Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Graeme Barclay, and I'm the Chairman of your company. It is my great pleasure, on behalf of the Uniti Group Board of Directors, to welcome our shareholders, directors, executives, employees, and guests present today, both in person and those participating through the webcast, to the Uniti Group Limited 2021 Annual General Meeting. I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet today, being the Wallumedegal people, and pay my and our respects to their elders, including those past, present, and emerging. Before formally opening the meeting, there are a few housekeeping matters I would like to address. Unfortunately, again, due to COVID and uncertainty over the related healthcare rules, and the number of people that could attend our AGM, we made an early decision to host the meeting in a hybrid form with a limited number of attendees physically present here at our Gladesville office, and also shareholders are able to attend virtually via webcast. Fortunately, we were able to accommodate all shareholders who indicated an interest in attending the meeting in person. We sincerely hope that next year we will be able to host a fully face-to-face meeting, with as many of our shareholders who wish to attend as possible. For those present, I would ask you to ensure that all mobile phones are switched off or to silent. In the interest of safety, I would also like to familiarize you with the emergency evacuation procedures for the unlikely event of an emergency. In the event of an emergency, you will hear an evacuation alarm. Please calmly follow the instructions of the wardens as we exit the building. In order to ensure shareholders have the opportunity to participate in this AGM, we invited questions to be submitted via email prior to the meeting. The webcast platform we have implemented for this meeting also enables you to submit questions during the meeting online or via the audio dial-in if you are attending the meeting online. We will also provide the opportunity for questions to be asked from those attending in person at relevant points during the meeting. Instructions for the process to ask a question are on your webcast screen. I can advise at this time, no questions were submitted prior to the meeting in relation to any of the resolutions. There are a number of questions in relation to the business, which we will respond to after my address, together with any questions which are received during the course of the meeting. In addition, at the appropriate time during the proceedings, I will review and respond to, or allocate to the appropriate person any questions received during the meeting via the webcast platform in relation to each item of business. Please note that questions may be moderated or where there are a number of questions on a similar topic, they may be amalgamated. I confirm we have a quorum present, and so I declare the Uniti Group Limited Annual General Meeting for 2021 open. The notice of meeting was distributed to shareholders on the 22nd of October this year, and with your consent, I propose to take the notice as read. I would like to start by introducing our office holders who are in attendance with me here in Sydney. Michael Simmons, our Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Vaughan Bourne, Executive Director. Ashe-lee Jegathesan, Chief Corporate Services Officer and Company Secretary, and Darryl Inns, our CFO. In virtual attendance from Adelaide, Melbourne, and Brisbane today we have Kathryn Gramp, Non-Executive Director. John Lindsay, Non-Executive Director. Geoff Aldridge, Chief Infrastructure Networks and Technology. Julia Walsh, Chief Customer Officer. Kurt Magner, Chief Consumer and Small Business, and Jordan Grives, Strategic Business Advisor to the Board and Executive. Our Auditor, Chris Biermann from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is also in virtual attendance. Before we commence, I will outline in more detail the voting procedure at today's meeting. In order to ensure we capture the votes from all shareholders, I will declare a poll on all items of business. Each poll will be opened individually following the discussion on each item. Each resolution will be detailed on the screen, which will also show the proxy position with respect to that resolution, and I will declare the manner in which I intend to vote undirected proxies. When you registered your attendance this morning, if you are a shareholder and/or a proxy holder entitled to vote who has not already voted and who wishes to do so, you will have received either a voting card or a login ID and password for you to lodge your vote. If you've already submitted your vote, you will not receive either of those. For each item of business, I will open the floor for discussion prior to voting. After the questions are answered, I will put the motion for that item to the meeting and ask you to submit your votes in relation to that item. I appoint Nakul Joglekar from Boardroom Services Pty Limited to be the Returning Officer in regards to the poll. Based on the votes that have been cast prior to this meeting, we are in a position to declare the likely outcome of each resolution at this meeting. Following the meeting, later in the day, we will lodge the results of the poll with the ASX. Turning to the chair, chairman's address. When I addressed our shareholders at the AGM last year, we had just secured court approval for the acquisition of Opticomm by scheme of arrangement. That acquisition was to become effective the very next day. This milestone marked Uniti becoming the largest non-government fiber to the premises operator and triggered the steps required to integrate our then existing wholesale and infrastructure business with Opticomm by combining their assets to become the largest private owner of fiber infrastructure in the greenfield residential fiber to the premises FTTP market. Second only to the government-owned national broadband network, with Opticomm bringing approximately 118,000 active services and more than a further 215,000 premises either under construction or contracted to be built at that time. By combining their capabilities to transform your company to a formidable competitor, able to compete for and secure a growing percentage of the available market for new greenfield residential FTTP opportunities, support expansion into new adjacent property markets other than residential housing, and create a platform to embrace value-added technologies able to be deployed across the FTTP networks, and to further diversify earnings for shareholders. I'm pleased to say that the integration of Opticomm as a cornerstone foundation for Uniti's wholesale and infrastructure business, which we have now renamed Wholesale, Enterprise and Infrastructure, or WEI, is now complete. In December 2020, we announced and completed the acquisition of Telstra's Velocity Estates and South Brisbane Exchange, better known as the Velocity assets, for a purchase consideration of AUD 140 million, a significant portion of which we negotiated as deferred consideration, coupled with a commitment that Telstra become a retail service provider across our own fiber network, including Velocity. Our engineering and operational teams are well advanced with planning for the Velocity network and customer equipment upgrade, which will benefit approximately 50,000 existing active customers with super fast broadband connectivity, with the opportunity to convert the remainder of the currently 65,000 connected premises to active premises. We expect Telstra to be connected as an RSP in April 2022. We will commence the migration of current services, the upgrade of Velocity network to 10 GB capacity, and marketing to unconnected premises in May 2022. Throughout this calendar year of 2021, we've been focused solely on organic growth. At the start of 2021, we announced we'd completed the acquisition of businesses we had identified as part of a well-defined strategy to build a significant FTTP business with the capability to challenge NBN. Part of that strategy was also the acquisition of RSP businesses, which could promote connectivity on the owned FTTP networks following the passage of the Telco Law Reform, implementing regulatory changes enabling functional separation. At this time, we moved from a business building scale, strategic advantage and shareholder returns through acquisition to delivering on the opportunities and the potential those acquisitions brought to Uniti Group through integration and accelerated organic growth. We announced mergers and acquisitions were unlikely as we focused on organic growth. What this meant was that our executive team could focus on the integration of the businesses we had acquired, planning the Velocity upgrade project, and on building out the capability to deliver profitable, expanding and sustainable organic growth, and to provide our end users with the speed and bandwidth they need now and in the future. It was also about competing aggressively in the FTTP market and growing our share of the contracted future FTTP networks to be built, principally against our major greenfield competitor, NBN. I'm pleased to report that despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, causing lockdowns and some construction interruptions at various times, the team at Uniti and in Uniti's extended partner and supplier network have continued to deliver excellent outcomes, and we are grateful for all their efforts and achievements. Essential to this transition to organic growth was building a united Uniti Group underpinned by a well-defined and widely understood corporate strategy of win, build, fill. Win in market, grow market share, transition to a strong customer-focused culture. Build more of the highly profitable and strongly cash generative FTTP infrastructure, which is now our core competency. Fill, the networks and infrastructure we build with customers that are receiving a great experience. I can confirm that this has occurred, and today we are Uniti Group, a group of one. That said, the job is not done. We are continuing to focus on being better at winning, building, and filling. In the second half of the FY 2021 year and the first four months of FY 2022, as we announced last week, Uniti continued to grow consistently, demonstrating the ability to deliver organic growth from the platform we have built, demonstrating the strong ongoing demand for services delivered on owned FTTP networks, demonstrating the ability to grow the contracted order book to build future FTTP networks that will deliver long-term compounding annuity earnings growth, and demonstrating the ability to integrate acquired businesses across all segments to support the organic growth achieved. A critical measure of Uniti's success in market and an indicator of locked-in long-term growth in revenues, earnings, and cash flow is the scale of and growth rate in our contracted FTTP order book. In FY 2022 year to date, Uniti has continued to secure new business in its core greenfield FTTP market, in line with the run rate achieved in the prior six-month period. We are now winning the right to build future networks across a broader spectrum of customers and are continuing to add to our order book at a significantly faster rate than we are moving premises into construction from the order book. Our primary focus today is on the wholesale enterprise and infrastructure business. That's appropriate because it contributes some 84% of the group's EBITDA, and this proportion continues to grow steadily as we deploy our contracted order book to become active premises. However, I do want to highlight our other businesses for the important contribution they make to our group. Our consumer and small business or C&SB unit, which we operate on a functionally separated basis from the wholesale infrastructure unit, is the Uniti retailer that sells retail services over our own high-speed fiber networks, NBN networks and fixed wireless networks. Our customer acquisition activities in C&SB are centered on our Uniti-owned infrastructure. We see this as an opportunity to drive an overall increase in the utilization of our own networks, over and above that delivered by our RSP network more broadly, and therefore generate greater profitability from our invested capital for our shareholders. As we expand our FTTP infrastructure into adjacent property markets, and develop products and services suited to the adjacent market end users who will be businesses and enterprises, this business unit will become a greater earnings contributor. In those markets and for those customers, our Uniti re-retailer does not need to be functionally separated, providing the opportunity to maximize returns to shareholders as we expand our infrastructure footprint. Our communications platform as a service or CPaaS business has continued to deliver annuity revenues and high cash conversion, with 99% of EBITDA in FY 2021 being free cash flow, which has continued to be what CPaaS has achieved in the first four months of FY 2022. The high cash yield from this business was an important contributor to the group's ability to secure acquisition debt facilities for the Opticomm and Velocity transactions. The CPaaS businesses are now fully integrated, realizing expected acquisition synergies. At the start of FY 2022, we commenced and are now nearly complete in a platform upgrade which vastly expands the CPaaS product capability, but more importantly, expands the addressable market for the services the platform can provide. Our CPaaS business has a small market share competing against a small number of major market participants, and we are now positioned to compete more effectively, which augurs well for good organic growth. This brings me to our group cash generation metrics, which continue to perform strongly, and for me, are a highlight of our business, with growth capital expenditure being fully funded and still generating significant surplus cash. Combined in FY 2021, the Uniti businesses delivered 68% of underlying EBITDA as operating free cash flow, having fully funded growth and maintenance capital expenditure. The generation of surplus cash by the business continues year- to- date in FY 2022, and has enabled us to delever quickly with net debt at the end of October standing at AUD 183 million, a net leverage ratio of 1.3 x the current consensus forecast for FY 2022 underlying EBITDA of AUD 144.5 million. It is this operating cash conversion ratio combined with the ongoing growth in Uniti's revenue, profitability, and in the long-term contracted or in construction FTTP order book that has provided your board with a conviction to announce a share buyback over the next 12 months of up to a maximum 10% of issued shares, subject to share prices, market conditions, and importantly, whether we identify other more accretive opportunities to deploy our capital. As we said in our FY 2021 annual report and confirmed in last week's operational update, while we have been and continue to be focused on organic growth and winning in market, we will consider acquisitions of selected assets or businesses that are aligned with Uniti's strategy of expanding and activating its national footprint of super-fast broadband networks in both our existing core greenfield residential FTTP market and in identified complementary adjacent markets. Also, as confirmed in last week's announcement, the consolidated group has performed above its internal budget for group revenue underlying EBITDA, free cash flow, and net leverage in the first four months of this financial year to 31 October 2021. Accordingly, we've confirmed that we expect to meet or exceed the full- year underlying EBITDA market consensus of AUD 144.5 million for FY 2022. This represents an increase of 54% over the same metric achieved in the FY 2021 year. We are therefore very happy with the start that we have made to FY 2022. Our cash generation at above 60% has been maintained, notwithstanding increases in growth capital expenditure to support increases in new network construction. The rate at which we are growing our long-term contracted FTTP order book indicates that we are continuing to increase market share. There are encouraging economic indicators in the markets we operate in as Australia emerges from COVID-19. In particular, property vacancy rates, property construction, and supply chain improvements, which bodes well for the remainder of FY 2022. There are also minimal regulatory issues on the horizon, and we forecast relative stability in wholesale and retail prices at this time, with a general trend towards higher speed tiers, providing a positive impact for ARPU. The networks which we build today, principally FTTP access networks and fiber backhaul, are future-proofed, capable of meeting long-term bandwidth speed demands through fiber's near-infinite capacity, and does not have the speed limitations, congestion, or environmental concerns or the continual capital expenditure demands which a wireless network faces. What is perhaps most compelling for Uniti is our medium and longer term future beyond FY 2022. As I've mentioned, we have significant contracted business to build more FTTP connections, and we have continued to grow this order book this year in line with the record run rate of the second half of FY 2021. As we deploy connectivity to these contracted premises, Uniti will materially grow earnings and cash generation at a better rate than currently because of operating leverage. A number of FTTP commitments we have secured with property developers are exclusive, and some extending beyond 10 years. Our executive and business development teams have been expanded. And continue to be very active in building long-term strategic partnering relationships with the developer community, as we continue to focus on organic growth and in turn expect to further grow our contracted FTTP order book. Our platform and expanded developer relationships will enable us to take our residential Greenfields FTTP network business model into adjacent property markets such as commercial, office, independent living, build-to-rent, industrial, as well as into selected brownfield markets. We already have the key personnel to implement this scalable expansion with minimal incremental operating costs. Our objective is increased and diversified revenue and earnings from these adjacent markets, with metrics similar to what we currently achieve in the residential greenfield sector. To summarize all of that, your company is in the enviable position of being able to deliver long-term compounding, self-funded annuity earnings growth, converting to a high proportion of free cash flow for the foreseeable future. Turning to governance-related matters, I'd like to make a few observations. Uniti is a company that has been transformed from a fledgling loss-making entity at IPO in FY 2019 to a fast-growing, profitable digital infrastructure company with a market capitalization of approximately AUD 3 billion and inclusion in the S&P/ASX 200 in June 2021. Remuneration remains a hot topic in Australia and overseas, whether shareholder or regulatory-driven. At last year's AGM, I acknowledged that our remuneration structure and policy needed some development, to reflect the tremendous change in scale and circumstances that has been achieved at Uniti Group in less than three years. I stated we would begin this work in FY 2021, and we have done so. In our FY 2021 remuneration report, we set out the result of this work by laying out a new remuneration structure for our executive team, taking the form of a traditional STI and three-year LTI scheme with performance measures for STI focused on underlying EBITDA, operating free cash flow, growth in the number of secured premises, and growth in the number of activated premises, an LTI focused on relative total shareholder return and EPS growth metrics. These metrics were carefully and deliberately selected, to motivate the executive team to deliver great outcomes for shareholders. We remain committed to ensuring that our remuneration philosophy and framework is fit for purpose in enabling us to attract, incentivize, and retain competent and capable staff, executives, and board members through competitive and attractive rewards for delivering exceptional outcomes. We have a philosophy to pay fixed remuneration below market rate and reward outperformance with share-based incentives, with vesting periods that deliver alignment and retention benefits for shareholders. We intend to retain the principle that our executives that contribute above and beyond outcomes will share in the wealth created for shareholders. We will, of course, take on board feedback from our shareholders and make adjustments, as we continue to evolve our remuneration structure in future years. The other area that we acknowledge that we need to do further work is our environmental and sustainability initiatives and targets. Our rapid ascension to the ASX 200 is the reason, and not an excuse, for this area not having received sufficient attention in our journey to date. We therefore consider our FY 2021 sustainability report to be a starting point for Uniti, and this will need to be developed into a more comprehensive approach to some of the key issues, such as network resiliency, waste management, energy consumption, workplace health and safety, social and community contributions and obligations as we look to refine our approach to these areas for Uniti in FY 2022 and FY 2023. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank you, our shareholders, for your outstanding support over the past year, particularly during our capital raisings in support of our acquisition strategy and at general meetings. We know this is not a given, and we do appreciate your support. I mentioned the Uniti employees earlier for their delivery above expectations in the context of the COVID challenges and generally across the past 12 months. On behalf of the board, I wish to again thank them for their passion and professionalism, and all that they achieved during calendar 2021. I also thank my fellow directors and our executive team for their hard work, strategic approach, dedication, and commitment throughout the year. In particular, I acknowledge the tremendous leadership throughout the Opticomm and Velocity acquisitions, driving our organic growth execution, building human and technical capability, dealing with COVID and all aspects of day-to-day operations from our CEO and MD, Mick Simmons, who has been instrumental to what Uniti achieved in FY 2021 and the first few months of FY 2022. Mick and I are open to taking questions on the business at this point. As we move into the more formal part of the proceedings, I will take questions that relate to each resolution at the appropriate time. There have been, as I mentioned, three questions submitted prior to the meeting, which I'll deal with first, and then we'll open the questions to those that have submitted questions through the webcast. Question number one, and this is for Mick. On a number of occasions, the company has mentioned adjacent markets and technologies. Can you elaborate on what this means? Yes. Good morning, everybody. We had focused historically through the acquisitions and organically through CY 2021 on residential Greenfields housing. What’s happening is we are improving our win rate every month. We're building substantial relationships with property developers and investors in the property sector. Those investors operate across multiple asset classes, particularly as you get you build stronger relationships with the bigger developers. That's opening up an opportunity for us to take the business model we have today into those adjacent asset classes. Those relationships are enabling that to occur. What we see is an opportunity to transition our Greenfields residential business model, to the alternative property asset classes such as commercial, industrial, office, and independent living. The emerging build-to-rent asset class is particularly appealing, especially as we see larger funds and investors attracted to long-term ownership. This is happening. You pick up the paper every day and there's someone else investing in build to rent. Our model is ideally suited in this property class. Because our model is not just providing an endpoint as part of a national broadband network. It's a really important point in competing with NBN. Every premise that NBN builds is an endpoint as part of 12 million other premises in Australia. We are a technology and infrastructure partner. We are in residential Greenfields, but this is even more compelling in these adjacent property asset classes. We're a partner for the long term, so we built the platform. Today, we have the platform to do this. This is what we see in adjacent markets. Diversification of our revenue and earnings, but with similar returns. It's a very similar business model. Investment in technology ideally suited to our core FTTP networks. I wanna emphasize, we see investment in two forms. There may be infrastructure ownership, but importantly, where we don't see that asset as being stranded in the future or disrupted. Or it may be a partner ecosystem that we can facilitate because we have the platform. We have the platform to support the technology that's deployed in these property precincts. That's to improve the amenity in property precincts we invest in and be a true partner of our property customers. What that means is we're securing for our shareholders the long run earnings, and cash flow our networks are capable of producing, and that's quite an exciting development, I think, for our company in the future. Importantly, it's happening today. We're pitching for business today. It's not a vision, it's not a strategy, and we have built the capability to do this. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, mate. Second question relates to integration. How is integration of all of your acquisitions progressing? As Graeme touched on, integration is now complete. It's not something we work on today or we talk about. Today, we're talking about investment. In the CPaaS business today, we operate on one OSS and BSS platform. Billing is integrated on one platform. The same CPaaS platform services all customers across all brands. As Graeme touched on, we are now upgrading that platform for growth, adding new features, and we are positioning it for growth. Likewise, in the consumer and small business, we now operate across one OSS and BSS platform. That platform's interconnected into all of the resold networks that we sell across, including our own FTTP networks on a functionally separated basis. We're on one platform, one billing system for all brands. The integration of our FTTP businesses and networks is also complete. The Huawei's been replaced in the core. Connected and active premises are predominantly on the same OSS BSS platform. We are ready to commence the migration of Velocity networks, as Graeme's touched on. We're ready to go. We're just waiting on Telstra. In our FTTP business, we're no longer focused on integration, but rather network enhancement to secure the long-term earnings. This is our Need for Speed project. The fiber networks we have have a wonderful quality of being very long-term. Some we see globally forecast earnings for 40 years on these similar networks with the similar returns we enjoy today. We have one enduring feature is a lot of our networks are not competitive. This long-term quality and its ability to meet future bandwidth speed demands with minimal maintenance CapEx, is a core feature of our business and the technology. That's why we invested in this technology. It's a wonderful thing. Near infinite speed, dedicated to the endpoint and not shared, not finite or subject to congestion. The majority of our networks is 10 GB enabled today, and the remainder is being upgraded, but importantly driven by demand. Speed, longevity with low maintenance CapEx and high earnings margins is what we have, and we're gonna continue to upgrade this network to enable it. Interestingly, our 10 Gb-enabled networks today is upgradeable to 25 GB with a software-only change. That's the capability of the network you, our shareholders, have invested in. This is the network we are bringing to Velocity, and this is our long-term Need for Speed project because we can. Today, as Graeme mentioned, we proudly promote ourselves as Uniti Group of One. Our wholesale customers are now becoming customers of our CPaaS platform. Our consumer and small business business is now selling across business premises on a vertically integrated basis 'cause our functional separation allows us to do, but it is also focused on our own network. We are well positioned now to grow into the future. As I mentioned, we have the platform to do so and markets to grow into. Good answer. Final one that we've received prior, then there's a couple that have popped up on the webcast. Still with this pre-question. Has the RBS levy started applying? The RBS levy kicked in first of January 2021. In our half- year, our earnings for H2 FY 2021, AUD 64.5 million EBITDA included the RBS levy. The consensus numbers that Graeme mentioned that we've stated, we don't have a concern with include an allowance for the RBS levy. It has kicked in and it's in our earnings today. Interestingly, I don't know if shareholders picked this up in the last week or two. There's been a debate emerge around the future of the RBS levy, and in particular, this has occurred in Parliament with a review of the regional communication or subsidies for regional communications. The debate's now lifted to the RBS levy extending across all technologies, not just fixed networks. The momentum is building for a review. That review, I anticipate, will provide shareholders in the future upside in earnings if it was to progress as the debate is indicating at this point in time. Okay. Upside in earnings. Thanks, Mick. Let's deal with the questions on the screen. First question is, congratulations for outstanding performance. Instead of giving priority to pay off debt first, any particular reason to go for the share buyback option? Yeah, I'll take that one. We have a business today that has high debt capacity, given our annuity earnings profile. We've analyzed the way that we could use or deploy the surplus cash that we're generating, and we believe that it's accretive for shareholders for us to undertake a buyback versus paying down debt. That's the principal reason that we are looking at and have announced a share buyback subject to, as I said, particular prices, share prices, market conditions, and whether or not we identify other accretive opportunities to deploy that capital to be more accretive for shareholders. The next question is, are there any plans to pursue international markets? Perhaps you can deal with that one, Mick. Not at this stage. In terms of M&A activity, maybe just to provide a bit of color on that when we called out no M&A activity at the start of this year. We have a wonderful business with fantastic earnings and great margins and cash flow. Other businesses that operate in our sector that may appear attractive don't necessarily have the returns that we have, and therefore we saw greater returns for shareholders in organic growth. Because of those margins and earnings that we can generate and the vast market we've got to grow in, both in Greenfields housing and now in the adjacent markets, the returns there are significant. The other businesses that may look attractive to expand don't necessarily come with the earnings and the cash generation that we have in this business, so it would really taint our business. However, importantly, we haven't ruled out asset acquisitions, domestically, or acquisitions that are core to our business that have the exact same competency as what we have today. They are alive. There are some assets that are attractive. So we're not ruling them out, but there's nothing imminent either. Thanks, Mick. That deals with the questions that have been submitted through the platform. I understand there's questions on audio. If I pass back to the operator to facilitate the audio questions. Thank you. Your first phone question comes from John Whittington of Australian Shareholders' Association. John, please go ahead. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. As the operator said, my name is John Whittington, and I'm a volunteer for the Australian Shareholders' Association. Today, I hold proxies from 33 ASA members and non-members for approximately 220,000 Uniti Group shares. We would first like to thank you and all employees for the efforts in producing such a great result in very challenging times. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for an interesting and informative address. Mr. Chairman, my question is that you won a bidding war to obtain Opticomm at a higher price than you originally thought appropriate. You now don't refer to this purchase as good value, only as, quote, fundamental to our strategy, unquote. How can shareholders have confidence that in your enthusiasm for a given strategy, you have not overpaid for Opticomm? Thank you. Thanks for that question, John. Yeah, you're right that we ended up having to lift the consideration we were prepared to pay for Opticomm. The original acquisition price was a price that we had negotiated and agreed with the vendor board, and we were very comfortable with the price that we negotiated at that point in time. The fact that we increased the price and were prepared to do that meant that we continue to see really good value for shareholders even at the higher price that we paid. I think the FY 2021 results would demonstrate what's been achieved by the combination of the Optic omm business with our existing business. I think you know I think the you know the comment that you kind of called out. I know it was in our annual report and in the letter, the joint letter from myself and Mick. That sentence also goes on to state that it was fundamental to our strategy to deliver excellent returns for shareholders. I think that's the context in which all shareholders should consider what happened and what occurred during the Opticomm tussle. I think our FY 2021 and FY 2022 results to date validate what transpired and the fact that we were successful with the Opticomm acquisition. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I might just add to that, John. I mean, having secured Opticomm a ctually enabled us to then proceed very quickly to the acquisition of the Velocity assets. I don't believe that we would have been in a position to be successful to secure the Velocity acquisition without having secured that first step of combining our business with Opticomm. Thanks. We've had one further question. Okay, sorry. There are no further telephone questions. Okay, thank you. We do have one further question that's been submitted on the platform, and I'll read that out. Congratulations to you, your fellow directors, executives, managers, and staff on the financial results and operating strength you have all achieved with Uniti Group over the past 18 months. Given you say that Uniti is in the enviable position of being able to deliver long-term compounding self-funded annuity earnings growth, converting to a high proportion of free cash flow for the foreseeable future, can you update the meeting on when dividends may commence being paid, i.e., in the next couple of years or not for several years yet? That's a good question. I think the answer to that is that we will continuously review the appropriate use of the surplus capital and the surplus cash that the business is generating. For the next 12 months, we've taken the view and with high conviction that the appropriate first step for the utilization of our surplus cash generation and the headroom we have in our leverage metrics, which is accretive for shareholders, is to undertake the share buyback. We will keep our capital management and returns to shareholder position under continuous review. We will continuously consider whether it's appropriate that we introduce a dividend. We haven't made that decision at this point. You can be assured that we understand that for a number of shareholders that will become important, and we will continuously review it. I think that deals with all questions at this point. I'll now turn to the formal business of the meeting, and address any questions from shareholders on each item. Shareholders will be given the opportunity to ask questions on each item following its introduction. However, in order to speed things up, if you'd like to ask a question on any of the resolutions, please submit your question now rather than waiting until we get to that item, indicating the resolution to which your question applies. There are four items of business before the meeting today. For each resolution, I will be directing all open, undirected proxies given to me in favor of each resolution, as was specified in the notice of meeting. The first item of business is consideration of the FY 2021 financial statements and reports. The Corporations Act requires the board to present the financial report, the director's report, and the auditor's report for the last financial year at the annual general meeting. The Corporations Act does not require a vote of shareholders on this resolution. The company's auditor is Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, and the signing partner is Chris Biermann. Chris is in attendance virtually. The FY 2021 financial report was Deloitte's and Chris's second year as our auditor and signing partner, respectively, following a tender process after the FY 2019 year. We have not received any questions relating to the auditor's report, or the conduct of the audit in advance or through the portal. Are there any questions for Chris in relation to the FY 2021 audit or the FY 2021 financial statements? There are no telephone questions. As there's been no questions, I declare that the reports have been received and considered at the meeting. Thank you, Chris. We will now go to resolution number one, adoption of the remuneration report for the financial year ended 30 June 2021. In accordance with the Corporations Act, the resolution that the remuneration report be adopted must be put to shareholders at the annual general meeting. I note that this vote is advisory only and does not bind the directors or the company. However, the board will take this vote into consideration when reviewing director and executive remuneration. Shareholders will note my earlier remarks in relation to our focus on improving the structure of our remuneration and the changes that we have implemented to executive remuneration and incentives for FY 2022, as outlined in the remuneration report. No questions have been received in advance of the meeting on this resolution. We'll pause again to allow shareholders the opportunity to ask questions relating to the 2021 remuneration report if they wish. You have a phone question from John Whittington of the Australian Shareholders' Association. John, please go ahead. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I've got two questions. Do you want them one at a time or both together? No, I'll take them both together, John. That's fine. Okay. I've read a lot of remuneration reports, but I'm having trouble trying to get my head around director fees. The remuneration report suggests that your fee in FY 2021 was AUD 132,125. Section 7.3 shows that AUD 734,809 worth of options, plus AUD 300,000 worth of share rights were also issued. Similarly, the other non-executive directors supposedly had a fee of AUD 80 or just under AUD 85,000, yet were also granted AUD 275,000 in options. What did the directors do this year that was worth so much money? Thank you. Oh, sorry, that was the first one. Second one, you indicated in section five of the report that the maximum pool for non-executive directors is AUD 850,000, yet the statutory REM table on page 49 shows non-executive director fees worth over AUD 1.7 million. How is this not breaching the limit? Look, thanks for those questions, John. Just to clarify, the AUD 132,000 number that you referred to relates to the cash fees and superannuation that was paid to me for the FY 2021 year. That excludes what is the statutory accounting for share-based payments or options, which have been issued to both myself and to other members of the board. That statutory accounting flows through the remuneration table that you mentioned. Footnote one of page 52 of our annual report deals with how that benefit has been calculated. Each and every share and/ or option that constitutes share-based payments has been approved separately by shareholders at general meetings in the past. I'm not gonna try to justify what, you know, individually or collectively, you know, we have achieved to justify the remuneration. Not gonna try to link that in any way other than to remind yourself and our shareholders that the total shareholder return achieved for FY 2021 was 133%. In relation to your question on the NED fee pool, we've made that clear in the notice of meeting that established that limit, that was the cash-based fee limit. We are paying below that level in terms of cash fees being paid to directors. The statutory accounting and expense for share-based payments has, as I've mentioned, been specifically approved in each and every case by shareholders separately. There are no further telephone questions, and there are no current webcast questions. Great. Thank you. The position in relation to both the direct votes and the proxy votes received for this resolution are displayed on the screen. This includes the undirected proxies given to me, which have been voted in favor of the motion. For shareholders who have not yet voted and wish to vote their direct holding or proxies, please do so now. On the basis of the votes cast, I note that this resolution appears to have been passed. Our next item of business, resolution number two, relates to the reelection of directors. Today, as required under the listing rules and the terms of our constitution, two of your company's non-executive directors retire and offer themselves for reelection. Both John Lindsay and I were elected by shareholders at the annual general meeting held on the second of November 2018. Details of our respective background and experience are set out in the explanatory statement attached to the notice of meeting. In each case, the other directors unanimously support reelection. We feel the combination of respective biographies and support of the people that each of us works with closely is a strong endorsement, and neither of us propose to make further comments at this point. No questions have been received in advance of the meeting on this resolution. I'll pause for a minute or so again to allow shareholders the opportunity to ask questions relating to each of the two resolutions, or either of the two resolutions relating to the reelection of directors if they wish. You have a telephone question from John Whittington of the Australian Shareholders' Association. John, please go ahead. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, we've heard you, but we haven't heard from Mr. Lindsay. Retail shareholders find it important as the one chance every three years when a director is standing for election for them to actually speak to their election. Is it possible that we could hear from Mr. Lindsay? Because otherwise we won't get a chance to hear from him again. Thank you. I think John is on the line. If John could make it in a couple of sentences, just let shareholders know why it's appropriate he be reelected. Thank you, Chair. Look, thank you for the opportunity to speak to this. I've been involved with Uniti since its very earliest days, and I've been involved with the Internet and telecommunication industry in Australia, including in some quite senior roles with quite high levels of responsibility for a long time. I bring technical and practical telecommunication industry experience to this board, which, you know, is something which is sometimes missing from the skills matrix of organizations like this. I'm very proud to be of the service that I've provided to date and for the opportunity to continue to do that. Thank you. Thanks, John. I think that's helpful. For John who asked the question, I would refer your members to John's biography, which is set out in the annual report. Thank you. There are no further telephone questions, and there are no current webcast questions. Thank you. The position in relation to both the direct votes and proxy votes received for Resolutions 2A and 2B relating to each of John Lindsay's and my re-election as a director are displayed on the screen. This includes the undirected proxies given to me that have been voted in favor of the relevant motion. For shareholders who have not yet voted and wish to vote their direct holding or proxies, please do so now in relation to each of the separate resolutions, number 2A and number 2B. On the basis of the votes cast, I note that it is likely that both John and I have been re-elected for a further term. Congratulations, John. I thank shareholders for their support. The fourth item of business is Resolutions 3A and 3B, approval of the issues of share rights to Michael Simmons and Vaughan Bowen, respectively, each as part of the Senior Executive Incentive Plan for FY 2021. Both Mick, CEO and MD, and Vaughan, Executive Director, have agreed to take 100% of their incentive plan payments in the form of share rights at an issue price of AUD 4.181895 per share right, being the 10-day VWAP following the release of our full- year results in August, which incidentally is slightly higher than today's price. I also note that a large proportion of these share rights will vest over a three-year period. Details of how the number of share rights to be issued is calculated is as set out in the table contained and otherwise on the terms and conditions set out in the explanatory notes. Further information relevant to this resolution, including the terms of the share rights and the performance metrics the board took into consideration in determining the awards for these executive directors for FY 2021 were also set out in explanatory notes. The amount involved in these resolutions are consistent with the information set out in the remuneration report in our FY 2021 annual report. No questions have been lodged in relation to these resolutions. I now offer the opportunity to shareholders to ask any questions or make comments in relation to these two resolutions if you wish to do so. Thank you. You have a phone question from John Whittington of Australian Shareholders' Association. John, please go ahead. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, this is my last question. We are concerned that there are no ongoing vesting performance conditions on the target deferred equity incentive other than continued employment. It looks basically like you've just got to stay employed to get the target deferred equity. Normal for a longer-term incentive is that the performance is judged at the end of a three-year or four-year performance period. We won't be supporting this, and we'd ask, will you undertake to include more challenging ongoing vesting performance conditions in future awards? Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for those observations, John. I think as I outlined in some of my opening remarks, that we have continued to look at and evolve our remuneration structure and, made some significant changes, I believe, for FY 2022, which has introduced a more traditional STI and long-term incentive plan structure. The LTI component of the incentive scheme going forward will have performance related conditions, over a three-year vesting period. I think you're right. We take on board your observations consistent with observations that other shareholders have made, and I think we've already evolved our structure for FY 2022 to take on board those concerns. Thank you. There are no further telephone questions, and there are no webcast questions. Great. Thank you. The position in relation to both the direct proxies and proxy votes received for each separate Resolution number 3A and 3B are displayed on the screen. This includes the undirected proxies given to me that have been voted in favor of the relevant motion. For shareholders who have not yet voted and wish to vote the direct holding or proxies, please do so now in relation to each of the separate Resolutions, number 3A and 3B. On the basis of the votes cast and subject to the additional votes yet to be counted, I note that each resolution appears to have been passed. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the formal business of the 2021 Annual General Meeting of Uniti Group Limited. The results of the resolutions, including the final poll, will be announced to the ASX later today. Thank you for your support of our company as our shareholders, for your attendance and your participation in the meeting today. I now declare the 2021 Annual General Meeting of Uniti Group Limited, closed. Thank you.