Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Transurban Group Half Year 2023 Results Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer section. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I'll now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Scott Charlton, CEO. Please go ahead. Great. Thank you, and welcome, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us at Transurban's Result Briefing for the H1 of FY 2023. I think actually I have some family and friends joining because of the announcements today. Thank you for supporting me. Today I'm joined by our CFO, Michelle Jablko, and together we will take you through the presentation we've lodged with the ASX this morning, and there's quite a lot of good news. Also on the call is our investor relations team, who as always, will be happy to follow up with you if you have any questions. Today's presentation should take about 40 to 45 minutes, and then we'll allow time for questions, and hopefully we'll get around to seeing some of you or most of you over the next few weeks. As many of you know, our roads and offices sit on the lands of many of the First Nations people. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners as the original custodians of the land and recognizing their connection to the land and to the waters and community. Our recent opening of the WestConnex M4-M8 Link, and you'll see that on the first page of the results cover, was a great opportunity to highlight our long-term partnership with the indigenous organization, the Kari Foundation, whose singers performed an acknowledgment of country as part of the opening. It was a inspiring performance, and if you get a chance, I really would encourage you to look at that performance on our website. The WestConnex website, that is. Before we get started in the results, many of you will have likely seen the ASX release that came out this morning as well, announcing that this will be my final year at Transurban. After 11 years, and with the business in great shape, and we are gaining significant momentum, now is the right time to transition the business to the next CEO and for me to pursue new opportunities. I'm obviously incredibly proud of what we have collectively achieved over the last 11 years, including the caliber of the executive team, who are in turn supported by a deep depth of dedicated and talented employees. I'd personally like to thank everyone at Transurban and our partners who have made the last 11 years the most fulfilling of my career to date. Of course, I would also like to thank our security holders for all your faith and support over the years, and I really look forward to catching up with many of you during the coming year. This transition will allow plenty of time for an orderly transition, and there are quite a few things that I still want to see through over the next year, including completion of the excavation of the West Gate Tunnel project, the EastLink opportunity, commencement of work on the M7-M12 Interchange project, and a few other near-term strategic priorities. With that being said and getting that out of the way, today is really about our H1 results. You will see that the business again is in an excellent position to capitalize on our growth agenda. I'll kick off now to the highlights slide, which is page four in the investor pack. We have a lot of records this half, which is great. We've achieved record traffic results for the period, and our average daily traffic in November exceeded 2.5 million trips per day for the first time, and we had freight volumes for the half up around 4% on our previous record. We also achieved a record revenue result for the half, with proportional revenue up 43% year-on-year, and our group EBITDA margin at its highest level since pre-COVID at around 72%. What this shows to us and what it's demonstrating is that our customers are seeing substantial value in utilizing our assets as we move past COVID and into a new period of growth. On a project front, we opened our final stage of WestConnex, the M4-M8 Link, last month, and we opened that ahead of schedule and on budget. We also expect to receive all final approvals for the M7-M12 integration project imminently, and we will commence construction shortly. In Melbourne, we have made excellent progress on the West Gate Tunnel, with more than 90% of the tunneling excavation now complete. These results and many more of our delivered initiatives, both over the last year and some that have taken now five or six years to come to fruition, have allowed us to upgrade our distribution guidance to AUD 0.57 for per security. Moving to that slide. Our upgraded distribution guidance of AUD 0.57 per security is AUD 0.04 above the guidance we gave at the full year and represents an almost 40% increase on the FY 2022 distribution. Again, we continue to see record traffic performance in Sydney. In fact, it was two weeks ago or a week and a half ago, the M4 recorded over 200,000 trips in one day for the first time, partly thanks to the Red Hot Chili Peppers concert, we'll take it. We've also had record traffic in Brisbane. We see continued strength in freight and an uplift in airport traffic around the country, as well as ongoing improvement in Melbourne, including more people returning to the office. This increased certainty around traffic performance across all our markets, and particularly the outperformance in Brisbane and Sydney, were a couple of the key factors supporting the board's decision to upgrade guidance and the major reason for the expected increase in EBITDA. I figure just a bit of more color on that. Clearly, when we gave guidance toward the end of last year, we still had work from home, if you could, in Victoria. It was our first guidance coming out of COVID. The wet weather events in Sydney. We had a lot of volatility and a lot of uncertainty providing the original guidance. Obviously, this increased distribution highlights really what has become the structural strength of the business. In a variable economic environment and the critical nature of our assets. Again, we point out the strength of our assets, particularly being located in growing urban environments. Now turning to our investment proposition, there's nothing new here. I'll quickly go through this, but just a reminder, we now have 22 high-quality assets in five markets with increasing volumes of traffic and a pipeline of development opportunities to drive medium and long-term distribution growth in all of our markets. Our inflation-linked toll escalations, debt hedging, and active balance sheet management provide near-term interest rate protection. Not only that, EBITDA benefits in the near term and medium term. We're balancing growth and distributions and investment in our development pipeline, and this will allow us to create long-term value for all of our stakeholders while continuing to grow our distributions. Slide seven. This is nothing new and something we've been speaking about for quite some time now as we've come into this interest rate environment. It's about our inflation-linked toll escalations coupled with our hedging profile. As we said, with this we should and does provide a net benefit in the near term. As you can see from the chart, we're starting to see that actually to come through, and we'll continue to see further benefit in the H2 as some of the higher CPI numbers recorded are incorporated into our base toll prices. This, of course, then will compound over the full life of the assets. Remembering that in some cases it can take up to 18 months for the CPI numbers to flow through to some of our escalations. Our exposure to short-term spikes in interest rates is minimized by our high rate of hedging, with the cash rate likely to reduce as inflationary pressures will ease over the next few years. What our key driver, obviously, of the result is a tracker traffic is at record levels for the group for the half. Brisbane and Sydney, as well as the 95 Express Lanes in the U.S., all reached record levels in the period. Melbourne continues to show improvement, large vehicle traffic remains strong and reached a record level in the Q1 of the period. The results were particularly pleasing given the major weather-related impacts in all of our Australian markets over the period, including floods in Melbourne and Sydney. In Sydney as well, these record traffic numbers were achieved as well if you exclude the impact of the newer assets, NorthConnex, the M8, and the M5 East. In the U.S., the 95 Express Lanes, which is our longest toll road asset, continues to perform well, mainly as a result of the additional trips from the 395 extension, as well as weekend and interstate travel. One of the things we always like to include when we do our presentation is, obviously a survey of our data and, what's happening in the traffic and some of the insights that we use when we consider the business. This is some of that data here on this next chart shows the ongoing strength of freight traffic and travels around the cities. That travel and freight more than offsets the slower recovery that we're seeing in airport and some of the CBD-related trips. However, we all know that airport passenger numbers are increasing, and we're seeing a gradual improvement in airport-related corridors. We're also seeing CBD traffic continue to improve despite some of the recovery in public transport numbers. Again, our most recent research from January shows that respondents continue to prefer private transport over public transport. Now, of course, and it's a very, topical topic, a very hot topic. The moment the cost of living remains an issue for many of our customers and the country at large. While large expenses, including groceries, electricity, and mortgage repayments, are greater concerns for most people, we understand the importance of providing support for our customers experiencing financial hardship. Our Linkt Assist program continues to provide support for those customers. I would like to remind everyone that in relation to tolls, more than 80% of our Australian customers spend less than AUD 10 on average a week, and tolls represent approximately only around 1% of the average Australian monthly household expenditure. Again, as we look at our traffic insights and what's happening, we see this play out in Sydney with record traffic numbers that show that people clearly see value that the toll roads offer there. Over the past 20 years, Transurban has invested more than AUD 25 billion in major road projects in Sydney, which has contributed to more efficient and reliable movement around the city. During this last half, customers have saved more than 200,000 hours in travel time every workday by using our toll roads compared to the alternative. In New South Wales, we've long recognized that harmonizing and improving the efficiency of the tolling regime would make using the road simpler and easier to understand, as well as it has the potential to improve traffic flows and increase safety across the whole of the Sydney road network. Of course, we're very excited about the potential opportunity to engage with the New South Wales Government over the coming election, sorry, after the coming election, about meaningful toll reform on the other side. Now we'll get into some of the asset portfolio and project pipeline updates. We have the normal market slides in the appendices that you've normally seen, but we just have so much going on, and we've done so much over the last few months. We've decided just to hit the highlights in the market slides and appendices, and happy to take any questions on those. The M4-M8 Link completion. Hopefully, some of you in Sydney would have the opportunity to drive through what is now Australia's longest underground motorway. It's an amazing piece of infrastructure. This 22 kilometers of tunnels, again offer a substantial benefits for the Sydney motorist. Not just the motorist, but now the surrounding communities who we appreciate have been through years of construction pain, but now, they'll get the benefits of the road as well. Opening the M4 M8 on January 20th was a defining moment for Transurban and our Sydney Transport Partners. This does mark the final stage of our part of the delivery of the project, which with just the government related Rozelle Interchange to come. I do wanna point out the project was delivered ahead of schedule and on budget, which was a tremendous achievement for the team, particularly given the challenging environment over the past couple of years. I do wanna point out as well that all three stages have been delivered in line or ahead of our schedule and budgets that we determined at acquisition. It's now early days for the M4/M8 traffic, but so far the numbers are in line with our original forecast. We're very pleased that people are already seeing the benefits. Again, I'd like to thank the 12,000 people who worked on the project, and again, I think to those overall, which is close to 40,000 people who contributed to the WestConnex project overall. The benefits of the consolidated WestConnex will continue to grow because this provides the central transport connection for a number of other major government road projects. You'll see the map on the screen that shows there's still five major roads worth around AUD 10 billion connecting to WestConnex. These are all being done by the government, and they're all scheduled to be open over the next six years and contribute to the traffic growth and the utilization of WestConnex. Just to show you, the scale of the project and what's being delivered, we're gonna do a little bit something different. Instead of me just talking about it, we're just gonna run a quick video that shows the benefits that WestConnex creates for Sydney. Thanks for that. It's an amazing project. I think when I was there at the ribbon-cutting, I think somebody referred to a comment that the Premier had made, I think a couple of years earlier, and I think he reinforced it that he thought WestConnex would be a tourist attraction. I think for us infrastructure nerds, it certainly is a tourist attraction. I'm not sure for everyone, but certainly for us in infrastructure, it's amazing piece of infrastructure and something that we're extremely proud of. Moving to slide 13, sorry, 14, and the West Gate Tunnel project update. Again, it's making excellent progress. We're now around 90% of the way through the tunneling. We've taken a lot of risk out of the project now and very pleased how it's proceeding. We expect that the excavation of the twin tunnel to be complete by mid-year, with the breakthrough on the inbound tunnel in the next few weeks. I can't wait to be there to watch that big piece of concrete fall through the, or the TBM poke its head up the other side. It's a very exciting time, and we've achieved a number of milestones on other sections of the project, including completing the structural frame of the bridge over the river in just 7 months. 14 of 18 new lane kilometers on the West Gate Freeway. Go back to that number. They're going to be 18 new lanes or 18 lanes, but 14 of those lanes have been completed and all existing bridges have been widened and strengthened. Again, this is another project that offers substantial benefits for motorists and the freight sector in terms of safer, faster, and more reliable travel. We'll go from Sydney to Melbourne and back to Sydney. We'll talk about we're waiting to receive the final approvals, regulatory approvals to widen the M7 and create an interchange with the government's M12 Motorway after we receive the stage three approval from the government in December. Those final regulatory approvals are imminent and financial close should be out here in the next couple of weeks, and we'll start construction. The project scope includes around 26 kilometers of widening works, including two additional lanes to the M7, and is expected to be complete by the opening of the new Western Sydney Airport in 2026. Funding for the approximately AUD 1.7 billion project includes a just over three-year concession extension and Transurban's contribution of the 50% of the North Western Roads Group funding is roughly about AUD 600 million, half of which will be through debt that's raised at the project level and half of it will be equity provided by the group through other capital sources. Moving on to the Greater Washington area. In the U.S., work is continuing to progress well on our Express Lanes extension projects, and we now expect to open the Fredericksburg extension by the quarter, by Q3 2023. That's now six months earlier than we had been recently forecasting. This extension extends the 95 Express Lanes by 16 kilometers and will provide faster and easier access to major employment bases, including the Marine Corps Base at Quantico, supporting 28,000 workers. During the period, we also reached the final step of the environmental review process for the Maryland Express Lanes Project, and we look forward to working with the new administration in Maryland. The government and the transport secretary there have just been recently inaugurated and will be working with the new team and administration to determine their strategic priorities and timing for this important project. If I move to the next slide, we're very excited today that we have also entered into an agreement to partner with CDPQ through the sale of 50% of our A25 asset in Montreal. For most of you know, we've had a relationship now with CDPQ since we did the second tranche of WestConnex. They've been a fantastic partner, and we're very pleased to be strengthening and deepening that partnership in their hometown of Montreal. For those of you who don't know much about CDPQ, they are one of the world's largest institutional infrastructure investors, and this agreement gives us a strategically aligned partner who brings valuable local capability again, and we're very pleased to have them on board, and we look forward to working together to pursue potential development opportunities in and around the A25. Montreal continues to be well-aligned to our investment criteria, having consistent population growth, stable economic environment, and historically, it has been one of Canada's most congested regions. We'll jump now from Montreal to Melbourne. we sort of moving around the map pretty quick and back and forth. In Melbourne, investors in the city's only other toll road, EastLink, are reported to be looking to sell down their interest in this asset. Look, we're not yet aware of actually the percentage of interest on offer or any details around the potential sale process. However, clearly, as a Melbourne-based business for more than two decades in our hometown and where we were born, this is a market we know and understand comprehensively on every level, from operations to traffic forecasting and beyond. Should that asset come up for sale, we are obviously very well-positioned to participate in a near-term opportunity. Always with any of our acquisitions, we would take a disciplined approach in the best interest of our security holders. Besides these projects that we've delivered or the ones, the larger ones that are presenting themselves, we still have a long-term project pipeline where you can see a range of opportunities. These include potential enhancements to our own assets as well as possible acquisitions and greenfield projects. There's no lack of opportunity for growth. It's just about maintaining discipline and making sure we take the best of creating the opportunities. These will continue to give us options to grow the distribution and add value, we believe, for decades to come. Before I hand over to Michelle, I'd like to highlight an automated truck trial that we conducted on CityLink late last year. I don't know if some of you saw this, but actually for us, this is again, and for infrastructure nerds, this is a pretty big deal. The trial was the first of its kind in Australia. This is gonna help us prepare for the ways roads and on-road technology will be utilized. This will have the potential to increase our asset utilization and significantly improve safety and community impacts over the next decade. The trial also builds on our experience of running other trials of connected and automated vehicles in all of our Australian cities. By just showing you the picture it's hard to explain. We're gonna try this again. We're gonna do a short video to show the truck in action. As you can see from that video, it's a very exciting project for us and we think for the trucking community. It highlights how our work with technology partners is keeping us, we believe, at the cutting edge of some of the road transport technology and better utilization of our assets. With that, I will now hand over to Michelle to run through the financials. Thanks, Scott, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be here. As Scott just outlined, a combination of strong traffic performance, embedded inflation-linked toll escalations, and a well-managed balance sheet showed the strength of our business model and provided great outcomes across the board. You can see some of the key metrics here on slide 22. Traffic of 2.4 million average trips per day for the half was the highest on record as our urban assets continued to help people move around the cities in our core markets. This, combined with inflation benefits, increased proportional toll revenue by 43%. Proportional EBITDA grew by 54% as margins expanded nearly six percentage points. Funding costs were stable despite higher interest rates, and the strength of our balance sheet also continues to provide flexibility for near-term growth opportunities. All of this supported the board's decision to lift our FY 2023 distribution guidance to AUD 0.57 per security. I'll now take you through some of the detail. Starting with the 84% increase in free cash on slide 23. Record EBITDA and well-managed funding costs underpinned AUD 845 million in underlying free cash for the half. Our first-half distribution of AUD 0.265 per security was 104% covered by underlying free cash. You can see strong free cash generation coming through both our fully owned assets in Melbourne and Sydney and from our joint ventures, where the investment that we've made over time is coming through in the form of record distributions back to the business, excluding capital releases. With stable funding costs, most of the EBITDA uplift across our markets went straight to free cash. In other words, a 35% increase in traffic translated into an 84% increase in free cash, given inflation benefits, 72% EBITDA margins, and stable funding costs. If you now move to slide 24, this shows in a bit more detail how strong revenue growth led to the 54% increase in EBITDA of AUD 1.2 billion. Like for like toll revenue was up AUD 437 million. Around 80% of revenue growth across the group was due to higher traffic on our roads. We also had the benefit of higher inflation, which has started to come through. This forms a new revenue base for future years. Toll escalations can also lag inflation, and so recently announced inflation is still to flow through on a number of assets. Costs for the half were higher as we spoke about at the full year, due to our new assets, higher traffic, and our continued investment in our business. I'll cover this in more detail on the next slide. Higher revenue more than offset these additional costs, and our EBITDA margin increased to 71.8%, moving towards more normal levels. If I take us now to cost details on slide 25. Volume-related costs were higher as traffic on our roads and our proportional ownership in WestConnex increased. These costs are more than offset by the additional revenue we received. The numbers you can see on the slide are H1 to H1 and already include some cost increases that incurred in the H2 of last year. This half, we've also seen some inflationary impacts, including CPI-linked maintenance contracts, but these were also more than offset by additional revenue. We invested more in early-stage development spend, which we take to OpEx, but is ultimately included in the economics of new projects. For the full year, we still anticipate costs, cost growth to be higher than the 11% cost growth we had in FY 2022. Full-year costs will partially depend on decisions we make regarding our strategic growth projects. If I step back and consider costs overall, this has been a period of considered investment as we set up the business for continued success. However, we remain focused on managing cost inflation and maximizing value from our investments. If you move to slide 26, I've included an outline of why we make this investment in strategic growth. Our historic investment in development has resulted in additional EBITDA of more than AUD 600 million and more than AUD 1.3 billion of additional free cash over the past 3 years. We've also maintained our weighted average concession life at an average of 28 years for the last decade, demonstrating the sustainability of our business model over time. While new assets and projects clearly have a cost, making this investment up front in high-quality assets in our core markets allows us to continue to grow the business and realize value over the long term. On average, we would normally spend around AUD 20 million-AUD 30 million per year in early-stage development OpEx, which we consider as part of the overall cost of the projects we deliver. As we flagged at the full year, we expect that this year the number will be higher, potentially up to around AUD 50 million. We're more than just a collection of concessions. We take a long-term view of the value of our business, and we make targeted investments that set us apart, help make us a partner of choice, and support long-term growth and sustainability. We've set out some examples here on slide 27. We invest in enhancing outcomes for our customers with 392,000 hours saved by our customers every workday and 97% of our customers choosing to interact with us through digital channels. We invest in road safety research with the results providing insights that help protect drivers on our roads and also on the wider networks. Serious road crashes on our roads have reduced by 12% over the past five years. Recent data-led improvements to lane design and signage on CityLink in Melbourne reduced rear-end crashes by 75%. Technology investments have also enabled real-time monitoring and response on our roads. Again, all setting up our business for long-term success. Moving now to funding on slide 28. Our balance sheet is in good shape. There are two key benefits of this. Firstly, we've set up the business for the higher interest rate environment. We've continued to manage the balance sheet with 97% hedging and an average maturity of around seven years. We've completed the majority of our FY 2023 refinancing. We've kept finance costs stable as the cost of new debt was largely the same as the cost of debt maturing. If you turn to the next slide, you can see here that most of our existing debt is not due to be refinanced until post FY 2026. Of course, we'll see the impact of rising rates over time, but decisions we've made to set up the balance sheet well mean that this will largely depend on rates at the time of refinancing. In the meantime, we'll see revenue benefits from inflation with almost all of the revenue base escalating each year. The second benefit of our strong balance sheet management is that we're well-placed to fund our committed projects. We've got AUD 3.6 billion in corporate liquidity today. We've previously flagged that we expect to receive around AUD 1.9 billion in capital releases between FY 2023 and FY 2025. This expectation has not changed, although the nature of these may change if more efficient, as we've noted on the slide. Including the proceeds from the A25 partnership agreement we announced today, this gives us, in total, AUD 5.9 billion in corporate liquidity overall. This compares to committed CapEx of AUD 3.4 billion, which covers the West Gate Tunnel project, the Fredericksburg Extension and Northern Extension projects in Virginia, and the M7 widening and M12 Interchange project recently announced in Sydney. Our balance sheet position and our through the cycle approach should help support distribution growth and has given us the flexibility to continue to invest in our business for the long term. Before I finish my presentation, I just want to point out that we've included some additional analyst notes in the back of the pack to assist with modeling of the impact of new assets, tax, and debt amortization over the coming years. These start on slide 34. Thank you all very much for your time today, and I'll now hand back to Scott. Thanks, Michelle. Well done. Just to recap on the outlook slide. It's again, it has been an excellent H1 and after coming through the last two or three years of COVID and seeing Transurban back on track and with the strong momentum for the group, it's obviously very pleasing for all of us and quite good to be reporting to you that result today. We've got record traffic, we've got record revenue right across the group, including all near all-time highs in our freight volumes. Again, seeing the benefits of inflation-linked toll escalations, including increases of more than 6% in some of our markets, and obviously further benefits to come. On the development front, we've achieved a number of significant milestones on our projects, and everything is on time and on budget at the moment, including opening our final section of WestConnex ahead of schedule. These results have allowed us to upgrade our distribution guidance to AUD 0.57 per security. Again, with the assets coming online, with the stuff we're delivering, with what's been done with COVID, this is all going to position us well and deliver on long-term distribution growth for our security holders. Thank you very much. Now, we'll open it up for questions. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on the 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. The first question comes from Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Question about the announcement about the A25 transaction. If you could give us some background to how the transaction came about. Also, you've called the transaction, the start of a partnership there. Can you just clarify, does that include kind of de-development preemptive rights in that region, kind of similar to your Transurban Chesapeake deal? Yes. We already have a partnership, obviously, with CDPQ in WestConnex. Really our discussion started on the back of WestConnex, and it's going so well there, with both of us and, like, what can we do more? How can we work together? Obviously, we're in Montreal. We spent some time in Montreal. We were talking about what we wanted to do in Montreal with the business. Obviously, CDPQ invest heavily in infrastructure in Montreal. We just started with some discussions two years ago, and then that came to fruition in the joint venture. Yes, hopefully there's some opportunities around the A25 or wider opportunities in Montreal. That would be the long-term, plan, as we've done in most of our markets and long-term partnerships with what has turned out to be, I think, one of the strengths of the Transurban Group. I'm very grateful to, you know, AustralianSuper, to CPPIB, to Tawreed Investments and to CDPQ, 'cause they've been great partners, in our journey and a big part of our success. Great. Thank you. Just turning to the M7 widening project. I just wanna make sure I understand the sources and uses of funds properly. You've got 100% project CapEx of AUD 1.7 billion, and then Transurban's share of that, AUD 600 million. Is there some government funding coming into the mix as well? Effectively, the North Western Roads Group is approximately AUD 1.2 billion, and then the government funding is roughly around AUD 500 million, which is kind of equivalent to roughly, it's not exact, but it's kind of equivalent to what the M12 interchange valuation is. That was just the arrangement that we came to. The concession extension is just a little bit longer than three years. Okay, great. That's clear. That's all for me. Thank you so much. Thanks, Rob. Thank you. Your next question comes from Ian Myles with Macquarie. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, guys. Can you just give some more color around your dividend, especially given you're returning, as you sort of flag AUD 0.02-AUD 0.03 of capital when you've got a pipeline of projects plus the EastLink, which may require new equity? Well, I'll do the high level, and Michelle can give you the details. I mean, there's other things happening as well. I mean, you see the FFO to debt looking good. We've got obviously some capital coming back from the A25, the revenue EBITDA is stronger, we've got some more room on the balance sheet. EastLink, yes, there's an opportunity. It may or may not occur. We did give that guidance when we did do WestConnex, that we would return the impacts of the dilution to those security holders over the next 2 years, which is roughly about AUD 0.02-0.03. We're just being consistent with what we told the market at the equity raising, we do believe we've got a lot of capacity on the balance sheet. Part of EastLink will depend on, well, one, does it happen? two, what do they actually sell? There's just a lot of variables. We wanted to be consistent and do what we told the shareholders we would do at the time of the WestConnex capital raise. I agree with that, Scott. It's being consistent with what we said. In terms of absolute dollars, it's pretty small in the whole scheme of things, and we've also got the additional proceeds from the A25 transaction as well, and corporate liquidity remains in very good shape. Yeah. Okay. On the cost performance, I, you know, there was a fair bit of grief last last half when you reported and people were upset about dividends, but more importantly costs. How do you think you're going there in a project across the group to actually sort of, rein in costs or bring them down? I'll let Michelle. I mean, we're working hard on it, you know, when all the market heads start screaming that you're doing a good job, we've got that uncomfortableness around the group, we're working hard on it. I think one thing I would say at a high level, and Michelle will talk about it's we tried to on slide 27. I think one of the things is, you know, there's a lot of investment on things that we wanted to show where the investment's going, whether it's customer, technology, community. There's a lot of things that make Transurban successful but don't necessarily just show up on the balance sheet. We were trying to show where some of those costs go. We're very conscious. We see the margin improvement as very important and continue to expand that margin. Michelle, who is managing that process, I'm sure will be happy to talk about costs. Yeah. Very consistent. About half of the cost uplift, if you go H1 to H1, was volume. Whether that's because of more traffic on the road or WestConnex. Then as we sort of spoke to through the presentation, we're being really thoughtful and disciplined about where we spend to make sure it is on either on, spending sensibly around our early stage development works, which helps de-risk projects and also sets them up well for the future. M7, M12's a really great example of that. Also some of those other investments we're making, because we don't see ourselves just as a collection of concessions and it's how we continue to set up our success for the long term. Ian, absolutely, we're focused on it, and Scott sort of smiled at me when you asked the question 'cause he knows how hard we're giving our ExCo, how hard a time we're giving our ExCo at the moment. Okay. Look, one final question. If you think about it from a Covid impact, do you think you can make the call that your earnings have sort of normalized from the Covid influence of this H1, or you still think there's more Covid to come out? Oh, look, I think it depends on the market. You know, Brisbane clearly was the least affected market. I would think most of Covid has come out of Brisbane. Clearly North America, you know, the 495 in Melbourne. You know, we've been watching cities around the world like Toronto, you'd have known, you know, the 407, Ian, and others. There's still those cities that had longer lockdown periods, more restrict lockdowns have just taken so much longer to recover, they still continue to recover. It's just been much slower. We still see Melbourne recovering. It's just a longer timing period. Sydney's just interesting for a couple of reasons. There's just a lot of, you know, obviously with WestConnex opening during COVID, parts of WestConnex, it's just really changing the city around quite a bit. We'll see how it settles down. NorthConnex is still performing very strongly, you know, in the M7. I think partly Sydney's doing well economically. It's gonna take Melbourne a bit longer to recover, but we think it will. We see that in the strong freight numbers. It's not inconsistent with places like Toronto and elsewhere overseas. It's just gonna take a bit longer. The only other thing I'd add, Scott, Okay. is that airports still have a bit more to go as well. They're still a little bit below pre-Covid. Yeah. We're seeing office, I think office occupancy, the latest numbers I saw, I get confused 'cause there's so many different ways they're calculated, but I think Sydney and Brisbane are around the 60% and Victoria is still around the low 50s. But it's, it's coming back. Okay. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Ian. Thank you. Your next question comes from Anthony Longo with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Well, good morning, Scott. Good morning, Michelle. Firstly, congratulations on the results and, you know, congratulations on the job, Scott, and no doubt in the next, the balance of the year as well. First thing I just wanted to ask was, Michelle did touch on the costs and the margin comments. Like how should we ultimately be thinking about where proportionally we'll take EBITDA margins now sit in the context of, you know, the results that you have delivered and, you know, some of those traffic trends that we are seeing? Thanks, Anthony, and thanks for your kind words. You know, if you looked where the margins are, and obviously we have a lot more tunnels now, which are more expensive from an operations point of view, but in our view, in trying to push all the team is continuing to increase the margins. We should be, to Ian's point earlier, we're still recovering in some of the COVID and some of our places like Melbourne and the investments that we're making in, like, our controlled operation center in Brisbane, which have cost us a bit over the last five years, but pleasingly, and all credit to the team, and hopefully, some of you are listening, we've now gone live with our last asset in Queensland, so all of our operations in Queensland are done out of one center, and the guys there have done a great job. I mean, that cost us money over the last five years, but hopefully efficiency of operations cost, a better outcome on the road will occur over the next period of time. The only complication with all that is when you do start, obviously the M7, M12, there's a little bit of disruption until the roads widen. Again, I'm pushing the team and continue to have margin expansion, surely there's opportunities continue to expand the margin. Yeah, we're pushing hard to sort of get back to that pre-COVID trend. I think that's how I'd describe it. Great. Yeah, that's great. Thank you. Second question I had was just with respect to freight. I mean, that looks like it's extremely resilient, and it really looks like it is underpinning that heavy vehicle traffic as well. In the context of, you know, potentially cost of living concerns and, you know, a tough consumer environment, I mean, how are you sort of thinking about, you know, that trend going forward? Is that something that you think is now a structural trend that will continue or? You know, there's always sensitivities, around the edges, you look at, I think Port of Melbourne's at a record level and continued to grow. I think, you know, all the ports on the East Coast are forecast to continue to grow, even with the sort of an economic, I guess people at the moment aren't forecasting recession for Australia, but even an economic slowdown. All we can point to is the history that we've seen in Australia or urban environments is that they do pretty well. Even as we said during the GFC, I think the ED was the only road that went backwards. The rest of the roads, I mean, they grew slower, but they didn't go backwards. So we're pretty comfortable that those underlying trends... I mean, there is a point, obviously, that compounding growth can only go so far 'cause if it's growth off a much bigger number, a smaller number off a much bigger number is a bigger number than a bigger number off a smaller number. There you go. So, we're confident that freight will continue to grow and that the trends, the macro trends are certainly in our favor. Nothing's changed, you know, other than the timing also by a year or two in population growth. You're still expecting, you know, the cities of Melbourne and Sydney to grow by 40%-50% in the next, you know, 15, 20 years. Those are massive growth numbers. Again, you know, I love the stat that 40% of Sydney is within five kilometers of WestConnex. That just tells you how important those roads are. We do expect that macro trend to continue, but clearly, off bigger numbers, the growth will be smaller. The only other thing on freight is there's still quite a lot of infrastructure spend as well. Yes, it's definitely been helped by the economy, but also by the amount of infrastructure that's going on in our cities as well. Okay, great. Look, final question from me is just in terms of the work from home and traffic trends, I mean, do the survey results that you have published in the presentation, does that give you know, a lot of confidence in terms of the stickiness and maybe some of the structural changes that we are seeing in terms of traffic, or is that something that you do expect will normalize to pre-COVID trends in time as well? I'm talking more the, you know, the preference for private transport versus public. I think the move back to public transport will occur over time as people get more comfortable with the situation and as congestion builds. As congestion builds, our traffic will increase on those roads that are more centered around the CBD. I think, again, remembering, it's hard because we come from a situation where most of us are commuting to the CBD when we go to the office. The majority of people don't work in the CBD. They work, you know, that's why we've seen such good traffic on the M7 or the M2, because these people are commuting to work or the places that they need to get to around the orbital. I think, you know, long term, there will be more of a trend back to the office. Will it go back like it was? No. I think there'll be more flexibility. We've always had agile working at Transurban. You know, we see a little bit different trends, you know, that the Mondays and the Fridays tend to be a bit weaker, but the weekends are stronger. Overall, we just see significantly more kilometers being driven, and these roads continue to add value. I guess we even see that again through the last 6 months, with the record traffic numbers. Great. Thanks, thanks, Scott. Thanks, Michelle, and, appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Owen Birrell with RBC. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, guys. Look, just firstly, Scott, thanks for your leadership of the business. I just wanted to say, you know, really appreciated your candor and engagement with the sell-side community over the years. Just, just on that point, you've set a very high hurdle for your replacement. Can you give us a feel for any sort of types of candidates that the board are looking for? Are there any internal candidates in the mix? Yeah. Owen Birrell, I mean, a lot of that's for the board. First of all, thank you for your kind words. I like how you said the open and candor and transparency before you then asked me a question you know I can't answer. Thank you for that. Look, I'm just very excited about the shape of Transurban. This year is going to be a great year. It's so nice to be reporting all these positivities and these things that we've been working on for five or six years, like WestConnex, operations consolidation, a lot of this stuff now coming to fruition. You see it starting to flow through the distributions. The next few years of Transurban are going to be fantastic. You know, at least I can say I leave the company in good shape for at least two years. I can hopefully when I walk out say it was okay when I left it. I'm sure it'll be okay with the next group as well. In relation to the process and one of the things we are trying to do and is be very transparent with the market. One of the things I didn't wanna do was just walk out the door, particularly when I'm talking to partners and we're looking at potential EastLink and all these things that, you know, we have time for orderly transition. There's a lot of relationships, there's a lot of important things going on, and I just wanted to be transparent when people are talking to me about it or talking to the executive team that we can do that on an orderly basis. There's some great internal successor candidates, but not only that, there's just a great depth of management within Transurban. There's gonna be no change in strategy. The board is very clear about that. No change about how we approach things. It's just time for, you know, it's time for a new CEO by the end of this year. They're gonna run a orderly process, as they've said, to look at external candidates, but there's a lot of great talent internally. I mean, that's all I can say about that until the board provides further updates. I appreciate your comments. Look, you know, I haven't said I appreciate, we've had a lot of fun. I've had a lot of fun and with the analysts over the years. You guys make it, you make it interesting and challenging at times. You know, I've really appreciated the relationships and the support and the time that you've given Transurban. It's been a great time. We'll have time to talk about that at some later point. I think that's all I can say at this point. That's great. Can I just ask another question? Just looking with this result there, the A25 sell-down. Your asset is You've only sold it at the book value after sort of four years of ownership. I just wanted to get what the Transurban view is on the bigger picture around that asset. I mean, is this Should we be looking at this as an exit strategy for what's been a difficult asset? You see the CDPQ bringing something material to the partnership and therefore we should expect something to come in the short to medium term? Yeah. Thanks, Owen. Look, we, the asset's performed according or ahead of our expectations, so we're pleased with how it's done. We wanna do more in Montreal. We think there's a great opportunity to do more to the A25 and in that market. You know, if you go to Montreal, you'll know how big CDPQ is in Montreal. So it's a behemoth in their home market who has a lot of in-depth knowledge and capability, about particularly their home market and a mandate to invest in their home market, as well. Supported by obviously, a lot of the citizens of Quebec and Montreal. You know, partly it's a strategic alignment and to hopefully again, with us, we'd rather have a smaller piece of a bigger pie than a big piece of a small pie. It's just about trying to create more and bigger opportunities longer term. I know, you know, I can remember in my 11 years, and some of you would have been around since then, that when I first came, there were comments about the U.S. and why there, and it seems really small and what are you doing? Then over time, we've been able to create, you know, one of the best Express Lanes networks in the world. The biggest one, I think, at this point in time, the longest one. Unfortunately, infrastructure takes time and takes investment in partnership stakeholders. Hopefully the next CEO will be the beneficiary of, our investment into the, A25, and they'll create a wonderful network in Montreal. One more question, if I may, just on EastLink. I think that's sort of an asset that historically we didn't really expect Transurban to look at. You've raised it here that, you know, you are looking at a potential portion of that asset if it does come to market. Transurban hasn't traditionally taken minority stakes in assets. Is that something you'd be comfortable doing with EastLink, or is it a more of a controlling operating position that you would prefer with that asset? Look, Owen, I don't think we can talk about the specifics. I think we've never been a passive stakeholder. I think that's really. We're not just gonna sit there and watch someone operate an asset or. Yeah. We've never been a passive stakeholder. Clearly in a Melbourne context, we think there's potential benefits for customers, stakeholders, long-term opportunities. You know, it's a good asset, but clearly with its ownership structure over the last decade or so, however long it's been, that, you know, they've had a different approach to a business than, say, Transurban, which keeps reinvesting in the business and creating opportunities. We're just set to see how it plays out at this point, Owen. That's why we just didn't want anybody to be surprised if our name was mentioned. A lot of times in M&A and other acquisitions, our name gets mentioned, and we don't even know it's on because we're not interested. I think our name got mentioned Chicago Skyway, and we didn't even pick up the IM. We just didn't want the market to be surprised that, yes, we would look at it if it were to fit our criteria. I don't think you could ever see us being passive. That's fantastic. Thanks, Scott. Cheers. Thank you. Your next question comes from Paul Butler with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead. Hi, Scott. Congratulations on a pretty outstanding 11 years. Thank you, Paul. I was gonna sort of ask you about the timing of the transition, because I think, you know, there's been a fair bit of speculation over the last few years, of, you know, when you might decide to pursue other projects or other challenges. Can you give us a bit of... In that regard, I'm sort of a little bit surprised that the board didn't have, you know, an announcement, of a replacement, given that, I guess, you know, your decision's probably not too much of a surprise. Can you give us any color on your discussion with the board on that? Oh, I think all I can say, Paul, is after going through two years of COVID and obviously having, you know, been able to lead a fantastic team and, you know, partners and all the stuff we've done together, it's been a great run. I clearly wanna leave when the company's in a position of strength and with momentum. In discussing with the board, you know, you always have discussions with the board over the last two years and other things. As I said, I think earlier, the main thing for me and for the board is we didn't wanna surprise partners. We didn't wanna surprise stakeholders, in relation to just me walking out the door and someone coming in. That whole thing, we have some great internal candidates, but the board wants to do the right thing by looking externally as well, which you know, is, I guess, best practice. That's up to them. If you conduct that process externally and it's not public, then, you know, then leaks occur and all kinds of nonsense can be played out. It's just the Transurban way. We're just being very transparent, very open. I've had a great time, a great run. I'm gonna miss a lot of the people, but it's time, you know, for me to do something else. It's time for Transurban's transition. I'm gonna leave, hopefully, the company in a great position for the next executive team, and we'll go about it in sort of best practice, and they can manage those relationships and stakeholders and all that over the next year. There's a few things I wanna do. You know, I wanna have a run at EastLink, if that's what they're gonna do. I wanna be there when the WestConnex Tunnel breaks through and a few other, a few other, very exciting things for the group. I'll be focused very hard on my energy on the next year on delivering on those things and delivering on the transition and taking your questions at the full year results, and hopefully you'll come up with some good ones. Yeah, there's nothing more to it than that, Paul. I think, you know, there's two ways to go, as you said. Some people just come out and say, "Hey, he's gone, and this is the new person." That's pretty tough when Transurban's built on relationships and again, infrastructure moves slowly. We decided to do it this way, and I think it's the right way. Okay, thanks. If I could ask another one. Just on EastLink, you know, if you combined a stake in that asset with your existing assets in Melbourne, it strikes me that's gonna create a whole load of other investment opportunities that you could, you know, do with a similar process, that you've done with the government with West Gate Tunnel. Is that sort of set you up for, you know, a large investment pipeline in the future? One step at a time, Paul. One step at a time. We'll look at EastLink first. Yep. I think that's all I can say. Okay. Just finally, the New South Wales government road projects that you talked about, the five projects for AUD 10 billion investment, are any of those gonna be tolled? Are there potential asset sales that would make sense from Transurban's perspective in the future? Yeah. Well, you know, you put me on the spot because we're running into an election in New South Wales, we don't normally like to talk about it. We have put on the slide on slide 18, where we've talked about the potential monetization of the Sydney Harbour Tunnel and Western Harbour Tunnel. Those are potentials. Longer term, the M6. The M6 has one tolling point that just connects right into WestConnex. It's not gonna be much of a toll, but it does have a toll. Then there's long-term, the Beaches Link. The Sydney Gateway project that connects WestConnex to the airport into the port. We actually are doing some of the management and operations for New South Wales government because it connects into WestConnex, so it's just easier for us to do the management of the connections there. There's a few that could be monetized over the year, depending on government over the years, depending on government policy. Only the Western Harbour Tunnel and the M6 at this point would have tolls on them. Okay. Thanks very much. Thank you. Your next question is from Andre Fromyhr from UBS. Please go ahead. Thanks. Good morning, Scott and Michelle. Just firstly, on the M7 widening project, potentially, would you be able to talk through some of the impacts that you expect to cash flows during the three-year construction period, and specifically about potential traffic disruption? Should we be comparing it, for example, with the M2 widening project from a few years ago? I'll let Michelle talk about the funding and the arrangements and the timing on that. In relation to the traffic impact, you'd be more compared to the M5 West. The M2, if you remember, if anyone's driven the M2, was a very narrow corridor. We kept having to shift traffic back and forth, and it was, it was a nightmare. We had the tunnel that we had to widen while it was under construction. I think you're more compared to the M5 West, which was in the 5% sort of range. Okay. as opposed to the M2, I think at times got down to, you know, 10%-15%. It's more the sort of the 5% range. Remembering the M7 was always meant to be widened and is set up a little bit easier. Michelle, you can talk about the funding. I agree. In terms of the construction, it's in that order, you get on opening, just because of the congestion that already exists there, you get a pretty good step up in traffic on opening, so it happens quite quickly. In terms of the funding, as Scott went through in the presentation, our equity contribution, the debt piece is about AUD 300 and the equity about AUD 300. The debt CapEx facility, we're pretty much done already, so that's sitting there inside the business, and the equity contribution will just come from our corporate liquidity. Just to follow up on that. Is the debt funding a subset of the capital releases that you already have flagged? I see there's a comment about- The debt funding? potentially reinvesting The debt funding is just new CapEx facilities that we've pretty much. Okay. already raised at the asset. The equity funding, yes, we were planning on a capital release from the M7, which we'll just effectively recycle into the project. There's also a comment in the pack around the M4 to M8, you know, now that it's open, that the cash flow impacts from it would be neutral until the Rozelle Interchange would be complete. Is that because of, you know, the operating costs coming online or potentially financing costs that were previously capitalized, you know, now being recognized? Or what's the offset there on the revenue benefit? It's mostly two things. There's some potentially some other impacts on the broader network. We haven't really seen them to date, but we're assuming that they come through over time. Yes, there are some costs, some maintenance and other costs. So- Yeah. It might be a little bit conservative 'cause we're not seeing any other impacts. The issue is that it is you got to remember that the traffic between the M4 and the M8 doesn't really, you know, I guess, meet its strides until Rozelle and the Western Harbour Tunnel are open. A lot of the traffic that's currently on the M5, or the M8 or the M4 will reach its toll cap when they get into the M4-M8 Link. Even though it has the traffic, its revenue contribution- Yes. is limited. It's limited somewhat because of the toll cap, but you have the operating costs. Once you open Rozelle and particularly the Western Harbour Tunnel, then you get a lot more traffic, that's using the western alternative to the CBD or using that side of the CBD. You'll really get a nice jump. Between the interest for that section that comes online and the operating cost, there's not a huge contribution until Rozelle and Western Harbour Tunnel. Pleasingly, the traffic has been. It's doing. a little bit better than Yeah. A bit better. A bit better. you know, we forecast. Okay, great. Just final one, should be a quick one. The AUD 0.02-AUD 0.03 per share that you flagged as potential capital releases included in the FY 2023 distribution. Can you just confirm that's the end of this period of time where the WestConnex capital releases would be used to fund distribution? Or is there potentially an impact as well in FY 2024? Well. Yeah. Go ahead, Michelle. The statement we made at the time of the acquisition was that it would be the first two years, and we I think it was AUD 0.027 per share last year, and we're talking approximately AUD 0.02-0.03 this year. That's the first two years. Beyond that, the board, you know, will have to make decisions based what's in front of them at the time. Yeah. For us, that's the end of it. It's the board's decision, what they do with. Sure. capital at the time and the position, that they see at the time, and again, investment. We're not gonna limit the board, but as far as forward guidance, that's the, that's the end. Yep. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Your next question comes from Anthony Moulder with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Good morning all. Well, congrats, Scott. Great 10 years. Question for Michelle, if I can start with the working capital benefit. I appreciate a lot of the increase in the guidance comes from the performance of the assets, but how does that working capital benefit in the H1 profile to the H2, please? Yeah. I wouldn't assume it's more one-off in nature. Most of it was when we spend money on some of our projects on behalf of our partners, sometimes we have arrangements where they pay us, and that's come through working capital. I would expect working capital in the H2 to be more normal, if you like. Okay. you mentioned in response to an earlier question that traffic upsides on once the M7 widening had been completed was pretty good. What does pretty good look like in a percentage term, please? North of, 10, maybe 10, 8%. Wow, okay. Thank you. Obviously looking at growth projects, EastLink also a little surprised to see EastLink in that mix, but how do we think about an allocation of capital, obviously a large pipeline of growth opportunities into the North American market. Is that still the focus? EastLink would be a nice to do, but the focus certainly remains for a lot more growth coming out of the North American market. How do you think growth profiles with EastLink? I think, Anthony, we've always been... You know, if it's in our core market, a little surprised I mean, a little surprised people are surprised at EastLink. The reason we haven't looked at EastLink before is it hasn't been for sale. And, you know, there, obviously, there's things we could do if EastLink was part of Transurban that would, we think, add a lot of value long term to security holders. It just, it just hasn't been for sale. We didn't think it would ever go for sale. I think a couple of times people have tried things, but, and they may not put anything up now. I'm not sure. Obviously we know more about this market than almost any place else in the world. We think we're set up and, you know, it provides significant cash and again, create more longer term opportunities. As far as development's been and where we go, you know, we just have the criteria around fitting our strategy, having the resources, having competitive advantages, and then being able to fund it. As long as it meets our strategy, is in our core markets, you know, we'll consider the opportunities, and we have a lot of opportunities. Again, it takes a long time for them to play out. A lot of times we don't pick the timing because government decides when they're gonna do these things. We don't specifically say, "Well, it's just here or it's just there," or we put a focus on this. If it meets our strategy and our criteria, we think it's good value for our shareholders, then we'll have a go. It's not that we're prioritizing one over the other. Again, always trying to balance short-term distribution growth and long-term value. The U.S. has been creating long-term value. Something like EastLink and some of the other stuff is short-term distribution growth, where their situation is. We'll assess it within that portfolio and be disciplined. You know, one of the things I'm really pleased about is that, you know, essentially every one of the acquisitions that we've undertaken and developments we've done, you know, has performed in line or better than forecast since I've been here, and I'm really pleased the team's been disciplined that whole time, and I don't see that changing in the future either. Understood. Lastly, if I could, the New South Wales toll reform, what are the key aspects that you're pushing for? Related to that, have you had any discussions with the New South Wales Labor Party about what their view on toll reform looks like for New South Wales? Yeah. The New South Wales Labor Party was part of the tolling inquiry, in the upper house in New South Wales, and I think there was a lot of discussions and a lot of options and other things put forward. We have to wait till after the election to see what or if they want to pursue anything or whoever's in government, obviously is the most important thing. I think both parties have talked about doing, some form of substantial toll reform. You know, it's really up to a matter, for policy. I think both sides of government, if I go to the tolling inquiry, have talked about things like, you know, distance-based tolling and potentially tolling caps, very similar to WestConnex or whatever. You know, it's really, it's up to government to set the policy. We're happy to provide ideas around efficiency or fairness or equity or whatever it may be around the network and how to make the network perform better. That being said, and you would've seen the slide in our presentation, you know, that we've got a lot of partners that we have to deal with. They've got their own assets that would be a part of that. It's not going to be a simple fix, but something we're certainly up for and we think it would make a lot of sense for not only our security holders long term, but customers and the efficiency of the network. Actually pretty excited about hopefully kicking that off after the next election and working with the government on some options there. Thank you. Thanks, Anthony. Thank you. Your next question comes from Nathan Lead with Morgans. Please go ahead. Hi, Scott and Michelle. Thanks for your presentation. Just three questions from me, if you don't mind. First up, I suppose as I was thinking about the DPS guidance for FY 2023 being struck about the same time as the free cash flow long-term incentive targets. We've had the upgrade to the distribution guidance. I mean, how are you guys sort of viewing that LTI? Is that no longer a stretch? It's more of a base or low case? Can you just sort of put a bit of context around that? Oh, look, yeah, forecasting four years for free cash flow in the current environment, we think it's a stretch and it's an, it's something we'll work hard to do. If the business keeps performing like this and we keep delivering like this, can we make it? Absolutely. You know, setting those targets one year ago when, you know, I mean, we had free cash flow targets for the three years prior, which the last two years haven't, have been zero. You never know what's out there. You know, we're very focused as an executive team on making those targets and doing better. I think that's all I can say. Four years is a long time, unfortunately. Yep, absolutely. Okay. Second question, I suppose, is on the A25 sell down. AUD 350 million for the 50%. 100% is, you know, AUD 700 million. My understanding is there's a CAD 650 million bond at the corporate level in CAD that hasn't been swapped back into AUD. It's my way of thinking, sort of allocated against that asset. Is it kind of fair to say that from a look-through value there's really not much coming through to Transurban? Well, Go ahead, Michelle. Yeah. The way I'd describe it is over the last few years, we have received cash, free cash from the business, and if you adjust for that, and the concession length, you're pretty much back at what we paid for it. Some of the debt is at the asset level and some is more at the corporate level, which we've just refinanced actually. Yeah. Can you pay down that bond? I mean, it's a bond, right? You can't actually use the proceeds to get rid of it. We hedge it, though. Yeah. Okay. Final question for me is sort of similar to a previous question about the M4M8, but, you know, on that slide 34 about the free cash flow considerations from new assets. Can you just talk through what's going on there with the West Gate Tunnel project? Is that literally just a step up in finance costs going from being capitalized to expensing, basically absorbing the EBITDA from the asset? You've got to remember that with the West Gate Tunnel, a lot of the values come through CityLink as well. The escalation. The escalation. In terms of incremental value, yes, you've got the revenue, the new revenue, but we've also got the capitalized funding costs. The operating costs. The operating costs. Yeah. Well, hopefully we'll do better. Yeah. Hopefully we'll do better. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, congratulations, Scott, for a fantastic career there at Transurban. Best of luck in your next phase of your career. Thanks. Thanks, Nathan. I appreciate all the support. Just for people on the line, unfortunately, we can probably take maybe two more questions, then we have to get on with our day. I apologize if we can't get to everyone, but we can follow up later with those people who didn't get through. We might take 2 more questions. Thank you. Your next question comes from Justin Barratt with CLSA. Please go ahead. Hi, Scott. congratulations on your contribution to Transurban. just in relation to that, I wanted to get from your perspective, what are the most important couple of things for the new incoming CEO to focus on from a Transurban perspective over the next couple of years? Yeah. That's a good question, and probably more a question for the board because they're gonna pick the new CEO, you know. I can't give much color in that. The board, you know, we've talked about it. There's no change of strategy. Just continuing to build the partnerships, the relationships, within the group. I think just being, you know, just staying on strategy and remaining focused when it sometimes can obviously be a very volatile and very noisy market, particularly when you deal with the listed sector, and then just having a passion for infrastructure, which everyone at Transurban has. I think that's more of a question now for the board. I think I'll have to leave it at there. The only other thing is they have to take my calls every once in a while just to let me know how it's going. No worries. Thanks for that. Just another pretty easy one. I think at the FY 2022 result, you said that you expected about AUD 0.10 per share of capital releases in FY 2023. I just wanted to confirm that that was still the case. Yeah, we'll talk about that. Well, you wanna talk about that. No, go ahead, Michelle. We haven't done any really of any material note in the H1. We are still intending for about that in the H2. How and where we structure it, we're just working through the most efficient way to do that. You know, what I would say is, because we're sitting on so much corporate liquidity at the moment, there's always a balance between the carrying cost of the extra liquidity until you need it versus the certainty of that. We work through that. That was the original plan. It may still come through by June, but because of the extra liquidity, because the business is doing well and the timing of our spend, it may be better to wait until the Q1 of the next year. We'll just work through that. That money's still there, the AUD 1.9 billion is still there. It's just the exact timing of when we bring it through might be pushed back, but we're still working through that. Okay. Maybe I can just do one more then. Just based on the fact that you sort of talked about how good your liquidity situation is, and I guess in terms of A25, the asset starting to perform a bit better, and I think previous analysts have said that the sale value is consistent with your book value. Why you look to sell an interest in the A25 now? It's about creating opportunities for the future. Same with Transurban Chesapeake to get partners in to help us more with the capital there in the U.S. business because of the opportunities we see for growth. In relation to A25, it's about having the right partner to help us cement the opportunities for the future there in Montreal, rather than just being there with one asset. Part of that was that, you know, to be honest, four years, five years ago, when we first bid on WestConnex, CDPQ was our competitor. For many years, CDPQ has been our competitor. We're lucky enough that in the second WestConnex transaction, they've become our partner now. You know, we had a great relationship in WestConnex, and again, that led to the discussions and opportunities and what we wanna do. It's always good to turn a competitor into a partner, and we're very pleased with that outcome. It's a combination of creating more opportunities and then getting close to CDPQ through the WestConnex transaction. Great. Thanks for your time. Thank you. We can take one more question, and, then we'll just have to follow up later. Apologies if we don't get to you. Okay. Now I'll hand back to Mr. Charlton for some closing remarks. All right, we will take one more question. Is there one more question? Oh, yep. Can we take one more question, operator? Sorry. I promised it. I wanna deliver. Yeah, sure. Your next question comes from Rob Koh from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Oh, he's come back around. Well done, Rob. Thanks for letting me back. I think a lot of people have said nice things about you, Scott, and now I feel like a tool for saying it on the second chance. You know, obviously we congratulate you as well. I guess my question just goes to New South Wales toll rebates, and there's been a extra evolution on that. I guess are you able to give us any sense of what the traffic impact is of those toll rebates and then perhaps more meaningfully, how you then evolve that policy going forward? Yeah, look, obviously the toll rebate policy or the rego relief, is a policy for government. Look, you know, it, it has to have an impact. Obviously, the M5 cashback policy on the M5 has an impact. It's probably not as big as people think when we, when we do the numbers and stuff, but it does have an impact. Again, a matter for government. As we said in our slide there in relation to New South Wales, you know, we do have all the concessions at some point, there is some up, potential upside sharing with the government. You know, if any of those were to significantly impact our revenue, then we would obviously share that with the government. Clearly, during COVID, nobody was there to share the downside with us, but that's the risk we take, and we accept that. So there is some impact, Rob, but again, a matter for government. You know, it's interesting and, you know, speaking with the New South Wales Premier and when we did the opening of M4-M8, you know, just reminding everyone, and it's a choice that governments make and policy makes and the bureaucrats make that, you know, I think, you know, there are subsidies for tolls for certain parts of the population, particularly M5 and rego relief. You know, the New South Wales government subsidizes public transport by over AUD 6 billion. There's electricity subsidies. There's housing subsidies. Again, that's all a matter for government. We're happy to give our ideas on how to make the network more efficient. Sometimes, you know, the policy might differ from what we think is the best to deliver for the outcome, but that's a matter for government and happy to work with them and give them ideas. It really doesn't have probably as big as an impact as you would think. People choose to use the roads for various reasons. It's obviously helpful for the cost of living, but I don't think it changes the outcome much. Rob, on your opening, thank you very much. We've had lots of discussions, and I know we will. I appreciate you not calling me Mr. Charlton anymore. Took a long time for you just to call me Scott. I appreciate that, Rob. All right. Okay. Thank you so much. Have a good one. All right. Thanks, everyone. I'll just wrap it up there. Thank you for your time. Look forward to seeing everyone. Like I said, I'm gonna be around for the next year. Lots of things to deliver. Very exciting time for Transurban Group. Lots of momentum, and we look forward to catching up with you shortly. Thanks. Thank you. That does conclude our conference call today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.