Provide access to retail and wholesale investors to an asset class that was previously inaccessible due to the illiquidity or liquidity constraints and the size required to invest in these asset classes. Obviously, utilizing the LIC structure broke down these barriers for investors. The portfolio didn't come without its challenges and for us there were three key pillars that we needed to work through. The purpose of today's webinar is to provide you with an update on those three pillars, namely, an update on the investment portfolio revitalization, which I'll pass to Nick to go through very shortly, an update on the sustainability of the dividends, which is such a critical element to the LIC structure, and also an update on the evolving share register. As we look to tighten the share register and change that supply demand imbalance that we have had, we will then open up to Q and A, facilitated by April. Obviously this is your company, so we do encourage you to ask questions along the way. The online portal to submit questions is now open and we encourage you to start submitting questions as we go through the short presentation at the outset. Before I pass over to Nick to go through the investment portfolio update, we do have a disclaimer on screen. Basically any information that we provide today is general in nature. It hasn't been prepared with any individual's specific investment needs or in mind. Before assessing whether an investment is correct for you, please do your own due diligence and or seek professional financial advice. Nick, do you want to kick off the portfolio update? Sure. Thanks Marty, and good morning everyone and thank you for joining us. In terms of the portfolio update, as Marty said, obviously we've been through quite a process around revitalizing this portfolio since we took it on from Blue Sky back in October 2020. You can see on the left hand side of this slide today the current allocations within the portfolio. We've got approximately 25% in private equity, 15% in water rights, 14.7% in infrastructure, a bit over 8% in real estate, 7% in agri, 4% in private debt, and obviously the remaining balance there is in cash. A few tweaks that you've probably noticed over time here: the water entitlements piece is now down to sort of 15.7%. You can see there that's come down from around 18%- 19% sort of six months ago and much higher than that. I think the water entitlements were closer to 40% when we took on this portfolio back in 2020. We do like water as an asset class. We think it's a wonderful diversifier in a portfolio, but we think its weighting should be around 10% to 15% in this portfolio over time. We're happy that we've been able to sort of bring that down and we can talk to the dynamics in the water market shortly. The other tweaks here: the infrastructure allocation has largely stayed the same. Real estate is starting to grow, so we're seeing a lot of the capital that we've committed into real estate starting to get drawn down by our investment partners. We'll talk to some of the examples in that asset class shortly. The agriculture exposure is a legacy exposure that will come back over the next 12 months and you'll see a slight increase in private debt from sort of 4.5% up to closer to 10%. The other big change that we're making at the moment that will come into place over the next month or so is putting our cash to work. One of the questions that we've often had is this large cash balance that we've got in the portfolio and it has been a drag on portfolio returns. It's worth noting that most of that cash has been committed to private equity strategies that will draw down on it over time. 20% of that 22.9% has been committed and that will draw down over time. The challenge is we will always have a cash balance within this vehicle because as we commit to new strategies, we also have exits coming back, so capital coming back from other managers over time. We've always got this cash balance that's there. What we're looking to do is put in place a Treasury tool. We'll be appointing an investment manager by the name of Fortlake to manage that cash on our behalf in an investment grade credit strategy that is very, very low risk and importantly is daily liquid. That will add around 70 basis points to performance annually by allocating to that strategy. Just making the portfolio work a little harder is probably the key takeaway from that. We're also allocating to one new private debt manager which will be a nice complement alongside ICG. You can see as well that we've got our four key themes on the right hand side of this slide. They continue to be the sort of pillar of our portfolio construction process. When we're building this portfolio out, we still think these themes are really important and provide great opportunities to deliver great risk adjusted returns in the future. Just moving along, most of you will have seen this slide before. This slide breaks down the portfolio between the core sort of income strategies that we've got within WMA and also the growth strategy, so the strategies we're relying on for capital growth. This split, there's the sort of 40%, 40/60 split, is where we like it, that's sort of hitting the mark. We think that split is appropriate. You can see here that the blue bars represent that capital that has been committed to strategies that is not yet drawn down and there is only a small cash balance remaining. On a fully invested basis this is what the portfolio would look like, and the blend of those return targets. We think this portfolio should be delivering 10% + over the long term. I think there was a question that came through around what this portfolio, the return objective should be. We do think this portfolio should be generating returns of 10%+ plus through the cycle. This slide breaks out all of the various investment partners and investment managers we use within the WMA portfolio. Once again this is on a fully invested basis. You can see on the private equity managers on the left hand side there. Then we've got the water, the infrastructure, the real estate, the agriculture and finally the private debt exposure. The main changes that you will see here over time is, as we said, that the water exposure we've brought down to be within that sort of 10%- 15% range. Infrastructure and real estate will grow closer to 20% over time, and the agricultural exposure will reduce to zero as we exit the agriculture space but still retain the water exposure separately. We'll see that private debt exposure tip up closer to 10%. We're really happy with all of our investment partners that we've got within the portfolio. They're all delivering on their mandates and, in particular, finding some really interesting opportunities in real estate with a group called Wentworth. That's there, perhaps just an example there. I know Marty and I like talking about this one, but there's some really interesting opportunities in real estate in the market at the moment buying sort of quality assets off motivated sellers. A good example of that is 100 Harris Street here in Sydney in Pyrmont, just down the road from UTS, for any of you from Sydney that know the area. This was an asset that was owned by Dexus on Dexus' balance sheet. It was considered a non-core asset by Dexus. It's the old wool sheds building, a beautifully appointed building. Wentworth have been able to acquire that building alongside the Lowy family a couple of months ago, and we have co-invested directly on that asset with them. They've bought that building for around $240 million. That is $100 million less than Dexus paid for it seven years ago. It comes with a five-year lease profile on the asset, well-diversified tenant base, and some rent guarantees as well. There's also vacant land that comes with the asset, and they're buying it for about 40% below replacement cost. The new Metro will open up at the front, and there are lots of value-add levers there. This is a really good example of buying high-quality assets off motivated sellers, particularly in the real estate space where we've seen some pressure on some of the listed groups to look to exit non-core assets. We still see some really interesting opportunities there and also in the private equity space as well. We're talking to a number of our investment partners around some co-investment opportunities at the moment, especially in that sort of technology services space that we continue to see as really interesting and playing into the digitalization thematic that we play in the portfolio. Anything else, Marty, on the portfolio that's worth touching on? I just think maybe just how different the portfolio is compared to Blue Sky. Obviously, under the management of the previous manager, they were limited to their own internal managers. Our opportunity set's much broader. Maybe just a general comment, Nick, on the kind of, given you're near into the team, the quality of the managers and the partners that we've got there with the background. Yeah, it's a really good point that Marty raises. When we took this portfolio on, it had private equity, it had venture capital, it had water, and it had agriculture. We'll continue to hold private equity and water within this portfolio. The venture capital exposure is legacy exposure that will come back to us over time, as will the agri exposure. We have diversified the portfolio into other asset classes that we see as providing really strong diversification benefits and strong sort of tailwinds, being real estate and infrastructure and also private debt. As Marty says, this is an exceptionally high quality portfolio. These investment managers that we have partnered with are best in breed institutional-quality investment managers that investors are unable to access outside of being an institutional investor. There are groups here like Crescent Capital and Allegro in private equity as an example, where the minimum check size to get access to these groups is often $10 million. That just speaks to the quality of the groups we're investing alongside large institutional investors, whether that be Australian superannuation funds, large endowments out of the U.S., pension funds from offshore, and other institutional investors. I think that's really the exciting bit for me, providing retail and wholesale investors to a truly institutional-quality private markets portfolio that is sort of coming out of that revitalization stage that Dania and the team had worked on and now moving into that growth phase, which I'm here to sort of deliver on. Great. Thanks, Nick. Just touching on performance, and I know there are a couple of questions around performance, so we thought it important to look at the performance on the portfolio and the attribution of that performance over time. You can see here these are the annual performance numbers since we took on the portfolio in October 2020. The far right bar is the since inception annualized return figure. You can see here that we've delivered 9% since inception since we took the portfolio on. I should say this is the underlying investment portfolio performance. We're really pleased with that performance. Private markets, generally speaking, over that period hasn't been that easy. Private equity, for example, has been a challenging space over the last couple of years. We're really happy with that 9% performance number. You can see here, over the last three years, the portfolio hasn't lived up to the expectations around performance. There are three key reasons why, and I think it's really important to point these out. Firstly, when we took this portfolio on from Blue Sky, you can see here in that first year, we had some pretty strong private equity returns. The reason for that is that when Blue Sky initially raised the capital and IPO'd the company, all of the capital that was raised was committed at that exact time. There was very little vintage diversification where they committed capital over different periods of time. It was largely committed in one period. We had some really strong exits when we first took on the portfolio. That's very typical in private equity. They often sell the businesses that are performing well early on and then hold on to the businesses that need more work later on. That has hurt performance in recent years, but was obviously a core driver of the strong performance we had in those first couple of years. The other asset class that's had an impact here has been water. You can see that especially in FY 2022, water was a big contributor of returns. We had some pretty significant weather conditions with droughts around Australia through 2021 and 2022. Water was a big driver of returns. Over the last three years we've had some pretty wet conditions, and water hasn't kept up with those lofty numbers that it delivered early on. That has hurt performance. Also, why we want to bring the water allocation down is so that the returns on this portfolio were not solely due to, you know, rainfall. Right. We want a diversified return stream in this portfolio. The third piece of the puzzle here is that as we've worked through this portfolio revitalization phase, the team has had to redeploy the capital that we've received back, especially from those exits in the first year, into new strategies. You've heard us talk before around this idea of the J curve and the time that it takes for that capital to start working for you, the investors. That also explains why the last three years we've had sort of muted returns, as we've been in that J curve phase. The positive point here is we're now coming out of that. We're now at the back end of that process. Most of our managers that we committed to are at the end, coming to the end of their investment period, especially within private equity. We're starting to see the benefits of that portfolio come to fruition. We've seen some exits this year, including one from one of our new investments, which was Linen Services Australia with Adamantem. That was a really, really strong exit. We're starting to see that portfolio perform and tick up. The water, the water rights as well, the water sector, and we can talk to this shortly, is starting to look pretty interesting again. We do feel like performance is shifting, but hopefully that just gives you a sense of why performance has been what it's been and the time it's taken to obviously work through this revitalization stage. Maybe I'll hand over to Marty to talk through dividends. Yeah, thanks, Nick. Given capital management is a board decision, we'll just touch on it quickly. As I said at the outset, one of the challenges with the portfolio when we took it on was we were staring down the barrel of a dividend cap. The profit reserve had largely been depleted and we were able to initially maintain that $0.01 dividend. Obviously, since then we've been able to grow, neutralize the dividend. We're paying equal dividends in the interim and final, and we've been able to slowly grow the dividend. I guess the pleasing part as we sit today is we do have $0.142 in the profit reserve, which is around three years dividend coverage. We're yielding close to 8%, including the benefit of franking credits. That's on share price, not on NTA. We do have a very sustainable dividend balanced by that reasonable profit reserve to give us foresight for investors. A much more pleasing position to be in than where we were four and a half years ago. If I jump onto the last slide before we open up to Q and A, just a quick reminder for anybody who wants to ask any questions, please do submit them and April will facilitate. The next section of the webinar was just a bit of a look at the evolving share register dynamics. It's probably a slide that you haven't seen previously, but something that Nick and I have spent a bit of time delving into the underlying composition of the share register. You'll have often heard Geoff and the team at Wilson Asset Management talk about tightening up the share register and here's probably the best example we've got of that at work. The high level number: since Wilson Asset Management were appointed investment manager, we've been able to increase the number of shareholders by 40%. For us that's a very pleasing first step. What that doesn't tell you is the selling that we've had to wash through on the other side. As we stand today, 70% of the register are new. So 70% of shareholders that are on the register today have joined the register since Wilson Asset Management were appointed. Of the total register, 45% own multiple Wilson Asset Management products and around 1/3 own three or more Wilson Asset Management products. That really just talks to the level of alignment that we now have with the register that we didn't have at the outset of us taking over the management of the company and that change in supply-demand imbalance. I think if you look back to where we were, we probably underestimated the toxicity of the register that we inherited, with shareholders being either disenfranchised with their experience under the previous manager or investors who had joined the register because of the widening share price discount to NTA. We've had to wash through them. We're at a position now where we think we've got a platform and stability within the register to be able to manage that supply-demand imbalance and gradually move that share price towards NTA parity. That's probably a nice segue into the premium target that we implemented when we were appointed investment manager. I know there's a couple questions on it and we'll touch on it again. We did want to just briefly touch on it at the outset as well. For us, it is likely that we do have a vote at the AGM because we haven't met that premium target. The company is still trading at a discount and has failed to trade at a premium since Wilson Asset Management were implemented investment manager. The premium target was implemented to show alignment between the investment manager and investors. At the moment it's maybe not having the impact we would have expected to and we'll touch on that maybe through the Q and A. For us, what this shows us is that we do have a Wilson Asset Management aligned register. I guess the mechanism of the vote is a special resolution. We need 75% of shareholders who vote at the resolution to vote for a wind up. Given the composition of Wilson Asset Management aligned investors and a number of financial advisors and institutional investors on the register who are supportive of the vehicle in an ongoing format, we don't think the vote, if it was today, would go ahead. We would like to encourage all shareholders to vote, have their voice heard, and you know, as a democracy. We do want shareholders to participate in that vote and the board will provide further material to shareholders ahead of that vote. We can maybe touch on that again unless, Nick, you wanted to add something. Probably the only other thing to add is clearly the challenge here is the underlying assets are largely illiquid assets. We're investing in private markets and I've had the question from some shareholders, say, Nick, why, surely I should just vote for a wind up and I can get NTA. The challenge with that is realistically it would be a 5+ year period to return NTA to investors, given the commitments we've made in private equity and the other asset classes. These are illiquid asset classes. If we bring forward that process to sell the portfolio, you're going to be selling assets in a fire sale, which will be at a discount, and you're back to where we are today. I think it's just important to recognize and understand the underlying portfolio composition and the fact that these are illiquid assets. I think that's an important element of that and that's why we think that the portfolio is an important part of the broader Wilson Asset Management business. We want to grow this portfolio over time. That's why I'm here. I didn't come in on, as I joked in that first webinar, on a 12 month contract. I came in to run this portfolio long term because I really do believe in this portfolio and believe in its place in investor client portfolios. I'm very confident that we will get through the vote and that from there we'll have clear air to hopefully get this to trade up closer to NTA o ver time. We may pass over to you, April. Now just to run through the Q and A section of the webinar. Great. Thanks Nick and Marty for your insights, and thanks everyone for joining today and for sending through questions. Nick, we'll kick off with you. We've got a question from Trent. Trent has asked, and this is a good one, if the fund was to receive an additional $100 million tomorrow, where would you see the most attractive opportunities to deploy that capital? Great question and that would be a nice problem to have. Thank you, Trent. If we had $100 million today, it'd probably be a combination of things. As expected, we would look to do additional private equity investments with a combination of the existing managers and new managers, including co-investments, especially in the mid-market growth space where we continue to see some really interesting opportunities and we could co-invest at a larger size than we currently do, which would reduce fees as well. That's an important one. As I mentioned, real estate, we're starting to see some really interesting opportunities in real estate and buying really high-quality real estate from motivated sellers at depressed pricing. There is a high correlation in real estate between base interest rates and yields, and we haven't seen yields yet fall to where interest rates are, so it's catching up. I think there is some value there in real estate that is coming. We would do more in real estate, especially in the value-add opportunistic space, and we would probably do a little more in infrastructure. Infrastructure has been a standout asset class over the last decade, providing really resilient income returns and importantly, inflation pass-through measures. Given the uncertainty around the inflation outlook, I think that would be an important one to continue to top up. Great, thank you. While we're on the topic of having an extra $100 million, we've got a question from Colin for Marty. Do you anticipate any capital raisings in the foreseeable future? Yeah. Thanks April. Thanks Colin. Look, for us with any listed investment company you can only really raise capital if you're trading at a premium to NTA. The quickest way to disenfranchise existing investors is to dilute them and raise capital at a discount. We're committed not to raising capital at a discount to NTA. Obviously, given the company has traded at a discount to NTA for a substantial period, we want investors that are either there on the register today or coming in tomorrow to have a positive experience. I think any capital raising, while we would like to raise capital at a point in time and this vehicle could be substantially bigger, we would do it sustainably and we would do it once we'd been trading at a premium to NTA for a period. No capital raisings in the foreseeable horizon, unfortunately. Thanks, Marty. We've got a question from Brett which is on the gap between the share price and NTA. I know you've touched on a little bit, but maybe you could give some context on what actions you're taking to narrow the gap between the NTA and share price. Over what time frame do you expect those measures to gain traction? Yeah, and it's, it's. Thanks, April. Look, it's a really difficult question on the time frame. Kind of starting with the second part of the question. For us, it's about tightening the register, which hopefully we've shown today that we are working through. The register has improved materially from the point at which Wilson Asset Management were appointed investment manager. The difficulty is we don't know who will sell and the reasons for their selling. All we can control is that we are out there promoting the product and we're raising, buying. We're looking to minimize selling by engaging with existing investors. We're looking on the other side of the equation. Promote, buy and generate demand from new investors. Nick and I have traveled the country over the last couple of weeks, all major cities engaging with intermediaries, wholesale investors, asset consultants and financial advisors. Those meetings have largely been positive. Hopefully we are starting to see, or we will start to see, some traction from those meetings. I think kind of taking a step back and looking at Wilson Asset Management as a business, one of the things we have done I think exceptionally well and which differentiates us from other listed investment company managers is our shareholder comms and engagement. We joke, we call it the engine room of the business. The comms and marketing department that we have, including the investor relations team, really sets us apart. As a business, we have been very focused on WAM Global. We've taken the discount from WAM Global through strong performance. It's a critical element and increased income. That comes in engagement. We've taken that discount from 18% to about 2.2%-2.5%. With a concerted effort, we can make a material impact in the discount. Obviously, for WMA, it's important that we now perform and the portfolio has taken shape and we expect it to deliver stronger returns, as Nick is pointing to. From an income perspective, we're in a good position. From a comms and marketing perspective, that engine room has already started to reposition, while not losing focus on WAM Global, some of our efforts into WMA ahead of the shareholder vote next year. Timeline's very difficult, but they're the tools that we've got at our disposal and we're kind of utilizing them for WMA as best as we can. Thanks, Marty. Yeah, WMA is definitely a focus for all of us over the coming months. We have a question from Marianne on water. Marianne says, Nick, earlier you said that water is looking interesting. What's your view on water currently and over the long term? Marty, no puns, please. I know that you're about to. You're about to launch into them. Marty has a number of puns, so if someone could keep count, that would be. Let's just start by saying the tightest turning. The tide is turning. There you go. Solid income stream. Anyway, the water space, as I said, is a great diversifier in the portfolio. How do we view the market at the moment? We do think it looks pretty interesting for two reasons. Firstly, price of water has increased substantially. The water markets, the entitlements we own, are largely around the southern part of the Murray Darling Basin. The water in that part of the market per megaliter is up at sort of [$350] a megaliter, and that was closer to $50 a megaliter this time last year. It gives you a sense of, I guess, the dry conditions that we have experienced through summer. We've seen pricing increase. The other element we've seen, and it's worth noting that the water market's an interesting one. It all resets on the 1st of July each year, the water market. We've started to see that pricing come through. The other interesting element, and this is perhaps where Marianne's question, which is a good one, is the labor government alongside the Greens has promised to buy back all of the water entitlements in the Murray Darling, and we're starting to see that transaction activity come through. We won't, through our investment partner Argyle, participate in selling entitlements back to the government, because we do like the use of the entitlements longer term. The impact of the buyback is that the buyback is taking place at sort of 10%- 20% premiums to current pricing of entitlements. The water valuers in the market are starting to look at some of that transaction activity and the flow-on impact to other holders of entitlements, including groups like Argyle. We're expecting the valuations to hopefully start to increase from here based on where that government buyback is taking place. The other element there is that as a holder of water entitlements, we get an allocation each financial year of water through Argyle and Argyle can make the decision to either sell the allocation or lease it to irrigators and farmland operators. What we're seeing because of the buyback and this idea of taking supply of water out of the market is that the irrigators and the farmers are now looking to lock in longer term leases at more favorable pricing than has been the case in the last few years. Where water was very, very much available, it is now more scarce. They're concerned about the future availability of it and we're starting to see more attractive lease terms. On that basis, we do think water looks probably a lot more interesting than it did over the last few years, but as we said, at the right weight in the portfolio. It does feel, as Marty started off with, it does feel like the tide is turning on it. Nick, just on that one, you mentioned the water rights and I guess the spot price and the income's gone from $50 a megalitre to $350, when water rights was obviously a big contributor to attribution in FY 2022. Just to paint a bit of a picture in context of where water rights can get to, what was the price per megalitre there? Yeah, correct. Twenty years, start of 2022, I think it was closer to $700. It can move around. The pricing can be actually quite, the pricing of the water price itself can be quite volatile. It can obviously increase substantially from here. It also just shows how depressed it was when it was at $50 a megalitre after some pretty wet summers last year. There's a $350. It's not the top of the market. No, there's still room for further income. Absolutely, yeah. Thanks, Nick. Marty, we've got a question from Kate on private debt. She said there's lots of raisings that she's seeing in the press lately. Can you touch on the current market dynamics and how WMA's portfolio is different? Yeah, sure. It's a good question and I'll need to make sure I keep this short because it's a bit of a bugbear as Marty smiles. There is a huge amount of capital that's being raised in this space. I think a recent KPMG report pointed to sort of $200+ billion that's been raised. Marty and I heard when we're on the road recently that there were 300 odd managers in this country raising capital, which frankly is too many. There will be some sort of rationalization that's needed. The important thing with private debt, let's step back. Why does private debt exist? It exists because banks find it harder to do the sorts of lending they have traditionally done. Private debt is an important asset class and it's an important provider of financing to both corporates and in some cases into real estate because it's more flexible capital. We've all dealt with banks before. They've got their checklist. If you only tick nine of those 10 boxes, they don't want to know you. Private debt is more flexible capital and can cater to those sorts of borrowers. The important thing within our portfolio, we only do corporate private debt. We do not have any private debt exposure that is backed by real estate or residential developers in particular, which is where a lot of the cracks are starting to appear. That's the first point I wanted to emphasize. The current exposure within our portfolio is a tad under 5%. As I said, we're allocating to a new group at the moment that will bring that exposure to 10% and we're comfortable at that level. Now, the two groups that we have in the portfolio and the new group we're allocating to, as a group we've just allocated to effective 1 July, is a group called Longreach. Why did we allocate to Longreach? We think they're a really neat complement alongside ICG. It's smaller lending, it's actually fixed rate lending targeting sort of 10%+ returns. The most important thing, and this is the most critical thing when you're looking at private debt managers, is how strong their workout and recovery experience is. It is very easy to find ex-bankers that can go out and underwrite a loan, provide a loan. It's a different thing to roll their sleeves up and work it out when inevitably things go pear shaped and so workout experience is really, really important. This group Longreach that we've just partnered with has this in SP. The team, has got Mitch who founded the team, is an ex quartermanth bankruptcy lawyer. There's Farrier Hodgson's insolvency practitioners, and Adrian, the Portfolio Manager, worked on the restructurings of the Icelandic banks during the GFC. Really, really strong workout experience, and that's just so important because things, you know, not all loans go well, right? It's really important that you back managers that have that workout experience and, importantly, have the right process in place around valuation of loans. If things aren't going well, we want to see those loans marked down, and both of these managers have a strong valuation practice of doing that and not just holding the loans at market, at face value, and not marking them down when things go pear-shaped, which we have seen take place in the market. Hopefully that answers it. April, as I said, I could go on for hours about private debt, but hopefully that covers the key elements. Thanks Nick, that's very helpful. While we're on the topic, Dave has asked apart from percentage, how does your private debt exposure differ from that of WMX, which is WAM Income, another WAM listed investment company? Yeah, it's an important point. WAM Income Maximiser, WMX, does not invest in private debt. The allocation we have here is completely different. The WAM Income Maximiser invests in a combination of Australian equities and investment grade credit. Investment grade credit is less risky than private debt. It's investment grade by nature. The vast majority of private debt is what we call sub investment grade lending. It is a completely different asset class and there is absolutely no crossover at all. Thank you. We have a question from Gary. He's asked since 2020 WMA has returned 24% excluding franking versus the index, the ASX 200 of 67%. What catalysts can you give confidence? What catalyst can you give confidence that WMA can outperform the index over the next five years? Yeah, thanks April and thanks Gary for the question. I think that there's a couple of important points here. Firstly, the WMA portfolio is not and we don't have a benchmark to beat the ASX 200. This is an alternatives portfolio. We do not own listed equities. I think that's probably the most important thing to point out. We invest in a number of alternative asset classes across the private markets spectrum. Those asset classes, most investors are investing in WMA to provide diversification away from equities as a complement to equities in their portfolio. That's really the role of WMA in an investment portfolio, as a complement alongside equities. Obviously, we want over the long term for the performance of the portfolio to sort of try and hold up with equity, but it's probably its most important attribute is its performance during periods where equities perform poorly. That's really where we see alternatives sort of bear most fruit, I guess, is during those periods of higher equity market volatility. We saw that through the start of April, right around Liberation Day, equity markets were exceptionally volatile. The WMA portfolio didn't move around. I think that's probably the most important point, the underlying assets are not listed equities. They're not intended to behave like listed equities. We actually want the exact opposite in our portfolio. The reason for that is because it is a complement alongside investors that hold listed equities. Don't know if Marty, if you want to add anything else on that. Yeah, I just think looking at the numbers there, since the inception of Wilson Asset Management taking over the portfolio to the end of May, as Nick said, through the formal part of the presentation, the investment portfolio has delivered 9% per annum. Total shareholder return is up 30.5%, which is 5.9% per annum. We might just have a little mismatch between Gary's numbers and the timing that he's used between what we report. If you include the benefit of franking credits, the return is 41.5% or 7.7% per annum. For us, what's going to drive increased performance going forward? As Nick said, we hope the portfolio can deliver, call it 10%- 12% per annum through the cycle now that we've gone through that portfolio revitalization and that portfolio is working a little bit harder. We hope that there will be additional alpha on offer for shareholders as that share price discount to NTA closes, given the current supply demand dynamic and that improved register that we've touched on. For us, we think we can deliver better performance going forward. As Nick said, the purpose for WMA in client portfolios is not to compare us to an equity benchmark. It is more of an absolute return style product. Thanks, Marty. And Nick. Marty, Mark has asked, with the share price at a discount to NTA, what's the planned post October 2025. Yeah. That's, I guess, the exciting point for us. I think Nick and I have been working quite hard on generating additional buy-in and demand for the product. As I said, the kind of vote and the premium target was implemented to show alignment between the manager and shareholders. Unfortunately, at the moment it is probably having the opposite impact as investors who are looking at the product. There is a very small, or we believe very small, element of wind up risk there if the vote was to go ahead. We feel that there's investors on the sideline at the moment doing due diligence in the product so that when the vote has passed and there's no longer any potential perceived wind up risk, they will be more comfortable taking meaningful positions in the company. For us, initially going back five years, the alignment piece of the premium target was implemented for the right reasons and it was an important feature to have. Unfortunately, short term, as we get closer to that vote, it's probably having the opposite effect. For us, we'll continue to manage the product as we do, we'll continue to engage with shareholders as we do, but we think some of those barriers to converting potential investors into current investors will be taken away. We're very excited about the prospects once we get past them. Yeah, I think it's all about continued engagement as Marty said. It does feel like there's some buying there on the sidelines, especially from some of the larger advisor groups, and going through the process now of engaging with them, talking about the portfolio so that we're not at square one post the vote. We've actually started to work on that process. Post the vote, they're ready to come in if they're not willing to come in now given that perceived wind up risk that Marty talked about. Thank you. Nick, we've got a question from Christopher. What is the look through gearing of the fund and how is it financed? Yes, good question. There's no gearing at the company level. The underlying investment partners will have gearing. The gearing will differ depending on the asset class. Private equity, for example, typical gearing levels are around 40%- 50%. Real estate's not dissimilar. Infrastructure can vary quite a bit. The defensive assets, social infrastructure assets tend to be geared more highly than that, and the economic infrastructure assets less. The look through gearing at the portfolio level is around 40%. Most of that, the vast, vast majority of that is financed through bank financing, not private debt. Thanks, that's helpful. We've got a question from Saranj eet, possibly for Marty. Would the board consider acquiring other alternative asset managers to integrate with WMA's existing portfolio? Yeah, look, as a business we have always been opportunistic and that's one of the great things about working with, you know, we're going to found a lead business led by Geoff. We have been opportunistic and within other parts of the business we have acquired portfolios when it's made sense. The easiest way to do that is when we are trading at a premium. It's back to how do we grow WMA when we're at a premium to NTA. That's one option we've got. Obviously capital raising from existing and new investors is another. We'd need all the dynamics to be right. We'd need to be at a premium. The portfolio that we were looking to acquire, I think, would need to be assets that made sense given the illiquid nature of the assets that we'd be inheriting through a takeover. The assets would need to make sense for the WMA portfolio. Given the work we have done with the register on WMA, we'd want some comfort around the composition, the share register of the company that we were acquiring because we don't want to derail or upset the work that we have done in tightening the current register. That's one of the risks of the takeover, depending on the size of the takeover to current WMA portfolio. It's an option, it's something that I'm sure the board would consider if the dynamics were right and there was an opportunity that made sense. At the moment there's nothing on the immediate horizon. Thanks, Marty. The next question comes from Michael and is for Nick. Can you share your impression of the portfolio having taken over from Dania? What would you like to change? I know you've touched on some of the dynamics that have changed. Yeah. No, it's a good question. That was the attraction for me joining, the high quality nature of the portfolio and the fact that I didn't need to come in and try and rip it up, and I couldn't rip it up if I wanted to. It is a really high quality portfolio. As a reminder for everyone, Dania and I did work together for a long time at WTW, and we come with a very similar investment philosophy and investment approach to building private market and alternative portfolios. I think that was sort of paramount to me taking over the portfolio, the high quality nature of the underlying investment partners we have, many of whom I've worked with before and researched in my role at WTW. In terms of the changes, as I talked about, there's two that we've made since I've come on board. Firstly, putting in place this Treasury tool, which will go live in the next month or so, which is just making our cash work a little harder because we are, as I said, we're always going to have a cash balance. It's sort of 20% thereabouts at the moment. Over time it will trend down, but it will always be there around 10% - 15%. Having a Treasury tool that can just make the portfolio work a little harder and add to the overall returns of the portfolio is important, and a new allocation in private debt and also looking at some additional co-investments but with our existing investment partners that Dania and the team had put in place. We'll continue to grow and expand it. They're not sort of wholesale changes, which was never the plan. They're tweaks at the edges to hopefully deliver increased investment performance over the long run for investors. Thanks Nick. The next question comes from Joseph. What sector or sectors will your team focus on to invest in in the coming year? Yeah, sure. I guess linked to the question before around what we would do if we had $100 million to put to work, private equity mid-market growth space in Australia continues to look interesting. Interesting sectors such as, as I said, sort of technology services sectors. Looking at businesses where they provide a technology service which reduces the need for labor. Obviously, the cost of labor has increased substantially in this country, and any business which takes that cost out of another business is interesting. There are obviously sectors that are more challenging. Consumer discretionary is a tough space to play in, so less there, but sort of that technology as a service space. Healthcare continues to be interesting. There are obviously some challenges around Health Scope, which has been in the news quite a bit, but outside of that, especially health technology-related businesses, labor for hire. Healthcare Australia, HCA, which is a business we own by our investment partner Crescent Capital, is performing really, really well. I think private equity businesses in some of those sectors look interesting. In real estate, as I said, we continue to like some of the underlying dynamics. It feels like the office is turning, which is why we were really interested in doing that 100 Harris Street co-investment with Wentworth. We're also investing more in life sciences as a sector within real estate. We're looking at a new co-investment with our partner at Wentworth for a life sciences site in Macquarie Park. Life Sciences, for those that don't know, is lab space effectively, so renting that space out. They're highly specified real estate to lab operators in genomics and others. We don't have, we've got high demand from that tenant base around this country but very, very low levels of high-quality lab space. That life sciences sector is an interesting one that we'll continue to deploy into and a strong thematic behind it. Thank you. Murray has asked, does WMA pay fees to the investment partners? If so, what is the range of percentage amounts that is paid? Yeah, it's a good question Murray. We do, we do. It varies quite a bit. Private equity is the most expensive asset class, and then it tees down from there. Importantly, we are investing as an institutional investor, so we're getting access to these investment partners at often less than half of what a wholesale investor could access if it was available. The look-through underlying fees on the portfolio across the underlying investment partners is just on 1%, and then obviously the Wilson Asset Management fee is 1% on top of that. Thanks, and Marty. Just on that, maybe just jumping in there. The return that we at Wilson Asset Management publish of 9% per annum is inclusive of the fees for the underlying investment managers. Obviously, Wilson Asset Management or a WAM Alternatives Asset level is a 1% management fee, no performance fee. The 8% that we have delivered since the appointment of Wilson Asset Management is per annum, including our and the underlying manager's fees. Net of fees, net of everything, 8% return. Yeah, it's a good, it's a really important point and there will be some of those underlying investment partners that will have performance fees, but importantly the performance fees, especially in private equity. This is an interesting one because we often get the question around, you know, perhaps the vehicle trades at a discount because no one believes what the actual underlying valuation is and are the assets, you know, is anyone, any of the investment managers inflating any of the underlying assets just on performance fee structures. In private equity, our private equity managers are paid based on realizations. They get paid performance fees when they exit the underlying businesses. They do not get paid performance fees to mark up assets along the way. They get paid at the back end. Once those exits have taken place and they've returned capital to us, then they earn a performance fee. There is no incentive for them to mark up the assets along the way. Importantly, if they did that and then they sold it for a lower level, they would find it extremely difficult to raise capital for a subsequent fund. There is very little incentive for managers to mark up the assets. Clearly, the valuation processes that our investment managers use are an important element of our due diligence process when we're looking at them, ensuring that they are best of class and institutional partners as we talked about before. Just going to hijack the Q and A for a section, April, so sorry but just given you touched on it there, Nick, and on the valuation process, is it worth kind of delving into, I guess, the dynamic of valuation process with the underlying managers we've got. We've got now, and there are other institutional investors and kind of the regulations that they've got there, which gives us comfort on the NTA. Yeah, yeah, it's a good one and it's timely because we're working through our external valuation process at the moment with our auditors. Obviously as a holistic company we have audited accounts, so we have a process we have to work through semiannually on the valuation side of things and then the underlying investment partners are also undertaking their valuations. We're looking at their valuations, assigning, doing our work on whether they are appropriate and then clearly through to our audit sign off. The valuation processes and methodologies used differ across the various asset classes. For the most part across private equity, infrastructure and real estate we have independent valuations that the investment managers are getting from independent parties. In real estate it's the, you know, it's the CBREs, it's the Colliers, it's the real estate agents in the market and then in infrastructure and private equity, it's typically one of the big four accounting firms that's providing an independent valuation over the underlying companies. As Marty said, we are investing alongside other institutional investors like superannuation funds in this country and they face their own set of regulations around valuations from APRA. You've probably seen some press around this. It is a point of great focus now and I think it's an important point of focus because historically I don't think valuations, independent valuations were done as frequently as needed. We're starting to see that frequency has picked up and I do think the valuations we now see from our institutional partners do reflect true carrying value. We've seen that in recent times with the exits we've had on private equity. The one from Adamantium that I referenced before, Linen Services, was sold at carrying value. Bought the business three and a half years ago, ticked it up along the way as a business, performed really well and have sold it at sort of 2x their money and delivered returns back to investors, which was sold at carrying value. I think that just speaks to, I guess, the rigor of the valuation processes that our investment partners use, which is important. Thank you, that's very helpful. Marty, Robert has asked, with the discount between the share price and NTA, have you considered using your cash balance to buy back shares? Obviously, capital management is a board decision, so I won't speak on behalf of the board. A couple of points that I would raise there is the cash balance we've got is largely committed, so it is committed to new strategies which will be called upon. It's why the cash balance does look high and we're making that cash work a little bit harder. It's not cash that we've got necessarily to step into the market and do a buyback if we wanted to. The other component of it is that I've been with Wilson Asset Management for 10 years now, feels longer some days, and part of the role that I've had is look at buybacks across the LIC sector. Obviously, it's a very common question that we get, and I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to ascertain whether buybacks are net positive within the LIC sector. The assessment that I have is the buyback acts generally don't work within the LIC sector, and the register base of an LIC is predominantly retail mom and dad shareholders. I think while the dynamics and the economics make sense, I think from a psychological and sentiment perspective, it is deemed a negative. It is deemed that you've got no better investment ideas other than buying your own stock back. While it's negative accretive, I think it does change investor sentiment. There's some really good examples in the LIC space at the moment. There's a couple listed investment companies, and I won't name them, that have got very aggressive buybacks, two in particular that are buying back broadly 25% of their shareholder base year on year, and over the last two years their discount has widened. For us, at the core is changing that supply demand, making sure that we are communicating effectively with existing investors so that they are well informed and excited hopefully about the prospects of their investment. We're working equally as hard on engaging new partners to join the register to take away any supply that there is there from the existing investor base. Hopefully, as we've shown today, we've had great success thus far and we've got a really strong platform to narrow that discount. Never say never. It's always a discussion. Capital management is always a discussion at a board level. I would just caution the effectiveness of buybacks in the LIC sector if the board were asked, in my opinion. Thanks, Marty. Nick, we've got a question from Anthony. Given the objective to increase the allocation to infrastructure to around 20%, will you also be adding a second manager in this sector? Yeah, it's a really good question. We have a sizable allocation to Palisade within the portfolio, which is split between their diversified infrastructure fund and their renewable energy fund. They do have a separate business, the Palisade Impact business, that we will be looking at in time. We will probably look at additional strategy to get us to 20%. Whether it's with a different manager or not, we'll work through. We're pretty comfortable at that sort of 20% level to one manager. Beyond that, I do think it's a fair point around concentration risk with one manager. That said, as we said before, we did have over 40% allocated to water to one manager in the past. We have had that historically, and clearly, obviously having conviction in the underlying manager is critically important to that and ensuring we've got different mechanisms to replace management if need be, if they're not performing or if their key people leave. That's an important part of our due diligence. I think the short answer is at 20% we'd be comfortable having one manager. Beyond 20%, I think it starts to create some risk in the portfolio and we'd look to have more than one manager. Thanks, Nick. Joseph has asked, when investing in the real estate sector, what is the timeframe your team looks at for holding an asset? Yeah, it's a really good question. It differs a little bit. We've got sort of two primary exposures within real estate. We've got an investment with Barwon in the institutional healthcare space. That is a very core defensive income orientated strategy. What do we own there? We own about 32 private hospitals with very long-term leases to various operators in the market. Importantly, as I've said before, we only have one hospital that is tenanted by Health Scope and they are currently paying their bills, which is great. The others are tenanted by Ramsey and other groups in the market. They tend to be very long-term leases. Those underlying assets we're looking to own for the better part of a decade or longer and take the income yield from those assets, which tends to be really, really healthy and less economically sensitive in nature, given we're playing that aging demographic theme. They tend to be very long-term holds. The Wentworth strategy I talked about with something like 100 Harris Street, the period of hold for that property is probably going to be around four to five years max. That's the typical hold period for some of the more value-add strategies where we're investing in a property, adding value, which means either redeveloping, repositioning the asset, new lease terms, looking at development approvals and things like that, perhaps not actually developing it over time, but getting the approvals in place and then selling it on to the next buyer. Typical hold period of sort of four to five years max on some of those assets. It'll be a shorter. Are we allowed to delve into any more Wentworth examples? Yeah, we can probably cover a couple at a high level. Maybe just the one. There's a Melbourne one. Can't talk about who the seller was, but it was another large listed REIT. This was an interesting one whereby Wentworth were contacted by this group who said, look, we've got an apartment building in Melbourne, we have the site next door that we want to develop, but we cannot develop the site until we have sold all of the units in this current development, of which there's 60 left. We would like to start building next door on this new site in the next four weeks before we report our results to the market. We need someone to buy these units quickly. Would you like an opportunity to acquire these residential apartments? You can have them at a 40% discount to market, but you can't tell anyone that we've done the deal and you can't sell any of them for 18 months and you've got three weeks to complete the deal. The team were offered this opportunity because they had some exceptionally close relationships with this organization. Through some of the team, they then did their due diligence on the assets and acquired those units and they've started to sell those units off. That will return a sort of two and a half to three times equity multiple and a 30% IRR. That just gives you a sense of once a year, again, a real estate owner selling assets for a reason other than property, other than it being poor property. It wasn't to do with the quality of the property, it was to do with other reasons that they needed to work through as a listed business to report to the market. It's an interesting dynamic to see groups looking to exit high quality assets for other reasons and obviously this group being able to pick some of those up at pretty attractive prices. Thanks Nick. Great. Wow, what an opportunity. Nick, Bill has asked how well is the portfolio placed? Weather, trade wars and their aftermath, and what buffering does it have? Yeah, it's a good question. Look, it is really well protected. It is a portfolio that is almost primarily based in Australian assets with very little on the under. On the private equity side, there is only a very small number of the underlying businesses that have any offshore exposure or export goods into offshore markets, so extremely well protected from that front. I think importantly it's the diversification within the portfolio across each of the asset classes, and this is why we have a diversified portfolio. We don't just take a view on, we want to own this sector within private equity and that's it. That's when these sorts of broader geopolitical tensions can play havoc on a portfolio. Having that broad diversification is important, but the fact that we've got largely Australian assets with very, very limited exposure in particular into the U.S. market means we're fairly well protected from the current tensions we're seeing in markets. Thanks, Nick. You did touch on earlier about valuations, but Stan has asked specifically, is the share price discount influenced by retail investors who are not fully confident in the value ascribed to the unlisted assets? It's a really good question. I think there probably is, I think there is some of that and we've seen that across not just WMA but the other LICs in the market that invest in alternative assets. They are trading at largely a discount with the exception of some of the private debt exposures in the market, which I think plays to that asset class and also the desire for investors to access high levels of income. I do think there's a bit of that and I think there's probably just an understanding of the assets and it's taking time. Obviously there's a piece of education here to educate the investor base. Importantly, we've had 15 exits on this portfolio since we took it on in 2020 from Blue Sky. Of those 15 exits, they've averaged out at a 34% premium to NTA. That obviously gives us a lot of comfort that the valuations are appropriate, that we have seen markups on exits of assets. I think that is important. I do think the market, this is still a relatively new asset class to lots of retail investors. It's not for larger institutional investors who have been investing in this asset class for two to three decades. It's a very different world in the institutional space. I think for a retail investor, it's still early days for the asset class. I don't know Marty, if you wanted to add. I know, look, I don't, I guess you don't know if there is or there isn't, but I think if there is, there shouldn't be. Yes, I think, you know, as Nick said, we've got a, or to even take a step further back, when we took the portfolio on, the board were very pragmatic and on the front foot about our, in relation to writing down assets and in some cases writing off assets and writing them down to zero. We have been very conservative in our valuation process, as Nick's already touched on. The investment partners that we have are institutional-quality. Most popular parts have large institutional investors who are regulated by APRA. That additional level of oversight and governance, as well as our own internal valuation policy that we go through on a semi-annual basis. With our track record of exit investments at or at a premium to carrying value, investors shouldn't be concerned about the validity of the NTA. Thank you. Anthony has said that you don't have to be an institutional investor to access Palisade's PFIT, which invests into PDIF. He says that a second manager that we can't access feeder structures would be handy for investors. Nick or Marty, do you have any comments on this? Yeah, look, I think that's a fair point. The other strategy that they have, the Palisade Impact one, I don't believe can be accessed by wholesale or retail investors. Importantly, the PDIF, the fee that we pay to Palisade is well below that being accessed by wholesale investors in the market. I think it's a fair point. We don't want, you know, the last thing we want is this portfolio to have 10- 15 investment managers that have product that are available to you directly as shareholders. That is our competitive advantage of going out and backing institutional-quality groups. Obviously, over time, some of these investment managers will look to launch more product that is available to a broader investor base, including retail and wholesale investors. In these asset classes, we still see a number of managers that only offer product to institutional investors, which we are to them. I think it's a fair point and something we're absolutely conscious of when we're building the portfolio. Thank you. Melville has asked about the new Fortlake Asset Management team. Have you come across them and their team? Yes. To give you a sense, it's a good question. We're aware of the group. I and the team spent about, probably, I've been here five months, I reckon three and a half, the last three and a half months doing due diligence on this strategy. We looked at all the other strategies within investment grade credit in the Australian market to weigh them up, decided that this group we thought were best in class to do our formal due diligence on. To give you a sense of it, it's probably upwards of 200 hours of due diligence. What does that look like? A lot of time with their team, a lot of time sitting in their office, on screen, understanding how they trade in investment grade credit, how they make money, and the role of this treasury tool and how it would work for WMA. Backtesting the tool in our portfolio, undertaking quite a bit of quantitative modeling around that. A huge amount of due diligence and also referencing them with a number of groups that we know in the market. Market is a really important part of that, and obviously over the last 20 years I've got relationships in the market with different participants so we could go about that process and over time build our conviction in them and their ability to manage this capital on our behalf as a treasury tool for WMA. Nick, Danny has written in and said that the discount to NTA is being justified by the inability to exit when the manager wants. Firstly, can you clarify this comment? Secondly, do you give consideration to an exit strategy when it comes to potential investments, and if so, how do you apply value to this? Yeah, it's a good question. I think the question relates to exit of the underlying assets from the private equity managers, and clearly we've seen an environment, especially last year, where exits were pretty muted and we saw this sort of existence of what's called continuation funds. Private equity managers sort of creating continuation funds to hold on to assets for longer. In some places they make complete sense. Healthcare Australia, HCA as an example with Crescent, is a continuation vehicle and that made sense because it wasn't the right time to exit that business and it was still performing really, really well and has continued to perform really, really well within the continuation vehicle that we are invested in. That's not always the case, and clearly looking at the incentives of the underlying managers and ensuring it's not just a grab for base management fees of holding onto assets is important. What I would say is we have seen exits pick up. I talked about the Linen Services example before, which was an exit from Adamantem. We spoke to one of our investment partners yesterday and they're looking to exit one of their assets over the next six months. They've appointed an advisor, which is an interesting one, and that would yield a sort of 2.5 x equity multiple on exit in the sort of sub three year period. Also, one of our other investment partners last week I spoke to and they've been, someone's come to them, a trade block via one of our other portfolio assets. I think we're starting to see, I think it was probably a fair comment through last year, but we're starting to see more transaction activity in the market. We've obviously seen the IPO market pick up. Everyone would be aware of the IPO of Virgin from Bain. Bain held that in one of their private capital funds. Seeing some of that come back is important. The IPO market, to be clear, is not the only exit route for private equity. It is one exit route, but it is an important one. Seeing that market come back I think is a real positive for WMA, but also our listed products that we've got as well. Looking at trade buyers, other institutions, other large, you know, if we're coming in as a small to mid-market growth private equity play, selling to one of the larger buyout funds. We've seen that happen quite a bit and bolt-on acquisitions as well. There are lots of different exit routes, and one key thing that forms part of our due diligence on these opportunities with our managers is looking at what the exit routes are and ensuring it's not just one exit route that is we're going to IPO this business in four years and that's all, that's the thing we're banking on. We don't do those. It has to have different levers in place for exit because who knows what the IPO market's going to look like in four years. That's a really important part of our process. I think just to follow on there, Nick. I think when we took the portfolio on, as Nick said, obviously there was concentration by vintage year. We saw a lot of exits in the portfolio through FY 2021. We have been very mindful with Dania on the team and now Nick, we've been very mindful in diversifying the maturity profile and the vintage year diversification of the portfolio. Our expectations on a go forward basis is we get three to five exits per year. We don't expect the turnover of the underlying investment portfolio to be huge. It's three to five exits a year complemented with the income from those core defensive strategies which will generate our return. It's that more consistent cadence is what we're looking for on a go forward basis and not large lumpy turnover, which is what we had in 2020. It's an important point. Thank you. Nick, Joseph has asked, what is your process when your team decides to invest in real estate? The process, obviously we look at, I guess it's a mix of both top down and bottom up, and what I mean by that is top down sort of sectors. Let's look at the real estate sectors. The core sectors are sort of office, retail, and industrial, and then there's what's often referred to as the more alternative sectors, so healthcare, life sciences, student housing, those sorts of sectors. Then looking at the thematics and the drivers in each of those sectors. There's that sort of top down work that occurs, and then there's the bottom up work to look at the investment partners that we want to partner with and where their skill set is. An example is Barwon, for example, who's our investment partner in healthcare real estate. Tom, who runs that, is in my opinion the best healthcare real estate investor in the country. He speaks as if he's a doctor, right, like he understands the healthcare sector exceptionally well, comes from a family of doctors, and just understands that space really well. I think that's the most important thing, ensuring that the partner we partner with has the skill set in the sector they're playing in and ensuring the two things line up right. We might find an investment partner that is exceptionally skilled at, say, investing into retail and shopping centers, but we might not think that the opportunity set is right. It's getting the opportunity set, the top down piece, to be ripe enough along with a skilled investment partner that we know, that we like, that has a solid track record and is well aligned, that can deliver for us and add value. It's a combination of both that top down and the bottom up that's going to deliver value. Thanks, Nick. Mehdi has asked, Marty, do you see any capacity to increase the dividend over the coming years? Yeah, thank you for the question. Look, again, it is a board decision. I can't speak on behalf of the board. What I would say is we have increased the dividend year on year and we do have that three years profit reserve. The profit reserve gives the board comfort around the sustainability of the dividend and a lever to increase the dividend if they wanted to. I think looking at where the yield is at, we're yielding, grossed up for franking, close to 8% based on the current share price. It is quite a healthy yield already, kind of that 8% gross up for franking. There is room for growth either as the NTA grows or as the share price tracks closer to NTA. There is room for dividend growth, which obviously based on your cost price, there's further upside for investors who do invest at a discount. Again, board decision, but we've got a much stronger platform than we did four and a half, five years ago when we took over the company. Great. Nick Murray has asked, given your positive outlook on water rights, would WMA be decreasing its allocation to the portfolio? Yeah, so look, it's a fair point. It's more around just getting it to a weight that we're comfortable with. Clearly there's no guarantee around what we're seeing in water. We do think, as I said, that the outlook for water is a lot more positive than it's been. We don't want the sole driver of this portfolio, frankly, to be rainfall, so it's just important that it's at an appropriate weight. It'll be around that 10% - 15%, and we're comfortable there. Obviously, if it does return really well, you'll see that weight increase over time. What we'll probably do is take some profits off the table as that happens to bring it back to a weight that we're comfortable with over the long term. Yeah, I think for Murray's, just for a bit of context there, the weighting to water rights was 40% when we took over the portfolio. Obviously, when we're in a very dry market, that was yielding exceptionally well when it was, call it, $700, $750 a megalitre. We were getting great yield from that. As we've had a plentiful rainfall period, that really dried up and the risk in the portfolio was just too large, which is, as Nick said, the reason for diversifying the portfolio. Thank you. Nick, David has asked what are the possible negative impacts of the decline of the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar on your investment partners and their underlying assets, and what is your plan to deal with that? Yeah, I guess linked to that question before around the trade wars and geopolitical risks, there is very little exposure that we've got to the U.S. market through this portfolio. There is a very small number of underlying portfolio companies held by our private equity managers that export goods to the U.S. that will face impact from the tariff. The impact on this portfolio is very, very low. There is legacy venture capital investment that is priced in U.S. dollars that's actually done well because the Aussie, we then obviously revert that back to Aussie dollars and the Aussie dollar is stronger. That's a net benefit. The overall impact of the broader U.S. economy on this portfolio is pretty much negligible. Thank you. Bruce has asked, are your investments constrained by avoiding overlap with other WAM funds? I wouldn't say they're constrained. I mean, in many ways the other WAM products are largely listed equity products. Obviously, WMX is a combination of equities and investment grade credit. There are a lot of asset classes outside of equities and investment grade credit, a number of which WMA invests into. There are lots of other alternative assets that we don't invest in within WMA. Think especially in the more liquid alternative space. Hedge funds as an example, commodities such as gold, we don't hold within the portfolio. We could, but I think the view being that this was set up and designed as more a private markets portfolio. I think that's what the investors want to see from us. Obviously, the hedge fund space can be pretty challenging, quite high fees and performance can be good for some of the high quality managers. On balance, it can be challenging. We think that this portfolio across the asset classes we've got is exceptionally well diversified. There are possibilities to do more, but we're pretty comfortable with where it is and there's nothing, we're not constrained by the other products that we run. Thanks, Nick. Marty, Angus has asked, how does WMA accrue franking credits? Yeah, and look, it's a good question because it is slightly different for WMA versus our broader LIC product range. Obviously, with the other LICs, we've got listed products, we will receive fully franked dividends along the way to varying degrees. Within the WMA portfolio, we don't receive fully franked dividends off, obviously. Our ability to generate franking is solely based on our ability to pay tax. We need to generate profits, on those profits, as an Australian corporation, we pay tax and that generates franking credits that we can then distribute through to our investor base. The profit reserve at the moment, I think we're sitting, obviously we said three years with profit reserve. Yeah, half that. It's about half that in franking credit. We do have good foresight in relation to not only the ability to maintain the dividend, but also to maintain the franking component for that dividend. Hopefully, as investment portfolio performance ticks up, as Nick says, that'll generate increased tax liability which generates franking that we can pass through to our investor base. Thanks, Marty. The next question comes from Diane. I suppose it's for both of you. In your conversations with shareholders, what is the general sentiment like towards the upside? Yeah, maybe I'll take this one first. Marty can add. I've done some calls recently with a number of shareholders and I must say that the sentiment's been quite positive. I think this speaks to what Marty talked about, the evolution in the shareholder register for WMA, and it's taken time for that to happen and for investors to understand what we invest in within the portfolio, importantly the role of WMA within their broader investment portfolio. The sentiment from most investors that I've spoken to is, we like the portfolio, this adds to my overall investment portfolio that I've got. Often the question back to me is, what's the plan, what's happening with this vote, like this very question that we've been asked. I must say the sentiment has been very positive. That gives me confidence, as I said, that we will get through this vote at the end of the year. As Marty alluded to, the vote probably holds back some of the new buying, especially from the larger advisory groups. I don't know, Marty, if you've got thoughts on the conversations you've had. No, I think if you look at the financial advisor market and broker market, it's broadly 40% of the register. There's one financial advisor who's a large portion, kind of 15%, 16% of the portfolio for them. Obviously, we're very engaged with them and we spoke to them about the vote at length for them. Their indication thus far has been that they're very supportive of the vehicle in a continuing form. We believe that if the vote was happening tomorrow, they would vote against the wind up and for the continuation of the company. We would like all investors to vote, and as Nick said, it has been overwhelmingly positive. If anyone's got any questions, we're happy to talk through the mechanics and how it works. For us, it's been very, very positive. Yeah. Great. Anthony has asked regarding the NTA and current on market price given liquidation would, as stated, take some five years to complete. Is the stated NTA more like a future value estimate? No, it's the value today. It's obviously to exit these assets, there's a sales campaign that would need to take place. It is the value today of the underlying assets. The other challenge with that timeframe is with the private equity commitments we've made. As we talked about, we've got a cash balance of sort of 20%, close to 23%. 20% of that cash has been committed to private equity strategies. Now, what do we mean by that? We mean we've made formal, legally binding commitments to private equity managers that will come to us and ask for that capital over time. We have to make good on that. We cannot renege on that. That is probably the biggest challenge for the wind up, that if we're forced to that, we'd have to continue to make good on those commitments over time. They will then use the funds to buy out assets, add value to those assets, and then exit those assets. That's probably the biggest challenge. Clearly, the liquidity profile in the vehicle is different across each of the underlying sectors. Water, as an example, is liquid. Is liquid. Another pun for Marty. There you go. Is the most liquid one, and then it sort of gets less liquid from there. It isn't a future day. It is the value today. It's more the time it would take to then exit the underlying assets, and in particular the committed capital cash into private equity that is being committed to vehicles closer to eight to 10 years. On balance, we think five years is probably the time frame for exit. Thank you. Murray has asked, are there other or new alternative sectors that you're looking at investing in? Is gold an asset that you look at? We're not currently looking at gold. It's an interesting one. We do have asset classes like infrastructure that provide what we need in terms of inflation protection that you tend to get from an asset like gold and scarcity of value. The monopolistic nature of, say, infrastructure, I think, is probably a better asset class. It tends to be as well. With gold, obviously, it's had an exceptionally good run of late, but it's quite binary. I think it's important to have a more diversified portfolio. We could look at it. There's nothing stopping us. It's not something we're currently looking at. Other asset classes, it's sort of interesting if you look at the portfolio today, sectors like life sciences in real estate. Not a sector that we probably would have looked at three or four years ago because it didn't really exist. There are sectors that are evolving and continue to evolve within private markets. When we talk about the opportunity set, it's broad and it continues to broaden as some of these sectors continue to deepen in the market. The same with healthcare real estate as well. When I first backed that back in 2016, that was a very small sector. Most participants in the market said, it's too small, it won't become institutional enough. Now we've got sort of three or four large institutional managers in the market with healthcare real estate portfolios. We've continued to see that grow. The opportunity set continues to expand. If it fits the mandate, and we think that there are strong tailwinds behind a sector and, importantly, we find the right investment partner, absolutely, we'll look at new sectors over time. Maybe just on the inverse to that question, any sectors that you wouldn't look at? Obviously, you've mentioned hedge funds as being one that probably doesn't look challenging, a bit too much equity market beta. Potentially correct. Venture capital. Venture capital, yeah. It's a good point, Marty. Venture we do have in the portfolio; that's a legacy investment that we took on from Blue Sky, and we're very unlikely to do venture capital in the future. Venture is a difficult space. Much like gold, you tend to have quite binary outcomes. I think if you're going to do venture capital, it needs to be a much larger proportion of the portfolio. You want to have a more global exposure and tap into the deep venture market in the U.S. in particular. The other, probably the big challenge for venture, is within the context of the listed investment company structure. The structure is that the time frame of when you commit capital to actually getting an exit back from the underlying managers is exceptionally long. It can be upwards of 10 years. That's difficult when we are promising to pay a strong income yield to investors. That time frame is not well aligned, in my opinion, to the LIC structure. Agriculture is probably the other space that has been a bit more challenging. I think if you're going to do agri, you want a more globally diversified portfolio to diversify against weather patterns. Agri is probably the other one we've got in the portfolio, once again, a legacy exposure. That will be coming back over the next 12 months. Thank you. You've already answered the second half of Jill's question, but the first half was about wind farms, if you could touch on that. Do you invest in wind farms? We do invest in wind farms. We have quite a bit of renewable exposure, both wind and solar, through Palisade. We could come back to you on the specifics of the wind exposure, but the renewable exposure in the portfolio would be close to 67%. About half of that Palisade exposure is in renewable energy. Thank you. The last question comes from Murray. What is your current cash weighting? I think you touched on it earlier being 10%- 15%. When will it be fully deployed? The current cash in the portfolio is 23%. 20% of that has been committed to strategies that will get deployed over time. The challenge we've got is that capital will be deployed over the next sort of three to four years, most of it hopefully in the next two years. The challenge is, and I raised this before, that on the other side we will have exits, we'll have cash coming back. This is why we needed to put in place this treasury tool with Fortlake to manage the cash, because we will always have a cash balance. That cash balance will range over time between 10%- 15% is our expectation, looking at our cash flow model. It is something we're doing. Always going to have cash on hand, just given the nature of the strategy. The cash that has been committed today, most of that will be called over the next two to three years. Thanks, Nick and Marty, and thank you everyone for asking all your questions. I'll hand back to Nick to close. Wonderful. Thank you all for joining us today and thank you for all the great questions. We weren't sure how long this would run for, but I think we got some really good questions and hopefully made use of everyone's time. I really appreciate your support and I guess personally thank you for welcoming me on board sort of five months into the role and really enjoying it and being a steward of your capital. Thank you again for joining us. Thanks. Thank you.