We look forward to taking your questions towards the latter part of the webinar. Let's start with the investment portfolio performance. In FY 2025, the WAM Leader's investment portfolio was strategically underweight momentum driven stocks, including some Australian banks, which negatively impacted the investment portfolio performance over the twelve months to thirty June twenty twenty five. The WAM leader's investment portfolio increased 5.9% in the 2025 financial year, underperforming the S and PASX 200 accumulation index. The investment portfolio performance since inception and the historical profits reserve available have enabled the Board of Directors to increase the fully franked full year dividend for shareholders to $0.94 per share with the fully franked final dividend being $0.47 per share. The fully franked full year dividend represents a dividend yield of 7.1% and a grossed up dividend yield of 10.1% when including the value of franking credits based on yesterday's share price of 1.315 per share. Many of the dynamics which impacted investment portfolio performance during the year are now contributing positively to performance as the momentum trade unwinds. In the financial year to date, the investment portfolio has increased 7.9%, while the S and PASX two hundred Index is up 5.5%. I will now hand over to Matthew, who will provide a market and investment portfolio update. Thanks, Olivia, and thanks for everyone for dialing in today and joining us on the WAM Leaders webinar. I'd just like to highlight, as Olivia said, it was a tough year last year, but very pleasingly, I can report back that we've had a very strong start to this financial year and much of those dynamics which caused underperformance have worked in our favor, which we all thought we always thought would happen, but it just took longer than we thought. So a very strong start to the year. And we've got you can see a huge amount of momentum back into the portfolio. So I thought what we could do is just talk around some of the things we're thinking about with markets at the moment and give you a short outlook. In the very short term, when I talk about the next maybe four to six weeks or two months even, it's going to be quite tight on the liquidity front. And what I mean by that is, globally, September is a bit of a high issuance month in the rates or bonds. So what happens generally at this point of the year is you get a bit of tightening in liquidity. And if people have been watching this week, you've seen a bit of a sell off in global bonds, particularly around the longer dated bonds, like the ten years out of the thirty years. And what this does is put a bit of pressure on risk assets. So you might have seen the equity markets moving down quite aggressively yesterday. That was really in response to some of the liquidity dynamics I was talking about. So when we look at markets at the moment, they do look expensive. There is a lot of interest rate cuts perceived by the central banks coming into the market. We think in the short term, these liquidity constraints and maybe some of the interest rate cuts coming out of the forward market will put a little bit of a pressure on risk assets. And we've positioned the portfolio to take advantage of this, and we think this dynamic will play out over the next few weeks to two months. Post that, November, December, liquidity generally improves in the market as well. So we think it's going be a very good time to be positioning for that throughout September and October. And what we will see is some of the leading indicators we're looking at, at the moment, we're seeing a real pickup in activity. It's very early days, but we had a bit of a fall post Liberation Day and a loss of confidence. What we're seeing now is a general pickup in business activity across the globe as well. And particularly in Australia, Australia has been very resilient. We've almost been an anomaly globally where it's probably the most resilient economy at this point in time. So we think all this should provide a pretty good end to the year in equities. So we're going to position the portfolio throughout September and October in anticipation of improving liquidity into the end of the year. So as we see it, we probably think, yes, it's going be a pretty turbulent couple of weeks. It might stretch out to October. But it feels like, yeah, you've got to be pretty cautious in the next few weeks on these liquidity constraints. But position the portfolio, and that's what we're going to do, position for the October, November, December time when you get an ease up in liquidity. So when we talk about the reporting season so the reporting season has just happened in Australia. So most of the companies come out with their full year results. Some come out with their half year results. And it's a very important time within the equity market to get a read on the underlying economy. What I could say here is the underlying economy is resilient. We think the Reserve Bank of Australia is probably a little bit dovish versus the economic activity at the moment. So we think there will not be as many interest rate cuts within Australia. And again, we've got to position the portfolio in advance of this because at the moment, there's very much consensus to be positioned for a lot of interest rate cuts. We think that is probably wrong in the short term. So we think there will be probably one more interest rate cut and that we'll be sitting and being very much data dependent post one more interest rate cut. So for us, it looks like within Australia, resilient economy, maybe one more rate cut. And what we're going to focus on is companies which can cut costs, which can really lean on the cost lever while still having a top line supported by the resilient economy we're seeing. And as far as China goes, China, obviously, huge important trading partner. There's been a huge equity market rally in China. It's probably not followed up by fundamental activity. But we remain quite constructive on minerals and resources. So we think into the end of the year as well. In Q4, there will be a stimulus again in China, more stimulus. So again, we'll be setting up for that opportunity ahead of time. Also, commodities do pretty well in a lower U. S. Dollar environment, which we're seeing at the moment, and also in an inflationary environment, which, again, we're starting to see the effects of the tariffs kicking in inflation. So the way we see, we're probably a little bit more hawkish on inflation. So we think inflation will be higher than consensus at the moment. The biggest market we've got look at is The US. We think U. S. Inflation could get around 3.5% to 4% by the end of the year. And we think economic activity is a bit more resilient, so probably less interest rate cuts. So we're really positioning the portfolio for that. With that, I might hand over to John who can talk about some of the the portfolio movements as well. Thanks, Matt, and thanks again for everyone for joining us. So maybe I'll lift a little bit on on the reporting season that just passed. We're quite pleased with the way that the portfolio performed throughout August. As many many of you would have noticed, it was one of the more volatile reporting seasons that we've seen in decades where large caps bore the brunt of many of the larger falls on the ASX. So for us, we navigated and pivoted quite well during this period. And, you know, the the the key stocks that drove the performance last month with names like a two Milk, Coles, Tabcorp, Pilbara, Mineral Resources, Qantas, and Ampol. They all did particularly well throughout August and and drove the performance of the portfolio. At the same time, a couple of names we we we did we did get hit by, Woolworths, not owning Brambles, CSL, although the portfolio was underweight, it was still a big position in the portfolio and had a negative drag on performance last month. And Rio Tinto was just an underperformer relative to BHP. But as we come out the August, we're very pleased with the way that the portfolio is constructed today. We still see a lot of those names that I just mentioned in the top performer category still having a lot a lot of room to run. Yeah. Others I didn't mention, like NextDC, we think there could be a material rerating in that name going forward. And then other names that we're starting to revisit where valuation may provide some opportunity, and I've already noticed there's a few questions on CSL. We'll talk about that one in a bit more detail later. Further, commentary that we that we learned during reporting season from the various companies that we saw. Firstly, inflation is ever present, particularly from a a wage pressure standpoint, And it's just gonna be a path of the course going forward that productivity measures will be needed to be will needed to be taken to offset that inflationary pressure. And one big thing that we're starting to see is lots of job cuts, lost the cost cost outs, which is the nice way to put it. So AI will benefit and enable all of that cost productivity that companies are thriving to capture. So we're starting to see that. Further, we're still starting to see some more green shoots in the domestic economy. The likes of Wesfarmers and Coles started to say that basket size is increasing. People are starting to move off the bottom rung of the value spectrum. So we're starting to see a little bit more confidence from the domestic consumer. Property prices obviously help that. But from that standpoint, it probably puts the market in a in a fairly robust position. As Matt said, the economy is fairly resilient, which leads to some of our thinking about the rate cutting environment or lack of, as we should say. That's probably the the the way to frame, August. The team is very buoyant around the way that, the portfolio is constructed. It was pleasing to see some of the momentum in the names like CBA and Wesfarm is starting to come out, that heat starting to come out of the market where a little bit of more common sense is starting to prevail around valuation. So from that perspective, we're seeing a lot more opportunities than we have in some time, and we're encouraged about the year ahead. Yeah. And just to if I walk through some of the sector exposures. Quite often, we like to think of the portfolio very much from a stock specific level. But from a sector perspective, we're still very underweight in the financial sector. We still think bank valuations are excessive, more so CBA. We still think that's really up there on the valuation curve. And then we walk through to materials where you have an overweight materials position. The biggest weights here are Rio and BHP. But again, we're starting to introduce we caught a lot of the lithium rally, which was pleasing you know, as we saw some chatter out of China around closing some mines or suspending some mines. So we got a lot of the lithium balance. We still have a decent position in lithium, so we are overweight material sector. On health care, we are actually equal weight. The biggest weight we have there now is we've been adding to CSL a little bit and ResMed. They really lead the health care sector. Consumer discretionary, we are underweight despite the Australian consumer being resilient. When we look at the Australian consumer, quite often, we look at the APRA data, which gives you the bank deposits. And bank deposits have actually increased quite a lot. So there is capacity on the Australian consumers to do well. But the reason why we're underweight, the sector is really Wesfarmers. It dominates consumer discretionary sector and is almost CBA like on valuation. It's really extreme. On the REIT front, the REITs, which is the property sector, we have about an equal weight. Industrials, we are underweight because we think a lot of the cyclical names in there, really, we can't see a catalyst. I mean, the bigger ones we have in that sector are Qantas, which has done really well. Consumer staples, again, we're around equal weight. The biggest holding there is Kohl's. We think Kohl's, as we was demonstrated, is really dominating Woolworths. So we have an overweight Coles position. And we really overweight that sector but then pulled back on A2 So we've reduced our A2 milk holding after the incredible re rate. We still maintain an overweight IT sector. So the IT sector really dominated by a few big names as well. And the ones we are increasing weights in are Wisec after it got hit during the reporting season after tempering growth expectations. And NextCC was another actually, NextCC was a big driver of performance too. They had a really big rewrite off their result. So those are the two big ones in the IT bucket. Common services, again, really dominated by Telstra. We do have a market weight in Telstra, and Spark is another one, which is rerated from the lows. We've been through a bit of a journey with Spark from the highs to the lows, and it's coming off the lows now from $1.0.8 to around 2.3 So that's done really well. Energy sector, we think it's quite tough at the moment again. Santos is under a prospective takeover. OPEC have been increasing supply. It's really a bit of a tough market there. So we've been in and out of that sector. And then utilities, our favorite in the utility sector, have APA, which actually had another great result and has very stable business with a lot more costs out. And then Origin was the other good reporter that was in that sector. But that gives you a bit of a a taste of the portfolio. You know, where we're to from here, we're probably gonna take a what we are taking a little bit more defensive stance. We've increased the cash weighting to around 5% of the fund. And we'll be looking at what sort of levers we can pull for this period, which is gonna be testing the equity market. But the real goal is to set the portfolio up for later in this year when seasonally and from a liquidity perspective, should be a lot easier for equity. So we're going to try and navigate that. But as John said and Olivia mentioned at the start, really pleasing to see some momentum back in the portfolio. We were the outperformance is, we've been waiting for it for a long time to come back, but it's really kicked in now. And we think this new market regime really suits us. So we're very excited about the year ahead. So yes, really happy, and we can open up to questions if there's any questions, Olivia. Thanks very much, Matt, and thank you to everybody for sending through your questions. Please keep sending them through the webinar platform. We'll first discuss gold as we have a couple of queries on gold. John, gold prices have reached record highs. Do we have any gold exposure in the portfolio? And what is your outlook? We we do. We do have a we do have gold in the portfolio. Basically, gold's a story of two ends when it comes to the Australian market. You've got the really big guys and then a whole bunch of what we call mid and small caps in the emerging producer space. And for us, the three big guys are Evolution, Northern Star and Newmont, and the name that we've had for most of this year is Newmont. It sits below that level of the top 20 that you you guys as shareholders would get visibility on. For us, Newmont got hit back early this year on a poor production report, and that was the opportunity for us to buy a decent holding and decent waiting in it. And since then, it's materially rerated. Northern Star and Evolution, we we've avoided for the most part of this year because of their own production issues, and we feel like they still haven't got a grips of grips of that yet. Northern Star is the one that we do see some valuation support in, but it may take a little bit of time for us to get some comfort around their production issues that they faced repeatedly over the last two to three years. So then when we peel the onion back and look at the next level down, that's where we've particularly done well. You know, we owned things like Gold Road, and we've all owned, yeah, a number of stocks that have been taken over this year because one of the things that we did play, we adopted a barbell strategy where we own Newmont and a bunch of of those mid to small producers from an m and a perspective. And the thematic that's been playing out in the market is size leads to flow, flow leads to share price momentum, and that m and a theme has has strengthening the portfolio. Degree was another that we participated in when it was taken over from Northern Star. So where we are today, we own Vault. We own, Ramelius. We own some Bellevue, all in smaller weights and Northern Star. So they're they're the they're the four names that sit sorry. And Newmont. They're the five names that sit within the portfolio. From a gold, macro perspective, we think it's extended right now. That's not to say you we might not see another four or 5% rally, but I think directionally over the next, you know, twelve to twenty four months, it's probably gonna be heading south. But Matt can provide a little bit more context there. Yeah. Just just a little bit more context. The portfolio has 1.5% weighting in gold at the moment. We did flex that up to around three, three and a half percent. But as John said, it's we we feel like there's probably on its last legs for the rally. And if gold was to shoot up from here, there would be some sort of existential crisis. You know, it's really been benefiting from US dollar weakness, inflation ticking back up. There's quite a few technical reasons why gold's going up as well. So, yeah, we have a 1.5% in the portfolio. Unlikely to go higher from here unless we can see a real catalyst, which would give us reason to increase our gold exposure. Potentially, I could see it going down. But again, we like to run, even at this minimum, around 0.5 of the portfolio in gold just because it's a nice little hedge against market disruption. So we are underweight gold. I mean, in hindsight, probably should have been a little bit more overweight for longer. But, again, the we've captured it through other means, but not directly through gold. Thanks, Matt and John. The next question is from Ian and Robert. Matt, can you talk a little bit more about the reasoning for the underperformance during the last financial year? Sure. I mean I'll put it down to there's probably two reasons why. One was the excessive valuation, so being underweight financials and some of the big momentum names like Wesfarmers. That explained around 5560% of the underperformance by not participating in what we thought was excessive valuations. The remainder was really legacy issues from stocks we own from a while ago that effectively almost went down to zero. So that was a big drag. And that was still a feature in really the first half of FY 'twenty five. So but then actually carried on into the back half as well. So that was the remainder of it. So Legacy Holding, also Spark had a big derating as well, which was around 1% of the underperformance. So majority was just not participating in what we thought was excessive valuations, but there was some bad stock calls. In hindsight, there were bad stock calls. But again, we've refreshed the portfolio. We've got new positions in place. All the legacy issues are gone. So that's what you're starting to see now, the real performance, which shareholders are used to and what we're used to because we hate underperformance, and we fight as hard as we can to get it back. So that's what we're doing at the moment. And pleasingly, we've had a really, really strong start to the year and hoping to continue that momentum for the remainder of the year as well. Yeah. Just for some perspective, we've we've we've already clawed back around a third of that underperformance already this financial year. So it's not enough. We wanna claw it all back, and that's what we're aiming to do. Oh, is there it's actually around 40 yield percent. It's pretty close. Yeah. Thanks very much, guys, for that clarity. And just following on from that, a question from Campbell. At what price would you consider getting equal weight into CBA? I mean, that's the greatest question ever. Like, no no one, unfortunately, knows because it's not really dictated by fundamentals. So, you know, fundamentally, it's worth about $80, $90. It's trading at, you know, whereas 60 what? $1.69? 1 well, high 1 sixties. So it's still fundamentally not correctly priced, but it's really an expression of it's quite a complex explanation of what's going on. But, effectively, there's too much leverage in the world, and it's and it pops up in all these weird places. And CBA has been one of them. So when you see young wines in this levered global trade, you see CBA share price exaggerated by movements. So when we saw the yen carry trade fracture in August, CBA was down 7% in a day. Like it's extraordinary because you have this excess leverage positioned in these names. Then on Liberation Day, you saw the same thing. As soon as you shock the system, you get undersized moves. And what we're seeing now is a little bit of a liquidity event where there's some liquidity drain in the market. Even yesterday, it was almost Three and a percent. Yes. It was almost down 4% on a global bond sell off. So you can see this is artificial. It's linked to factors which are not fundamental. So when you ask what price do we have it grow at CBA, it's you can either play the liquidity game or the fundamental game. You know, we we like to say we could play both. You know, we have flirted around with CBA a couple of times whether we we put a little bit of money to work in it and then pull it out because, unfortunately, the the gap between where the share price is and the fundamental value is too large for us. So we at this juncture, to go equal weight, I don't think it will ever happen at this price, barring a reason why this liquidity trade would continue. So let's say I mean, this liquidity trade all started when the SVP bank bailout in The US. So what happened there was there was a regional banking crisis in The US. The Fed stepped in and said to all the all the banks, hand whatever collateral you want, and we'll give you full face value for it. So effectively, there's zero risk on all these securities in the market. That was the cause of a fundamental rerate of and the leverage going up in the system because everyone thought there's gonna be bailouts no matter what happens. So the the rules of risk were rewritten. And it reminds me of LTCM blowup, which happened in 1998 from memory, where it was a it was a relative value, big macro hedge fund, blew up, was bailed out by the banks. Everyone went max long because they thought there's no risk here with the we'll always get bailed out. What you saw that was post that was the.com boom. So it's sort of rise with that period where the the Fed bailed out the banking system, and everyone went max on risk. And risk is mispriced still. Credit spreads are incredibly tight. It is so, some assets are incredibly mispriced, and that's what we're seeing at the moment. So to to answer the question, you really gotta make it cool on the liquidity game, the leverage game, whether you wanna play that or not, when you think it will break, and if you think it will continue. Because fundamentals, it just doesn't stack up here. So, I mean, that's a long winded answer, but it's it's the only way to look at it at the moment. To to support Matt's view, we are in the currently in the DRP pricing period or DRP purchase period for CBA. Historically, CBA would go up every day during this because they're buying 10 to 15% of the volume. It's been going down. So that's that's one thing that's an abnormality. For those on the call, many of you who followed CBA for decades, a 30 or 40 or 40 or 50, basis point move in the share price was a big move. Seeing three and a half and 67% moves in CBA is not normal. Yeah. On the result day for rather in line a rather in line result, it moved down 6% and since then it's retraced. So we're not talking fundamentals. We're just talking flow. And the way that we one thing I can guarantee is that we won't pick the bottom in CBA. But what we can do is try to average down, if it starts to fall and try to get a try to protect the portfolio that way. Thanks very much, guys. And we've got quite a few questions on CSL, which you did touch on briefly. From George, Henry, Ashok, and Leon, is the plunge in the CSL share price a cause for concern? And what is your outlook in the medium term for this holding? The big change that took place in August for CSL, and I think many of the many of the people that would have been on the call back in in March when we last spoke to shareholders on a webinar. In the in the February result, what drove, a strong CSL result was the historic bearing business, which is what we all know as the blood business. That drove strength, in the result and provided some comfort for investors that, you know, the main engine is humming. And there were some weaknesses in Securus and in in v four. Fast forward to August, the complete opposite happened, and that spooked the market rightly so. You know, the pivot or the or the u-turn in the bearing business is cause for alarm, and the share price reaction on the day was probably warranted. I guess from here, what we need to see is that stability, return, from the bearing business. We need to ensure that the long term growth, story that we have known and have loved, is still intact. Now they're doing an Investor Day in November, and hopefully, they provide a little bit more of a framework and reassurance to to the to the investment universe around the long term projections of that business. And Anna from our team will be heading over to that, in November. The second signal that spooked the market again was the the flagging of the divestment or the spin out of Securus. Again, people's concern around that were, what does the future look for that business? Are they just handing off this effectively orphan business that has no growth prospects to shareholders to deal with because management didn't want to. We probably don't subscribe to that. We think it's probably, a better business as a standalone with its own management focus. So we probably think that's overblown in the market, but really our focus and for us to go overweight in a meaningful way, see yourself going forward, is to get some reassurance around that bearing business. Yeah. What what we saw was a PED rate. So in the way we look at companies is on a a PE ratio, which is the price to earnings ratio. And c o CSL traditionally is a trader on a high PE ratio. We saw a huge PED rating because of question marks around bearing. So earnings weren't that bad from a group perspective, but it was just a PED rate. It like, most people have followed this since the flow, you know, back in the nineties, And you could always bank on double digit growth, and now there's question mark. So we saw a derate of the price people are willing to pay for it because there's question mark. So it's probably back towards an interesting level now, a market multiple. It's probably better than a market multiple, but, again, like, with with managing money, it's you have to deal with sentiment as well, and the sentiment is bad. So, you know, we're we're it's on our radar whether we need to go high in the in CSL. We're still waiting for the sentiment angle to change because it's very much spooked a lot of the market. But the business isn't broken. The growth rates, you know, people are talking about competition and, you know, we we don't think the business is broken. We think it will trend return to decent growth in Bearings. So there will be an entry point. You know, we talked about $180. You'd like, as for us is, you know, barring nothing changing would be a very attractive entry point. But anything sub 200 probably, at this point in time, looks okay. So that's sort of how we're viewing CSO. Well, maybe some context around the market that we're operating in. And and I think we've flagged and spoken about it before around the the the the dominance and the emergence of quantum index funds. And, yeah, one of the big things that they look for and they screen for is momentum and earnings momentum and earnings revisions. Yeah. CSL is at the wrong end of that spectrum right now. You've had earnings momentum turn negative and share price momentum to turn negative. And, you know, what these guys look for is, you know, is the stock gonna beat market expectations? Yes. Can we hold it safely for the next six months? Yes. In simple terms, they buy it. CSL is probably three to six months away before they can provide enough comfort for these price agnostic investors to to to really get involved again. So on the questions around, are we overweight? Will we go overweight? Right now, we're slightly still underweight. We need some real valuation support, to Matt's comments to to go overweight so as we can fight that tide of momentum. And and as we've seen from stocks like a two, when momentum turns, it turns pretty savage and the share price reactions go hard quickly north. So, you know, it's just something to to to bear in mind when investing currently in this in this world. Thanks very much for that, guys. And another stock question. What are your views on ResMed? ResMed, we really like. It reported really well. Great top line, great margin, really liked the business. There was the big chat around GLP-one. Will it hurt the business? Actually, it hasn't affected it. The business has great momentum. It's actually drifted a little bit post result. And we've been adding to ResMed. Know, in the low forties, you know, high thirties, we thought it looks pretty attractive as as drifting back towards there. I think it tried up to around $44 around result, and then it's just drifted, which often it does. So generally, a good strategy is selling a little bit of ResMed on a result day or, you know, a day or two post, and then buying back in, and and we're doing that at the moment. So for us, it looks solid. Can't see too many issues with it. There is talk, you know, Philips will have come back in in a meaningful manner. It's just tough, and we think ResMed have entrenched themselves throughout the the network as well with the the the businesses they have bought. So they are almost bit of a IT player as well as having the the mask and the the hardware. So it looks really good. Yeah. So it's a very noisy stock, we'd say, ResMed, because it always delivers at results. And in between results, you know, people start jumping at shadows and start to make noise. And, you know, I think one of the things that Matt's point is that you need to be a little bit more nimble and, towards reporting periods that I think it's certainly gonna be a material overlay for us. Thanks, guys. And we have quite a few questions on Coles and Woolworths from Mark, Henry, Bill, George, Scott, and a few others. Could you discuss your thoughts on the significant moves within the top 50 during reporting season, particularly Woolworths and Coles, and how you're positioned with those two companies? It's a great question, Alan. And and Matt saw Coles earlier in the week, and I saw all these yesterday. And I think, you know, the comment earlier around momentum, and momentum is is is a very important factor when it comes to retailing, and Kohl's has all the momentum right now. They're executing brilliantly. The head they they they simplified that business. Lee has done a tremendous job, you know, really focusing that business on what the consumer wants. So from here, we continue to see only strength for Coles over the next, you know, over the next twelve months. And, you know, at the result post the result, we've increased our weight, and it's around about two and a half percent of the portfolio. Yeah. Historically, Woolies has always been the stock that's on on the higher multiple and the high valuation. Woolies has a bit more challenges ahead of them. They do have the better network, but they've got more balls in the air that they need to juggle right now. Cole's is a very simple story. Woolies is a little bit more complex. Management needs to turn the ship around. And with all with all big ships, it takes longer than people think to turn that around. So going into the result, it was unfortunately an overweight. On the result day, we did, significantly reduce our position to the state where it's it's it's it's minuscule right now within the portfolio. Does that say that we think Woolies is broken for the long term? No. We'd love an opportunity to get back in there because we do believe that management will turn the ship around. But the question is how long it takes, and I we can't see it happening in the next six months. Yeah. And as John mentioned, I had the better meeting this time. I had calls, and it was smiles all around with calls. Great momentum. I'd say the the big difference is availability. Calls have actually nailed this for us. Woolworths had a few issues again with availability, like on shelf. Also, theft, Coles boosted their efforts against theft. And the the criminals have found the easier option now being Woolworths, so they've moved over to Woolworths. So now Woolworths have to address theft with gates on exits and the like. So, Cole's got the momentum. They've got their distribution network working now, for a huge investment. So clear momentum. It reminded me back when John and I was buying Woolworths. I think it was, like, $16.17, $18 when Brad Banducci first came in. And it took about three or four years to get momentum. So like John said, it it takes a long time because people get into a purchasing pattern, and they don't move unless it's a compelling reason. So even if the competitor's doing a great job, they won't even know Yeah. Because they don't move. So it does take a long, long time to turn these things around. So at the moment, Coles have got the momentum. We're back in Coles. You know, it's at $24. It it can go to $25.26, and starts to look expensive. Whereas Woolworths, I mean, if it got down to $24.25 dollars, you know, we'd have to Yeah. Seriously have a look at it. I think it's trading around 27 at the moment, so a little bit off. Again, you don't wanna go as John pointed out, in this market, you don't wanna go too early because there is no appetite for getting in too early because people wanna see results. They will not invest ahead of time. They'll rather wait for things to turn and miss out a little bit of the the early the turnaround sign. So, yeah, you could you gotta be very aware of that, and that's something we learned over the past twelve, eighteen months as well is you will not get rewarded by going too early. One thing to what's worth highlighting is there's a lot of there's a lot of speculation in the media around pending price walls in the retail sphere. One thing we've got comfort is that there won't be price walls, but there will be chain changing price strategies. At the moment, Woolies relies heavily on effectively a high low strategy. I think we'll start to see a little bit more low consistent everyday low prices. You know, I think we'll start to see that come from them to to try to eat back some of that market share they are losing. They're not only losing market share to Coles, they're also losing market share to Audi. They're losing share market share to Metcash and and some so some of the fresh grocers like Harris Farm. So, look, it's it's gonna be a battle, but, yeah, I think we just gotta get the timing right. Thanks, guys. And we have a couple questions on China. So, Bat, I'll go to you for this one. George has asked if there are any themes coming out of China that would impact your investment strategy. And George has asked if you could, in particular, talk about BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue, if there's a better positioning there. Sure. Thematics wise, it's a little bit quiet up from a stimulus point of view because the when we look at China, we because GDP has been quite strong, there is no incentive to, stimulate. And also while there is tariff issues, there's no reason to stimulate as well because you they don't know the tariff outcome with with The US. So it's been very much a status quo with China with no big themes. The one thing I'd point to is the rationalization of industries. So you might have seen lithium was a sector which we mentioned earlier where the government came out and cracked down on some of those mines being used and trying to rein in speculative. Speculative is probably not even the right word, but just pulling back some of the supply. And that looks like it's happening across a few industries. So that's interesting at the margins. Lithium was very interesting because the lithium sector was so shorted. So everyone was positioned very negatively for lithium. So the the moves you saw there were exaggerated because of the the positioning going into it. The other metals don't have those dynamics, so there's not really a play yet. What I'd point to, though, is that there's some quite important meetings coming up in China. And we think Q4, so the last quarter this year, will be a very important catalyst for the government. They need to hit their GDP numbers. They will have to do some short term stimulus, but also set up the run rate for next year as well. So we think from a thematic point of view, you probably don't wanna go too overweight materials at this juncture. But later in the year, it could set up for a very nice trade. So and when we talk about preference, I mean, for us, it's BHP and Rio. I mean, they are our two stocks that we like. Both both we like depending on price. I mean, that really dictates where we put capital to work. But we're more overweight at Rio Tinto than we are BHP at this point in time. Rio Tinto is probably well, it does have the better growth profile, over the next decade. You know, there is a lithium has been a bit of a question mark, but it's really quite a rounding error for Rio Tinto. But BHP have actually been doing very well in production as well, so they actually are performing well. So we don't have a huge preference between the two, but it often will be dictated by relative price movements. And then Fortescue, you know, we did buy that. It was in the low fourteens, fifteens. They're rerated to eighteens now, we've reduced that. Fortescue is like a fair weather stock where If the sector was ripping, you'd go Fortescue over the other two if you want real bang for buck, but it's riskier. So generally, what we do, if we get into a full blown rally in the iron ore names, we can wind Fortescue up to two, two and a half percent of the portfolio, but that's generally what we do, where we would run Rio and BHP around 7% of the portfolio. We could go up to eight each if we had real confidence around that trade. So from a risk perspective, we we run, re owned BHP at higher weights, but Fortisu can go up to around two, two and a half percent of the portfolio. But, again, we we might look at it around October, November to go increase Fortescue. But at this point in time, we just can't see a a reason to deploy more money to Fortescue. Just two comments, Dave, on that. Around the, cost curve support for iron ore, it feels like 90 to $95 is where iron ore bottoms out, and a lot of that, marginal supply comes out of the system. So from that perspective, if you're in an environment where a 100 iron ore is prevailing for the next six to twelve months, we envisage both Rio Tinto and BHP to talk about large buybacks. And that probably is the marked difference between BHP and Rio versus Fortescue. Fortescue will go in a capital investment phase. They won't have the ability to do the buybacks, whilst Rio Tinto and BHP, we envisage significant buybacks this time next year for the if the if the idle Yep. Strength remains. Yeah. I'll be going up to China in October. So next webinar, we'll have a a lot of on the ground information we can share with you around, China as well. Maybe we can do a few live from China. I I don't think we can, stream out of China. Thanks, guys. And, Matt, we have a couple questions on liquidity easing. You mentioned positioning the fund for an easing in liquidity later in the year. Can you talk about how you might plan to do that? And a follow-up question to that is how you think it might affect bank earnings. Sure. Like, when I mentioned liquidity, it's really financial liquidity. So it's when we look at the the plumbing in the system, effectively, we look at leverage and how easy financial conditions are, which really dictate how asset prices move. So when I talk about liquidity, it's nothing to do with the stock or the ASICs, really the ASICs. It's the global system or the plumbing. How easy how easy is it to get money and how cheap is it to get money and can you lever it up. So what I talked about is September is normally a a tightening of liquidity. So that's generally bad for risk assets. And it's generally a seasonal thing because there's a lot of issuance. So when governments or corporates need to raise money, they come to the market and ask for money for issuing paper like bonds and draw out a lot of liquidity. There's also a movement in The US. It's quite technical, but the TGA account, which is the account the treasury have, it runs down with when the government pays out money or they collect and it goes up when the taxes come in. But effectively, they have to rebuild the TGA account up, which is gonna withdraw around $300,000,000,000 of liquidity. So generally, environment is not good for risk assets. So the way we're positioned for that is reduce some of the risk within the portfolio. So those expensive stocks like CBA, if this does continue, will get hurt, Wesfarmers. But overall, the whole market gets hit. And we saw that when the bond markets globally started to sell off a bit on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The ASX was down 1.7% on on the was it Tuesday? Yeah. Yeah. It actually Wednesday. Wednesday. Sorry. Wednesday. It actually hit quite hard. And it's you can see how markets are linked, and markets effectively run by this leverage in the system. So when you strain that, things get hit. So we could see this happening Monday where the Australian rate environment, we saw the the ten year the ten year government bond starting to sell off. And then The UK started selling off, France started selling off, and then The US started selling off. So it's a global thing happening, and that really hit the Australian share market. So when we talk about liquidity, it's really that global liquidity piece we're talking about. And that yeah. How do you position for that? When it becomes tighter, you reduce risk. When it becomes easier, you add risk. So when we talk about liquidity will get easier later in the year, we will be adding to some of those positions which potentially will get hit. Maybe not CBA, but then things like on the IT sector, like the growth sector, which might get hit from higher long end rates, we might add to the growth sector. We'll actually deploy some of that cash. We look at markets through macro factors, fundamental factors and positioning and liquidity. And when liquidity is getting tighter, it's bad for assets. When it's getting easier, it's good for assets. So that's sort of how we view the world. Thanks very much, guys. And we have a couple of questions on Aurora and Amcor from Simon and Ian. Can you please comment on your overweight position in Aurora as noted in the August update? And can you discuss your thoughts on Amcor? I'll I'll I'll tackle both of those. It's pretty it's pretty simple, though, the discussion between those two. We feel like Aurora's bottom now. We it was a decent position last year. We traded it pretty well, selling most of our position at $2.50. We bought a lot back in the low $2. Where we think there's strong momentum in the business is the canning business where, you know, cans of coconut sugar and stuff like that where that can that demand continues to be very resilient, and they are best in class when it comes to that. The more questionable side of the business, Savor Glass, which is the glass bottling business which they acquired, we feel like that, you know, when you look at some of the global players there being Pernod Ricard or Remy or whoever it might be, we feel like that sector has bottomed. A lot of the capacity has come out of the market. So from that perspective, you know, at about a, you know, eight to 10% free cash flow yield on a very undermining multiple with a really strong balance sheet, we think it's a good resilient position to have in the portfolio. Yeah. It's probably, you know, a very likely potential takeover target if if if I was being frank. So we're really happy to own that one, and we think it's gonna be a fairly good twelve to eighteen months for that one. On Amcor, the challenge with that one is the end markets. That is a business that operates on very fine margin, and its end market clients like Kellogg's or, Procter Gamble or whoever it might be. We continue to see a decline, in volumes in the market and particularly in the, the rigid plastic business, which is Gatorade bottles effectively. Demand for that segment is is is is is weak. So for us, we need to see a bit more stability, in the end markets of Amcor's customer base. And when we do see that, and it comes back to timing and getting the momentum and not going in too early, when we do see that stability, we do believe that the synergies they got from the Berry transaction will drive this to a rerating. So for us, we can see a path for Aurora right now, and the path for Amcor is probably a little further, down the track, maybe back end of this year. The only thing I'll add to there is Aurora, like, I caught up with the management, and it's really a cash cow for yeah, to 2031. They effectively have done all the CapEx they need to do, and are generating a huge amount of free cash. So, puts them in a quite a vulnerable situation, I would say, you know, a a great industrial company with spitting out cash, you know, high high single digit free cash flow. It gives them a lot of flexibility on balance sheet. So that looks very attractive to us. Yep. Thanks, guys. And a couple more stock picks. What are your thoughts on APA Group? That's from Colin. Yeah. APA has been a great investment for us. We have been invested for about two years in that company. The real kicker here was the cost out opportunity. I'm not sure if I can share this around the with this employee cost, but yeah. They had a really inflated employee cost, which they were getting a handle on for a couple of years around how many people were employed and where they were employed and how much they were paid. And, you know, they did a real big exercise on this and have really taken out a lot of costs. So cost has been a big one, and the the biggest one has been the regulatory framework. There was a risk for this business to be regulated out from a price perspective, but that's all sorted now. So APA looks very clean, very lean, very predictable, high free cash flow, can fund all their growth aspirations for their own free cash. It looks very solid to us. I mean, it's not a exciting business where you get super excited about what they do, but it's a boring business, which is good sometimes. It Mhmm. It generates huge amount of cash, very predictable, and it's a great addition to a portfolio to have there as a a base that's gonna be very dependable. So API, we we still like it. You know, I still think it's undervalued. It it could easily trade back to $10. But, no, we we we thought that's two results in a row that have done really well. So they do have momentum and credibility, and we think it's a very attractive asset. Thanks, Matt. And what are your thoughts on the recent fall in Reiss, and do we have a position in that company? We we we we don't have a position in Reiss. I would implore anyone who can get access to the most recent Rice conference call shareholder call because we do get very limited access to Rice Management because it's effectively run like a private company. But if anyone can get their hands on that conference call transcript, it makes for great bedtime reading. It was one of the most refreshingly depressing conference calls that we've listened to in a long time. They told us how it is, not how it could be. They told us how tough their end markets are, how challenged The US rollout is, how much competition they're facing in Australia to the point where it it it really challenges anyone who is buying that stock today. You really need to take a very, very long term view that this business will turn around. And, you know, fortunately, we we learned the lessons of James Hardie's, and we were underweight. James Hardie's went at the result time, and we'll come to that later. But we didn't hold a position to reach. Although, admittedly, I was the one in the team pushing to have a look at it because it's come it's come down a long way. But the end markets, it's operating, the competitive dynamic, it's very, very challenged. I even raised it again with the team, and I was shut down fairly quickly yesterday. So we are keeping an eye on it. Yeah. It still screens expensive from a valuation perspective, and markets are certainly not getting easier. So, you know, we think there's probably another six to twelve months of tough times in there. Yeah. The one comment I will say, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see if this company wasn't listed at some stage, because it yeah. It's it's run privately, to the to the credit of the family. Thanks very much, guys. And the next question, there was one on Santos Yep. From Sam. What is your view on Santos and the possible takeover taking control offshore? This is it's gonna get noisy. It's gonna get political. Yeah. I think we had, you know, previously expressed that, you know, we'd shifted our preference to Woodside. And even in the even with a takeover, Woodside has outperformed Santos of late. What we do think happens is that the deal does go binding. Ad knock aren't there as tie kickers. They're genuine buyers. The question is what shape does this, eventuate in? What how how does a how does a transaction take place? Federal politics will certainly get involved in this. I wouldn't be surprised to see if, there's a breakup of assets. Potentially, a lot of the domestic gas assets either end up in different structures, with certain guarantees or agreements with the government to ensure that domestic supply is locked up and and granted. So I you know, from our perspective, we think that the deal does eventuate, but there are certain conditions and obligations that will need to be fulfilled, and certain promises that will need to be made to ensure that the political aspect of this deal are appropriately appropriately compensated. Thanks, John. And the next question is on Wesfarmers. What fair value would you attribute to Wesfarmers and why? Larry says, in the introduction, you compared Wesfarmers as overvalued to that of CBA. In your response to equal weight for CBA, you listed a number of macro impacts. So I think what the Baron Joey research analyst had a title for his note 40 times to 4% EPS growth. Yeah. That's not something we're we're particularly fond of paying. Wesfarm is undoubtedly has the best business in Australia, which is Bunnings. I think we've acknowledged that several times on these on these on these calls. You know, trading in Bunnings is circa 4%. It's facing inflationary pressure. It is having to move into new markets to capture more growth. They are executing phenomenally, they are a wonderful value proposition for the Australian consumer and will be ever present in this market. Kmart is another wonderful value proposition for customers, but that's starting to slow down. And Wesf Wes Wesets, SF, and, the lithium businesses are not 40 time multiple businesses. So for us, they are executing in the same way the CBA is executing, but the valuation for us just doesn't stack up. And I think if there were some dislocation and if we got back to, you know, maybe high twenties, low 30 time multiple, which I don't think we'll see anytime soon, we consider going overweight. Yeah. Which is around mid forties. Maybe fifties. Which is a fundamental value, so trading around $90. Thanks, guys. And the next question is from David on Wise Tech. Can you talk about your views on Wise Tech there and if you're comfortable with the governance deficiencies in the company? Yes. I mean, two questions there. Do we like Wise Tech? Yes, amazing business. You know, there was a hiccup around their perceived growth rate slung in their core business, cargo wise. You know, after chatting with the company and doing our research, you know, we're not overly concerned with that short term pullback. It's really just delay. But the business is in the best shape it's ever been, you know, as far as new contracts coming online. The acquisition, we think, will surprise the upside. So, yeah, we really like WSEC. It's expensive. Yes. But the business is going really well. On the governance issues, it's a tough one because Richard White, obviously, from a media perspective and personal perspective, there's a few question marks. But from a business perspective, he's unbelievably good, and he's a a key person within the WiseTech business because he lives and breathes the business. So for us, it's it's a bit of a conflict. Really generally like to say out of those arguments, so we just focus on the business. So, you know, Richard's very much engaged with the business again. And from our perspective, it's looks like a great opportunity over the medium to long term. And we do we have bought some WiseTech. We we did have some, into the result, but have actually increased the weight post results. So we think there's a great opportunity here. Thanks, guys. And we have a question from Richard and Debbie. What are your REIT picks, and what are your thoughts on DGT? Okay. GPT and Goodman Group would probably be our two standouts in the REIT space. Goodman, the market for some reason is fixated on them. They're doing a massive, deal on all their data center rollout. We expect to see a number of deals, not just one, a number of deals over the next twelve months, which will highlight the strength and the robust, growth profile that they have. So Goodman is a standout. And GPT, it's it's moved from a a stock which should trade as NTA value to a growth story, and it's doing significantly well right now. So they're probably the two REITs. DGT goes hand in hand with HomeCo. They're not stocks for us. You know? Yeah. There's a there's a there's a cohort of stocks that trade cheap and will always trade cheap because of perception issues, and those two have some perception issues right now. So we we think there's a lot there's a lot there's a lot for those companies. There's lot of water for those guys to, tread to to get to our investment universe, so we'll leave those two alone for a while. Thanks, guys. And given that we have a lot of stock picks coming through, we might do some rapid fire stock selections from you. Maybe you just wanna say buy, hold, sell, or if you wanna add some more commentary, you can, but I'll just go through them. Sigma Healthcare. It's a hold. A lot of a lot of a lot of selling pressure will be washed through the market over the next six to twelve months a lot as those insiders take their profits. Wonderful growth story if it settles in the in the high twos or, you know, we'll probably look to buy later this year. Sonic Healthcare? Probably a hold. Like, we you know, in the low twenties, it's a buy and high twenties, early thirties, it's a sell. It's we don't fall in love with stocks and, you know, valuation rise. So it's I think it was trading 20 sevens around that. Yeah. So it's sort of in no man's land at the moment, but you we do own it in a small position. We we picked it up when the market sold off, on its results day. So bit of a a trading opportunity there. Next is Zip. Buy. A heap of momentum in this thing, and it and it should continue to continue to grind high. James Hardy. Well, this is that's probably the toughest one out there at the moment. Like, market hates it. It's a shock of a result. Yeah. A few question marks around management. You know, people haven't really trusted, you know, what they said and what they delivered. So huge question marks out on this one. But, again, you know, if there is a turn in the cycle over there, which there isn't at this point in time, you know, we will look at it again. So at the moment, it's it's yeah. Yeah. It's not even a sell. Like, we don't we we own a tiny bit to have a look at it. So it it's just a hold. A buy on a three year view? In between, we don't know. Yeah. Thanks for that. Tabcorp. Gil has, done a Gil McLaughlin, the CEO, has done a wonderful job in transforming this. We've we've done very well out of it. At a dollar, it's gone up 50 odd percent very quickly. We still think there's more. It does need to consolidate at these levels for a little while, but there's a lot more to be done for this stock, and and we can easily see it, you know, a dollar 50 in twelve to eighteen months' time. Thanks for that. A n z a n zed. Sorry. A n zed. For us, it's this and, again, all these are very complicated because they're not just straight by whole sales. For us, yeah, Nuna is doing the right things at this point in time. It's cheap. They do have AUSTRAC ASIC funds pending, I'd say. You know, we'd like to see the size and quantum of those funds, and then you'd probably buy it on the ASIC AusTrack funds. Next one is Guzman Guzman and Gomez. Yeah. This is this is a tough one. Valuation is still up there. High quality business, great great rollout story, some hiccups. The last two results, markets expected and wanted more. The lot the most recent result, the trading update was significantly below where market expectations were hoping it for it to be to support the valuation. The next six months are critical for this stock. If they can demonstrate that it was just a hiccup and not, a step change, then it will go back up. But, yeah, the next, yeah, the next three to six months trading are really important. So I'm gonna I'm gonna sit on the fence and put on a hold. Thanks, guys. Next is Domino's. Oh, this is this is a really tough one. Yeah. It's value it's cheap. It's it's cheap as it's ever been. They it feels like they're they're they're building a strategy on the run. They're adapting to the market conditions as they can. They're they're talking about restructuring their pricing dynamic. And when we hear that kind of stuff, you know, it always takes longer than you anticipate. So we're happy to sit on the sidelines for a while. Yeah. I I almost say, as well, there's a bit of a health element here too. We've noticed Yeah. Sales have fallen off and high calorie pizza is taking a bit of a hit as well as as real change in preferences. So, again, you you you got big some some big headwinds in the industry at the moment as well. So tough spot. But, again, we were attracted by the valuation, but it's it's too hard too hard for us. Thanks, guys. Next is Harvey Norman. We we got a little bit of Harvey Norman, and they're they're taking share. They're they're they're doing really well, and particularly, the the electronics department, you know, in in in replacement cycle for computers and and hardware. So they're taking share. They've got some momentum. We'll hold our position. Consumers getting a little bit more resilient. So, yeah, probably a buy still. Thanks, guys. And do we have a position in block? Yeah. We've got a small position in block, actually. Yeah. It's it's it's it's been up and down a lot. It's promised a lot. There's a huge cost out potential. It's a small position. It's 25 basis points or around 25 basis points or 0.25 or 1%, so very small. We got in there around $80 $90 It has rerated a bit. Going forward, you know, like John mentioned, the the momentum's in Zip, they're really been kicking some goals, whereas Block's a little bit harder at this point, so we much prefer Zip. Thanks, guys. The next one is s x two for gold. We will have to take that on notice. It's probably a bit of a weekend research for me. We'll take it on notice, if it's interesting, we'll get back to you. And four d x? I think that's another I think that's another one for the small cap. That's Okay. Yeah. Thanks, guys. And the next one is Woodside. Yeah. So Woodside will become you know, it it's a it's a it's a tangled mess when it comes to Santos. If Santos comes off the balls and you look at, you know, 70 odd percent of the, large cap investor in Australia, they've had a strong preference for Santos. So I'd expect that if Santos were to be taken over successfully by ADNOC, we would expect a lot of money to flow to Woodside. They're executing particularly well in some of their assets like Sangomar. We expect Treon and Scarborough to the ramp ups there to be really positive. So we're a buyer of Woodside, but there is a big caveat around the what the HelloPeck do. Mhmm. Thanks, guys. Next is Treasury Wine Estates. Yeah. This is we we Picking all the battle socks at the moment. The battleground. Everyone's going to the steep. Yeah. The cheap, broken well, not a broken business, but severely under pressure. But, mean, TWE is another one. It's it's in the Domino's camp. It's the GYG. It's yeah. The alcohol segment's been terrible, and it doesn't look like it's getting any better. So it's under a multiyear derate, I'd say, from a growth perspective. So, yeah, a long, long battle. You know, we we look at the at the NTA sometimes, which is now. Which is around current price. So from that point, it looks attractive. Could they get NTA potentially? So, yeah, around NTA, we we think there's a a bit of a flaw, but, again, we're not confident. Again, I think the common theme here is we said don't be too early, and I think that still holds. Don't that you won't get rewarded going early. It's probably it's probably worth this one where given we we did previously have a rather sizable position in treasury. It's probably worth giving a little bit more context, and we exited most of that position at around about $11, but the biggest challenge here is that US business. And The US business could be characterized by two traits. They've got a very high end portfolio that's doing well and a low end portfolio, which is really, really struggling. It it's it's it's falling at, you know, 15 to 20%, volumes declining by. So they have a they have a distinct challenge in The US about trying to shore up that that lower end wine category they have. They're changing distributors, which probably leads to another downgrade. And then, some policies in China, are starting to lead to lower consumption of, some of the the great Penfolds wine that they distribute up there. So, yeah, there is a lot of noise. And in the absence of that noise, you know, I think this is a transition year, especially with Tim Ford retiring and and the new CEO taking taking the reins in November. So, yeah, it's probably something we're gonna look a bit more in earnest next year. Thanks, guys. I might move to some more macro questions and then come back to a couple of stocks. One of the questions was from George. Do you automatically exit a stock if it drops out of the ASX 200, or do you have flexibility around that? We have we have flexibility. You know, our decision to sell if something goes in and out of the 200 depends on what we think the the longer term prospects of it. So yeah. No. We don't we don't instantly. We have flexibility. Thank you. And the next one is from Ian. How are you playing AI implementation? I mean, for us, AI, there's there's various ways you can play it. Australia's not a pure play in the traditional sense. But the way we play, there's the the first bucket I'd characterize as cost out opportunity. So AI replacing, you know, some of the low end tasks within call centers and handling call volumes. And the big beneficiaries here, I'll point out, is Telstra. That's a really big beneficiary. Also, the Australian banks, anyone with a really high employment cost or really labor intensive call centers or they are the real beneficiaries in the cost side. Productivity is a little bit tougher, but you can argue that's a little bit of a benefit on productivity too. But that's a little bit more unproven yet. Obviously, there's the data center side where, you know, there's gonna be this incredible increase in data intensity, you know, which, again, Telstra actually benefits from the transfer of that data. But, you know, companies like NextCC and Goodman Group. So there's very much capital is still flowing to this space. It is a growth sector, so we can play it through that way. And then the final way we can play it is through energy demand. So energy companies such as energy Origin or AGL or you know, probably not AGL at this point in time. Our preference is Origin. And API as well with distribution of energy. So there's various ways you can play it, and we we definitely pay attention to it. But the the probably to say the biggest impact for us has been deploying capital into data centers and into the cost out opportunities. Energy has been the tough one because energy is dominated by external factors factors as well. But, you know, obviously, in The US, there's a lot more ways to play it directly, otherwise, we play it. Thanks, Matt. And that flows in nicely to our next question from Chris. As our energy security and affordability is being destroyed at an alarming rate, how do you position the portfolio in light of this? I mean, that was probably the highlight from the reporting season, the political statements from a couple of the CEOs. So I mean, the ones I was just scribbling down here was BlueScope, if you listen to that conference call, APA as well, talking about how ludicrous the energy policy is, mainly around gas and saying I mean, the the to summarize, there's not a supply issue. There's a regulation issue. You know, importing LNG is just ludicrous. So we just need some good policy on getting some of that two terajoules of gas into the market. So if we get some common sense policy, which, again, it looks like there will be, that will help. But then I I did see Chris Bowen talking about the renewable target by 2030, which seems totally unrealistic and not the right way to go. So, anyway, to summarize, the feedback we got from the companies is that government has finally started to listen. We think we will get better policy, not not amazing policy, but better policy. And a a switch or an easing in the regulation. Because the biggest thing, again, speaking to management through this reporting season, was productivity and regulation and red tape. We need to see a reduction in that. It's ludicrous. Some of the stories we've been hearing about rolling out fiber to housing construction, labor rules, labor the unions. So it's a highly unproductive set of frameworks at the moment. We need some regulation to help productivity. Yeah, the good thing is I think leaders are listening, and we're likely to get better outcomes over the next couple of years. Thanks, guys. Next question is back to interest rates. How many interest rates do you believe are left in this cutting cycle? Yeah. I think there's one. Again, using all the data we have in front of us, it looks like there's one more, and then it looks like a large pause. Obviously, our view can change as incoming data comes in globally. Mean the big driving factor would be The U. S. Labor market. So U. S. Consumers are sort of like the backbone of the global economy. So if The U. S. Consumer really deteriorates, we could get more rate cuts. But as we see we think there's one more RBA cut left. We think they pivoted to dovish, and they will have to walk back their dialogue, which was really we saw that with Michelle Bullock last night. She did a speech and started to walk back the dovishness. So we think one more rate cut and then a a long protracted hold. Thanks for that, Matt. We might go back to some more rapid fire stocks. What are your thoughts on zero? Post the d rate, it's probably a buy now. As a as an emerging construct a negative construct around SaaS and how AI is gonna impact it. We think that's probably overblown. It's expensive, but we believe that, that most recent acquisition will pay some dividends over the next, eighteen to twenty four months. So it's probably a buy at these levels. Thanks. Macquarie Group. Macquarie, classify it as a hold. You probably pull like, the way we look at it, we've pulled out our holding in Macquarie. We got a small holding. We wanna increase it over the next few weeks, but then back September, October, we'd probably increase the weight if liquidity starts easing and this company relies upon open capital markets. So that should improve as the back end of the year comes around. HMC Capital. Hopefully, they don't know where I leave it to sell. Judo. No. We that's one for the small cap team. Yeah. Like, from bank perspective, it looks extremely expensive and short of capital. But again, the small cap universe looks at banks differently. Great. Thank you for that. James has asked, do you own any rare earths companies in the portfolio? Yes, we do. We've had a decent holding in Luka over the years, and we pulled it down a fair bit due to some of the end markets being ordinary and also Eniaba project being not really viable with the current pricing system or framework. But when the U. S. Government started kicked in with the Department of Defense floor price, that was a game changer. So for us, this is the event we've been waiting for for many, many years for Aluca to have a ex China price, and we do have that now. So it's a game changer. When will you get rewarded for owning it? We don't know. But I think well, we think it's a must own now given the change in the framework. So we do own it, and we do have some Linus as well. And Linus, again, was an ex China play for us. You know, when China was using rare earths as a a bargaining tool with The US, we we positioned to Linus because it would be a beneficiary. But our biggest weight in the rare earth space is Luca, And for for the reason we think there'll be a a floor price or contracts with a floor price for them to make any of us suck suck up. Thanks, guys. And a couple questions on your thoughts for Life360. A lot of momentum, executing really well. It's had a great run, probably consolidates again here, but, we expect it to go further. So it's a buy. Thanks. The next one is Qantas. Probably the standout meeting that we had this reporting season. Management, they're executing incredibly well. They're generating a lot of cash. They're doing right by the customer again. They're replacing the fleet. We think earnings continue to grow above what market expectations are for the next two to three years. So it's had an awesome run. One of the hardest things to do is to buy stock after you've sold it, and we bought back in. And, yeah, I can easily see it going to 13 or $14 over the next year. Bye. Thanks. And do we have a couple questions on Telix Pharmaceuticals? Wish we wish we had Al here. She could have given us she she met with him yesterday. It's it's incredibly tough. I mean, the like we said, the market's got no patience for delays or, you know, when the probability of success swings. You know, Telix is very much caught up in that at the moment. So, you know, we were trying to get some more information around the FDA process and, you know, whether it will get approved, like, through the statement of issues. So, again, we we think it's actually looking looks interesting. But, it's we we don't have much visibility on the FDA process, so it's hard to make a high conviction call on that. But it looks like reasonable value here on the base business anyway. So arguably, you could say you're getting the option for free, but, you know, if it did get rejected, then it'll get hit. It's a little bit binary here. But, you know, we're we own we own it in the portfolio, so we're we're we're happy to take a certain level of risk on it. Thanks, guys. And the next one from Richard is Region Group and Charter Hall. Region is a sitting on the fence hold. It's around Fair Valley, so we'll kind of park that one. And Charter Hall, it's it's game time again. You know, volume and activity and transactions are starting to kick off again in the market, and this is somewhat the default rates for lots of people, lots of generalists and momentum funds. So, yeah, it probably it's had a great run and probably keeps going. So bye. Thanks. And Glenn has asked your thoughts on Nuix. Haven't followed that for a long time. Yeah. It's it's fallen out of the index and very, very small, so we don't follow that one. Sorry. One for Tobias. Two for Tobias. Okay. Thanks. We'll we'll make sure we ask Tobias. The next one is, let's see. From oh, he hasn't put his name. It's on tariffs, though. Do you have any thoughts on the tariff shenanigans? And what impacts do you think it will have on the WAM leaders' investment portfolio? I'm assuming those are US tariffs. Yeah. I mean, like, the biggest like, we saw the impact on Liberation Day with the infamous sign that Trump was holding it. That's sort of the impact it had on markets short term. It's quite difficult to lay it all out. But when we look at tariffs, effectively, the way we look at it is The U. S. Is collecting tax from the consumers. It's running around I think they'll get around 300,000,000,000 over the next twelve months. So that that's sort the run rate of, amount of money they're collecting. What that means is it's gonna either show up in inflation or show up in margins, and that's the debate everyone's having. Like, where does it show up? Doesn't disappear. It's gonna have an impact somewhere. So inflation will go up, and consumption probably goes down in The US, so activity. So it's not a great environment. Like, the tariff environment doesn't make much sense to us. From a fiscal point of view, everyone's happy with it because the US government don't have to issue as many treasuries as they would have had to. So from a fiscal point of view, it's probably okay. And how do we position for that? It's really through working out interest rates, the impact of interest rates off the back of tariffs and from inflation, and then the flow on effects for Australian companies, are operating in The US and importing a lot of their raw materials or unfinished goods into The U. S. So we have to work out from a company by company impact, will it hit their margins? I mean, that's a big debate. Mean, it's it's quite quite mathematical. Let's call it $300,000,000,000. Where does it show up? Either the companies eat the margin or it goes into inflation. So we're just waiting for evidence on that. At the moment, it looks like it's companies wearing the input costs at this point in time. But eventually, that will change. And inflation is ticking up as well now. So, yeah, it's yet to be determined, but we are watching it carefully and it's really shaping our interest rate view and how we position based off that. Thanks, Matt. And sticking with The US theme, Ian has asked, given the US government inability to cut spending significantly, how high can the gold price go if The US continues to print more money and push debt levels higher? Yeah. They've actually been withdrawing money, from the quantitative tightening program. It's really a look, the gold price is effectively a bet on the fiat system. Do you think the US dollars keep getting devalued and it has been devalued while you've seen the US dollar fall? So, it's really around your framework. If you think The US, you know, exceptionalism is over, you know, gold price goes much higher. If you believe in US, we'll rein it in and not issue bucket list of treasuries and finances through back channels, then you probably think gold falls. So it's really just a bet on your view of The US fiat system or the the global fiat system. At this point in time, we don't think US exceptionalism is over. And we think the current situation is they have framed in a little bit of spending. The Doge program was a bit of a fast, but the tariffs, if tariffs are in place, it actually does help a lot. But there is that impact we talked about between inflation, which inflation is good for gold anyway. But it could be a margin crunch and lower rates, which arguably is good for gold anyway. So, yeah, most roads point to good for gold, but there is a few scenarios where it's not good for gold. Fiscally things get better and you get some high growth rates, people will move money out of gold into risk assets again. Thanks, Matt. And a question from George. Do you think the relatively high volatility in blue chip share prices during this year's earnings season is driven by investors only interested in short term outlooks and outlook and performance, or is it due to increased algorithmic automated trading? Yes and yes. Yes and yes. And I'd also add the fund management industry not willing to take risk. Yeah. There's a huge lack of appetite to take risk, and there's a huge crowding mentality at the moment because I think everyone had pretty poor years. And any tracking error, they they quickly cover. So Yeah. We're seeing a lot when CSL fell, like, BHP, CBA got bit straight away because people like covering risk and Yeah. So it's very, very tight crowded market and a whole lot of influences at the moment. And just on I think one thing that we we need to accept and acknowledge going forward is one thing that AI does is, you know, when a stock falls 10 to 17% or whatever it might be in the day, that always happened in the past, but would take two to three weeks to get there. It's just happening quicker now. So you just need to expect that share price reactions, deratings, whatever it may be, just happen instantly, effectively. So we need to be more prepared and more nimble than than previously. And, yeah, we certainly have a lot more, short term money chasing the market. There's a lot more hedge funds who get, renumerated on a day to day basis. So, you know, they don't look beyond the next quarter, forget what the next year's gonna do. They're just worried about what's coming up. Oh, yeah. I mean, some of those guys, if they have a bad month, they get fired. Yeah. Like, very, very short term. Or they get capital withdrawn from them. So it's, yeah, really been obvious to us. It's probably been happening for about eighteen months, to be honest. And we've to adjust accordingly. Yep. Thanks, guys. The next one is from Anthony. He says, welcome. Are you expecting the NTA to also increase? Well, the NTA has been increasing at a quite good trajectory. I mean, I think we put out the NTA today, which was $1.38 You know, so we had a really good bump. Know, momentum has continued. So, you know, we're really happy with how the the market dynamics are working. And and we have adjusted our the way we're investing to reflect a lot of these thematics going on at the moment, which was a great question before about the moves in the reporting system and the quantum of the moves. That really demonstrates how we have to change our or how we've changed our the way we're investing to because we have to play play by the rules in front of you. So and that's what we've got at the moment. So for us, you know, we've got great momentum. You know, we wanna keep outperforming, you know, and go back to those days where we do 10% outperformance. I mean, that'd be ideal. And, you know, within the first two months, we're already, you know, well on the way there. So for us, yeah, we just see a clear runway ahead. And the the portfolio, we think, is in great shape with a lot of embedded value still left on the table within a lot of the names. So we don't feel like the portfolio has just had a great run and is exhausted. We still think there's a huge amount of potential there. And there's also a huge amount of overvaluation in the market too, which we touched on, CBA, Wesfarmers. I mean, JB HiFi arguably is overvalued too, but there's quite a few that still could derate dramatically. We have very low positions in a lot of those and some not at all. So for us, the mix, the dynamics are very welcome. We do have a clear road map over the next quarter, and we think the market is moving toward our direction around the tighter liquidity, the global bond market, you know, shaking around a bit and selling off. We think that will hurt those overvalued sectors. So for us, that's a great opportunity. But then equally, when the the liquidity or the bond market sells down, we've got to move back to the way the market was moving before, and we will do that now. We will be more responsive to how market moves in the short term. So for us, yeah, it's, you know, great to start the in a really, really big tailwind, but we we think it's just a start and, you know, really excited about the rest of the year. Thanks for that, guys. And we will end on our last stock picks. So the next one What do you think of Spark now? Yeah. I mean, we talked about being too early. I mean, Spark was a classic case, of being too early. We can see the opportunity there. Like, what do we think of it now? They have done the cost out, the heavy lifting. So Spark reminds us of Telstra when Telstra saw their enterprise division fall apart, basically. New Zealand government stopped spending. So for Spark, the New Zealand government were a huge client. They've been in a bad recession for a couple of years. So the New Zealand government don't have spare money. They've been pulling projects. So is it Spark's fault? Probably not. But could they respond faster? Probably they could have. But what they've done now is respond. So we've seen the share price rise from 1 point dollars 8 to $2.3 high. Well, it got to 2.4 at a point. So we think they've turned the corner. It's gone through the worst. It's actually a high returning business than Telstra, so it's investment grade. They've sold down their data center business, which was a real concern for the market because they thought there would come a lot of capital expenditure. That's off the table now. Now can focus back to on a high cash generative company, high dividend payer, and go back to boring. Boring is good sometimes, and these companies should be boring. They should be growing at GDP plus a few percent on price, so it will return to that. And the earnings hole has gone now. So for us, Spark, you know, we were way too early. It it had some pain, but it's actually recovered strongly and has been a decent contributor. Probably in the last three, four months, it's really picked up. So it's actually got a lot of tailwinds for us on that company now. Thanks, Matt. The next one is EBOS Group. It just trying to think. It's not one that we hold in the portfolio, and we haven't looked too closely. But I think the result was a bit weaker than market expected. It's lost a few significant contracts. Probably not one for us that we're gonna look at anytime soon. So I'll just sit on the fence and say it's a whole, but it's not one that we're too close to. No. We don't have a really strong view on that one, unfortunately. Thanks, guys, for the transparency there. Stockland. Yeah. That we we had a great meeting with Stockland. I mean, had a great result, ran really hard. The the thing I'd highlight there is Victoria. We don't wanna call the bottom in Victoria, but it's probably the worst is over for Victoria. It's actually seen some volume increase in sales and also price. So Socklin have a big exposure there. Probably what we found we underestimated with Socken was the optionality on their book as well. They got a huge property book, land bank. And they have great exposure. Like, you know, Tarun, the CEO's coming in and giving it a new, you know, access to capital framework. So that's been really positive. So for us, Soppen reported well, has momentum, you know, might face a little bit of a headwind with maybe interest rate cuts coming out of the curve. But for us, that will be an entry opportunity because we think the fundamental business is great and has a lot of optionality. So, yeah, Stockland looked very good for us. It's one of the highlights. And, I mean, the REIT sector actually reported really well, like, Centre Group, GBT, Stockland, CHC, Charter Hall. Mean, Goodman was an underwhelming one, but, again, we think that's temporary, the whole sector did well. Yeah. Thanks. The next one is Challenger. Yeah. I mean, Challenger's been a a core holding for us for a couple of years now. And finally, we saw the rerate we were waiting for. So it was trading $56 for a period, and then you've had the Japanese come in with their strategic stake. The biggest thing for Challenger has been the potential change in the capital framework from APRA. So, essentially, what happening there is Challenger can change the mix on the way they fund their asset and liability. So instead of holding illiquid assets, they can actually hold high quality liquid assets, which will be a bit of a game changer for Challenger. And people are just starting to see the potential there, what this will mean for Challenger. You know, capital management, you know, it's in a great area. Like, they've got a lot of structural and demographic tailwinds. It's in the, you know, that pension phase type annuity. It's actually looking really attractive. You know, when it got to a high eight dollars, we thought it looked expensive and did sell some. But the low eights, it looks really attractive. And, again, I think it was about four results in a row with a pretty well beaten expectation. So it does have momentum even though they've been doing a lot of work on the background for cost and changing the mix of the book. Despite this, they've actually been beating expectations. So Challenger looks good and has a good future ahead of it. Thanks, guys. The next one is MA Financial. That that's one for the small cap team. Don't follow it. A non aero not not to waste that one. And Orica? Hitting its stripes, doing really well. It's consolidating up at least $21 level. Probably has another leg of the another leg of share price growth. Yeah. It's a buy. Mhmm. Thanks, guys. And the very last one, Wham Leaders. Is it a buy, hold, or sell? Did we did we do the disclaimer at the start of the call? We did. We did. We'll do our best to channel Jeff here. We like to buy things at a discount to their asset value, and I think leaders are a small discount. So with the no advice pat on, it's a buy. Yeah. I mean, like, the NTA was a dollar 38, and I think it was trading dollar 33. So by that, it Jeff's definition, it would be a a buy, wouldn't it? I think it would. Thanks very much for that, guys. Thanks to everybody for your questions. Matt, I'll hand over to you for some closing words. Thanks, Olivia. And just like to thank everyone for joining us today as well. Really appreciate the questions coming in and very, well informed and, love the angle around cheap stocks. It's something we always look for, like when companies get beaten up whether there is an opportunity, I'd just like to, warn that strategy is fraught with danger at this point in time because of the I'd say the market is scared of taking risk at the moment. So you won't get rewarded quickly for those beaten up stocks. But yes, just like to thank everyone for joining us. We did have a tough year last year and a tough year before, but we've hit the ground running this year. We're not really confident on the outlook, really confident on the portfolio and look forward to getting back towards some really strong results and sharing them. And look forward to the next webinar where we're gonna answer all these questions. So thank you.