Hello and welcome. Thank you all for joining us today for the WAM Leaders Full Year Results webinar. My name is Bridget Thelander, and today I'm joined by WAM Leaders Lead Portfolio Manager, Matthew Haupt, and Portfolio Manager, John Ayoub. Before we begin, a disclaimer is displayed for you on screen, and what we, we'll discuss today is general, and is not financial advice. To start, I'll provide an overview of the full-year results, and then pass to Matt and John, who will provide an investment portfolio and market update, and discuss key investment themes and reporting season insights. We look forward to taking your questions towards the end of the webinar. Let's start with investment portfolio performance. The portfolio increased 2.8% during the year, underperforming the index. The investment portfolio performance since inception and the profits reserve available through the listed investment company structure has enabled the board to increase the dividend for shareholders to 9.2 cents per share, with the fully franked final dividend being 4.6 cents per share, and this represents a 7.2% dividend yield on yesterday's closing share price of AUD 1.29. Since inception in May 2016, the WAM Leaders investment portfolio performance has been 12.5% per annum, and that's outperforming the index by 3.6% per annum, with an average cash holding of around 10.7%. The profits reserve was 29.5 cents per share at the end of June, before the payment of the fully franked final dividend of 4.6 cents per share, and this represents 3.2 years of dividend coverage. I'll hand over to Matt, who will provide some insights into the portfolio performance and provide you with a market update. Thanks, Matt. Great. Thanks, Bridget, and thanks for everyone for joining us today, on the call for the WAM Leaders, webinar. As Bridget pointed out there on the opening, we'd just like to acknowledge it was a very, very tough year, for the WAM Leaders, portfolio and shareholders and, you know, ourselves as well. We've, we don't like underperforming, but this happened over that year. Largely explainable by, I'd say 75% of it's two stocks, and then 25% of it is stocks we didn't hold. So, but again, I'd just like to point out that this is a snapshot in time, it's a point in time. It's not-- We haven't exited those positions that have hurt us, so we're hoping for a great year ahead. So, while we acknowledge that, we are quite confident and probably as confident as we've ever been around an outcome in some of these difficult names that we've held over the period. So, with acknowledging that, let's concentrate on the year ahead. So I guess the year ahead, last year was all about interest rate hikes and how far we were gonna hike. This year will be about interest rate cuts and how fast we're gonna cut. So we think at the moment, like the market, the stock market is pricing a very soft landing scenario. We think it's a little bit too early to work out whether it's a soft landing or a hard landing. We're still waiting for the incoming data, but the market is very well positioned for a soft landing. There's a lot of interest rate cuts factored in, and the earnings impact for the stock market is probably not quite as deep as it should be. We think there is definitely a slowdown underway, but the slowdown is likely to accelerate over the next three to six months, and that's gonna provide some headwinds for some of the momentum names that we're seeing in the market. So again, very much around interest rate cuts coming to the market and how fast the economy is gonna slow. And if we look across to some of the positioning, so we think we are in that slowdown phase. We think the best way to position is have a defensive tilt into the portfolio. So we've been running the defensive tilt for probably about twelve months, and we think the market is moving towards our positioning right now. So you look across sectors where we think there's great opportunity, and sectors such as healthcare, some of the telcos are representing good value as well, and some of the more defensive utility type names are looking quite attractive as well. Coupled that with the other side of the market, the momentum side of the market, very, very crowded. So you'd see, you know, Australian banks hitting all-time highs. You know, that's been very evident and obvious in the market. You look at CBA, you know, Australia's biggest stock on the index. I think it cracked 10% the other day- Mm. On the index, so huge weight of the index, and it's trading, when we look at it, at a crazy valuation, so you know, almost three point five times book, where a bank, ideally, you should be buying, you know, Australian Residential Mortgage Bank between one point two and up to one point six times of the book value. So again, astronomical valuations, but it goes to show that crowding in the stock market at the moment is very, very intense. So we'd expect as the slowdown comes through, we'd expect the market breadth to increase, and a lot of that breadth will come to names that we've been hunting, that have been left behind, over that period in time. So overall, we are quite comfortable with the position portfolio. We've got that defensive tilt. But I thought if we could go through a couple of the slides, which sort of gives an indication of how we're sitting and how we view the world at the moment. So if you turn to the recession indicator slide, which we've got in the pack, I'll just get the page for you there. It's on page seven. This is one of the dashboards that we use to work out the likelihood of a recession within Australia, and if you can follow along on the page, it's a heat map. So the heat map, obviously, green is good and red is bad, and it's just trying to show that we are a long way away from a recession, but the risks are increasing. So we think the RBA, you know, obviously, there's been very public spat between the government and the RBA. The government think we should be cutting rates. The RBA think we should not, and in fact, they think potentially a hike. We're of the view the RBA will hold and likely cut next year. But it's just showing the risk of a recession is increasing in Australia, but we think we're a long way away from that, you know, with solid labor market and solid wage growth. So it's quite an important thing to watch, the health of the Australian economy, and so far it's been quite resilient. Anecdotally, we're seeing signs of softness across retail, and the cost of living is really biting across different industries, which we're seeing at the moment, but as far as recessions go, low probability within Australia. And the other slide we included, again, we talked about interest rate cuts. On slide eight, we've got the... This is, again, a heat map showing the probabilities of interest cut, rate cuts in the U.S. Obviously, the U.S. is a massive factor in global markets and global equity markets. It's a reserve currency, has huge flow-on effects, and the cost of capital. So we're looking across to the U.S., there's a huge amount of cuts coming. The talk is between a twenty-five and fifty basis point cut in the September meeting, which is live this meeting. So again, interest rates are being cut globally in the U.S. and likely to continue to come down as you're seeing signs of weakness in the labor market. And in Europe, we've had cuts, and in Canada as well, we've had cuts. So Australia is very much lagging, as far as the cuts go, but we didn't move as high. So that's a big difference as well. And Australia has a different transfer mechanism than the rest of the world. So again, a huge amount of cuts coming into the market. And the point to remember as well with equity markets and stocks, sometimes people think interest rate cuts are coming, equities are gonna rally. But that's only in rare instances where the underlying growth or the direction of the economy is turning positive. If the direction of the economy is turning negative, interest rate cuts will not save stocks. So that's just an important factor to distinguish. Interest rate cuts alone will not tell you where the market is going. It's really. It's got to be combined with the direction of the economy and the direction of liquidity as well. The important slide, I think, we'll cover off today was on slide nine, which is just pointing to how bad global markets think China is at the moment. So China is pretty much uninvestable for most of the market participants across the globe. And why that is important for us is we're seeing the flow coming from China and going to Australian markets, in particular, the top twenty liquid names in the MSCI indexes. A lot of Chinese stocks have been deleted, and we're seeing the consequence of that is flow coming into the Australian market, and we think it's been partly responsible for some of the Australian bank buying. Which again, you can see on this chart here, that the capital outflows are the worst since COVID, so it's actually worse than COVID, the capital outflows, and that has huge consequences across global markets because money is a flow concept, so money flows out of China, it finds a home elsewhere. It's found a home in Japan, India, and we think Australia, and in particular, Australian banks. So they're probably the three most important charts that I think sum up the market at this point in time, but overall, I'd say we're waiting for more evidence. We don't have the evidence in front of us to distinguish between a soft and a hard landing at this point in time. What we think the most appropriate way to position is in the cheap defensives, because we think the defensive trade has probably got three months to carry out, to play out still, before you'd switch to the more cyclical names. We think the cyclical trade is too early, and you don't have enough evidence to say this is a soft landing yet. So I mean, that's the big debate that we have every day, the difference between a soft landing and a hard landing and how we position. So, with that, I'll hand over to John, who can talk about some of the reporting season and some of the how we're positioning the portfolio. Thanks, Matt, and thanks to all the shareholders for dialing in today. I think a good place to start would be just on the state of the market and what we're seeing every single day now. And what we've noticed is, and Matt called it out earlier, crowding, and there is a crowding towards perceived quality, perceived certainty in the market. And what that has created is a dispersion, which we talked about in our last call, but the dispersion's got even bigger than we'd seen before. The valuations of stocks that have that perceived certainty or that perceived quality element has gone beyond any fundamental basis that we have seen for a considerable period of time. On the other side of the spectrum, we're seeing more and more stocks hit, you know, lows, twelve-month lows, pre-COVID lows, yeah, unsustainably low valuations, which is forcing responses from boards in some instances to rectify the valuation disparity that we're seeing in this market, and for us, what we're trying to consider is: Is this a structural shift in markets, or is this just a cyclical element that will play out through time? The names that we've said before, and we'll say again, the likes of CBA, Westpac, NAB, ANZ, Wesfarmers, JB Hi-Fi, they're not demonstrating the growth characteristics from a fundamental standpoint to justify the valuations where they are today. Yet momentum funds, quant funds, large Australian superannuation funds, global players are crowding in these names to the valuations where they are today. Whilst the other end of the spectrum, where companies we like to feel you can add value and generate alpha, the uncertainty or the lack of risk appetite in the market is driving the valuations in this sector even lower. So for us, one of the questions we're trying to understand is this a structural play, or is this a cyclical element? And we think it is cyclical. It's just lasted already longer than we thought. I guess the question for us is: What are the catalysts that potentially change this dynamic in the market? That typically leads us to our second question that we ask ourselves most days is: When do we pull the trigger on Australian resources again? The easy trade in the Australian market has been sell resources and buy banks. For us, when that unwinds, when that positioning unwinds, there's gonna be a rapid snapback, and that snapback towards BHP, the Rio Tinto, the South32s, the Sandfires, the Mineral Resources of the world, it will be rapid and swift. So we need to somewhat get ahead of that, start building positions, and we're starting to do that now, and Matt will touch on our view on China in a little while. But that's a big decision that we're gonna have to face this year, is when do we think that switch takes place from banks to resources, if indeed it does take place? That, we feel, will be the catalyst for a lot of that crowding around the quality, and the certainty around the banks should unwind. And for us, there's an inflection point in markets where we feel like we will capture a lot of performance, when that eventually does take place. And then that also then would lead us on to our third question that we typically ask ourselves in the market is: When, in a portfolio level, do we start adding risk to the portfolio? And what we mean by risk is buying these stocks that are battleground stocks, that we know have asset backing, that we know there is long-term upside for these stocks, but right now there isn't that risk appetite in the market. Yet the names that I'll highlight, where we haven't yet built full positions, we're doing work on, we're putting a little incubator positions in, those names are likes of Ramsay Health Care, Ampol, Domino's, Atlas Arteria Roads, Mineral Resources, Fortescue, Spark Infrastructure, and Sonic Healthcare. That's just a few names that we're starting to build positions in or even looking at building positions. Some may not graduate. Some may just fall by the wayside. We think they're just value traps. Others, in the past, we've had names like CSL, ResMed, Qantas, Brambles, Orora, and Lendlease, where they've been battlegrounds at times, but they eventually graduate to the little bit of market darlings, and in particular, the Brambles and Qantas of late, where they were clear battle stocks over the last year or two, they've graduated. But for us, that's where we see potential alpha generation in the medium term, but we don't think the market's quite ready to take that risk on. So for us, those are three areas from a portfolio level that we're really focusing on. Perhaps I'll now turn to some of the, some of those battle stocks and some of our challenges from last year and, you know, two stocks in particular that affected performance materially. Fortunately, one is on the right track, and the other one we're still working through, and that's Star Entertainment and Orora. I'll preface it by saying that sometimes we do play with fire, and when we do play with fire, occasionally we do get burnt. There's always a proportion of our portfolio that is in these deeper cyclical, hated names, shall we call them, and it normally makes up around 7-10% of the portfolio, and these two names last year made up that sort, that level. Right, as we stand today, Star sits at 3% of our current assets of WAM Leaders. What we can say about that, just conscious of what's taking place out there is, we think that Steve McCann is the right person, is absolutely the right person to turn this ship around. There are a number of challenges that that business is facing and has faced, and we think the previous board and management are absolutely culpable for a lot of the decisions and missteps that has taken place. They're not the only ones that are guilty of failings out there, and I think with the forms of time and when we can reflect on this fully in the future, a lot of other parties should have a lot to answer for, but we'll leave that for right now. What we are now expecting from a Star standpoint is there are a lot of stakeholders that need to align. In the last twenty-four hours alone, we've seen some positive announcements come out of the company, including the hiring of a great new CEO in the Gold Coast, the resolution of a legal suit with a AUD 40 million non-settled VIP high roller, you know, cash coming back into the door, the sale of the Treasury Building in Queensland. Effectively, AUD 100 million of cash is coming back to the company. There are a number of other assets that we think are non-core and saleable to help the strategic direction of the business, and undoubtedly, the cost base is absolutely swollen right now. And we think once Steve does what he needs to do from a strategic standpoint, dealing with the governments, dealing with the banks, dealing with other stakeholders, be it AUSTRAC and regulators, we think the business will be better positioned coming out the other side. You know, it's worth noting that the cleanest gambling money in the country right now is going through the casinos... perversely, they're the ones that are clean. You know, we could point the fingers elsewhere, but, you know, we'll let others do that. But right now, we think the business is set up for a more sustainable future. But what we will also say is that there are no sacred cows anymore, and for us, every single asset is for sale, and it's time to return cash back to shareholders in one form or another. So, that's probably all we can say about Star right now. If any shareholders do have any further concerns, Matt and I are here at your service. We'll happily take any questions offline. We are the ones accountable for the position, and we acknowledge we got that one wrong, but the journey isn't quite over there. And on the flip side, another one of the stocks that we struggled with last year was Orora. Now, that was 6% of the portfolio at around that AUD 2 mark, and what we're actually seeing is that strategy starting to play out. It's quickly gone from a AUD 1.90 to AUD 2.62 today in the better part of three or four weeks. And that is where the way that we value companies on the sum of the parts, where we get attracted to is where things are absolutely bummed out, but we understand that there is asset values or there is strategic sum of the part, and the sale of their U.S. packaging business for around $1.6 billion post-tax is far exceeded the value that any market participant had thought of. So where we now lie with Orora is a more sustainable, stronger business with a bulletproof balance sheet, which will be undertaking buyback. So, you know, for that, that's one of those battleground stocks that didn't work last year, but it's quickly paid dividends this year, and that's typically the way it happens in the market. So yeah, you know, it's a tale of two different stories, where one's still playing out and one is absolutely played out. If we pause there and then maybe reflect on the broader portfolio, and to add to a few of the comments that Matt was saying around how we're positioning that defensive quality bucket, which is the cheaper end of the spectrum versus a historical context. You know, the Telstras, the Amcors, the Woolworths, and the CSLs, they're the anchor positions within the portfolio. We think they're the ones that will withstand some of the turbulence that we're starting to see in the market. Markets and financial conditions at a consumer level, at the household level, I don't need to tell most of the callers who have dialed in today, things are deteriorating quickly. So we need those robust, strong balance sheet, high-quality companies that aren't overstretched on the valuation perspective to be the pillars of the portfolio, and that's the Telstra, that's the Amcor, that's the Woolworths, and then there's the CSLs of the world. The next level down are the stocks that we think have defensive characteristics but are cheaper, and they're the turnarounds where we think they're on their way. Those names include Dexus, Spark in New Zealand, Orora, and Treasury Wine. That's where we think the portfolio will do well and will drive the performance over the next one to two years, hopefully, and then if we talk about the China bucket, where we think positioning there ahead of time, and again, Matt will come to it probably next. The Sandfires, the Rio Tintos, the BHPs, and the mineral resources. Now, Mins, we don't own any fulsome manner. We've only recently started to look at it. But we see opportunities in this space, certainly, in the shorter to medium term. So maybe I'll just quickly turn over to Matt, who could talk about China. Yeah, I mean, it's a good point around China and what we're seeing there, again, like we showed the chart of it being largely uninvestable. You see, you know, there's all stocks like BHP, Rio, you know, at pretty low prices. And again, what we see in China, well, obviously, it's pretty tough. That's reflected and pretty well consensus. But what we saw is in May and June, a huge amount of local government issuance, and that generally leads activity. So we're actually getting a little bit more positive on the Q4 activity coming out of China. So we think there might be a bit of a trade here for resources. Again, it's a little bit early, but what happens is the government's issued the bonds, and then that translates to activity, the money gets spent. So a lot of the fiscal stimulus that's been put in, only 50% of it's been done, and now they're issuing the bonds. We actually think there could be a bit of a tailwind in Q4. And again, there's some important data that which will come out over the weekend, which will show their total social financing level. Again, that'll be a key indicator for us if they're actually increasing loans. It's probably gonna be a little bit soft this month, but next month will be the key one. For us, that looks like a clear theme for an investable theme. The other investable theme would call out is income or yield. We think if you can buy companies which are high quality and have that income, positive cost of carry, we call it, you actually get paid for holding the stock, which could be, you know, 4% or 5%. Things like ALX, you're getting paid 8% to hold the stock. Obviously, regulatory issues overhanging that, but we think that's gonna be a clear theme over the next few months. You need to hold companies paying higher dividends, because essentially, the spread between the cash rate and the income will increase. So the dividend companies pay and the cash rate are pretty close now, but we think there'll be a divergence there, and again, money will start to flow to these high income stocks, and that's the high income generally lends themselves to defensive characteristics. So we actually think there's two tailwinds for this trade, and I guess the third one we'd call out is REITs. So again, John touched on it with Dexus. So we caught up with Dexus, and then they're not going to call the bottom of office. Dexus are involved in office, but they said it's defrosting or dethawing, so we quite like that. The valuation is still, you know, 20-odd% below its NTA. So again, very much like a LIC, where you're trading at a discount to NTA. We think Dexus looks good, and some of the REITs look pretty good 'cause REITs are generally pretty defensive by nature, and I think a lot of people have lost maybe the faith in the REIT sector around those defensive characteristics. So we actually think that there are clear three investable themes for the remainder of the year: the China exposure for Q4, the yield exposure, and those high-quality companies in particular, like REITs, which were traditionally a defensive asset class, and healthcare and utilities are the other ones which screen really well. So we think we're probably the most excited we've been for a long time around the market valuation and the spread. Because what happens is, when people don't have a high conviction of where we're going, you get that crowding behavior, and the crowding has got so extreme that some of these names we're looking at are, well, almost back towards COVID lows. So we think this is a great opportunity for this year. If you get the increased confidence of direction, it doesn't matter if it's a soft landing or hard landing, if people get more confidence of the direction, money will spread, and we're starting to see the early signs now, but it's still right at the start of this inflection point. So we think, we are on the cusp of an inflection point, and some of the silliness- Mm ... will come out of the market, which has been going on for way longer than we expected, and is really quite hard to assign any logic to the way the market is behaving at the moment. But the only logic we can assign is flow of funds and a low degree of confidence on people's direction of the market, so they're just crowding. So overall, we're quite pleased by the developments. Even though there's pain in the short term, we think it's gonna set ourselves up for a great year ahead, but- One of the extremes that we toy with is valuations relative to CommBank. And if you look at the actual fundamentals of Commonwealth Bank, its earnings didn't grow last year, but yet its multiple rerated, its book value rerated, and then you compare it to a CSL. CSL's giving you double-digit growth, and yet it's cheaper than CBA, and it gives you that global growth in defensive nature, in a defensive sector, being healthcare. And from that perspective, we're happy every day to sell CBA and to buy CSL, because we think over the medium term, as CSL continues to grow, and CBA is a great company, we'll be clear about that. We think Matt Comyn and the team, they're incredible, and they do an incredible job. We struggle to see CBA worth being worth more than Goldman Sachs. That's one thing we will mention. Mm-hmm. But with that, maybe we can go to questions, Bridget, or? That'd be great. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds great. Matt, we've already received plenty of questions, so best to get started on them. I actually might start with the ones that came through to the inbox this morning. The first question is from Tony, who was a previous shareholder of QVE, and he was based in Hong Kong, so he had to take the cash out and then buy into WAM Leaders. He says: "It appears you have a lot of the ASX top two hundred names, which QVE did not typically own. Can you comment on the universe that WAM Leaders invests in, particularly, like, for the new shareholders on the call? Maybe I'll touch on what we saw from the QVE portfolio, and Matt can talk a little bit about Leaders in more detail. But when we inherited the QVE portfolio, you're right, Tony, there was a lot of names that we didn't own. I'd say there was probably 10 names that there was an overlap in, and we retained about 5 or 6 of those when we cleared out the portfolio. You know, QVE's portfolio is very much smaller, deep value, buy and hold positions, which doesn't typically fit within the Leaders' portfolio. So for us, you know, we cleared a lot of that out and have rotated it into Leaders, and that happened very, very quickly. But Matt can talk a bit more about the differentials in the twenties. Yeah, I mean, thanks, Tony, for the question. WAM Leaders is an ASX two hundred fund, so we can invest from, you know, CBA to, you know, the two hundredth largest company, as long as it's in the ASX two hundred. We can go outside, but we don't do that. So largely, you're getting a top two hundred fund, and then in the top twenty, we're actually quite... we find quite a few opportunities in the top twenty, so you'll see us participate in the top twenty, generally moving the weightings up and down quite dramatically. You know, our core stocks, you know, they can be in the top twenty, but generally between the top twenty and top fifty, I'd say, is generally a large proportion of our holdings sit, and then in the top twenty, we really move them up and down, so very active. We just don't buy the top twenty and hold it, hoping for index returns. We're very active in the top twenty, but you'll see them pop up in the NTA, and generally, they'll pop up too, because when we go into those names, they represent a high dollar value, so you'll see them popping in the top twenty on the NTA every now and then. We can invest anywhere, but generally the stock 20 to 50 is our preferred hunting ground, where we think we can generate a lot more outperformance. Perfect, the next question is from Kevin. He says: "I realize LICs are in a down phase generally, due to a lack of demand, but should the WAM Leaders' share price improve as interest rates fall? Good question, Kevin. I mean, to be fair, a lot of it's through poor performance as well in the short term, so we'll, we'll acknowledge that, and we're doing our hardest to, to get that back, and we think we will, but yeah, it's, it's almost like what we're talking about with REITs and other infrastructure utility names, where when you have fixed interest rates higher, obviously there's an alternative where you don't have to take equity risk. You get the, you know, fixed payments, very, very low risk. You've only got credit risk. So obviously, when there's more alternatives, we, we go back to flow of funds, you have viable alternatives, money moves out of, you know, equity income into fixed interest income. So we think as interest rates fall, like we said with our trades, with REITs, and some of the defensive utilities, that should provide support, and money move should flow back into equity income products like the LIC market. Perfect. Thanks, Matt. And we'll stay potentially touching on the share price. There's a question from Scott, and he said: "What strategy do you have at the moment to turn around the share price, given the negative performance? I mean, the strategy we have is obviously, first and foremost, to fix performance, which we're, you know, well on the way to doing that and starting to execute on that. Secondly is just, you know, regain some confidence in the performance of the portfolio. Like, we see the huge rebound potential in the portfolio now, which isn't translating to the NTA. So we think once that comes through, then the NTA will increase again and start going up, and then that will drive the performance, and then that will drive the share price. But generally, it goes in ebbs and flows. When you have weak performance, you know, people get disappointed, they sell, creates, you know, feeds on itself. We just need to arrest that, and also just communicate with our shareholders as well. Mm -around, you know, what we're doing, and also, you know, when we do have some success on some of these, turnarounds- Mm ... you know, they'll be quite public. So hopefully, that should be a positive catalyst as well. Yeah. And, like, we won't shy away from it. Last year was an absolute challenging year for us and underperforming the market. It's not something that we pride ourselves on, and, you know, we're a very competitive team, and we try to outperform in all market conditions. But, you know, I think over the last nine years, if you look at our performance on a nine-year basis, on a three-year basis, on a five-year basis, we've outperformed, and last year was. You know, it comes down to three or four poor stock choices, and not being able to allocate that cash to CBAs and the Wesfarmers that materially outperformed. You know, we think a lot of that unwinds naturally, and from a standpoint, the board is still, you know, they're still highly supportive. The dividend continues to grow, our profits reserve's still strong, and all we can ultimately control is the performance of the underlying portfolio, and hopefully, in time, that we drive the NTA up, and that respond, and that leads the share price up. Brilliant. And just, yeah, staying with that, I think it's important for shareholders to sort of, you know, understand that it is performance and not the trust and QVE. Matt had asked: "Can you comment on the fall in share price since you launched the trust and took over QVE?" Yeah. Do you just wanna- Yeah, the trust. We'll point out that the trust is still very small in the context of overall Leaders. So I don't think. I think it's had very, very little impact on ultimately switching from Leaders into the trust. From a QVE standpoint, there's always a little bit of a blowback from the shareholders that don't elect to take the cash, don't realize that they've ended up with Leaders shares and potentially some really short-term share price pressure. We expect most of that is now washed through, and from now, it's really about focusing on turning around that performance, driving the NTA higher, and ultimately, you know, hopefully, shareholders rewarded by that. Great. And then we'll focus on a few questions. There's a few ones coming through on dividends. This next one from Rob, he says: "Is WAM Leaders going to continue the policy of high dividends, which reduces the possibility of growth in the share price? Dividends are always a board decision, so we'll try and give you as much color as we can without speaking for them, 'cause we can't, but I mean, if you look historically, the WAM Capital dividend probably got ahead of itself, and was becoming too big a distribution for the size of the fund, and you know, we've learned our lessons with that, so I'd say there'd be a point where the dividend growth would decline versus history, because they will reach a natural level where it doesn't make sense, and probably the best way to look at it is the dividend is a proportion of NTA rather than the share price. You know, if you're starting to pay out too much of the dividend, which eats into the NTA, it becomes really hard to grow the share price as well. I think ultimately we'll learn the lesson with WAM Capital, not to go too aggressive with the dividend. I think it'll be very well managed and very controlled from here. Fantastic. And the next one's from Graham: "Will you be investing in the Lottery Corporation? Oh, yeah. Thanks, Graham. TLC is. It's been a wonderful performer, especially when you consider the separation between TLC and Tabcorp, where, you know, for a long time, people didn't really attribute enough value to TLC. But for us, close to that AUD 5 mark, it's what we would call fair value. And we would see limited upside from there, and considering that the wonderful, rightly or wrongly, the market values is this company on its jackpot sequencing. And what we mean by that is, when they have those super jackpots of AUD 100 million plus, they generate super profits. So the market looks at those large jackpots as an indication of future earnings, or the current earnings, I should say. And then, as you roll from year to year, they look backwards and say: "Well, you had X amount of $100 million jackpots, you got to cycle that this year." And for us, they're cycling a very big jackpot run last year. And their earnings somewhat are elevated from a theoretical standpoint, where if you look at the math and the probability of the jackpot sequencing that they experienced, particularly last year, it's very difficult for them to do that again this year. So from our standpoint, we have typically traded this stock from or anywhere between AUD 4.70-AUD 4.80 range is where we buy it, and from AUD 5.00-AUD 5.10 is we sell it. To break that current trading range, what would we need to see? More execution on the part of management around costs. It's probably got an elevated cost base than what it really should have. Further repricing of its current gains, so driving that price point without cannibalizing or losing market share or slowing of its growth. They're probably the two main things, and I guess the last one would be the rate environment. It should be a beneficiary of falling rates because it's considered infrastructure-like. So if we start seeing rates getting cut aggressively, that may see its valuation be elevated. But for where we are today, we think it's probably just at best fair value. Great. Thank you, John. And then this next question is from Peter, and I can see a similar question from Ashok. Peter says: "Why are you holding Commonwealth Bank, and why don't you sell it at these high valuations?" And then Ashok has also said: "Why does CBA keep rallying? It's one of the great mysteries of the world, CBA, where it is at the moment, but, I mean, flow of funds, super funds are buying it. We touched on some of the international flow hitting it. The banks themselves are buying their own shares through, you know, CBA, doing a DRP sterilization in market. They've all got buybacks on. So again, stocks divert from fundamentals when there is abnormal flow, and we're seeing abnormal flow in them at the moment. So why do we own CBA? We do own it almost begrudgingly own it. It's effectively- The size of it. It's risk management as well. So CBA is about 10% of the Australian index. You know, our position in CBA is 4% of the fund. We think it's ridiculously expensive, but we are, for risk management purposes, we know this flow is continuous. We're waiting for that switch, for it to switch off, and then we will be quickly exiting that position. But at the moment, like, it's really risk mitigation for us, and until we can see that trigger for this flow to break, we participate in a small way. We're not capturing all that risk, we're just hedging a little bit of that risk from not owning it. It's one of the strange things in this market, too, is some people have a 5% maximum underweight, like our peers, and they are forced buyers as well. So it's almost compounding, but the unwind will be dramatic, and we can't wait for that day. There were two other stocks, if I can recall, over the past five years, where this has actually happened to. The first was CSL, when it touched 10% of the index. There was begrudging index covering buying, which sent it to silly valuations at the time, and subsequently, it drifts post that, and when it drifts, it drifts fairly aggressively. And the second one was BHP last year, when it got to just over 10% of the index, and then as it peaks out, it's the what drove it up also just ends up driving it down. We expect a similar phenomena to happen in CBA, too. Again, we thought it would happen six months ago. It's still playing out now, and hopefully, it doesn't last another six months. Great, and the next question is from Gary: "What's your attitude towards all of the big banks? Buy, hold, or sell, or take the profits on offer on current elevated share prices? I mean, they again, we can't give financial advice, so we'll tell you what we are doing. You know, prefer like, the number one preferred bank based on valuation and flow is Westpac. Number two would be CBA, and then NAB, and then ANZ, the least preferred. It's such a tricky question. Are they buy, hold, sell? Like, every day, we're assessing it. We think they're a sell on fundamentals, but a buy, hold on flow positioning. So I mean, that's the game we have to play every day. On the regional side, Bendigo and BOQ, you know, our preference would be for Bendigo. On Macquarie Bank, again, a great business model, a great management team, very expensive. So for us, fundamentally, it makes it really, really hard to buy these companies, but for risk mitigation, we are playing those flow dynamics, which are very hard for a retail shareholder to watch. We get to see a little bit of the inside way that money is moving around. But the money is still moving into these stocks. We see it every day. You know, these desks are showing big bank buying to us, and we just see it every day. So risk mitigation makes us buy some of these banks, but fundamentally, you really could never say buy a bank- Mm at three and a bit times book. I mean. CBA's yield's like 3%. Mm. Yeah. It just, we struggle to comprehend the valuation, but yet, you know, I think the cost base of a lot of shareholders is way lower. You know, retail is still the largest shareholder in CBA. What potentially triggers retail to sell? We're not sure. And as Matt pointed out, index funds, superannuation funds, and quant money is flowing into this. So, I think we think the catalyst to unwind it is the turnaround in Australian resource stocks, which provides enough scale from a switching perspective. And I think that would be the main catalyst to see those banks fall. Yeah. It'd be the switching to a sector- Yeah or increased confidence of the direction of the economy, and you get a breadth increase. Yep. So those are the two things we're watching. Great. And what about resources? Ashok has said: "Why is the portfolio overweight in resources? Yeah, it's an interesting one. On materials, it may say overweight, but Orora pops into materials. So does James Hardie- James Hardie ... and others. and BlueScope. So some of these sector classification is a little bit misleading. So just for clarification, we are underweight iron ore by, you know, let's call it 3%. We're a little bit overweight gold, so that's bringing it up. But, like, our commodity position is underweight. Mm. If you're looking at the pure materials sector, so we're underweight. We are closing that underweight. But again, we're waiting for more data to get conviction. Mm. There's not enough data there yet, but the evidence is building that there could be a good trade in resources in Q4, but we are underweight, the pure resources. Great, thank you, and the next one's from Paul, and it's on Challenger. He says: "Given Challenger's share price dropped 11% on the fifth of September, have you considered maintaining it in the WAM Leaders portfolio? Yeah, it's another interesting one. Like, the company has had two or three profit upgrades in a row, but again, it talks to the narrowness of the market. So again, I mean, it's a very illiquid stock, and someone sold AUD 500 million- Mm ... like AUD 500 million. We thought the share price might fall to the sale price- Mm ... but it just washed through. And again, there's just no breadth or depth in the market outside of those big names- Mm ... so it's continued to drift. We think that will end shortly. I mean, fundamentally, the company's been in the best position it's been in for probably the, as long as I've been watching it- Mm ... to be honest. Like, which is a, so decent times- Mm ... before the GFC. So, it's actually in a really good position. But that block, the sell down from Apollo, the size of it, and then again, the people have got no appetite for risk, so they see Apollo sell, then they go, "Oh, something must be wrong," or, "They don't like it anymore," then they sell. Mm. It, it- Of course ... it goes to show the lack of confidence and conviction in the market. Yeah. So what are we doing? We bought a little bit more. We took some of the sell down. But again, due to liquidity, we don't want to wind that up too much, but it's screaming so cheap here and has had three profit upgrades in a row, so again, one to watch. One of the things I'll also add is that the messaging around that transaction was less than ideal. The assumption from market participants is that Apollo/Athene will now go to Xero or lose their board seat, the joint venture is all over. That the vendors or the banks that sat on a hold held some stock 'cause they couldn't clear it. That's all nonsense. I think it was pretty clear in the release post, and I think there's probably going to be more, and something that we do behind the scenes is we get there, and we try to, not publicly, but privately agitate to, for more transparency from a company perspective around the relationships there. So we would expect more detail to emerge around the relationship between the various parties. But the clear thing is, Challenger did nothing wrong here. This was purely a passive investor selling half of their stake, and people have run around with all sorts of speculation about it, and I think with the fullness of time, clarity will win out here as well. Great. And the next question is from Paul. He says: "Are Xero and WiseTech Global now highly overvalued? Is it time to sell and take a capital gain? Yeah, look, they're two names that we do hold within the portfolio, and absolutely they're expensive, there's no question about that. But I think the difference we can actually point to from Xero and WiseTech versus, say, let's pick on CBA and Wesfarmers again, they're growing, and they're absolutely executing on their strategies, and they're generating that operating leverage that we're expecting from these technology companies today. That does beg the question of what is a full valuation, and certainly WiseTech is approaching it, as is Xero. But what we're trying to grapple with, and something that's an ongoing discussion, is: Is tech defensive? Is their earning stream more defensive than people are attributing to? We don't quite have the same crowding in those names as potentially some of the big U.S. tech names are seeing. The valuations are also somewhat differential. You're probably right, they're approaching the sell territory, but it's something that we're watching. ... Yeah, I'll just add as well, like, we do a lot of work around where we are in the cycle, where we think the direction of markets will go, and where sectors will perform the best. So, that's very much where we do a lot of the work as well, around absolute valuation, where money is likely to flow. Great! And, the next couple of questions, John, we'll just go back to Star Entertainment. You touched on it earlier. But Claire is wondering: "What was the position size of Star Entertainment Group at the time of investment?" And then Colin has also said: "What was the initial investment case for Star Entertainment? Yeah, look, again, it's as it stands today, it's 3% of the fund. Yeah, I think if we, with, you know, retrospectively looking at, you know, what we got wrong, we had a really good experience with Crown, and when Blackstone was taken over from Crown, so potentially we were somewhat biased or blinded by the success of that investment. And ultimately, our view was that these are great tourist pillars that will generate cash through the cycle. Star's going ex CapEx, and that there is valuation support from an asset base. What we got absolutely wrong was the deterioration in earnings, and how quickly the earnings deteriorated, and the amount of capital that was required, A, from a regulatory standpoint, to ensure that they are now the cleanest gaming operators in the country, and, B, the capital that was required to build Queens Wharf in Brisbane. Yeah, it's worth noting that Queens Wharf is two years behind its opening. Now, all feedback that we're getting from its opening is that it's been a roaring success, albeit we would classify it as a partial opening, because a lot of the entertainment precinct, be it restaurants and retail sites, aren't open yet. But it was a necessary evil to get that open at the end of August. Where we stand today is that we still have a view that the assets, and if you think about the AUD 3.6 billion they spent as a combined entity in the Queens Wharf, the freehold assets that they have in the Gold Coast, the casino, and the hotels that they have here in Sydney, there is still a lot of embedded asset value there. But costs, and regulatory oversight, and mismanagement, and we won't talk too much about that, but those have exacerbated the impacts that have been suffered. For us now, it's gonna test our investment case if we're gonna realize the value of those assets, and that's something that we will certainly be agitating towards, where it's time to, you know, it's time to execute on some of these strategies. And, a lot of what's taking place now is behind closed doors, and we're not privy to that. So, a lot of what we're hearing in the press, and a lot of what the press is hearing may not necessarily be on point. So, I think what we need to do is take a seat back and see what eventuates here, not panic too quickly, and let the process take its place. Thanks, John. The next question's from Basil. He says: "I note that the fall in share price has been approximately 10%-11% since May for WAM Leaders. I also note that the energy index has fallen approximately 20%, and uranium stocks have fallen 50%-60% in the same period. I know you don't have any specific uranium stocks in the portfolio, but are you able to make a couple of comments on the drop for energy and uranium in particular? Yeah. On energy, I was just looking at it today. It's probably the most bearish positioning we've seen in the commodity for a very long time. So the world is very much negative oil, and generally that's a reflection of economic growth. So energy is very much on the radar for us, 'cause again, it's a contrarian position. People are already negative. You know, we do own some Santos, you know, sub AUD 7. We think it looks incredibly cheap. Woodside as well, I mean, that's approaching. We're a little bit more cautious on their strategy, but Woodside approaching AUD 23, I think it was. And again, both screening really cheap, but if we do go into this, let's say, the hard landing scenario, they won't look cheap. They'll actually fall, not a lot further, but, you know, they will fall further, so again, it's a little bit too early to go heavy in energy, but we think a lot of the work has already been done in the share prices, so they actually look quite interesting. We've increased our weight in the Santos, at the expense of Woodside, but they do look interesting. On the uranium, we had a little bit of, and we still have a little bit of Paladin, with the acquisition, which has been approved today by shareholders. I mean, that was one of the catalysts we had for owning it. And again, uranium does look okay over the long term, but again, short term, it has a little bit of, the price movement is very volatile, so you won't see us participate in a big way in uranium stocks. But we do think energy looks interesting, but again, we don't have the evidence to increase Santos a lot further from current levels, but the valuations scream cheap. Mm. and positioning is very, very bearish at the moment. So, yeah, it's one on our radar. Yeah, the, I'll just add a little bit on the commodity, uranium commodity. If you rewind, you know, three to six months ago, it was quite euphoric, a somewhat a bubble in the uranium space, where these things were quickly went to dizzying heights. Based on a lot of rhetoric in the market for the need of nuclear globally, less so from Australian perspective. We can understand that rhetoric, and we think absolutely there is gonna be a place for more and more uranium and nuclear power going forward. But there is certainly a differential between announcement time versus the reality of the need for the commodity. So if you look at the ones that you can participate in Australia, Paladin, Boss, and NexGen are the three most prevalent ones. They certainly look appealing from a global perspective and if you look at some of the announcements around small-scale nuclear that Amazon is talking about for the data center powering, there is absolutely a role that nuclear will play, but it's that differential between when these things are announced versus when the reality of the demand for the commodity takes place, and it's a mismatch of a couple of years, we'd say so it got a little euphoric. It got a little bit bubbly. The heat's come right out of it, and I think right now is another time we can kind of reflect and have a look at potentially having a better or a bigger weight, but we're not decided yet. Great. Thank you, John. The next question from Rodney is about ETFs and their effect on overall returns. He says: "How much do the rise of ETFs and their having to buy, regardless of fundamentals, e.g., CBA, do you think is masking some companies? And consequently, you know, does that affect your overall returns? Yeah, you're on the money there with the masking and the forced buying. It's a two-edged sword. It's really good on the way up. I'd love to see how bad it is on the way down, and we all... We got a little glimpse of it when the yen carry trade, which you know took place you know a month and a half ago or so, where CBA fell 6% on the day. Now, 'cause there are no natural buyers, like Leaders funds or some of the active managers and dare we say retail investors, when CBA's yielding 3%, they're not attracted to it today. So, yeah, it's absolutely a two-edged sword. It's great on the way up, but if we do have a hard landing or a soft landing, yeah, you've got to be careful what you wish for on the way down. So blindly putting ten cents of every dollar into CBA, you know, we really struggle with that. ETFs have been a wonderful success in capturing more and more of the market, particularly from the large super funds that don't want to take any disproportionate risk, and a lot of what we're talking about today comes back to the willingness of participants to take more and more risk. You know, 'cause they're getting benchmarked against MySuper, MyRules, and if they fail those benchmarking, then they're at risk of losing their businesses. So this crowding or this conservatism that we're seeing leads to, you know, more and more periods of, you know, just linear returns for certain stocks. But what we would absolutely welcome is a bit more dislocation in the market, 'cause I think that will see who's actually swimming naked when the tide goes out. Thanks, John. And this one's from Stephen: If WAM Leaders holds a stock and it falls out of the top 200, do you sell it? Our mandate, which is prescribed in the Leaders' prospectus, provides us some flexibility as to holding those companies that fall in and out of the ASX 200. Ultimately, it's a decision for Matt and myself to see if we think there's a pathway back in, or we think there's potential to make money on that share price. You know, I think Matt could probably talk a little bit more about this, but you know, there was a wonderful article the other day talking about falling angels, and when stocks fall in and out of indexes, it's typically free performance for those asset managers that don't hold them because there's a reason why they're falling. We haven't yet experienced a stock that has fallen out of our index. So to date, we haven't actually had to worry about that. I think for the most part, if it's falling out of that index, you know, part of our process is looking at sentiment and flow, and hopefully, we would actually pick that up ahead of time and sell that. You know, we got close this year. We tried to do a little bit of bottom-feeding with Domain Holdings. We made a tiny bit of money on it and then quickly got out of it when I realized, you know, it may not be in our investable universe per se for very long. So it's something that we consider, and but we do ultimately have flexibility within the portfolio. Fantastic. And another one from Stephen. He said: "Brownfield mines in the uranium space are signing off takes and garnering bank support through long-term contracts that guarantee cash flows years into the future. Are you looking at exposure here? Yeah, look, as we said earlier, it was certainly... they're certainly more attractive today. I think if we rewind it three months, the assumed uranium price in the equities was materially higher than the spot price. Yeah, for us, we prefer to invest, you know, the reality of earnings. But yeah, you're right, there is a lot of demand for offtakes, given the constrained supply that we are seeing in the uranium market, given what's happening in Russia, who are the preeminent supplier of uranium in this market. So, certainly something we're looking at, in particular, Paladin's probably the one that screens most attractive to us today, but are we willing to pull the trigger in a meaningful way right now? No. Great, and there's a couple on ResMed. The share price has bounced back. Is this as good as it gets for ResMed, or do you see future earnings and share price upside? ... Oh, another very tough question there on ResMed, does it get better? So the result was great. The margin upside story is yet to come. It's the reason why I hesitate is there is a lot of noise around, you know, GLP-1, the use of CPAP machines. But it appears like the evidence is gathering that it's not gonna destroy the market. You're gonna have these connected devices. Even Apple last night saying that, you know, they've got these watches now that can monitor for sleep apnea, so Samsung have got them as well. So all of a sudden, maybe the evidence is turning for ResMed. So we think it can get better. Is it expensive? Yes. So we, the way we work it out is that healthcare sector likely to attract funds? Are we going to a certain stage of the market where health stocks will look good? And we think health will look good. So for us, we think ResMed can get better. We did trim a little bit of it, but again, we think there is more upside here, basically around the margin. We think the margin will surprise to the upside over the next period. Thanks, Matt. And now we'll turn to George. He says: "Do you have a view on coal? There seems to be still overseas demand for coal, especially given renewable energy infrastructure is taking longer to implement than initially assumed. On this basis, do you see upside in companies like New Hope and Whitehaven? Thanks for the question, George, and I think one of the overarching comments that we've said repeatedly is that there is absolutely a need for coal and gas for a lot longer than people have suggested. Politicians, I should say, have suggested recently. We expect coal and particularly gas to play pivotable roles as we go through the energy transition phase, which will again take a hell of a lot longer than anyone had originally anticipated. If you bucket coal into two perspectives, you've got the energy coal, and then you've got the coal, met coal, which is used for the making of iron ore. And, you know, their relative valuations, yeah, they flow in different directions based on demand. And, you know, met coal has come under pressure as iron ore has rolled over. And that somewhat affects Whitehaven a little bit more than New Hope, which, you know, predominantly focuses on that energy coal space. So do we think there is valuation support for New Hope? Yes, but I guess ultimately for us, when it comes to buying coal stocks, you're gonna buy them cheap, but you also have to sell them cheap. They're never really gonna get back to fair value because the incremental buyer, or should I say, there are lots of participants in the market that are precluded from buying coal stocks. So for us, you really need to be rewarded from a dividend standpoint, be it a buyback, and the valuations need to be screamingly cheap to buy those names. We think New Hope is fine here. Whitehaven, we sold out during reporting season. It was, we had done pretty well out of it. But the valuation post the downgrades around its production costs meant that it went from, you know, one or two time multiples to a four or five time multiple. Albeit that sounds headline cheap, it's not cheap enough to attract enough flow. So for us, you know, Whitehaven encroaching AUD 5 probably gets closer to the mark for us. It's something that's on our watchlist and to circle back and see the company in the coming months to ensure that we haven't missed anything from our assumptions around the cost base. So I think maybe I'll digress slightly around cost generally and resources. What we have seen is an escalation of costs for most resource companies. Inflation is really biting, and production and demand start to wind down a little bit. Elevated cost bases come out even harder, so from that standpoint, we're really watching when it comes to our resource companies to ensure that they've got cost control in place, that their production wasn't affected by high grading or low grading in most recent results. Because as we go into an environment where iron ore looks like it's settling around that $90 mark, as opposed to the $120, which covers a lot of sins, we need to make sure that we're really across the production side and the cost control side of these resource companies, not just the commodity side, which is what we've been able to enjoy over the past few years. We'll stay sort of in the resources sector. There's been a few questions to come through on MinRes. Mm-hmm. Michael says: "Do you believe MinRes is oversold at these levels?" And Joe has also asked: "Do you have a view on MinRes after the substantial, drop in the share price? And is MinRes a current holding? Good, good questions. I think very topical. It's something that, you know, we think. To answer the last question first, it is now a holding, yes. It wasn't previously, but as we sit here today, it is now a holding within the portfolio, a very small holding. And why we say that is that, you know, one of the things that we've always thought is that if you, you know, in this instance, you put a billionaire in a corner, they're gonna come out swinging. You know, Chris Ellison has built this business from scratch. He's not everybody's cup of tea. He's certainly done it his way, a bit like Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart. They're happy to ride through the volatility. The biggest issues we're facing with this company is just the sheer quantum of debt. Now, for us to get more comfortable, we need to understand a way for this business, in particular, to de-lever. They had a Haul Road, which they sold half of it to Morgan Stanley, and they realized around 1.3 billion dollars for that. At the time, most people anticipated that would go down to repaying debt, but instead it went into CapEx, and the growth of the overall business, and supporting that trajectory of the business. That was the beginning of the spiral for the business to where we are today, and if you look at most hedge funds, it seems to be a bit of a consensus short from those hedge funds. And for us, that's a bit of a red rag to a bull. We start looking at it. What do we understand about the business today? We know that the mining services business is fairly robust and annuity-like, and I use that word very cautiously, "annuity-like." But where the challenges are in the business is the ramp-up of the Onslow iron ore mine and the valuations, and what they've expected from the lithium business in particular. We structurally think lithium is challenged. Again, it holds us back from holding too much of MinRes, but they have some of the top-tier assets when it comes to lithium, and at certain price points, they'll generate more cash than other guys. and its energy business, it was adversely affected by the ruling in WA around domestic gas versus export gas, and a lot of that upside was crimped on that. So from where we sit today, what we need to see is MinRes either delever or the underlying commodities rebound. What could they potentially do? We're shooting that around, and we're doing a bit of work, and hopefully gonna see the company in the coming weeks. Do they sell the other half of the Haul Road? Maybe. That could produce probably another AUD 1.5 billion and reduce the quantum of debt by one third. But sometimes you gotta back the individual as opposed to the industry, so to speak. So that's why we have that small position, and it's something we're doing a lot of work on to see if it has more upside to graduate to a larger position in the portfolio. If not, it's quite easy for us to move out of it. Thanks, John. Now we're going to the U.S. election. This question's from Steve. He says: "To what degree is the U.S. election causing nervousness or uncharacteristic buying or holding in the market? What do you predict will happen after the election if either Harris wins or if Trump wins? A great question there around U.S. election. So, generally what happens is, markets don't do a lot before the election, and then they rally post the election, no matter who wins, unless it's a disaster. One of the parties is a disaster, but, you know, you could argue, depends on your side of politics, but both are reasonably business-friendly. So, what we're seeing as well, which is... I'll point out, is companies are saying they're holding back spending before the election, too, because of the uncertainty so it creates, is almost self-fulfilling slowdown, and that's why you don't get a huge amount of risk-taking before elections, too, as far as buying and selling goes in stock. So generally, it's a pretty benign period pre-election, and then a rally post-election as the uncertainty comes out of the market, because equity markets hate uncertainty, and the election always causes uncertainty unless there's a lay down favorite. But again, like, you look at the policies of both, reasonably supportive, not too different. The fiscal lever is already pushed pretty hard, so it's not like Trump can come in and spend his way out of it like he did last time. There is tax cuts, which are obviously beneficial. So again, it's largely beneficial and a rally post the election, and nothing beforehand, so that's how we see it playing out. Thanks, Matt. Next question is from Anthony. He says: "Could you please publish the market weights in your top twenty? We do publish, and it's a constant feedback, and we do appreciate it, and we know, we understand why shareholders would want that. I guess maybe if we could explain it from our perspective as to our preference as to not have them out there. We do publish them in the annual reports. I guess the differential between the annual reports and today is that we are a highly active fund, and if we are moving in and out of positions and producing that top 20 every month, sometimes provides some of our peers and brokers in particular, a little bit more insight than we wanna give them. As to the individual size of positions, particularly if we are buying or selling, you know, sometimes we need to take an action which we wanna be invisible with. That's probably the best as I can describe it. So I understand why shareholders want it. The guide is typically around the annual report where we outline every single position. But I would say, like, three months on from that being released, you know, positions have changed materially, so we kind of like the anonymity by not releasing that. So we try to provide the top 20 holdings. And if you look at the commentary, quite often you can work out where we are positioned elsewhere. So yeah, a little bit of mosaic theory can get you there, but we understand... I hope you can understand why we don't want to release it all the time. Thanks, John. The next question is also from John. What are your thoughts on APA Group, and the recent share price decline? Do you still own it? ... Yeah, I mean, we own a little bit of APA. It's such a tiny proportion of the fund now. It's 15 basis points, or 0.15 of 1%, so very, very small holding. The reason why we sold it down was regulatory issues with the government around price setting for the pipeline. So, as you've noticed, we have a highly active government involvement in a lot of sectors. I mean, I don't think there's a stock in our portfolio that hasn't been touched by some sort of intervention or policy. So for us, talk about lessons learned from like a Star Group, where they basically changed the rules on them. We looked at APA. We liked the story, but the uncertainty, and we touched on the uncertainty. No one's willing to pay for uncertainty at the moment or hold uncertainty or hold risk, so we had to reduce it. So it's at fifteen basis points of the portfolio. We fundamentally like the story, but until we get clarity on the price setting, we just can't take it any higher in the portfolio. So it looks cheap, but probably everyone else has got our view as well, that it's too hard to invest when you've got government intervention. 'Cause Roger also asked another question on APA, and you just touched on that, Matt, but yeah, he was saying: "Is APA undervalued at its current share price, and do you see its long-term value? Oh, undervalued 100%. Until you get the framework which they can operate in, it makes it hard to invest. But we think, I mean, eventually, logic will come back into all decisions, and we think this will be another case of logic returning, where energy demand or energy use is so high going forward, and you need people to build things and transport gas for energy. So why would you regulate things where no investment happens? It just doesn't make sense. So we think logic will win, but it might take a while. Great, and the next question's on Woodside. Ron says: "Woodside appears to be on the nose at the moment, and when leaders only have a small holding, at what price do you see it as buy? Thanks, Roy. Like, it's for a period of time, we haven't liked Woodside. Our preference, I think, for three or four years now has been Santos over Woodside. It's getting to the stage where the risk-reward is about the same between the two. You know, we still have a preference for Santos 'cause we think it's getting towards the end of its capital expenditure phase, whilst Woodside's about to embark on a capital expenditure phase. We think the cash generation that Santos will generate versus that of Woodside gives us that preference for Santos. I guess the biggest challenges for Woodside and what would hold us back and what is holding us back from buying more, the two acquisitions they recently made, we don't love, from a total... to be totally transparent. We think the acquisition of Blue Ammonia in the U.S. is a little bit off script. We can understand why they wanna go down that path to get a little bit more of the green credit into the share price, but the deploying of shareholder capital when you are an oil and gas company, for us, stick to what you stick to your knitting, space effectively. And then on the other side of the spectrum, Tellur, the other acquisition in the U.S. is effectively an infrastructure investment. And when it comes to buying infrastructure, most people look at a geared return. Woodside are paying cash for it, so the returns that they will generate, and we might be proven wrong here, doesn't really stack up versus the rest of the portfolio. Unless they can add material value by increasing the tolling or bringing a partner in, we struggle to see the rationale for those two acquisitions and the quantum of capital that they're gonna spend on those and the time it takes to get a return. It's just cleaner with Santos. With all that being said, at $23, it starts to appeal. I guess the last thing that I will call out on Woodside is that its dividend policy, and given its capital commitments, and its dividend policy is on its EPS, while a lot of the peers are, it's on its free cash flow. We think it's a bit of a misrepresentation to look at Woodside's dividend on its EPS yield, given that they're putting asset sales above the line to prop up that dividend. So for us, a cleaner result without those one-off sales from Scarborough, which may occur again if they sell more of Scarborough down. The realization is that there is a potential for them to cut that dividend and move to more of an EBITDA or a free cash flow yield standpoint, similar to what the rest of the global peers do. So they're the two things that are holding us back. Perfect, and the next one's from George. He says: "Do you have any view on Perpetual, given its depressed share price and recent year-end reporting? We have lots of friends at Perpetual, so I don't want to speak ill of it, but I think the business from what we all know Perpetual to be, which was a wonderful franchise, which distributed it, which was a great distribution and trustee business, it's gonna change. And I suspect it's gonna become more of a boutique asset manager. So we have the right team in place, and we have all the respect for the investment team. We think they're great, great investors, but from an asset standpoint, there's gonna be a fair bit of transformation coming through that business from being what it was known as to what it will become, which is effectively just a boutique asset manager. The biggest unknown is around the realization of the proceeds from the KKR sale. Nobody knows what the net number is, what the tax implications there are of the proceeds of that sale, and how much of that proceeds come back to shareholders by a, via a buyback or a dividend or whatever it may be. So I suspect there is upside. And I think most people have probably gone a bit too conservative from a tax perspective on the realization of the KKR proceeds. But until we get certainty, and it falls into that risk bucket, it's probably gonna sit where it is, and then you need to take a view on post that, how do we value the boutique business? What is their strategy to grow? You know, recently we've seen Magellan try to pivot a little bit, as opposed to be just an individual asset manager, to being a bit more of a boutique fund to fund, a bit like a Pinnacle or a Fidante, which sits within Challenger. So it just, we don't have a clear view on what Perpetual looks like, two or three years down the road. Thanks, John, and the next question's from Bruce. And he is wondering what your ethical and environmental limits or constraints are on investments? Thank you, Bruce. It's a pretty easy one. We have a very open and flexible mandate. And first and foremost, our mandate is to generate returns for our shareholders, and when it comes to generating returns, we have to absolutely consider our peers and what ESG means from the incremental buyer in the market. As we mentioned earlier, around coal stocks, we realize that there isn't as many market participants that are willing to buy, say, New Hope or Whitehaven, versus there would be to buy Goodman Group or NextDC, you know, in that perspective. So the way that we frame ESG is that we need to ensure that we consider it in a valuation sense. We do enjoy the ability to have flexible mandate to go anywhere in the index. But from a sustainable or a governance standpoint, it's something that we deploy anyway. We need to ensure that sustainability and the governance that is in the business is paramount. And I think from a Wilson Asset Management perspective, there's no secret that, you know, we have some fairly strong pillars around ESG broadly from a business standpoint. So, you know, it's something that we get questioned on a fair bit, but we do enjoy that flexibility in our mandate. We have another one from Ron. Do you have any comments on gold, and what gold stocks do you have in the portfolio at the moment? Sure. Ron, we have quite a few gold stocks in the portfolio. So, our view on gold now is probably a bit more neutral. We were really positive gold around June, July. Had a good rally, as all those interest rate cuts come in, 'cause gold has a cost of carry, and when interest rates fall, it's actually beneficial for gold because of the cost of carry comes down. And we think gold here... we're trying to debate it now is like, where to from here? Gold will probably work, in between a soft and a hard landing, and at a real hard landing, it actually gets liquidated 'cause people want liquidity. Soft landing, you probably see money flow back to cyclical stocks. So there's a more narrow path where gold will work now. What do we own? So we have Genesis, that's at fifty basis points. Evolution, twenty-five basis points. We've got Newcrest, Northern Star, and the other big ones that we have, and the gold within the portfolio would be around 2.5% of the portfolio in gold now. But we're selling a little bit today, but I think over time, gold will come down. We think it's served its purpose for the time being, but there is a narrow definition or narrow path where gold will work from here, but the probability of it working is just probably decreasing, and that's generally how we work. If the probabilities decrease, we decrease our weight. What about Tabcorp? Do you think it's low enough to buy? That's from Peter. Good question, 'cause I actually got a couple analysts in today to do a bit more DD on the name, and, you know, it, it's one of those ones where it almost fits in that star camp, where it's a contentious asset, where regulators have stepped in and caused some dislocation in value. But underlying issue for Tabcorp is its cost base. When your revenues are declining, as they have been, and the, you know, costs are going the wrong direction, yeah, something needs to be done. Now, their balance sheet is stretched, and that comes after their Victorian license acquisition last year, and there's a likelihood that there is a New South Wales license acquisition in some time in the future. So the likelihood is that balance sheet does get stretched again. With the change of CEO, the question we need to ask is, does he tackle the cost base quickly? Does he have the right team in place? Because if you look at certain stocks, leadership matters from a different standpoint, and with a stock like Tabcorp, the leader is quite often a statesman as opposed to an operational person. If you look at the history of Tabcorp, Dave, David Attenborough, when he was CEO, he was wonderful at getting outcomes for shareholders and stakeholders when it came to regulatory or government relations, ensuring things like Lottoland get kicked out, point of consumption tax coming into the market. So there is a CEO role for Gil McLachlan to ensure that that statesman role is occupied, but what we think he needs to do is bring in another layer of operational experience into the business. So I think one of the catalysts for us would be, does he bring the right people in to run the operational side of the business? And then secondly, how do they de-lever that balance sheet? Is it via a capital raise, which I suspect they may need to do, and then from reducing the cost base. Great. To answer that clearly, we're not there yet. Yeah. Thanks, John. And the next one from Michael, going back to the investment portfolio: What is the highest level of cash that you would go to? That's a very interesting question. During COVID, the depths of COVID in maybe in March, we got to around 15%, I think it was, around 15% cash. Look, the way we prefer to run cash is the final lever if we think there's no viable alternative through defensive stocks. So it's normally around, you know, big black swan events, or black swan. Obviously, you can't predict, but around those big crash events that we've got some sort of insight or level of insight into. So it's really the last lever to be pulled. What is the max cash we could go to? I mean, it's a hypothetical, like, depends on the scenario, the situation. I'm just guessing, but like, if you had perfect foresight, you'd be 100% cash, but we'll never do that. You never have perfect foresight for a crash, because crash, by definition, are unforeseen events. But generally, you can see some writing on the wall, the probabilities, as we talked about, so we'd gradually wind the cash up if we thought something was imminent. But I would have thought that 15%, that is pretty scorched earth for us, where we're like: Wow, that's- Mm. There's no viable alternatives. And we're probably, like, during COVID, we actually started hunting. It wasn't 15% for long, we, 'cause things got sold off so quickly and aggressively, we actually started- Mm ... deploying very quickly. So, line in the sand, let's call it 15% cash. One of the things I will say, markets today move a hell of a lot faster than they did fifteen years ago, where sitting you know, if you look at the GFC, you would have done well by sitting on cash for the better part of eighteen months. If you look at our COVID experience, you know, it was three weeks. Yeah, it things are moving more rapidly, so being nimble is certainly something that we think is ever present from now on. Great. And this next question is from Garth: After a period of reasonable growth, NIB has been smashed in the last week. Is NIB in your portfolio, and do you have a view on the company? Yeah, so NIB is not in our portfolio. We do, we do own some Medibank. We think Medibank has been a clear winner over this period and much higher quality business. NIB's probably been hit by the students, like not having as many students come into the market because they're quite leveraged there. They have a travel, insurance business as well. So for us, NIB has been a market darling for a long period of time, high growth, high valuation. We don't own it in the portfolio. It's hard to see us owning it, to be honest, because of the, you know, change in CEO coming as well. For us, we just stick to the higher quality Medibank, which reported really well, whereas NIB reported poorly, like it was a really poor result, so we don't own it and not looking to invest in it at this point. Mm-hmm. We also think Medibank and NIB are in for a fight with the hospital operators and governments, and, you know, we've got to be careful of what you wish for when it come to investing in this space also at the moment. Great, and back to the portfolio again. This next one's from Andrew. He says: Do you think the NTA will go back to a premium, and if so, why? So the share price to a premium, Can we call a friend? Can we get Jeff online? Like, the way I'd categorize it is we don't believe the NTA reflects the value of the portfolio anyway. Mm. So we think the NTA, like, if we could value the NTA now, it'd be much higher than the stated NTA, because obviously, you're not going to invest in things you don't think is worth what they're worth, like, you think they're gonna go up. Should the share price trade at a premium? We think it should. You know, as we get... You know, we've had this tough year, we've acknowledged that. We're doing a lot in the background to turn it around. You know, things are working in our favor now. We got one more hurdle in STAR to overcome, and that will provide a bit of confidence. The stock has probably traded between a 3% and 7% premium for a period of time, and I think there's no reason why that shouldn't happen. I mean, history suggests it should. And also, if you've got rates coming off as well, all of a sudden, these equity-linked products, which give you income, will come back in vogue. So 100%, through the cycle, it should trade at a small premium, I'd say. Great. And then we have another question from George. He's a very engaged shareholder. Mm-hmm. With BHP being down over 20% from its high in December last year, do you think the China slowdown and its negative impact on the iron ore price is already factored into BHP's share price? ... Yeah, good question, George. So we do think it's factored into the share price, but when you invest, you need to have you can either invest ahead of the data or have the evidence building or have no evidence, up to you. If you have no evidence and you're investing 'cause it's cheap, it's a really, you, you're placing, it's basically hope. You're hoping it goes up 'cause it's cheap. So we're looking at BHP now. Are we do we have evidence building that it can turn around? And I'd suggest, yes, you've got the bond issuance we talked about in China in May and June, which will translate to activity in Q4. The Chinese government are not happy with the trajectory at the moment. They need to stabilize asset prices. So there is evidence building. It's very early, though, so it's really your risk appetite so we have been increasing BHP because we can see the evidence building. The probability of the change in flow happening is increasing, in our view, so I'd say it's early. We're not at our full weight, where we think we will be if we get more evidence, but there's definitely enough building, and there'll be a key data point over the weekend, which I touched on at the start, which is the Total Social Financing. It's basically all the amount of loans within the Chinese economy. If that's increasing, if that surprises to the upside, there's another tick for your evidence so we're just collecting information. It does look interesting. The current iron ore price is reflected in the share price, but there's not enough evidence for mass buying of BHP yet, and that's what we're waiting for. But we're generally ahead of the market, sometimes in positioning, which can hurt in the short term. But again, we're underweight BHP, but closing our underweight now. It's about 4% of the portfolio, BHP, and it's been increasing. We increased it from about 2.5% about a week ago, so we have increased it. Great. This is also from George. "On Treasury Wine Estates, do you think its current share price may be negatively impacted by the reported fall in per capita alcohol consumption by both Chinese and Australian consumers? Great question there, George. Thank you for that, and I feel like we might need to have a lunch with George to go through it. Yeah. I think Treasury's, you know, in the low elevens represents good value from our perspective, and we've been buying more in the low elevens. I guess the question on consumption is luxury and prestige wine category continues to grow, so, you know, we need to make a distinction between the growth in luxury versus the fall in commercial. And Treasury participates in that growing category, so they're somewhat isolated from the decline in those commercial volumes, which have lost share to more pre-mixed and beer and other categories. So that category remains robust. Within China itself, yes, wine has declined, but Treasury is coming back from a low base post the removal of the tariffs, so they're capturing more share. Penfolds is a unique proposition when it comes to China, in particular. It's more of the brand awareness, and what it represents in China is very unique and not replicable by many of its peers. So we are very encouraged from what we're seeing from its early trends out of China. We expect it to take more and more share. The Chinese label wine, which is the China Wine Trial and the Chinese wine region that Treasury does have, we expect that to be a robust grower for them off a very small base. So I think over time, as they divest the commercial volumes that they talked about most recently at the last result, I think a re-rating of the stock is inevitable. There was a little bit of confusion from the analysts at most of the major banks around what the divestment of the commercial wine business does look like from an earnings perspective. Most people thought they would get rid of the AUD 60 million worth of EBIT that the commercial volumes do generate for no return. What we do know of Treasury is that management team is so razor-focused, laser-focused on returns and EBIT growth, they're not gonna give something away and just rip up AUD 60 million worth of earnings for no return on the other side. They got punished because people expect them to do that, and we unequivocally have belief in that management team that they will not do it, and that will come out in the fullness of time, most likely in the February result, perhaps as late as August. But we think there's upside from an earnings perspective, and there's an upside from a valuation perspective, too. Yeah. One of the benefits we have of talking with companies as well is, like Endeavour Group. So when you talk around per capita decrease, they've definitely seen it at the low end of the wine. Mm. So John touched on that. The premium end has been rock solid. So again, drinking less low quality. The high quality is remaining, and RTDs, the ready-to-drink- Mm ... so another huge growth engine for alcohol consumption. Again, we've asked that these companies, you know, Treasury and Endeavour, is it part of a structural change? And, you know, the answer is these things happen over a very long period of time. But it's probably the feedback we got was it's a cost of living rather than a, you know, a structural switch to, you know, a health-conscious consumer, but it's more of a cost of living. ... Thanks, Matt. This next one from Peter, he says, "Do you intend to take part of the Star class action? Yes, in short. Yeah. Generally, what we do with these ones is we generally just put our name down and- See what happens. And if you know, there's a settlement, there's a settlement. But yeah, I mean, our general principle is we normally put our hand up. Mm-hmm. When there's a class action, there's no real downside. Yeah. Um- We don't have to actually do anything. We just. If there's a settlement, we normally get a little slice of it. Great! And the next one's from Garth: "If you think that coal has a long way to run, could that mean that Dalrymple Bay Infrastructure can play a role in your portfolio?" Hopefully, I didn't put to that. Garth, that's probably one stock we haven't looked at in a very long time, so you've probably triggered us to do a little bit of work on that one. Mm. If we find any opportunity, we'll give you a call and let you know. I mean, we did look at Aurizon as well, you know, around the movement- Mm ... of coal as well, and I mean, that's, it's a pretty tough investment. But we are always on the hunt, so we'll take that one on notice. Yeah ... and do a bit of work on that one. Great. And the next one's from John. He says: "What is your outlook for Sonic Healthcare, and do you own it? Yeah, we've picked up a little bit of that recently, and it certainly fits in the battleground stocks, John. So for us, what could ultimately send Sonic higher is, again, it's suffered from an elevated cost base as they've made some acquisitions and, you know, elevated earnings from COVID testing during that period. So we haven't seen what we would consider a normal period for Sonic for the better part of four years. I think a lot of that is behind them, and so from here on in, we can actually see what normal looks like. It's time for management to deliver on the cost optimization side of the business. They are very acquisitive, and they're a very acquisitive organization, so what we expect from them and why we are starting to look at is we have some belief that management will remove layers of costs over the next 12 months. Equally, we think they participate in a very stable testing environment, where as we start returning more to normality, you could start seeing some operating leverage come through as they remove those layers of costs. And we do expect them, certainly, to make more acquisitions and potentially the sale and leaseback of their property portfolio, which is undervalued on their balance sheet. I think one of the things they mentioned at their results call was the potential sale and leaseback of all their labs, the land below their labs. you know, I think they were talking about a 5% cap rate they would sell them for, and then redeploy that capital into acquisitions and get 10%. There is some skepticism around their ability to generate that 10% side. But what we feel that if they do do the divestment and sale and leaseback of their property, it goes a long way for them to delever their balance sheet. And then, if they start making acquisitions and do what they've been doing in the past, and that's generate good returns from acquisitions, then, it gets more attractive. So it's a small position, and it's certainly on the watchlist. Fantastic. And the next one's from Kerry on the dividend. She said: "If the dividend is reduced, do you think that your share price will reduce as more people will sell? Yes. Yes. Yes. I think, yeah, 100%. I think where we sit today, I think we've got... Was it, Bridget, three point one years of- Yeah, three point two years, I think. Of dividend coverage, so you could take some solace from that. Yeah. Yeah. And if you feel that we're not gonna make any profits in the next three years, you know, we're pretty confident that the dividend won't be cut. But, hey, let's see what time takes. Yeah. There's a healthy profits reserve right now. The next question is from Simon. He said: "What economic data are you watching to decide whether we're having a hard or soft landing? That's a great question, Simon. I hopefully won't bore you here if I go too deep, but let's try and keep it high level. What you watch is leading indicators, so the PMIs and the ISMs, which are like surveys of future intentions, so they are a key thing that comes out monthly that we watch. So they are a huge input into how we view things. Then, also, you'd be looking at credit spreads. So credit spreads is just a sign of how much people think how much risk there is in the market of not getting paid your money back, and the margin they charge over an interest rate. So that's a very important one, credit spreads. The other one I'd point out is the term structure of the yield curve, which sounds complicated, but it's really just the yields across all the different years of the yield curve. So it ranges from, you know, the cash rate all the way out to the 30-year rate. What you're watching here is the long end of the yield curve, which is around the 10-year. If that is rising, people are more positive on economic growth. If the 10-year rises, I'd argue that would be more inclined to a soft landing. If you watch the 10-year rate roll over, you could really come into a hard landing. So for us, that is one thing we're watching at the moment, is that term structure of the yield curve and all those leading indicators. So, there is a plethora of data, though, like labor market, obviously, is a massive one, too. But the labor market can be lagging. The continuous claims out of the U.S., which we get weekly, and that is a good indicator, you know, how many people are filing for claims, unemployment claims, so that's a very good one. But there's a huge amount of data, and probably the most confusing thing over the last period has been the data has thrown off so many false signals. You know, all the stuff we normally rely upon has proven to be incorrect over short periods of time. But we feel like we're getting back towards more normality now. You've got a normal sloping yield curve. Yeah, but really you've got to watch the data like a hawk. But the whole market is watching the data at the moment. Everyone's sort of... We go back to the opening comments around positioning. A lot of people don't know where we're going, so they're all crowding. So no matter what direction we go, we're confident we'll take advantage of it because of that crowding. So hard landing, soft landing, we don't really care. Obviously, hard landing is more painful, but as long as we get clarity on direction, we think we're in for a much better time. Thanks, Matt. That was a great answer. The next one's from Roger. He says: DJW is down and continues to trade well below NTA, and has done for years. Is this share of interest to WAM Leaders as a possible, you know, acquisition target for WAM Leaders? I think the best way to answer this one is, it should have been a question for the WAM or the WAM Strategic Conference call. We'll take that one on notice, and if Jeff has a view on that, we'll get him to give you a buzz. Yeah. Well, at a high level, I'd say we're concentrated on getting our performance up, our share price at a premium. I mean, that's all we're focused on at the moment, and until that happens, then acquisitions wouldn't be on the cards, I'd say. Great. And then there's another one from Richard. He said: "Is Corporate Travel Management held in the portfolio? And what are your thoughts on the current valuation? No, it's not holding, held in the portfolio. Unlikely for it to be held in the portfolio anytime soon. The business has changed a little bit. It's the quality's deteriorated for our liking, post its move towards a bigger presence in the UK. What we feel is that they've potentially lost some market share in their core business to the likes of Flight Centre and Amex Travel. Yes, it has absolutely derated, but we think there might be a little bit more to go in that name. Our preference has been, and will be for some time, to own the travel provider, being Qantas, as opposed to the agencies of sorts. They raise thin margins for the most part, and if they lose contracts, you know, that operating leverage quickly unwinds. We don't own corporate travel today. It's unlikely that we're going to own it anytime soon, but never say never. Hayley used to cover it, who's in our team, and she keeps a very close eye on it. If anything changes there, yeah, we can act quickly. Fantastic, and I can see there's one more question that's just come through from Garth. He says: "EQT strikes me as a great old-school business. They've come off recent highs. What are your thoughts on the company? Yeah, like EQT unfortunately fits outside of our remit. It's outside the ASX 200, but you know, to point you in a direction, Garth, if you look at KKR's acquisition of Perpetual and what assets they took out of it, they took the trustee business, and they took the brand. So from that perspective, you're right. You're right that an old-school business like EQT does have certain appeal, but unfortunately, it fits outside of our investment horizon. Fantastic. Nearly done. Just one more. From Doug: Do you have a view on CIA and the iron ore share price? Their share price is, yeah, quite far down. Quickly on this one again, CIA, again, was leveraged. It was a wonderful stock in buoyant iron ore markets. It's spending capital and developing more mines. It's slightly higher cost. As you build up, as you ramp up a mine, your costs are always more elevated, so it gets more affected from rapid deterioration in iron ore pricing. So, you know, at this stage, and given our risk appetite, our preference is certainly to stick with Rio and BHP. Next level down is Fortescue, so CIA, it's an absolute play on the commodity and their ability to execute on their mine ramp up, and we're just not quite comfortable enough. Fantastic. I think we've had nearly everything come through. One more on AGL. Are you comfortable to share your view on, yeah, your outlook for AGL and whether it's likely to go further? AGL has been a solid performer in the portfolio. We think that their ability to execute has improved considerably under the new management team, and they've kind of rode the volatility and the uncertainty that we saw from the initial comments around energy transition, and the management team, and particularly the outgoing board, did a wonderful job of transforming this business. Going forward, we need to get more comfort around what wholesale energy markets look like. We think they've got a good handle of it. Their trading team, so they make some profits from trading in the futures curve of wholesale energy markets. They've been. Their shackles are being released somewhat, which allows them to make a little bit more profit. I guess ultimately, the big question is how they participate in the energy transition and what they do from a battery storage, and the deployment of the capital into battery storage, and how quickly they can ramp up returns from that part of the business. Risk reward here is probably more balanced than it has been. It is a good defensive business, fits within that characterization where defensive quality at a reasonable price. It's not gonna run away anytime soon, we suspect, but on a pullback, we would probably be a buyer. Yeah. I'll just add the bit of softening in the electricity prices currently, and then we've trimmed it a little bit. Yeah. But again, all those other medium-term, long-term, you know, facts hold. But just be aware, there's a bit of softness in the probably 'cause of the weather. It's a bit of heat, and people aren't using their cooling yet. So we're in that bit of a changeover period where they've switched off all their heating, so the electricity demands come off and pricing's come off a bit. Fantastic, and I think that wraps up our Q&A. I'll pass back to you, Matt, for any closing remarks. Yeah, just like to thank everyone for their support over the years. As we said, it's been a tough year, FY 2024, but we're pretty positive on FY 2025. We think you know, a lot of those issues are behind us and being resolved at the moment. You know, that breadth we talked about, we think that will increase. We think some of these silly valuations will come back towards us, and the money will flow to some of these undiscovered - well, not undiscovered, but just- Underappreciated ... underappreciated assets, which, you know, we're seeing that early signs of that. So just to like to thank everyone for their support over that tough period. You know, the thing I'd like to point out as well is the performance isn't lost. You know, we haven't crystallized that underperformance. We're holding these stocks, and we, you know, we're getting quite confident on a turnaround on all of these ones. So, yeah, I'd just like to say it's a point in time. You know, we're still fighting away. We're battling away every day to try and realize that value for ourselves and for shareholders. So we're confident we can do that, and we'll get back to that, maybe not the 10% outperformance that you've grown to like, but, you know, we're gonna try our hardest to get back up there. So just like to thank everyone for their continued support and look forward to posting some good results going forward. So thank you.