Hello and welcome. Thank you all for joining us today for the WAM Leaders FY 2024 Half Year Results Webinar. My name is Bridget Thelander, and today I'm joined by WAM Leaders Portfolio Manager Matthew Haupt and Portfolio Manager John Ayoub. Before we begin, a disclaimer is displayed for you on screen, and what we will discuss today is general in nature and is not financial advice. To start, I'll first give you an update on the WAM Leaders Half Year Results, and then I will pass over to Matt and John, who will provide a market update and discuss key investment themes and reporting season insights. We look forward to taking your questions towards the latter part of the webinar. Let's start with investment portfolio performance. Since inception in May 2016, WAM Leaders has achieved 13.3% investment portfolio performance, outperforming the index by 4.4% per annum. The WAM Leaders Board of Directors declared an increased fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.046 per share and intends to deliver a fully franked full-year dividend of AUD 0.092 per share. This represents a 6.7% dividend yield on yesterday's closing share price of AUD 1.37. The profits reserve was at AUD 0.315 per share at 31 December 2023 before payment of the fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.046 per share, and this represents 3.4 years of dividend coverage. WAM Leaders reported an operating profit before tax of AUD 16.9 million and an operating profit after tax of AUD 16.8 million for the six months to 31 December. So I'll hand now over to Matthew, who will provide a market update. Thanks, Bridget, and thank you for everyone for joining today on a special day, RBA Day, and also Bank of Japan, who changed their monetary policy for the first time. So exciting day. Thank you for joining. I thought I'd touch on, first of all, the market outlook. What are we seeing in the market at the moment? How are we positioning? And also some of the key debates we're having around markets at the moment. So if I touch on the market, we're looking at historical highs as far as valuations go. So is this warranted? If you run the clock back to last year, it was really around the end of the interest rate hiking cycle. The market saw interest rate cuts in 2024 and got incredibly excited around this pivot, and we're seeing this continue for most of this year. I classify it as exuberance at the moment. It's not really matching fundamentals, but stocks are enjoying an incredible period, and it's really around the interest rate cut expectation while economic growth will be maintained. We think that will be tested over the next few months. We think the interest rate cuts have been coming out of the market, but the market keeps grinding higher, and a lot of the economic data we're watching at the moment just warrants a little bit of caution. We think the stock market is ahead of itself. It is overvalued in the short term, but there's still incredible opportunities, which John will touch on after. But some of the thematics everyone's talking about AI. When you have new technology, what happens is the market tries to crystallize all those returns in the current environment without actually knowing where we're going to go. So what we're seeing now is hype. It may be true. It may not be true, but the market is trying to work out how to crystallize all that valuation upside into the present time, and we're seeing that spread across quite a few stocks which are leveraged to AI. Will it be increasing productivity? Probably. Do we know how much? No, not yet. But again, that's the environment we're in where there's a lot of blue sky priced into a lot of these stocks which are leveraged to AI. And then if you look, obviously, the big one for Australia is China. How is China travelling? China I classify as fairly benign. The stimulus so far has been very gradual. We think China, the environment isn't going to get a lot better, but it's probably not going to be as bad as people think, and I think the cycle will be extended for quite a few years. So what we're seeing at the moment is equipment, product recycling, some stimulus measures designed to improve productivity. There will not be a bazooka-style property stimulus, which I think the market is well aware of now, but it's going to be a more gradual approach. So I think China is looking okay. It's not going to be fantastic. So I think there can be cyclical trades within China. And we look at home in Australia. The data so far this year has been quite weak. Labor market has been quite weak. Retail sales have been weak. And we really think some of that macro policy is really starting to bite at the moment. So there is meant to be expectations of an increase in jobs this month in February. So just something to be careful of, I guess, is there may be a countercyclical bounce back in data. So where do we sit now? We think, obviously, monetary policy expectations have been coming out of the market as the economy has been more resilient than people think, but we think equity valuations are stretched, and you'd be better warranted picking sectors which actually haven't benefited in this uptick in the stock market at the moment, which we think there are quite a few. And that's probably a good segue to get John to talk about a few of the sectors that we actually like and what we saw post-reporting season. Thank you, Matt. And welcome, everyone. Just touching on a couple of the things that Matt mentioned there. Absolutely, we've seen some euphoria in the market, but it is in the extremes. We've seen pockets of the market hit 52-week highs, yet we've also seen pockets of the market hit 52-week lows. So what we've seen is massive dispersion within the markets where, in totality, indexes, yes, are up, but individual stocks have been left behind for one reason or another. And we can touch on a couple of those opportunities that we're seeing. Within the WAM Leaders portfolio, the one thing I will say is that we didn't participate in that most recent rally to the full extent. And the main reason is we stuck to our process around the fundamentals and some of the valuations that we've seen in this market. We couldn't get to some of the market pricing around certain stocks in certain sectors, and it cost us some performance. We'll say that upfront and we'll preamp some of those questions. Stocks like Wesfarmers and the banks where we didn't see any valuation support had incredible reporting seasons. Goodman Group, where it was a stock that we called out as a big buy earlier last year and in November around our roadshows, that had an incredible run from the low 20s to above 30, and we sold out too early. We remained disciplined to our valuation process, and that did affect performance in January and February in particular. What we're seeing now is we expect some sort of retracement of that performance in those sectors. The buying has been filled, we'd say. We expect that the outlook and the reality of the growth profile versus the multiples that these stocks are now trading on, the reality will set in, and we expect these to pull back in what we won't call a market correction, but we'll call it a rebalancing in the valuations in the broader market. So with that, what we've seen is that there's a number of opportunities of those stocks that have been left behind. I'll call out a couple now. Woolworths, for example, for the first time in a very long time, it's trading on a P/E basis of sub-20. Yes, it had some hiccups in the short term. Yes, it's in the spotlight from politics, but the fundamentals of this business remain robust. Coles is, for the first time in multiple years, trading at a higher premium on a multiple basis than Woolworths. So for us, we take opportunities like to build position in Woolworths. We're building a position in Telstra, again, a stock that hasn't participated in the most recent rally. It has higher growth in the banks and arguably more recurring earnings in the banks. So we're building positions in these high-quality defensive sectors where we think will show some resilience in the face of market volatility that we expect to see over the next 2-3 months. Some of our core holdings like TWE and Challenger, they will remain at the forefront of our portfolio where we think there's significant upside in both those names. In the materials space, our preference has pivoted from the bulks, and we're liking more of the growthier commodities like South32. So stocks like South32 with growthier commodities like alumina and copper, where some of the bazooka policies that will come out of China, and Matt will touch on this in a little while, should support the growth in these whilst there'll be a rebalancing of bulks, particularly RIO, Fortescue and BHP, where we see some sort of pullback in market demand for those products. So as we stand today, we're rebalancing that portfolio. We're sticking with our core holdings, which we think have a lot more headway to go, yet we're building positions in core-quality defensive names that should be able to withstand the volatility that we expect in markets. It's probably a good point to add to why we touched on why the market went up through interest rate cuts, but also the capital inflows into Australia as China became really uninvestable to a lot of people and the relevance within the MSCI indices decreased. What we saw was a huge amount of capital both on equity and the debt side coming to markets like Australia. The best example of this is the Aussie banks. CBA, tremendous bank, well-run, great CEO, trading well above historical valuations. It got up to 2.6x book, which is just incredible. The fundamentals actually didn't support that. So I think what you saw was a perfect storm. You had falling interest rate expectations and massive capital inflows into Australia, which pushed up a lot of these valuations. I think probably in the last few weeks, we've seen a real change in this. We're starting to see the banks run out of air, and they're starting to roll over a little bit. So we think that has largely played out over the short term. So over the short term, what do we think? Obviously, the RBA came out today. The language, the market interpreted as slightly dovish. They took out a key statement around rate hikes. They remain on the fence, really. They talked about whether the next move could be up or down, basically. But I think you could classify as slightly dovish the statement. So I guess for us, on a tactical point of view, because the way we run the money is we have fundamental views and then tactical views, and we always try to make sure our tactical views are taking short-term opportunities when they arise, when we see data or flow. And we think the market is really moving back into our sweet spot now after that exuberance and capital flow really distorted the market. And we were saying to each other every day that it felt distorted, the Australian market. It really did. The flow you'd see it every day, the banks would start up about 0.2%, then just grind high the whole day after about 10:30 am. And that, for us, was always going to end. We just didn't know. And we were quite surprised on how long it went for, to be honest. It went for a lot longer than we thought. We were talking billions of AUD flowing into the Australian market and really distorting a lot of the prices. That has come to an end now, thankfully. We think going on from here, the market will move more back to fundamentals, which we like, where companies which actually have valuation support and decent businesses actually get rewarded rather than just I classify the market was in a strict momentum mode. Anything that had positive momentum would keep going every day regardless of valuation. The stocks would keep going. Anything that had the opposite, any hiccup in earnings, would be punished, and no money would flow there. That happened for about 2-3 months. That has switched probably in the last 2-3 weeks. We're actually happy this has happened. We thought it would happen, but it's gone on for a lot longer than we thought. So we welcome the next quarter or two. That was highlighted in the dispersion that we saw, particularly in February. You saw some of the largest stocks in Australia up 13%, 14%, 15% for the month. You don't typically see that sort of movement. Equally, some of the poorer performance was down the same. We think there's a lot more searching for short-term performance in the market. That could be driven from more and more hedge funds and quant funds trying to seek those shorter-term performance. There clearly was more and more passive index money driving inflows, as Matt was saying. Driving the market for that short period of time. Where we sit now, we think that's come to an end. Hopefully, some of that underperformance that the portfolio has that I've seen over the last six months reverses and hopefully reverses fairly quickly. So, just to characterize how the portfolio is currently positioned, the sectors that we are overweight, we remain overweight materials. We remain overweight staples, energy and tech for the first time in a long time. We can touch on the reasons why there and where we're underweight, in particular, healthcare and materials because of the valuation healthcare and banks, I should say, and financials, where we think there is very little valuation support for those sectors. Probably just if we touch on performance as well, I know we had a few questions pre this webinar around performance. We touched on the reasons why we didn't keep up in performance. Around 80% of the underperformance is really linked to one stock, which is Star Group, which has been probably one of our worst investments for about 18 months. This isn't our market, but our underlying performance, if you strip out Star, is not too bad. A large chunk of the underperformance is really around one stock, Star, which we obviously have been a terrible investment off the back of government regulation. That hopefully will address some of those questions which we had pre this webinar. Because it's incredibly low. We get really disappointed with underperformance. We hate it. We work as hard as we can to get that back. But we're actually really confident we can get that performance back over the next few quarters as this market sort of matures into a more reasonable market. And the direction of the economy, I think, really favors the way we're positioning the portfolio. Perfect. Thank you, Matt and John. That was very interesting. I can see that we've already received lots of questions. I think you've touched on a couple of them already. Before we do dive into those questions, potentially, we can just start on the recent QVE takeover. Prior to the webinar, we have had a few shareholders write in. Potentially, Matt, you could just provide an update on the QVE takeover and what it means for WAM Leaders shareholders. Sure. So QVE was we were in discussions. What does it mean for shareholders? I mean, it's really the way we see it is as we get the fund gets bigger, this will push us to almost AUD 2 billion. We've talked about in the past a rationale for doing share purchase plans and increasing the size of the fund. Obviously, for shareholders, you get liquidity, which is a good thing. We've become the third largest LIC. The benefits for managing money is, again, access. And also, we feel unconstrained in this portfolio at the moment. At AUD 2 billion, we feel there's a lot of headroom for us. And we've become more relevant through all the broker networks, which we are relevant for them already. But it just intrudes our abilities and access. And that's the real benefit for shareholders. But yeah, the rationale, obviously, was QVE was trading at a discount. The boards talked, and they agreed to a scheme of arrangement. So we get to transition that portfolio over. We think it will be incredibly easy, and there should be no disruptions to the current portfolio or any share price action. Perfect. Thanks, Matt. And now we'll start on Q&A. The first two questions are from Ian. He wrote in just before. And you did touch on this with Star. But his question was that while he acknowledges performance since inception for WAM Leaders has been strong, short-term performance has been dismal when compared with passive ETFs. Has the formation of the unlisted WAM Leaders fund taken your eye off the ball? Good question, Ian. Dismal is something we think about all the time. If it wasn't the one stock we think, what are we doing wrong? Are we seeing the market wrong? But thankfully, in one respect, it is related to one stock. The way I'd characterize it as well is in extreme valuation scenarios, quite often we don't keep up with the market. We pull a lot of levers to try and keep up with the market. But we're quite contrarian in nature, the way we manage money. And when you get a full-on momentum market, quite often we do struggle in that environment. We do pull some levers. Quite often, some of the levers we pull is we go into tech. Gold works quite often as interest rates fall. So quite often, we are pulling levers in the background trying to keep up. But yeah, hugely disappointing, working as hard as we can to get that back. And we're actually quite confident in getting that back now. We think we're past that peak momentum market, the peak euphoria which was happening. It was out of control. We look at ourselves every day and go, what is going on here? It's just the valuations. We're so disconnected from fundamentals. And we do have a process. And we will not participate in those instances where there's a huge disconnect from fundamentals. We'll try and hedge some of it out through pulling levers. But you'll never see us go full speculative, with no respect for valuation. That is not our market. And that's not the way we invest our money. So the market is coming back towards us. But we've really got to fix the one stock we have to fix is Star. That would solve a lot of the problems. Perfect. Thank you. And Kevin goes just slightly further just to say that obviously, he expected the share price to increase given market conditions and a good half-year result. But he does recall that Geoff feels that the LIC market is in a consolidation phase. So could this also be a reason for price stagnation? Yeah. I mean, the LIC sector has been under pressure. And we quite often hypothesize why. And I think in the environment where you have high interest rates, you have viable alternatives in term deposits. We think that is one reason why the LIC sector is under pressure. When it's under pressure, there's always calls. Is it structural, cyclical? We're of the firm belief it's cyclical. We've seen it many, many times. And it really feels like it's a reflection of the environment we're in with high interest rates. If that was to reverse, I would expect premiums to go out again because you're getting good yields with equity backing behind it, which has capital growth potential. So I think that's a real reason. I don't think it's structural. It's just cyclical. That'd be our view. Thanks, Matt. The next question is from Gary. He has asked, what are the actual positives experienced so far from having the unlisted fund as part of the firm? Have you encountered any negatives? And then, yeah, just touches on the share price again. But hopefully, this is only short-term, he says. Maybe it's worth highlighting that at the moment, the unlisted fund is relatively small in the grand scheme of what we manage in its entirety. And the allocation of time that it takes for Matt and I to manage that fund and for the broader team is minuscule. At the start of every month when we get the flows, that's probably the only time we have to solely focus on the trust. But for the most part, our day-to-day processes and investment allocation of time has not changed. So as much as it sounds or could possibly be distraction, it hasn't. And some of the performance issues that we face that have got nothing to do with the trust is just on us making some poor judgment and some poor decisions. We reflect on it daily. And we've learned from that. And we're only human. We've had some great years. This year's a bit tougher. Hopefully, our shareholders judge us on the journey for the last eight years, not just the last six months. We're very confident that we'll return to strong performance. Hopefully, that's what we can focus on. If we can perform in these more volatile markets that we see over the next little period, we can earn that trust and get that share price back up to whoever wants to see that. And I'll just add as well, with the trust, the benefits have been exposing us to a larger financial planner network, some institutions which have been great. And the interaction, I think, is a positive for the LIC. And it will be a positive for the LIC as well as our exposure goes up within different parts of the market we didn't touch before. So that's been a big positive. The negatives, there hasn't been really I can't really think of a negative, to be honest. Yeah, there really hasn't been one. I think it's been a positive experience so far. Perfect. Thank you. Stephen has a question on interest rates. Matt, you've touched on this in your opening remarks. Further to what you've said, do you think that the U.S. will cut rates first? Versus Australia, I guess the question is, will it cut first versus Australia? The answer would be yes. I think that the Fed moved higher than the RBA. The RBA was slower. And they didn't move as high in the terminal rate. So the market expects a June, July cut from the Fed. And we would be thinking August onto the back half of this year for the RBA to move, barring unforeseen circumstances. I mean, what we do is we look at the market expectations, too. And that's pretty well-consensus as well. So we're not saying anything groundbreaking here. But yeah, no, Fed to move first. And quite often, the world waits for the Fed to move because it's the biggest liquid markets, capital markets, fixed interest markets, the strength of the U.S. dollar. Quite often, banks will sit behind the Fed. Like China is one in particular. We think China are hanging out for the Fed to cut. It'd be soon to move. They are dying for the Fed to cut. So yeah, we think RBA much later this year. The one thing Matt mentioned earlier is that inflation is stickier than most commentators expected. Where pricing had 3 or 4 rate cuts priced in America this year, including Australia, a lot of those cuts are now coming out of the market given the stickiness and the actual absolute strength of the U.S. economy over the past 2 quarters. What we're seeing is that there is a slowdown. There's a slowdown coming quickly. We discuss this all the time in the office. Recession is a dirty word. But recessions sneak up on you. It's just small decisions add up. They actually lead to those dramatic events to markets. We're starting to see more and more of these small decisions taking place and slowing down of economies. That's why we highlight there's going to be more volatility and more risk to the equity markets in the short term. Yeah. And just also, I'm going to add another point here, the FOMC meeting. We expect the dot plots, which are all the Fed members, get out their texts and draw some dots on the page. And currently, there's about 3 cuts. And we think they might move back to 2 in this meeting coming up. So just something to watch later this week. We think there are expectations of those cuts to come out further out of the market. As John touched on, in the US, we had CPI and PPI, which feed into the PCE, which is what the Fed watched. So we think the PCE might increase. And that is the sticky inflation we were talking about. So markets went up off the back of 6 interest rate cuts pricing into the market. And now, we think it will come back to 2. But the market hasn't blinked, really. The primary driver of why it went up was those interest rate cuts. And we think that is coming out now. Brilliant. Thanks, Matt. It wouldn't be a WAM Leaders webinar without a question on the banks. You touched on CBA. Ashok has asked for your pick of the banks at the moment. He's also asked if you could comment on the recently approved. OK, no problems. Yeah, there's obviously two questions. What is your preferred bank? And what is the right bank to put money in from an investment point of view? Both really hard questions with the banks where they are now. We are hugely underweight the Australian bank sector, our highest weight bank. So this has implied what is our best pick. We do like National Australia Bank still. I think the business bank isn't as competitive as the mortgage side, the retail side. And the next one is it's a hard choice, the next one. But the ANZ is the next one. And that touches on that point of the ANZ Suncorp deal. Do we think it's a great deal? No. Does it give them three years of potential cushioning of their results? Yes. So that's why we like it. Now, when you do an acquisition, it does allow you to pull a few levers. So we think it gives them a bit of a buffer there. So now, the ANZ are the highest weights we have at the moment, whereas our favorite bank is CBA, best franchise, highest ROE, but the most expensive. Their DRP is rolling off as well. That has been a buy-in market for about a month every day of 13% of volume. But we think the whole sector is a little bit overvalued at this point in time. We're hugely underweight. Brilliant. Thanks, Matt. On the topic of mergers, Ewan has asked about the Woodside and Santos merger. What are your thoughts on this? We were excited. We were always hopeful that the two companies would get together. But there was a large gulf between the valuation expectations that Santos wanted and that Woodside was willing to pay. For us, being primarily a Santos shareholder, we weren't going to give the company away. If you look at what the two companies provide, Woodside is an incredibly large company with strong growth potential in the future but missing some cash and missing a period of growth. Santos is about to get into a sweet spot. There was some concern around the leadership of Santos. For us, that leadership is now refocused, re-energized, and will continue to drive performance. What do we expect going forward? We still think Woodside needs Santos. But we also think that there are other players globally that would love to have some of those assets that Santos has. What we learned from the process is that Santos potentially is at the right prices for sale. And that attracts attention from major players around the world. What we think they would need to do is probably consolidate and clean up some of their domestic assets, which are highly desirable by the likes of Beach Energy. And then, if you have a high Tier 1 global LNG player remaining, these are desirable assets and will play a pivotal role in the energy transition going forward. So for us, Santos remains a core holding in the portfolio, highly desirable assets, energized, refocused management team. And we're happy to ride out whatever comes, takeover, or stand alone. We think it's got a lot of potential. Thanks, John. Now, going to a question from Mark. He says, to what extent do you factor in macro tailwinds into your longer-term positions? In which of those do you consider likely to have the most impact on your decision-making? That's really a great question. There's two parts to it. The macro, so the way we run the money is there's a tactical part of the portfolio where we're adjusting the weights, which is coming off the back of macro data. And the most influential macro data is really around ISM and PMIs, which are surveys around activity. We use a lot of those for adjusting the portfolio. And I mean, that's the short-term tactical side. It's also part of the business cycle. We can use that for business cycle, which is the longer term, the job market, obviously, not the unemployment rate, but continuing claims in the U.S. as a favorite, initial claims, which is more front-end, gives you more of a lead. Interest rates, so interest rate curves, looking at interest rate curves, what regime we're in, sloping or steepening. There's various terms for the fixed interest markets, which I won't get into here, but slopes of yield curves, basically. There's currencies. We use it huge as much as we can. We've got a big funnel. We're putting it all in. So macro does dominate a lot of the tactical moves. On the longer term, I think what Stephen was saying is macro tailwinds. That is in alignment with fundamentals. So we're looking for the fundamentals. And then, we're looking for that for a longer term. We're looking for that macro overlay for a tailwind. And what would that be is really around business cycle. So if you're going to put some money into a manufacturing company, you want it at the start of the business cycle, not near the end. So we'd use our macro tools and signals to work out where we are in the business cycle and how to position the portfolio. So you have duration for that trade. And in the business cycle, you can really cut down into four segments. So we have that. We do that weekly, sometimes daily. We look at where the data is moving. We're looking where stock prices are moving in a sector basis. And we make sure we know where we are in the cycle and then position for that. So yeah, great question. And it's a complex topic, but something we monitor every day. The next one is from Govinda. This is potentially a question for the WAM Capital team. But I'm not sure if you look at these companies as well. What are your thoughts on adding Washington H. Soul Pattinson and Brickworks to the portfolio? I mean, for us, the liquidity becomes a bit of an issue with these companies. They're not that liquid. We rate the companies highly. I think the guys running it are incredibly good. Yeah, it doesn't really come up in our universe much because of the liquidity. We just never can get set. The way we tactically adjust the portfolio, this doesn't quite fit how we manage the money. Perfect. Thanks, Matt. And the next two questions are from Tony. He says, do you think insurance stocks represent better value than banking stocks? And what is your view on copper prices? Yeah, I mean, we touched on banks and thinking they're incredibly overvalued. So by default, insurers look better. The question is around insurers. Obviously, they benefit from higher interest rates. That's probably reflected in insurance a little bit. Probably the less cuts is good for insurers. So in the short term, they look much better than banks. But we are wary of once the data does turn, interest rate cuts come in fast. And then, you probably wouldn't want to be an insurer. So short term, they do look good. On the copper front, we do like copper. Probably the exuberance is a little bit overdone in the short term. Copper traditionally is linked to industrial production. But obviously, now, the focus is wider, whereas supply hasn't really increased as much as demand. So the market does look tight at the moment. A recession would wipe out a lot of that exuberance if we do slip into recession. But from a long-term point of view, we think copper looks great. And how do you get exposure to that in Australia? I mean, Sandfire is one. It does look expensive. South32, once coal goes, it'll be around 25% earnings. You've also got Rio Tinto with world-class BHP with copper assets. And also, one probably not known as much is Evolution, a gold miner. I think it's around 25%-30% of earnings come from copper. So that is an interesting one to us as well. But yeah, structurally, it looks like a great market to be in versus the bulks. But I'd argue that's pretty well consensus now. And we do have that contrarian bias in us. Obviously, if EVs and the Green Revolution keep kicking along and the use of copper, even for like India developing nation where they're building a lot of infrastructure with power grids and the like, even China's still going, our look for copper looks pretty good. Great. Thank you. And the next question is from Andrew. Why such a small dividend increase when holding three years of profit reserve and a portfolio made up of high dividend-paying stocks? That's a good question, one for the board, I guess, but for us, I think it's just a level of conservatism and also lessons from the past from the other LICs where maybe the dividends went up too fast and then become such a large part of a payout. It starts eating into the size of the fund as well. You start seeing the NTA decline. To stand still, you need a return like 15%, 17% per annum just to stand still. You get to a certain point where the dividend should be a percent of the net tangible assets. It shouldn't really go too far ahead of that. I think that's my interpretation of it, is just a more controlled increase versus previous experiences of going really heavy with the dividend increases. Thanks, Matt. The next question is from Nick. He says, what has been the impact of the AEG acquisition and merger on overall performance and the premium discount to NTA? Should we be expecting similar with QVE? With AEG and QVE, we expect a very, very limited impact. Both portfolios were manageable. Being able to transition those to replicate what the overall Leaders' portfolio were very little in the way of impact on the NTA or the assets that we'll be acquiring. And then, just the dilution of the profit reserve, again, I'm sure the team can give you exact numbers. But they were very small and didn't really have much of a meaningful impact. Yeah, I think AEG and with QVE, I mean, within a day, we pretty well have the portfolio set. And I'd say that'd be the same, given the size of the fund and the way we manage money. It has really minimal impact. And on the share price, I guess there is a cash-out option for QVE. So that should eliminate some of that selling pressure. There was to be selling pressure. So again, hopefully, there will be quite minimal impact. Perfect. Thanks for the answer. The next question is from Detlef. They say, what investments held the portfolio back from positive monthly performance? Yeah, obviously, we've touched on one earlier. But a couple others in February that underperformed were Orora, South32. There had been pullback in our position in Rio Tinto, CSL, and Santos, both all those companies had a relatively poor February whilst other stocks were up 17%, 18%, 19%, 20%. So just going back to that dispersion, a few of our big holdings suffered from some short-term weaknesses for one reason or another whilst other pockets of the market had absolute incredible performance. So we'll see that normalize over the next two to three months. We should see a retracement in that performance. And we have started to see that normalize would be the important point too. That probably in the last it's really picked up in the last two weeks where you start to see that reversion back, which we thought would happen. But yeah, obviously, February was a positive momentum market and was one direction. For the most part, just touching on each of those stocks that we called out there, we've maintained our conviction in those positions. In many instances, we've bought more on the weakness for us that they present more meaningful opportunities. A couple of names like CSL, we reduced our positioning. Rio Tinto, given we think there's some near-term headwinds for iron ore, we've reduced those positioning. But for the most part, when we talk about Orora, South32, Santos, Telstra, Woolworths, we've increased our position and weightings to those names. Perfect. Thank you, John. And the next one is from Mark. What are your thoughts on Mayne Pharma, AMP, and Endeavour? You've picked a fairly motley crew there. I'll touch on Endeavour first. We've always said that there's two great retailers in the Australian market. They're Bunnings and Dan Murphy's. The difficulty with Endeavour is that you've got this wonderful business being Dan Murphy's. He's been suffering from some competition, some changes to the way that society consumes alcohol, which has led to some, what we're not sure on is if it's structural changes or cyclical changes, the way that we consume alcohol. Our best guess today is that they are cyclical. We will revert to the consumption of wine, spirits, and beer as opposed to what we're seeing as material uplift in a lot of ready-to-drink seltzers and lemon-flavored, whatever they are, drinks. Those things have had an impact on the way that we consume, the way that consumers have bought alcohol. But where your issue with Endeavour is, and we commend them for this, is that they took action, swift action, on the way that their pubs they gained responsibility that their pubs have to impose. And they took swift action on ensuring that they confirmed with all regulation anti-money laundering. And they've learned the lessons of other sectors. So they took swift action, which has hurt them in the near term. What we see over the next 6-12 months is a leveling of the playing field where we expect government regulation that's impacted casinos that's also impacting Endeavour to flow through to other gaming participants, so clubs and pubs. And we think that there should be a leveling of the requirements around cashless gaming and the oversight of the responsibilities to ensure that every facility is compliant with patron-tracking regulation. So they took swift action. It's caused some issues to their bottom line. But we think over time, there is latent value in the assets that they do own. But it may take a little bit more time for that to unwind. Mayne Pharma sits outside of our universe. So we'll probably defer that one to the WAM Capital team. But we do know that it's had a stellar run recently. So we might get a chance to invest in again the ASX 200. And AMP is a stock that Oscar and Tobias and Geoff hold. For us, we have an aversion from other fund managers who are investing in fund managers. What we've seen is that there's been more of a destruction of value as opposed to a generation of value. And that's just a broad statement on the space. AMP is a classic example of whether the sum of the parts are greater than the current. But what we don't see is those catalysts to realize that value. Brilliant. Thank you, John. The next question is from Chris. He says, with the banks exceeding broker valuations and the big iron ore miners in dangers of lower iron ore prices, where is WAM Leaders looking for opportunities within this remit? Just on the iron ore, there's a lot of headlines around iron ore crash and iron ore turmoil. And I'm not sure why. But iron ore gets a really bad rap in the press. But it's actually a pretty strong price at the moment. If you said China property would be down 40% on last year and down 20% this year, I would have thought iron ore would be much lower. It's actually not a bad-performing commodity. And there is a bit of a flaw with iron ore. In China, the local producers stopped turning off around $80-$100. So you need a pretty drastic event to push lower. So I think the death of iron ore is probably a little bit premature. It's under some bit of a pressure at the moment with some of the stimulus in China being a bit slower than expected. But it's far from bad. The profits being reported are far from bad. But yeah, good question. If you exclude banks and miners, where do you go? John touched on that. Telstra is a good one. CSL, we're getting more comfort on now as well. But there's a whole range of companies, smaller ones, which we think look quite good. Iress is one. It's been through a bit of turmoil and good new management turning that company around. They're realizing some value for some of their assets, which haven't been integrated, fixing the balance sheet. There are some really good stocks that have been well left behind. From a sector point of view, John touched on as well. Staples don't look too bad. Woolworths, Metcash. For the first time in a long time, we've actually gone a bit positive on Metcash. It's been a wholesale business, low margin, low barriers to entry, really. That was always a threat. That faded away. But some of the recent acquisitions look quite good. So Metcash looks good. Treasury Wine Estates is another one. China tariffs should be lifted. I mean, that's all the talk in the press is that they will be lifted, even Treasury Wine Estates put out an announcement. And A2 Milk, again, I think it's around 70% of sales go to China. And they have had pickup in marriage rates. Births are picking up. I think that we're short-term. Maybe you've got a 1-year, 18-month window. And then, the demographics start chipping away again. But for the first time in a long time, A2 Milk looks pretty good. So for us, staples look like a pretty good hunting ground at the moment. And on banks, you're right in pointing out that valuations have exceeded nearly all broker estimates. And that's not to say that banks are broken and they're not broken. It's just that there's competition. There's margin headwind. There's very little growth. Yet, the multiples are as high as they've been in a very, very long time. So for us, they're not broken businesses. They're great franchises. They just lead to great funding for other opportunities that we're seeing. And it did impact performance in the short term where they had great runs from December through the end of February. And we're somewhere between 8%-10% underweight the sector. We're looking for that reversion to help actually unwind some of that performance that we were talking about earlier. Yeah, I mean, on the banks, through the cycle, the competition shifts from the asset and liability side on banks. And at the moment, it's really on the liability side, which is the deposit side. There is a huge deposit war at the moment. So the really high at-call cash rates are really hurting margins. So that is going to continue. So we just can't build a real bull case for the banks. Valuations were cheaper. I mean, bad debts are probably not going to be too horrific. But the mortgage competition is really intense on the deposit side too. So they're copying it from both ends. Great. Thank you both. The next question is from Harvey. We're going back to the RBA announcement now. He says, Has the language in the RBA announcement of no change in rates shifted your view of the market and different sectors? Well, what we do is as soon as it comes out, so at 2:30, we read the minutes. Then, we make our interpretation of the minutes. And then, we watch what markets do post that as well. My first impression reading was like they're not really ruling anything out. It's still read a little bit hawkish. But there was that removal of potential for interest rate hikes, explicit sentence removed. So the market interpretation was dovish, away from the screen at the moment. But the one I watched initially is the Aussie dollar, just to see what happens there. And then, obviously, the short-term interest rates. And they all fell, even the 10-year rate, which I thought maybe it would hold. And the short end fell. But the long end fell probably in tandem as well. So the market's take on it was dovish. We're really talking at the margins here when you remove one sentence but then keep in the optionality around movement up or down. But I mean, we all know, well, I shouldn't say we all know. But they won't be hiking. Famous last words. But it's more of a case of when do they cut. And after reading today, it doesn't really change our opinion when they'll cut. But it's market interpretation would be slightly dovish. Great. And the next question is from Jill. And John, you touched on the Woodside-Santos merger. But she's just asking for your view on Woodside. Thanks, Jill. I think you've asked this question before, if my memory serves me well. I think it shares. Yeah. I think I said earlier that Woodside had growth. I think I meant to say Woodside lacks the growth that Santos does. What Santos provides Woodside is that growth element. Undeniably, the assets that Woodside acquired from BHP are some of the greatest assets, oil-producing assets in the world. For us, there is a funding gap that is required for Woodside to be able to maintain the dividends that shareholders want and to actually grow the portfolio to a level that the company needs. For us, they need to balance those two competing factors of being the dividends and the cash flow that's required to pay shareholders and the cash flow that's required to develop a lot of the assets that they do hold. They've successfully sold down some of their Scarborough portfolio, which helps bridge that gap. But for us, if you're comparing the pair, the reason why we like Santos, it's an easier story for the next three years in particular. Woodside, undeniably, on a 10-year view, is better. But we struggle to traverse the funding gap in the short term. But it's something that we constantly keep an eye on. And we look at the relative valuation between the two. Both well positioned. We're of the view that oil and gas will play a pivotal role for longer than many market commentators think when it comes to the green energy transition. You could constantly see those manufacturers that produce solar or wind components to accelerate that are struggling to meet the demand that's here right now. So we struggle to see the ability of these guys to fulfill the demand that we see in the future. So that transition, which most companies to 2035, we can't see that being done for a much longer period of time. And the lack of investment that's broadly seen in oil and gas assets globally put these things in particularly good, strong, robust positions. Controversially, we think coal and uranium both play a pivotal role also in this transition period, particularly uranium. And I think that was a question that we may have been asked. If you look at some of the policy that's coming out of the U.S., uranium is going to play a much bigger part in the near-term future of energy. We own Boss Energy from that perspective. And we think these commodities, which are shunned and haven't really had a lot of money spent in exploration or development of new assets again, I know it's not a nice topic to discuss. The tobacco industry has made a lot of cash flow in the late stages of their industry. We see very similar characteristics for coal, for uranium, and for oil and gas to that where there's underinvestment. There could be massive amounts of cash flow generated from these sectors and stocks. Thanks, John. The next question is from Peter and Michael. They've asked for your thoughts on CSL and Transurban. I'll touch on CSL. And then, maybe Matt can touch on Transurban. We actually spent a fair bit of time with both these companies during reporting season. And CSL is a story of two companies competing. The traditional business that we all know CSL to be, which is the blood fractionation business, it's firing. It's going as well as it has gone for a very long time. It's the backbone of the company. And it's doing remarkably well and probably provides some backstop to the earnings profile for the next 2-3 years. And that's why Matt touched on at these $280 levels, we think it's an attractive level for us to get back into it. North of $300, we were a little bit we thought it was a bit stretched at those levels. Where the issues that we're seeing for CSL is around its most recent acquisition of Vifor. They're seeing significant headwinds for that company and for the products that it distributes. So that being said, the Behring is the much larger component of the business, around 80%-85%. So at these AUD 280 levels, we think the core business is offsetting some of the headwinds that the other fragmented, the newer acquired businesses are facing. So at these levels, we find it more compelling. Yeah. I think the Rika rollout, again, for CSL will be quite pivotal over the next 12-18 months as far as productivity goes and collection costs. So we quite like it at these AUD 280 levels. On Transurban, yeah, it's an interesting one. Quite often, we look at it more of an interest rate proxy or a bond proxy from a tactical point of view. But from a fundamental point of view, the company looks relatively well positioned from here. I mean, the government intensity, I guess, or scrutiny has increased. There will be changes across the next 6-12 months. But we think they're well positioned to navigate through this. So we actually don't mind TCL from here. On a tactical point of view, we're going to be worried about the RBA. We've probably got the all clear now from those guys. So when I was talking about interest rates, so yeah, we quite like TCL. And I mean, the catalyst for us for TCL to re-rate from here is, perversely, economic conditions weakening. Obviously, traffic would fall. But the valuation would go up more than offset the fall in traffic. So for us, it's really interest rate play, defensive characteristics, and very much an interest rate play. So that's how we see it. I'll just highlight two extra things that we learned. The one thing that you have to give TCL a big tick for is their ability to create ironclad contracts that the government can't disrupt. We saw a review into toll roads be released last week. What is clear is that the existing arrangements that TCL have with governments are ironclad. That if there were to be any changes to the way that tolls are treated, that compensation would be afforded to TCL. So a big congratulations to the team and the way that they are ensured protection for their shareholders. Unfortunately, consumers get the raw end of that stick. The other aspect that we need to focus on for TCL is how do they grow and where do they grow. They've been touted in the press to want to acquire things in Denver. I think in the US, I should say, in Denver and the US. They will look at acquisitions. There are potentially some toll roads in Victoria, some toll roads in New South Wales that could fit within the portfolio. But again, the construct of those contracts with governments will be pivotal in the way that the valuation metrics stack up to date. They've been incredible in doing it. We'd like to see if they do grow and they want to invest in growth, A, where they source that capital from, and B, the shape and the nature of the contracts that they do have with governments. Perfect. Thank you both for those answers. We've received a few questions on STAR. Broadly, do you still hold STAR? What is your outlook for the company? And what is the rationale to hold STAR with the current known risks? Yes, we still hold STAR. We own just under 5% of that company. What we can highlight is the assets. We still fundamentally view that those assets being underpinning the valuation story. I think it will take time for that value to be fully realized. They've suffered incredibly from the regulation, the regulatory oversight that has come to the sector. Pleasingly, you see what they've been able to achieve with the Queensland government and the steps that they have taken to reform that business. Equally, they have taken exceeding steps to reform the New South Wales business. We expect them to do more and more reform to ensure that they have a business going forward. For us, you've got to look at what assets they have. They have more than just casino floor. They have a lot of hotel rooms. We think there is value to those hotel rooms and to the assets. So yes, we're there. We're going to continue to hold. It's something that we're working incredibly hard in the background to look after. Brilliant. Thanks, John. The next question is from Lee. They say, "Why hasn't the profit reserve risen over the last few months? I think looking at it, I mean, it's really a function of investment performance. So as we touched on, they've been through a bit of a tough period there over the past few months. But as we highlighted, we're navigating our way out of that tough period now. So we'd hope to be adding to that again. So it's just really a function of investment portfolio performance in the short term. Thanks, Matt. The next question is from Gregory. He says, "Is there a catalyst for your investment in Challenger? For Challenger, I mean, we've held Challenger for a while. And our degree of confidence is going up every time we meet with them as they really put in place the strategy and implement it and execute it. So the catalyst from here is we really have a few things. They have a cost-out program now from Accenture. They're in there helping them. They have annuities, which is backed by the government rule through APRA, forcing well, not forcing, but encouraging super funds to have annuity plans and offerings. So we think there's a lot of tailwinds for Challenger both from an operational point of view but also from a regulatory point of view with those annuities. And they have been increasing the quality of the book as well, which in the short term hurt their return on equity. But the market is now looking through that. They're tracking towards their return on equity. We actually think Challenger is getting better every time we see them. The tailwinds are still there as well. A multitude of catalysts there. Ultimately, cost-out equals earnings upgrades. We think that will come through too. Thanks, Matt. The next question is from Lindsay. "Does having a trust mean that the LIC will never trade at a premium to NTA again? That's one as well. We debated a lot in doing the trust. Then, the conclusion was that it actually doesn't affect it. We're seeing many instances where having a trust has not affected the premium on the LIC. And I talked about one of the positives of having the trust is expanding the group of people we talk to and engage with. And I think we probably underestimated the positive impact that would have on the LIC too because we'd be seeing these planners that we haven't seen before. And they were like, "Maybe the trust isn't for us. We'd be interested in the LIC. So we're actually expanding our contacts for the LIC." So theoretically, you think that would put a cap on it. You think if I can trade the trust for the LIC, the LIC should never go to a premium. Quite often, we find the shareholders are two distinct categories because the trust income can vary a lot and be high and sometimes zero in certain circumstances. Whereas the LIC has that steady stream of dividends. The end users are different. It creates two different markets for the product. It actually doesn't affect it. Well said, Matt. And then, Rod has a question on fully franked dividends. He said that partially, rather than fully franked dividends are creeping in. Is this a trend that you see impacting WAM Leaders? No. Again, a lot of our companies are paying fully franked dividends. Our profit reserve is high. Our franking balance is quite strong. So not quite for us the impacts because we get a lot of fully franked dividends streaming through. And then, it's a function of profit reserves as well. So yeah, for us, we don't see any short-term issues with franking. Great. Alexander has asked if you own any tech stocks. Yeah, we do. It's one of the sectors that we realized when the momentum was kicking off and what we're seeing that we needed to cover those bases. We've owned WiseTech for a long time. It's been a core holding in the portfolio for a long time. It sits just below those top 20 holdings that shareholders get to see on a monthly basis. We bought some Xero in the low 100s. So that's done OK. We owned a bit of Altium. Right now, we've bought some Megaport, some TechnologyOne. We still hold our WiseTech. And Matt alluded that we own some Iress and PEXA, which are two forgotten tech stocks. Where we're a little bit underweight were the old classified techs or the REA, Carsales and SEEK. But recently, in the shorter-term pullback, we've picked up some REA, even the highest quality of those. Yes, we do own tech. We're overweight the space. Where we're underweight is quite often runs in parallel to tech is consumer discretionary. We're significantly underweight the consumer discretionary space. Thanks, John. And the next question is from David. "Is Macquarie a buy at the moment? How do you view it? Around AUD 200, we had been reducing. So I mean, it gradually began reducing the 190s, low 190s. So we like the company. They're doing extremely well. They're doing a buyback currently. So Macquarie are generally pretty good allocators of capitals or issuers of capital. So we've reduced it. And that worries us a little bit. They're buying their own stocks. So maybe they know something we don't because they're pretty good with how they deal with capital. So I think the environment's got better for Macquarie. But obviously, the share price has gone up in tandem. So the debt capital markets have opened up. The gap between buyers and sellers has closed. The environment's got better. But we just struggle at AUD 200. If you're picking it up at 160, 170, I mean, logically, I mean, that's an obvious statement. But we'd be much happier there. So it just feels a little bit stretched. What could kick it from here, though, is if we do go into that soft landing environment, lower rates, but the earnings growth or the economic growth holds together, the stock would do incredibly well, might go to 240. So yeah, it's a highly volatile stock. But we just can't build the case right here to buy the stock. We've been actually reducing. Thank you, Matt. And the next question, we have another one from Gurpinder. They say, "Will WAM Leaders reduce fees now that it is around AUD 2 billion in assets to compete with the other LICs? I think the team can pass on Geoff's phone number. You can have that discussion with Geoff. That's a Geoff and board decision. We'll leave that one alone. Perfect. And then, Stephen has also asked, "You held Sonic Healthcare in your top 20 holdings two months ago. What are your thoughts on the company now? Yeah, fortunately, it was one that we reduced prior to the result. Sonic's a stock that you get a lot of clues looking at some of the international peers and comps. And what we started to see was increased fee pressure from governments globally on a lot of their business units. Equally, the collections that they were the super profits that they generated from the COVID period, the hangover from that has lasted and will continue to last for a lot longer than the market had anticipated. It's a stock that we want to like. It's a stock that we think ultimately has the right demographic drivers. It has the right market position. But the transitioning from the earnings that they saw during the COVID period to a post-COVID world, removing those layers of costs and the pressure the government balance sheets have and the way that they fund healthcare going forward probably leads to more headwinds for the stock than what we're comfortable with in the short term. When we start to see some of those global comps stabilize and when we start to see, I think, a leveling out of those fee payments, the changes to the fee structures that they receive, that will signal the time for us to get back in that name in a meaningful way, so yeah, it did appear in our top 20 for a brief period. But we quickly adjusted that. So we have a small holding in it today just to make sure that we keep an eye on it because, as we said, it's a stock that we want to like. It's just a matter of finding that right opportunity. Great. Thank you, John. And then, Cheryl has asked, "What are your views on gold and gold shares? Does the portfolio own any? So gold, we went quite large in gold probably about 3 or 4 weeks ago and progressively been winding it back. Gold generally moves off real interest rates. And we're a little bit worried the FOMC are going to turn a little bit hawkish this week. And we've lightened gold into that like how we talk about the tactical movements. It's a short-term tactical move. We actually like gold this year. Think gold will do incredibly well. But tactically, as we know, prices don't move in a linear fashion. And that's where we try and capture that performance. Where do we like which stocks do we like? Again, quite often, gold equities are great when they don't report their quarterlies because gold mining's hard work. It's actually really, really tough. And there's a lot of moving parts. So it's really hard for gold companies to have reliable results. So gold quite often works. And then, on the result day, you get a technical issue to mine or grade fall away or cost blowout. So buyer beware with gold stocks on their quarterlies. But what stocks do we like? Northern Star obviously is one, Evolution for the higher risk people. Genesis is an interesting one. A recent addition to the portfolio, GMD is one. And Perseus, I mean, but again, with Newcrest gone now, it's actually taken one of our options away. I mean, it's still listed but on a CDI basis. So for us, all those names, you can play. But just be wary around quarterlies. So we quite often reduce into quarterlies. But I think short-term negative gold post-FOMC meeting, the Fed meeting, we'd probably on the basis of that, whatever they come out with, we'll reassess. But we'd like to go long gold again this year at some point in time. But just, we've reduced the last week or so. Thank you, Matt. And then, Nick has a question on coal. He said, "Coal has had quite a ride. Do you expect the coal price to remain at current levels? And is WAM Leaders invested in Whitehaven? Yeah, it has been a bit of a ride. We do own Whitehaven at current. We owned it prior to the acquisition of the BHP assets. We took some profits. At these levels, we're getting back into it. What do we see as the catalyst before I talk about the commodity itself? The catalysts are sell down of those BHP assets. There's significant interest from Indian and Japanese buyers. We expect that following the completion of the transaction, when they do get the keys off BHP, there will be a sell down. That will help alleviate a lot of the market's concerns around their current leverage, which for us, given the cash that they will generate at current spot prices for coal, is a little bit obscure. But they've got to do what they've got to do. We like Whitehaven at these levels. Met coal, we can't see any significant change either way. So we think that's a pretty stable commodity. Famous last words, I suspect, there. And then, thermal coal, our views are that the thermal will be a little bit more volatile. But it's becoming a smaller and smaller part of Whitehaven's overall earnings. So we think the catalyst to crystallize more value for Whitehaven are those asset sales. And we think that will come in the not-too-distant future. And that should see a re-rating of the stock. Perfect. Thank you, John. And then, Cathy has asked if you have an opinion on AIA, Auckland International Airport. Cathy, it's really almost like a LIC where it's a bond proxy for us because of these long-duration assets. We find interest rates are a big factor in the valuation on how well these stocks perform. So from a micro level, I think the assets come CapEx, I think, Auckland Airport. It's regulated. To get us really excited, we'd have to see interest rates in an aggressive cutting cycle. That would excite us. At the asset level, it's probably not that interesting at this point in time, I'd say. We don't have a position. If New Zealand economy were to fall in a big hole, which is sort of it's gone the opposite way. It's actually the rate environment's ticked up a little bit in NZ. So it really doesn't even come on the radar at this point in time. Thanks, Matt. Lee says, "In a previous update, WAM Leaders likened APA Group as another Macquarie. But it's no longer in the top shareholdings. What's changed? I'd say this one's quite easy, the government. The invisible hand of the government has yet again come into another sector. I mean, we joke about it. But the government involvement in sectors is I'm not sure I've seen anything like it. I'm trying to work out why. I think it's post-COVID. I was trying to liken it to budget repair, trying to fix the deficit. But actually, we're in a quite good position, thankfully, from iron ore and coal and LNG. But yeah, I mean, unfortunately, APA, victim of government regulation potentially changing the environment for them. And we saw that with Star. And we're not going to make that mistake again with APA if anything were to go bad. And we talked about the market will not reward a company with risk around it. The market is one-dimensional, focused on sure things. All the money is crowded in those names. So yeah, and we have, that's the market environment we have to respect. And that's part of our process is flow. If money's not going to go to that area, we're not going to invest in it. So, government overhang yet again involving themselves in another sector. Best to stay out. Thank you, Matt. The next question's from George. He says, "Have you gone all in on Woolworths? Or are you buying gradually given that the company faces further negativity in the coming months? Speaking of the invisible hand of the government, here's another stock where maybe I guess what we'll say is that we haven't gone all in. But we're now overweight for the first time in a while. What we see different between what Woolworths do and that's some other sectors is that we're not sure what the government can do to regulate Woolworths and Coles or Metcash. And we don't believe that Woolworths and Coles or Metcash are gouging in any instance. They provide a critical function to society, rightly or wrongly. Yes, at times, meat and fish produce prices do fluctuate. And they perhaps capture a bit too much of the margin on the way through. But what we are seeing is a response. And that response has been rapid. And they've listened to what is required. Inflation is seen day to day from the consumer's pocket in Woolworths and Coles. That's not Woolworths or Coles' influence. It's just the way that the world works, unfortunately. So for us, with Brad leaving, the timing was unfortunate. I think he was going to leave anyway. I think his time at Woolworths has come to an end. And I think, unfortunately, for someone who's been a great leader and a great CEO of the Australian market, it was unfortunate to see him leave in such circumstances. But the business is bigger than one person. And we think what Woolworths have been able to build, I think the current share price isn't reflecting that. So for us, yeah, George, you're right. Uncertainty will remain while these inquiries take place. But we think similar to the Royal Commissions on banks, the other end of this will see that it was a bit overblown, a bit overhyped, and a significant buying opportunity. Thanks, John. And Neil has a question. He says, "In the macro environment, do you see the weight of industry super funds having an unbalancing effect on the Australian share market and ASX 200 valuations? I'll answer this quickly. I'll say yes. If there's any journalists on the call, we've got to be careful in the way we answer this. But I think the Origin transaction highlights that the significant power so the rejection of the Origin deal from Brookfield shows the significant power that can be distilled in the hands of a super fund. We need to be careful that it doesn't go too far. In the same breath, we need to respect that these organizations have built terrific business in the spirit of free markets. They should be able to do what they want. But we need to be careful that they don't have too much influence on deals based on their view that could impact smaller mum and dad retailers, so mum and dad shareholders. So for us, a balance needs to be found. Undoubtedly, the power will continue to shift more and more to the industry super funds. Perversely, for us, that provides opportunities. As their investment strategy for the most part, and I'll generalize here, is that they take significant concentrated bets in a handful of stocks and then index the rest. So that will see more and more dislocation and disruption and opportunity. So a lot of what we're seeing today presents those opportunities for us to make money on the longer term. So yes, there is significant power wielded, probably a bit too much in our opinion. But I don't think anything's going to change that. Well said. Thank you, John. We have a question from Geoffrey. "Do you still hold Atlas Arteria? And how do you view it going forward? Again, we're talking about a company involved with government regulation. So the French government, we do own the stock in the portfolio. It's a small weight. We don't have enough confidence to go high because of the regime they're operating in. For those that don't know, they operate a toll road in France and also in the U.S. In France, they keep having fights around the toll hikes, extensions to tax rates, all sorts. So again, the environment has taught us you can't invest with uncertainty over a stock at this point in time. But I mean, it does look cheap in the low fours, I think it was. But yeah, we just can't get enough confidence to push the buy order to take it up higher. We're just going to hold it there until we can get some more certainty around the environment they're operating in. Perfect. Thank you. And Sally, Matt has a question for you. I mean, yeah, has a question for you, Matt. "What is your view as to the ideal share price in terms of the percentage premium or discount to NTA? And secondly, how has the market cap of WAM Leaders changed, particularly in terms of the timing of the unlisted fund? So the second part, there's been no change. That's easy to deal with. The first part, I mean, that's an interesting question. What is the ideal share price versus the NTA? And I'd probably go back to some of the answers Geoff has given over the years. If you think we can outperform the market by a certain amount and also, we don't believe that the shares in the portfolio are worth what they are worth because we wouldn't be invested in them. So we don't believe the NTA is a correct price of all the underlying holdings. So at a guess, what's our expected return on a lot? I mean, it'd be the share market returns over history plus a little bit. So I mean, you'd be looking at 10%-12% above NTA. I don't know, like 5%-7.5% premium above NTA is probably a reasonable level to see, I'd say, just by the mere fact that every stock in the portfolio we don't believe is the correct price. That is the NTA. We think they're worth much more. I mean, that's why we invest in those companies. Perfect. Thank you. And the next question is from Claire. She says, "What do you see as the capacity of the strategy both across the listed investment company and the unlisted fund? I mean, it's something we've done a little bit of work on. We can't really see any issues like AUD 5 billion-AUD 7 billion. If we're pulling our numbers, we look at the liquidity and our turnover. I mean, effectively, you adapt. So is there a capacity limit? I don't think so. So we don't see any issues. We're only AUD 2 billion with QVE. I mean, there's decades of growth here without any impact. I'd say our process is adaptable. So I don't see any limitations. Great. Thanks, Matt. Question from Geoff. He says, "China prefers Aussie iron ore as the Brazil ore is of lower quality. He suggests a private conversation with Gina or Twiggy could be of benefit and is wondering if you agree. Geoff, I'll just start off by saying that private conversations with Twiggy are off limits because we understand our responsibilities as investors. We always operate under the rules of ASIC. We'll keep that one to the side. We did have an opportunity to have a chat with some of Gina's team late last year. There are a few dynamics to play in the market. If you look at the quality of the ore, you're right at the moment, there is a preference for lower grade ore given mills in China are wanting to produce less but keep people in jobs. So as it stands, the discounting that typically is attracted for lower grade ore that people like Fortescue and Gina produce, those discounts were smaller and smaller. But as we start to see normalization of that steel market in China, those discounts are going back to where they were. Brazil, for the most part, and Vale produce higher grade pelletized iron ore. A lot of that is blended with what Fortescue produces. And a lot of what is on the horizon for Rio's growth in Simandou and some of Twiggy's aspirations coming out of Africa are very, very high grade iron ore. So what we're seeing generally is that most of these producers are going further away from that 62 grade. And you're going to see more people of lower grade and expansion in some of the higher grades so that they can provide more optionality for whatever the end customer is requiring. Interestingly, what we're also seeing and a subject that we haven't spoken about previously on these calls is the emergence of demand from other markets. And we're seeing India, who has always been perceived as self-sufficient in iron ore, being able to fulfill their own domestic demand from their own producers, they're buying more and more cargoes. And we learnt that recently. So what we do know is that if China does slow, we do expect over the next 3-5 years, India to step in and take up some of that demand. And the mix of product that each of the majors have, the marketable iron ore that they have, that will change as well. Some of the conversations we had with Fortescue recently around green steel and their ability to convert green steel to pelletized iron ore that allows them to mine lower grade 50 Fe ore body. So what we're seeing is there's going to be a change in the way that the world buys iron ore depending on the way that green steel is produced and where it's coming from. So I think adaptability and product mix and the ability to fulfill what consumer needs is going to be more of a focus for us. But yeah, look, we'd love to have that conversation with Twiggy. But I don't think he's got time for us. If you haven't looked at them, have a look at the Fortescue presentation because it's actually quite interesting around that pelletized. The technology isn't quite there yet. If they get that right, that's an absolute game changer. If you've got some spare time, have a look at the Fortescue presentation. It's actually really interesting. Great. Thank you both. And the next question is from Theo. He says, "CSR, Adbri, and Boral are all facing takeovers. How will it affect the market? What all those transactions have in common is property value and embedded value within. So for a long time, when you do analysis on a company, you look at some of the parts. And for the most part, people ignore some of the parts and just focus on multiples, on current earnings. What we've seen from these transactions is that there should be more emphasis on some of the parts and what underlying assets that these companies own. In particular, we saw CSR and Boral. And today, when the what are they calling them? I'm just going to mental blank. When the independent valuers came out today on Boral, they said there was AUD 1.20 of property which wasn't reflected in the share price. So what that tells us is that we need to look more forensically at the assets that companies own. And that's something that we've always gravitated toward. The NTA of a company or what underlying assets the company owns is far more important in certain instances than the current earnings. So for us, it's an exercise in ensuring that those companies that we're looking at, what we will need to understand is what assets they own, what assets they control, and what those assets are available for as opposed to what they might be earning today which might be a cyclical trough in their earnings. Names that for us that had highlighted potential opportunities were Fletcher Building. Some dislocation recently around Fletcher Building share price in the change of management. Reliance Worldwide was another one that we added to the portfolio on the back of these. Both have seen significant uplift in short-term performance. That led us to have several conversations with the broader team to ensure that we've got a better grasp on physical assets that companies control. I mean, a perfect example was the REIT sector post-COVID. I mean, like SCG, I think it was AUD 1.80. And the assets were well above AUD 3. And again, some of the pressures at the moment with LICs, I mean, you're probably sitting in a 20% discount to NTA. So NTA is sort of like your safe. I hesitate to call it safe. But it's sort of like your safety blanket. If your earnings fall off and you've got the assets, you've got asset backing. You've always got that there. And you would go into this environment of interest rate cuts and slowing economic growth, you've really got to look at the asset backing of some of these companies too because some have zero asset backing. And we generally stay away from companies unless there's a really, really good reason. We like tangible assets. We don't like intangible goodwill and all those things. Sometimes you need to be patient to realize the value of all those tangible assets. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. I suppose staying on the topic of REITs, Joseph has asked, "Will your team be looking at Goodman and other large REITs due to lots of demand in data centers in the next 5-10 years? Great question, Joseph. Goodman was a core position in the portfolio up until about a month ago, I'd say, where we thought near-term flow, money flow, drove the valuation beyond what we thought was fair. Some context around that, Goodman was included in a global real estate index which led to about AUD 3 billion worth of buying over a period of a month which completed on March the 15th. Absolutely, you're right to highlight that the data center growth and it's something that we'd spoken about in previous roadshows and seminars where we think it's in a tremendous position because one thing that we do notice is that a lot of the other players in the data center space, they need capital to grow. They need the capital to buy land. They don't have the land banks. Then they need to go and raise capital in equity markets to buy the land to facilitate the demand. What Goodman have is they have that land bank ready. I think they will do incredibly well over a long term. I think the market potentially is a little bit ahead of itself given that the time for it to develop, to get approvals to develop, and then to actually generate revenue is a lot longer than current thinking is. If you look at the planning approvals that are in place, Goodman don't feature particularly strongly domestically in Australia. They have more aspiration to grow in the U.S. and in Japan and the like. But I think the market's got a little bit ahead of itself in the short term around the earnings. Longer term, absolutely, undeniably a great story. But I think we just any pullback we'd looked at back. That's the other way to say it. Great. Thanks, John. What about IPD Group? Stephen has asked if that is a company that you would consider holding. I think that's outside of our investment universe. Yeah. I don't even know what the company is, unfortunately. IPD. I think Oscar and co. own that one. So maybe they can come back to you. Okay. Great. We'll come back to you, Stephen. Ashok has asked, "What is your view on lithium for the next 12 months? Great question and one that we debate daily. It changes daily, too. Yes. The latest positioning on lithium is lithium bulls for about a month and a half and then back to bears. The reason why we think lithium might be okay in the short term is the restocking of the downstream guys is happening and providing a bit of support for the price. But the oversupply of the lithium market will kick back in. So what we think will happen is in the very short term, that restocking might excite people a little bit. But then the gravity of the supply will kick back in. And that will turn into being negative lithium names. So very short term, tactically, think lithium might be okay. But there's going to be a very quick trade, potentially a month or two. And then that might be the end of it. I'll give you some more color on the way that we debate, Ashok, just on a few of the things that we think about. What we saw was a particularly strong uptake in EV vehicles over the past three years. That for us is more akin to a luxury product demand where if you look at Tesla and Porsche or Audi who did the vast majority of the global demand, these were luxury products. A lot of the uptake and the early movers were tech people or the more affluent aspects of society. As we've seen luxury globally in all pockets of luxury goods pull back, you saw that same thing affect the demand for luxury cars. Where we think the big boom for lithium comes is when we have that critical infrastructure that allows lithium to become more mainstream where our Toyota Corollas or Toyota Camrys are replaced with you pick on Toyota or the Kias or whatever it is of the world are replaced with EV-style, more affordable $20,000-$30,000 cars. China have successfully done that. And we've seen that come through there. But the rest of the world is really lagging. So that's where we think the big demand for lithium comes is when that part of the market, not just the luxury part of the market, drives it. And the second thing that we'd often consider is where is the value to be made in the supply chain? Is it with the mine or is it downstream with the battery producer? If you look at some of those vertically integrated producers like Tianqi or Albemarle, we suspect more of the value for them is in the chemical end and downstream in the battery making the chemical that goes into the battery as opposed to the mining of the hard rock lithium or the carbonate. For us, we're still debating the longer-term drivers. We do know there will ultimately, there will be incredible demand for lithium. But how we navigate between now and then is the tricky thing. Yeah. And also the EV penetration, whether it's a luxury thing or whether it's the early adopters that always go for EVs are pretty well full now. There really has to be a psychological whether it's a price or a mentality. Everywhere hitting this glass ceiling now which we're trying to get our heads around is will that penetration go up? Will the lower costs increase penetration? Or it's really people don't want them. I'm probably a bad example. I love internal combustion engines. I love the linear delivery of an EV. I cannot stand. I don't like the way they drive. But it's an unanswered question. Is the penetration a cost issue? Or is it just a preference issue? And does the driving experience have to change on these cars? When's the government going to put the infrastructure into? Yeah. I mean, again, Australia's probably not a great example because it's so sparse. Dense cities are probably more conducive to EVs. Australia, when we go for a drive, it's like crossing Europe sometimes if you go up the coast. I'd hate to see the domestic energy grid try to support extra million EV vehicles where we have concern around the ability to power households in the peak of summer. So that's a philosophical debate for another time which we spoke to AGL about that. I think when the Labor government came out with a plan around certain amount of EVs by whatever date it was. They just said the whole energy grid would implode. It would take us 15-20 years just to meet the energy needs if we started constructing now. So yeah, a lot of unanswered questions. Thank you. That was a great answer. Thanks, Matt and John. The next question's from Richard. He said, "Some of your share selling and buying is fairly small margins. Can you tell us the cost to trade? The cheapest avenue for us to trade is, and if you're a broker on this phone call, please cover your ears right now. It's two basis points. So we pay two basis points for a trade. So it's fairly tight, very small costing on some of our trades. Fantastic. Warren had a question on the Bank of Queensland and Magellan. Yeah. I'll cover off the Bank of Queensland. So again, banking sector under pressure. Bank of Queensland have been in all sorts of trouble. They had to replace a CEO, couldn't find a CEO. Unfortunately, for Bank of Queensland, there's a lot of CEO opportunities within the Big Four banks at the moment. So no one wants to jump for the BOQ role before having a crack at the bigger job. So they're in a bit of a state of limbo. Also, the regulation, the cost of funding is not great for the regionals. So it's a really tough space for them at the moment. We can't make an investment case for them. We don't have any shares in BOQ. We're meeting with the company. We want to re-engage and see if there's an opportunity there. But we just can't make it work for us at this point in time. If we can't make the Big Four work on valuations and BOQs, I mean, it's a lot cheaper. But it's cheaper for a reason. We just can't make it work. Magellan? A bit more of a Geoff passion project there. So potentially a great question for Geoff. But similar to our comments on AMP, that we have a bias against fund managers. And what we're starting to see is they've stemmed the outflow. And there was significant outflow from a lot of their institutional investors. Some personal change, obviously, affected that as well, some management change. Near-term performance has been fairly strong from what we can observe given their focus and their bias towards a lot more of the growth either Magnificent Seven out of the U.S. But for us, it's trying to work out the sustainability of its fund now that they've stemmed the outflow. Can they transfer from outflow to growth again? Time will tell. But I think it's a bit premature for us to have a look at it all, get back in there. But again, we'll reserve that question for Geoff who probably knows a bit better than we do. Fantastic. And that's actually all we have time for today. We've covered off all of those questions. So thank you to everyone for sending them through. And I'll pass back to Matt for any closing remarks. Yeah. Thanks, Bridget. Thanks for everyone for joining us on the call. Great questions as always. We thoroughly enjoy these afternoons chatting to our shareholders. We'll be on the road in April. I hope you can come along to the shareholder presentations across Australia. But yeah, obviously, like I touched on the short-term underperformance, we're working as hard as we can. We think the market is moving back into our favor. All the stocks we hold, we're very comfortable with. Yeah, we're very confident over the next 6-12 months to really get performance going again. Look forward to having a good update next time we speak to you. Thank you for your time. Thank you.