highlight on the next slide, 17, that the transition to a road usage charge model to replace the current funding model is something being contemplated obviously by governments around the world as a more sustainable revenue source and a fairer way for drivers to pay for their usage. Research undertaken as part of our Mobility Trends Insights found that 50% of respondents preferred a road user charge over the current system. Of those, 68% thought that a road usage charge would be fair, with motorists who use the roads most paying a greater proportion for the roads. We know fairness has also been a topic raised in the New South Wales government's inquiry into tolling regimes. With the different tolling regimes in Sydney has led to some inequities, with some drivers spending more per kilometer of travel than others. We welcome, and have always welcomed the opportunity to engage with policymakers, and we take a pragmatic look at tolling regimes to create potentially a fairer proposition for customers. Now I'll move to some of the highlights of the specific markets. Starting out with Sydney. Toll revenue declined by 14% year-on-year, with traffic down around 25% due to the lockdown which extended through to October as compared to the prior year. Excuse me. Large vehicle traffic was less impacted by COVID restrictions, decreasing by only around 4.7%. The Sydney result benefited from the contribution of NorthConnex as well as the additional ownership of WestConnex from the 29th of October. As well as contributing to the traffic performance, I'm really pleased that NorthConnex has brought significant benefits to the community along the Pennant Hills Road, with a halving of near-miss traffic incidents on the road since NorthConnex opened. Progress is continuing on WestConnex, with the tunneling now complete on the M4-M5 Link Tunnels, which will connect the new M4 at Haberfield to the M8 and Rozelle Interchange. There is some additional information about WestConnex project delivery on slide 41 in the appendices. This week, the Group Executive of WestConnex, Andrew Head, and the Group Executive of New South Wales, Michele Huey, appeared at a public hearing as part of the New South Wales Parliament's inquiry into road tolling regimes, following on from their first appearance, which occurred in December last year. As I said earlier, we welcome the opportunity to be a part of these important conversations and to demonstrate the value we bring to our customers and the community. We look forward to ongoing conversations, both with the inquiry's committee and the New South Wales Government. If we move to slide 20, just a couple of highlights that I'll mention. There's a detailed proposal for the M7-M12 Interchange Project, which will connect the new Western Sydney Airport with the new M7 motorway. We submitted that in late 2021 as part of the New South Wales Government's unsolicited proposal process, and it's currently under assessment by the New South Wales Government, and we hope to have an update and progress on that soon. Now if I move to slide 21 in Melbourne, where toll revenue increased by 21% compared to the first half of the previous year, with traffic up by 20%. These increases are largely due to the long periods of government-mandated restrictions during the first half of the previous financial year. Car traffic increased by nearly 30%. Large vehicle traffic increased by nearly 6%. As with New South Wales, reducing the emissions intensity of our business has also been an important focus for us in Melbourne. Pleasingly, we recently signed a renewable energy power purchase agreement to source 100% of CityLink's electric consumption from renewable sources from 2024. We continue to engage strongly with our communities around the CityLink, supporting Run for the Kids, which we're planning will return hopefully as an in-person event this year. Now if we look at the pipeline and portfolio on the next slide, really our focus again is on getting the West Gate Tunnel project delivered in Victoria. In December, we announced an agreement with the state and the builders resolving some very long-standing and difficult disputes. Tunneling is now due to commence shortly, with project completion scheduled for 2025. We've outlined the key terms of this agreement in slide 43 in the appendix, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have on this. Quickly on Brisbane. We saw toll revenue increase by nearly 7%, with car traffic increasing by 3.2 and large vehicle traffic increasing by 6.5. Brisbane has benefited from the least impacts of COVID-19 of any of our markets with shorter lockdown periods. The transitioning of four individual control centers into the new integrated center is progressing well. The operations center will eventually operate all 81 km of our network right across Brisbane. Skip over slide 24 and look at the North American update, where traffic increased by nearly 30% versus the prior period, with improvements across the Express Lanes assets as well as the A25. Toll revenue increased by 17% or 84% on a like for like basis if you exclude the impact of the 50% sale of the Transurban Chesapeake assets. Two enhancement projects were approved by the Virginia government during the period, which we expect will result in some smoother traffic flows on the relevant sections of the 95 and 395 Express Lanes around some of the entrance and exits. If I move to slide 26 and an update on some of the projects in the area. In Maryland, pre-development work is progressing, as I said earlier, on phase I of the Express Lanes project, including a tender process for the D&C subcontractor work package. We are on track to receive final approval from the Board of Public Works at the end of this calendar year, and I'm looking forward to getting over there in the next couple of weeks and meeting both with, obviously our, employees, but with our partners. In Virginia, we reached commercial close on the 495 extension project during the period. As a reminder, this project extends the Express Lanes by 3 km towards the Maryland border, and we expect to reach financial close on the project in the coming weeks. We've almost completed 1 million work hours on the FredEx project. However, the schedule remains under review, given there have been some construction challenges. We do expect some further costs on this project, which should be quantified in April following an arbitration hearing with the D&C subcontractor. However, and I think it's important to note, we do not expect these additional costs will be material to Transurban. With that and our market highlights, I will now pass over to Michelle, who will take us through the financial results for the period. Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. When I look at our financial result for the half, I think it shows that the business is in a robust position despite the impact of COVID restrictions in our biggest markets. As we step through the detail, it's important to note that while Sydney and Melbourne both had significant periods of government-mandated restrictions, Melbourne also had these in the first half of last year and actually had less days of lockdowns this half. With that in mind, average daily traffic was down 4.8%. Given the resilience of our business model, this translated to flat proportional revenue of AUD 1.2 billion as lower volumes were offset by price escalations and continued resilience in commercial traffic. We've continued to invest in the business and our balance sheet is in good shape. Also, as Scott outlined, our hedging profile has been actively managed over many years. This protection, combined with CPI-linked toll escalations, position us well if we see rising interest rates and inflation. Let me now take you through some of the detail. Starting with free cash on slide 30. Total free cash for the half was AUD 459 million. This covered the first half distribution of AUD 0.15 per security, and there were no capital releases in the half. Free cash was slightly down by AUD 8 million. A few key drivers to call out here. Firstly, COVID impacted the outcome in our 100%-owned operations. However, distributions from non-100%-owned assets were higher, noting that the I-95 is now paying distributions. The deconsolidation of Transurban Chesapeake led to a reduction in net finance costs, and working capital movements were mostly timing related. While free cash was broadly in line with the prior half, it was below pre-COVID levels. Free cash should benefit from the lifting of COVID restrictions and improved traffic, although there can be some short-term timing differences with assets paying distributions in arrears. The next slide on 31 provides an overview of our statutory result, which was a loss of AUD 106 million. The improvement from the AUD 448 million loss in the first half of 2021 was mostly driven by remeasurement of certain balance sheet items that flow through the net finance cost line and are non-cash in nature. These relate to the measurement of derivative financial instruments, shareholder loan notes, and the West Gate Tunnel construction obligation liability. Moving now to our proportional results on slide 32, which give you a better sense of underlying business trends. Proportional EBITDA was AUD 805 million, which was AUD 35 million lower for the half. Like-for-like toll revenue was up AUD 21 million, with impacts from increased restrictions in Sydney offset by price increases, resilient commercial traffic, and comparatively less days of COVID restrictions in other markets. Costs were higher, and as I'll cover on the next slide, almost half of this was because of changes in accounting requirements. We saw some benefit from our new assets in Sydney, roughly balancing lower revenue from the Transurban Chesapeake transaction. New assets would likely have contributed more if not for the restrictions in place in Sydney over the period. All of this meant that EBITDA was 4.1% lower for the half, or roughly 2% lower before the impact of accounting-related items. A reasonable outcome, given 4.8% lower average daily traffic. If I take us now to costs on slide 33. We've split these between operational costs and accounting-related items. Our operational costs increased by 5.6%. This reflects investments we've been making in capabilities to support the recent and future growth of the business. This includes areas like data analytics, cyber, and other technology. Employee numbers were up around 2%. Increased costs partly reflected changes in the mix of staff, and also included a full half of costs for positions filled in the previous period. We also had higher insurance premiums. In terms of accounting-related increases, we changed the way we account for software-as-a-service spend, with more of our spend being expensed rather than capitalized. We flagged this at the full year. There was also a small change to maintenance provision discount rates across our Australian assets. If you turn to margins on slide 34, margins at the group level were just under 66%, lower than normal due to COVID restrictions in our largest markets. We would expect to see group margins return towards a more normal range as restrictions lift and traffic again returns to pre-COVID levels, and we've illustrated that for you on this slide. You can also see here that last year margins improved quickly as traffic recovered, and that the CityLink margin held up reasonably well at 80% despite lockdowns in the half. In North America, proportional margins improved as average daily traffic and the average price of both express lanes reached their highest levels since December 2019. The 50% sale of Transurban Chesapeake also improved margins with the higher margin A25, now a larger proportion of that market. However, even on a like-for-like basis, the North American margin was the highest since the first half of FY 2020. Moving now to our balance sheet metrics on slide 35. There are three key themes to call out. Firstly, our liquidity, debt covenants, and credit ratings have remained robust through COVID-related traffic volatility. This is the result of deliberate and concerted effort over many years. Our credit ratings were reaffirmed last year following announcement of the West Gate Tunnel dispute settlement. Secondly, we have a strong corporate liquidity position of AUD 3.8 billion, or just under AUD 3.4 billion after the first half distribution is paid later this month. This, combined with future capital releases, sets us up well as we go forward. Finally, we've been planning for higher interest rates for some time. Our debt book is 99% hedged, providing good protection in a rising interest rate environment. As Scott went through, we would also likely have revenue benefits from CPI-linked toll escalations. Most recently, we've had excellent continued access to debt markets with our refinancing last week of 95 Express Lanes Private Activity Bonds heavily oversubscribed and completed at rates below our average cost of U.S. dollar debt. Our balance sheet has us very well positioned. Moving now to slide 36. I'll just take you through some financial considerations looking forward. We expect traffic recovery with the lifting of COVID restrictions, acknowledging of course that there is still some uncertainty. We understand the challenge for our investors in quantifying the impact of the pandemic on our business, and we've previously provided numbers related to the revenue impact of a week of lockdown across the markets. Recognizing that the situation is a bit different now without strict lockdowns, we've simplified the approach and instead provided reference points for monthly traffic movements based on data from the first half of 2022. In terms of costs, drivers are likely to be similar to the first half, and our capital release profile over the next three years has not changed in excess of AUD 2.3 billion between now and 2025. The timing will be subject to market conditions. As I stand back from our financial performance the first half of 2022, our business is in good shape to benefit from recovering traffic as restrictions ease. We've built a strong balance sheet with forecast capital releases providing further funding support. Our hedging profile and CPI-linked toll escalations position us well in a rising rate environment. We continue to take a disciplined approach to capital management, carefully weighing all options. Any capital we invest is required to meet our hurdle conditions, which are based on a long-term through the cycle view of our cost of capital. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Scott. Thanks very much, Michelle. Well done. I'd like to finish today's presentation with a few comments on our outlook. As we noted in the presentation, 2020 and 2021 both were very busy years. Not only dealing with COVID, but with some significant milestones reached for the business. Last year included the sale of Transurban Chesapeake, acquiring their remaining 49% stake in WestConnex, and although difficult, agreeing a resolution on the West Gate Tunnel. While traffic has remained sensitive to government restrictions, we continue to see quick recovery after every period of impact. This now leaves us in a position to focus on our core operations and the growth pipeline ahead of us. While we foresee some changes in the economic environment, and something we've been planning for, again, as Michelle and I both have said for a very long time. Our inflation-linked toll escalations and debt hedging profile provide protection against the rising interest rate environment over the near and medium term. As always, we will focus on balancing distributions for our security holders, which we know is extremely important, with long-term value creation while maintaining our capital discipline. Of course, in wrapping up, I'd like to thank the team at Transurban who have worked so hard in very difficult circumstances over this period to contribute to these results, and again, our security holders who continue to support us and for attending today's call. With that, we will open it up to questions, please. Thanks, Ben. Thank you, If you wish to ask your 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 your on speaker phone please pick up your handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Anthony Moulder from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Good morning, all. If I can start with you, Scott, you mentioned the outlook for a quick recovery of traffic. Is that a different picture that you're seeing in this mobility data that you collect from Melbourne, the willingness to return to the office, the air travel expectations, et c.? No, not really. I mean, there is some differences between each market, some subtle differences. I mean, it all comes back to, you know, Victoria. We still have work from home if you can and mask mandates. We saw the recovery, and CityLink got very close to pre-COVID numbers toward the end of last calendar year. You know, we see the same circumstances. I think, you know, the deeper and the longer the restrictions go, obviously, it takes a little bit longer for the recovery to occur. Victoria has been through deeper restrictions for periods of time. No, we see the same trends in each of our markets. All right. Very good. The comments on road user funding, obviously, you've been talking about that for a little while. Given this report that we see today on the Western Harbour Tunnel, will that challenge some of those roads being built if they need to be subsidized by others? No, I don't think so, Anthony. I mean, this has been going on since the time of the Romans. Anthony, somebody has to pay for infrastructure. It's not free. You can either tax people, or you can have a user charge. You know, what we're saying and governments are looking at and industry and policymakers are saying is that over the next couple of decades, the current system is probably not as efficient as it needs to be with the introduction of technology and the changes in transportation. You know, Transurban wants to be a part of that discussion and the dialogue, but the infrastructure needs to get built. That's a definite. If you look at when the infrastructure does get built, and if you look at the benefits that the City of Sydney is deriving from WestConnex or Brisbane from the Logan enhancement or Victoria will get out of the West Gate Tunnel, these cities can't be world-class cities without world-class infrastructure. It's up to governments to decide how they wanna pay for it. We're happy to provide input into that dialogue, but it's ultimately up to the governments to decide how they wanna pay for it. Yeah, of course. Michelle, capital releases, I think you said that expectations on those capital releases haven't changed. Does the increase in yield environment change the outlook that you could have, depending on where rates go to for capital releases? No, because I think we took a pretty conservative view. You know, we always take a long-term view when we think about it from the start. As Scott said, rising interest rates are not really a surprise in terms of them coming. No, I'm comfortable with the number. I think, Anthony, going back to the investment, and this is why we got the natural hedge on both sides. I think if you remember back when we bought QML, I can remember we had forecast interest rates to rise when we bought QML, but we'd also forecast CPI to rise. We got to the same margin outcome we thought through the integration process. Partly, CPI disappointed us because it was lower than we forecast, but interest rates were lower than we forecast. We got to the same sort of outcome. Now we're just seeing the reverse play out, or what we planned for is there's hedging or it's an imperfect hedge, but there is mitigation on the other side that yes, interest rates will rise, but certainly in the short to medium term, inflation benefits us. Yeah. Very good. Thank you. Thanks, Anthony. Your next question comes from Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Oh, good morning. Apologies, I joined your call late for another company's results. If I'm asking a stupid question, I do apologize. I guess my first question is just about the opportunity in Victoria with the North East Link. I guess the construction package there is an alliance pricing or is it three separate contracts, as I understand it. Can you just talk to your appetite to take on alliance pricing for growth projects? Well, I guess there's a couple questions in that, Rob. First of all, we're disappointed we're not your first port of call on the analyst call. Thanks for joining. Look, in relation to delivery, we're not involved in the North East Link. We've put it down there, you know, as a project. We know long-term, the government's looking at setting up a tolling entity that they would own and toll, and we don't know what then that entity would do over time. You know, if the government were to choose to monetize something, then. They wanted the private sector to look at it, then obviously something we may consider, but that is a long way, potentially down the track and not something that we're looking at immediately at the moment. In relation to alliance contracting or any form of delivery. We will look at it in the context of a risk-reward equation. Yes, we would be prepared to potentially look at alliance contracting, but again, it has to be in the risk-reward context. If we're taking on more risk, then issues around contingency or how we share that risk would have to be discussed with all our partners. For us, every project that we look at is bespoke, and we do our best to manage that risk-reward profile. You know, we are not going to become a D&C contractor. That is certainly something that we would never do. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Charlton. Yeah, I guess the reason I chose the other company was more because you guys give me less to worry about. Well said, Rob. Thank you. Well, good recovery. My second question this might be a little silly, but I guess the one of the things we always look at is the maintenance provision versus the maintenance cash spend. Just noticing that the maintenance provision seems to have gone down versus PCP. Just wondering if you can maybe highlight any kind of lumpy items that are in that, please. Yeah, I'll give Michelle, 'cause there's new assets and stuff going on, but yeah, Michelle. Yeah, it's mostly because of the deconsolidation of Transurban Chesapeake. It's a big driver, and a little bit of WestConnex coming in. Yeah. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you very much. Thanks, Rob. Thank you. Your next question comes from Owen Birrell from RBC. Please go ahead. Sorry, guys. I was just on mute there. Just a quick one for me in terms of the margin step down that we've seen in Sydney. I understand Sydney provided a little bit of color around how you expect that to rebound as traffic comes back. I'm just wanting to get a greater sense of how much of an impact, I guess, the increased stake in WestConnex has had on those margins. You know, should we see those margins return to where they were pre-COVID with the increased WestConnex contribution there? Well, yes, the WestConnex margin in the short term, 'cause they're ramping up, there's new tunnels, and the tunnels have a higher cost, is partly to deal with that. They'll go back closer to pre-COVID levels. We have the accounting adjustment that's a permanent adjustment now. Yes, we are operating more tunnels in the short term. Michelle, you wanna make a comment? Inside of that is the Transurban. We own less of Transurban Chesapeake, which is lower margin. Net-net, the sort of impact of WestConnex and Transurban Chesapeake largely sort of net each other out. I think Owen's talking. Yeah Specifically about Sydney. I think. For Sydney, yes. You know, just for Sydney. With Sydney, it should get back closer to those numbers. Even WestConnex, as we said, the tunnels operate on lower margins 'cause obviously you have higher operating costs with the electricity cost. The size and the scale of WestConnex, and particularly when you bring the M5 West into WestConnex in 2027, you'll get back to what is pretty close to historical margins other than the permanent adjustment for the accounting change. It's also just worth noting, Owen, that the numbers we provided or that graph we provided on the slide that shows the normalized margins, we've looked at 2019 traffic for that. That's, you know, clearly there's upside as traffic improves as well. Yeah. Excellent. Just on North America, you know, big step up in the margins there. Just wondering how much of that big step up was the margins that you sort of getting out of Canada versus the remaining businesses that were left in that North America in that U.S. region? Yeah. I'll let Michelle answer the specific thing. Yeah, part of the big step. Well, it did big recovery. I mean, it was hard hit, hardest hit on the margin perspective from COVID, as you saw in the first half of 2021. If you look at the first full year for 2021, you see the recovery had already began. I don't know if you got specifics, Michelle. Yeah. It was mostly the growth in traffic, so the recovery. Yeah. You know, a small proportion was the- A25 The A25. Yeah. The deconsolidation or the 50% sale of Chesapeake. Great. Just one final question from me, just regards to the capital releases. You know, you sort of made quite a bit of comment around the AUD 600 million of incremental capital releases that you're getting out of the increased stake in WestConnex. Can we assume that all of that AUD 600 million will be used to mitigate this dilution that you sort of talk of between FY 2022 and FY 2025? No. Again, I'll let Michelle comment. You shouldn't assume all of it's being used. What we'll look at is the underlying free cash flow, and then we'll look at the impact that the equity raise had on that and use some of that to adjust. Yeah Adjust for, to bring back the investors as if the dilution hadn't occurred. I don't think it's forecast that we would use all of it. I don't know, Michelle, you wanna make a comment? Correct. I mean, what we said, and clearly it's a decision for the board at the time, is that we intend to use some of it, or it's likely we'd use some of it to offset dilution in the first couple of years. Obviously we're very pleased that when we'd given the forecast at AUD 0.15, despite the volatility that occurred since we made that announcement at the equity raise, that we were able to cover that 100% basically with free cash flow without touching that yet. Thanks, Scott. I'll leave it there, thanks. Thanks, Owen. Thank you. Your next question comes from Justin Barratt from CLSA. Please go ahead. Hi, guys. Thanks for your time this morning. I just wanted to follow up on Owen's question in relation to capital releases. Were those capital releases or those additional releases from WestConnex just giving a commentary on the FY 2022 distribution? Will those additional capital releases be used to, I guess, bolster distributions from FY 2023 onwards? Even if you sort of had really strong performance in the back half of FY 2022 and got some capital releases, it wouldn't be used to bolster FY 2022 distributions. Maybe I just to make sure I understand your question. We said that, putting aside the offsetting some of the dilutive impact on the WestConnex capital raising, distributions will be funded from underlying free cash excluding capital releases. Yeah. I think, Justin, the thing, what we're saying, if we did outperform, the business outperformed, but it would still have a dilutive impact from the equity raise 'cause the outperformance would just be based on the underlying operations. If we did outperform our budget, we'd still use some of that because there would still be dilutive impact of the outperformance. We just take that. Basically, whatever the performance is, if it's, you know, 20% below budget or 100% above budget, we take whatever the performance is and then calculate what the likely dilutive impact would have been and adjust for that. That's our thinking. Yeah, okay. Capital releases could be used to support distributions from FY 2023 onwards and not in FY 2022. Oh, sorry, I understand your question. Well, it depends actually in terms of. Okay. Market conditions this year and the timing of the capital releases. Yeah. Potentially, I think the board have given guidance to 22 and 23. Yes. Yeah. Okay, fantastic. Thank you very much for that one. Just a question on the Sydney Harbour Tunnel concession due to finish in August this year. Have you heard any more about any kind of process or monetization of that asset at all recently? I mean, no. I think there's been a fair bit of discussion in the media. Yeah. We're not aware of what government. I mean, obviously the concession gets returned to the government. The government will eventually have three crossings, and the government will have to make a decision what it wants to do. I think at the tolling inquiry, treasury officials were talking about they're doing a whole review of that concession and the whole tolling arrangements in New South Wales, and they'll come back and present to the government and, perhaps they'll make something public. No, we're not aware of anything at this time. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Andre Fromyhr from UBS. Please go ahead. G'day. Good morning. Maybe this is going back on the topic of the WestConnex capital releases. Just wondering if you could help reconcile how the WestConnex distributions have been funded. My understanding from the preso is received AUD 77 million of distributions from WestConnex. If I look at the asset, it did about AUD 100 million of EBITDA and then paid out about another AUD 100 million of cash net interest costs. I'm just wondering where the distributions have come from or how we should think about that. Yeah. With respect to capital releases. The distributions from WestConnex are paid in arrears. It won't fully reconcile through to EBITDA. There will be timing differences. And also it includes the M8 from last year, you know, so the M8 coming on last year's come through this time. There'd been sort of effectively a catch up, if you like. Right. Okay. Just on the EBITDA margin, you've helpfully provided the sort of the pro forma estimate of what the half would have looked like, excluding COVID traffic impacts. Can you just talk through a little bit of the math about that COVID traffic impact? Is that just a fixed cost leverage effect if you were doing sort of pre-COVID traffic levels or, you know, are there adjustments as well for changes in your cost base? If you look at the chart, you can see we've effectively added back the accounting change 'cause, you know, that's a change in policy, a bit more permanent. What we've done is effectively said if traffic was at pre-COVID 2019 or first half 2020 levels, all else being equal, everything else being the same, what would the margin have been? Yeah. The fixed cost of that journey, Andre, yeah, it's taken into account, but it's a small. It's small. It's a small one. Correct. Yes, it's taken into account. Okay. On just that accounting adjustment. We should interpret that as sort of a permanent shift, not just a single period change in provisions. Yeah. It's a permanent shift in accounting policy, and I think that's a fair assumption. I mean, clearly it will depend on decisions we make in terms of actual spend and what we're investing in. Yes, that's how I would look at it. There's a change in the guidelines. It's a change in guidelines. And regulations. Yeah. Last year, so we had to adjust to the change in accounting policy. Guidance or regulations, for some of us who are not accountants, it doesn't make a lot of sense. If you do it yourself, you can capitalize, and if you get someone else to do the same thing, you have to expense it. It actually is a specific thing to our accounting standards, and it doesn't affect GAAP. It's different. Unfortunately, it sort of disadvantages companies for using the cloud. [crosstalk] Invest in the cloud. Yeah. Yeah. That's the accounting standard. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Your next question comes from Anthony Longo from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Well, good morning, everyone. Just a couple of quick questions from me. On the OpEx piece, I do appreciate the disclosure and the way that you've tried to carve out the accounting adjustments and other. Are you able to, ex accounting adjustments, give more granularity on how much the insurance premiums did rise versus, I guess, that other growth OpEx that you did highlight? Yeah. The insurance was about 20% of that AUD 25 million. Yeah, it's a big growth in the insurance cost. It's still just been growth, so it's about AUD 10 million over a year. Then the rest came through as I said, just ongoing investment in the business. Okay, great. My house renewal is coming up shortly. Yeah. Don't look forward to that. I mean, there was also that. Yeah. You've seen the directors, you know, public liability insurance and other things like that that have just gone. Yeah T hrough the roof right across the market. Yeah, no problem. Look, second one on the West Gate Tunnel. I appreciate all the disclosure and the presentations that you did do last year. I guess looking at that project going forward from here, I mean, what's the risk of additional cost overruns from that going forward, or is that largely protected from here? Although we, you know, still maintain the underlying structure of a fixed time, fixed price contract. We have done as best we can to allocate the risk through that project, including the risk of COVID, doesn't lie with Transurban if there's a continued COVID restrictions. We have a cap on any spoil issues with the spoil site. We've done, we believe, the best to protect ourselves. We've got incentive arrangements and a pool of KPIs to incentivize the contractor. I was out there yesterday, the site looks fantastic. Everyone's actually very excited just to get on with the project. As I said, the TBMs are actually turning 'cause they're commissioning them. There's just a ton of activity happening. It just feels like a completely different project and very excited to get it going. We believe we've done the best we can to protect us against the major issues. That's great. No, I appreciate that. Look, just another one from me. Just in terms of, I guess, with offices likely to come back into the CBDs from March, I mean, and you know, obviously the potentially increased flexibility of the workforce, I mean, how is that sort of changing the way you're thinking about your projects over the longer term, maybe that initial investment case. Sort of wanting to understand the flow of traffic into CBDs that, you know, with a flexible environment, how does that ultimately impact the broader outlook for traffic across the portfolio. Yeah, thanks, Anthony. Look, it's a good question, and I've talked about it in a lot of different forms at a high level. You know, without going into specifics, we've always said there's a few long-term trends that we've always talked about. We've talked about, you know, the trend of remote working that was gonna play out over long term with technology, mobility as a service, electrification or zero-emission vehicles, which means the real price of private transportation will continue to drop. Again, e-commerce and all these things, we look at our long-term forecast and how they might play in and out of things. What COVID has done to some extent is accelerate those trends. Flexible working arrangements, but also e-commerce and a few other things. That's why you see the heavy vehicles are so strong 'cause the e-commerce has been brought forward. Yes, flexible working arrangements will have some impact. But all in all, if you look at the long-term trend lines, we're not seeing really that much difference in what we would look at or forecast in the long-term trend lines. You've just accelerated some of the trends that counter each other to some extent. We expect traffic to come back. Again, because of the public trend, even if the offices don't fill up, as we said, the reluctance to fully utilize public transport is gonna move more people into private vehicles. Again, to a large extent, our roads are directing people around the cities, not so much to the cities. Yes, we have a couple of strong commuter roads or roads that are connected to the airports, like the ED or Western Link in Melbourne or the Airport Link in Brisbane, which are more affected probably by CBD and airport traffic. As you see, like the M7, super strong, even the M2, Logan, you know, anything that has to do with freight, commercial, and moving people around the city as opposed to the city, we still see strong results even despite COVID. You know, yes, we take all that into account. Yes, there's movement and timing issues, but we still think the long-term trend lines and all of those cultural or structural shifts that will occur over the next 20 years will favor more kilometers being driven. Understood. Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Michelle. Really appreciate it. Thanks, Anthony. Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Ben Brayshaw from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead. Oh, good morning, Scott. Thanks for the presentation. Apologies, I missed most of the slides on another call. I was wondering if you could talk about what higher interest rates and potentially higher inflation might imply for the valuation of motorway assets in the private market. Because I think you've mentioned on several occasions that Transurban uses a through cycle approach to its underwriting assumptions and presumably your partners and, you know, broader practice in the market as well is consistent with that. I suppose my question is, at what point do you think, you know, long-term interest rates could create, you know, some disruption to the valuation of the underlying asset class? Oh, no, Ben, it's a good question. Look, you know, we heard of assets, not the ones we competed against, but you know, we heard of assets over the last two years where people were bidding zero interest rates into their model for, you know, a 30-year, 40-year concession, which, you know, heroic assumptions, but good on those people. It was some assets in Europe, nothing that we're involved with. I guess the answer is that we've taken those long-term impacts into our investment model, so we're very comfortable with our investment. I think what it does change, Ben, is that one thing that we do when we all do investments, and our partners as well, is obviously when we can lock in the short-term rates, we lock that in and take it into account, obviously in investments. If you lock in the debt for five years or seven years when you make the investment, then you know with certainty, and then you assume it rises over time. I guess what this does is potentially it ups the front end as you make a new investment as rates are rising, so it will affect some of the short-term valuations. I think what you've seen with Sydney Airport, with AusNet, with everything else, potentially disappearing out of the ASX, is that these long-term infrastructure investors who look through the cycle aren't really that concerned or as concerned about movement in the interest rates through the cycle, and that's what we continue to do. Yes, there'll be some short-term probably change in the valuations, but I don't expect a significant change in the valuations. Just to add to what Scott said, clearly it's asset dependent and, you know, as rates go up and inflation goes up for some assets, there are, you know, offsetting revenue impacts as well, if you're talking about the short term. Yeah. Thanks, Michelle. I mean, take your point entirely on looking at your revenue profile and, you know, 50% or thereabouts is, you know, or EBITDA is subject to, you know, an annual inflation adjustment. Point well made. Thank you. I think just one thing that, and I know Michelle wants to make a comment again about liquidity capital, and we're always very careful, and that's why we lock this away and we balance and manage the book very carefully. Obviously, we manage our security holders' capital very carefully. We recently did an issue in the U.S. for those private activity bonds, 13 x oversubscribed. It was just a massive call for good quality debt at interest rates below our U.S. average in this current environment. You know, we're very careful. We're not saying that's how it's gonna remain, but there's still a lot of liquidity in the market. Thanks, Scott. Thank you. Your next question comes from Cameron McDonald from E&P. Please go ahead. Good morning. A couple of questions, if I can. Firstly for you, Michelle, just delving into that question a bit earlier about the costs in insurance. I mean, 20% of the cost coming from insurance still leaves a 5.5% increase in the underlying cost base. Can you just explain to me what's driven that? Yeah. I sort of tried to touch on it in my speaking notes, but essentially, we've continued to invest in our business, and I called out a few areas: technology, data, cyber, as examples. What that does is it changes the mix of employees, mix of FTE as well. It really is that. It's just continued investment in the business. If you go back sort of six months, 12 months, there wasn't a lot coming through the cost base, so some of it is sort of catch up. I also touched on in my speech the annualization of people that were coming on over the prior half. A full half's worth of people had come on in the prior half. I think it can. So, so that. You know, it's hard to. That increase in investment, though. Sorry, Cameron. Sorry. That increase in investment, though, shouldn't that come with a productivity benefit? Some of this should reverse out in future periods. It does over time. You know, some of it's investing for growth we've had and some of it's setting ourselves up for future growth. You know, and again, if you sort of look at the margins slide, we've said if traffic was more normal, our margins would come back to more normal margins, and then, you know, if traffic increases beyond that should help over time. Yeah. Some of it, Cameron, you know, cyber, which everyone's dealing with, is cybersecurity uplift. What comes back to you over time is you're protecting your data and protecting your customers. Some of it's just the cost of doing business now in a modern and different environment. As Michelle said, it's, you know, we haven't had a huge change in headcount, but we have the headcount has left and the headcounts brought in is brought in at a different level and for different purposes. Some of that is just what you need to operate a modern business in today's world. Yeah. Understood. Just on some of the assets themselves, are there any timing issues we should be aware about where assets have either declared dividends or distributions that have not yet been received? You're expecting that to come through in the second half? I think it's probably more the other way, actually, in that we've got WestConnex and NorthWestern Roads pay in arrears. You know, there's probably a little bit more COVID impact to come through on those. Yeah, but no, not at this point. Yeah. Not at this point. At this point, I think I'm looking at Michelle and Tom. I think we expect all our entities that we're expecting to receive distributions from. When you particularly see the reversal in the, you know, traffic numbers that have come through, you know, from January with Omicron, and then it's reversing pretty quickly in February. It just takes a little longer on the distributions. Yeah. Than it does on the 100% owned assets. Yep, understood. Scott, can I ask you just a quick question about the terms of reference for the tolling regime? When I read that in New South Wales review, they've made some interesting comments around the transparency of bids, but then also potentially getting IPART sort of involved to independently set, you know, tolling and toll increases. You know, my question is, you know, could this lead to, you know, around that transparency, could this lead to like almost like a base case type scenario where, you know, you get like a more regulated return like, you know, we see in other infrastructure assets like, you know, gas pipelines as an example or, you know, or even Horizon Power where they, you know, there's a set amount of capacity or expected usage, and then if you over or under recover, there's an adjustment to the pricing. The second part of that question is if they change the pricing methodology, what compensation are you entitled to in your current concessions? Sure. Let's do the first question. Sorry, there's a lot of questions there, but let me cover that quickly. First are the sort of parameters of the tolling inquiry, looking, I mean, at what sort of happened in the past, but then what they might do in the future. They're not talking about retrospecting, retrofitting, or doing anything retrospectively with the current concessions. That's not really part of the tolling inquiry. We have contracts with the New South Wales Government that set out our commercial rights and obligations, and we have a lot of obligations. You know, any changes would need to have some commercial discussions. As we said, if there's something that makes more sense, then we're happy to entertain all ideas and look at how we make it more efficient and better for our customers while we're protecting our security holders. That's something that we have offered up many times and have discussed and happy to do in public forums. In relation to regulations, I think what they're talking about, Cameron, is IPART gets involved in setting the tolling, not in a regulatory regime like a utility or a network that IPART in future toll roads gets involved with the community on what the tolling regime would be. So what's the initial toll, what the escalation may or may not be. It's more, I think considering one of the ideas is whether the independent regulator gets involved in setting the toll, which is really, you know, it's a question for government. Historically, both Labor and Liberal governments have set the tolls and escalations, and have put those forward, and then that's been provided to the private sector, to administer. Again, it's up to what government policy wants to do. I don't think IPART. Right. Thank you. Yep. you. Yep. It becomes a regulated asset. Yep. Thank you. Although just for pure clarity, we are heavily regulated because our toll is set and the escalation is set. Thanks, Cameron. No worries. I think w ell, two things. Hopefully, we've exhausted almost everyone's questions, and we've run out of time. If you have any further questions, please follow up with the investor relations team. I will put a plug in. We are trying to have our investor day in May, hopefully in person. Hopefully, details will be coming out before too long. Thank you everyone for your time today. I know it's incredibly busy with the amount of results coming out and appreciate your attendance and hopefully I'll be able to see many of you soon. Thanks very much.