For dialing in today. My name is Oscar Oberg, and to my right is Tobias Yao. Together we're the portfolio managers of the four small-cap funds that we manage here at Wilson Asset Management, being WAM Capital, WAM Research, WAM Microcap, and WAM Active. In terms of this afternoon's call, it'll be very similar to previous calls. I'll give you a quick overview of our results, pass it over to Tobias, who'll talk about reporting season, and then we'll both talk about four key stocks that we quite like over the next 12- 18 months. If you've got the presentation in front of you, and you can turn to slide three, this is a snapshot of WAM Capital and WAM Microcap's results for the first six months of this financial year. We've come a long way over the last 12 months, I think it's fair to say. I think when we were here 12 months ago, and I certainly can remember this because in January there was a board meeting, and this is January of 2024, and I think we all felt that potentially we have to cut the dividend. I think it was from the end of that month in January, the market took off, and pleasingly, our performance actually followed with it. If we look over the last 12 months, the market is up 15%. WAM Capital, the fund, is up 33%, so we've outperformed by 18% over that period. It's probably one of our best periods of performance ever. Most importantly, we've gone from a profit reserve that was close to empty in January of last year to now having about AUD 0.25 in the profit reserve, which is about, call it, the next three and a quarter dividends. For context, as we said back in, we had a conference call in December, it's probably the best visibility we've had on the dividend really since 2021 and 2018. For context, WAM Capital in both those periods was trading at a 20% premium to its net tangible assets. Today we're trading at a slight premium to its net tangible assets. Just quickly on WAM Microcap, look, assimilated, had a great half, up close to 9% on the small orders index. Look, it's been a tough period for Microcaps through January and February, so we have lost a bit of that performance, but we're still outperforming by about 5%-6% or so. Given the strong performance, again, over the last 12 months and the franking that we have built up over time in that fund, the board decided to slightly increase the dividend from AUD 0.0525- AUD 0.053. Now, just quickly on the next slide, we've got WAM Research and WAM Active. WAM Research has probably had its best period of performance, I'd say almost ever, over the last 12 months. In this half, we're outperforming by 16%. We've had some great stock picks through that period. Sigma Pharmaceuticals, is an example. We're lucky enough we had the SG Fleet takeover. We've had a lot of good stocks through that period, which has been fantastic. Our team's done a great job there. On WAM Active as well, which is pleasing. Again, over the last year, the dividend coverage there has come a long way, and we're also outperforming there. If we turn to the next slide, it gives you a snapshot of January, how we went. If you can remember, markets did quite well through that period. We outperformed in three of the four funds. WAM Micro had a tougher month. Pleasingly, in February, all four funds have outperformed the market, which has been great because it's been a very tough February, very highly volatile, as Tobias will talk about. I think the most pleasing thing for us versus last time we spoke to you is we do take a lot of pride in where the share prices are across the listed investment companies that we manage. We know that shareholders have been doing tough in terms of where the share price is and how that's performed. Pleasingly, when we last spoke to you, I think it was in December, WAM at the time was at a 7% discount to its net tangible assets. Actually, all four funds were trading at discounts at that period of time. Pleased to say, as it stands today, luck can change pretty quickly, as we know in these markets, but all four funds are now at a premium. There has been a concerted effort internally to really drum home the message and the visibility that we have with dividends. That will certainly continue going forward. I'll leave it at that and pass it over to Tobias, who'll give you a snapshot of reporting season. Thanks, Oscar. Look, it's probably been one of the most volatile reporting seasons we've had in a long time. The volatility comes from the intraday movements and the reaction to the share price reaction to some of the reports that's come out, the results. I think it's partly because post the U.S. election, the stock markets had a really good run, particularly some of the momentum or high beta stocks. Going into the reporting season, many of these companies have had a very strong run to January and February, if they didn't deliver a perfect result with strong outlooks, the share prices come off. In the small to mid-cap space, over 60% of the companies actually fell in the month of February. 40% of the companies actually fell by more than 5%. It was a very challenging reporting season for the overall market. In terms of our portfolios, I think it really emphasizes the importance of having a very balanced portfolio. While some of the high beta companies that we have, we saw a pullback. However, we've had a lot of the unloved companies that saw a pretty sharp increase in the share price when the results came out and wasn't as bad as expected. Companies like EML, a2 Milk, Event Hospitality, and the likes of that, or AP Eagers, for example. If you turn to slide six, hopefully that gives you a bit of a color on what's happened over that two-month period. A lot of the sectors that's exposed to the Australian economy, and we've spoken about this the last couple of times, and that's how we've been positioning the portfolio for. Those companies outperformed. Obviously, some of the high beta names have come back on the back of the recent sort of tariff uncertainty in the U.S. and the general risk-off environment. For us, with the interest rate cut, it really supported the thesis for many of these consumer or discretionary-type companies, which we've benefited. In terms of our focus now, with the pullback in the market, we are revisiting all the companies that's really come off, some of the high-quality businesses we're slowly going back into or adding to the positions. We believe that it's a great time to be investing in some of these businesses and finding new ideas every day. Really looking forward to the next six months and obviously continuing to do the work on the ground to find these undervalued growth companies. On slide seven, perhaps I could start by talking about two stocks that we like. The first one is a company called a2 Milk. Now, they are a milk company, a number one, but also an infant formula business with the majority of its revenue and earnings coming out of China. They had a hiccup in August last year when they had an issue with the supply chain. The management team has delivered a very strong result in February after overcoming the supply chain issues. What we realized is that they're winning market share in China at a very fast rate. We are very positive on this business because, as you know, with infant formula, there are three stages for the infant: stage one, stage two, and stage three. Particularly for their customers, if a baby is on the stage one formula, they will naturally transition to stage two and stage three, which are a larger part of the revenue. Because of the ability for them to attract new mums and putting many of these infants on the stage one formula, over the next 12- 18 months, we see the natural progression of many of these infants progressing through the stage two and three, which supports the revenue. The other thing that's really changed for this company, it used to be really a one-product company or it was infant formula and obviously milk. They're now using the IP to expand into multiple geographies and also multiple products. They launched the seniors product, they launched the super high-end product, and they will be launching many other products that will come to the market. From our perspective, with over AUD 1 billion of net cash for this business, it is very well positioned over the next 12-18 months and is a key holding in our funds. Another company, which we have owned, a company called Beacon Lighting Group, now it is more than 50% owned by the founders, the Robinson family, which has done an amazing job growing this business. Beacon Lighting, what we think is unique for this business is over the last few years, they have grown the trade business or the commercial business at about 20% per annum. Now, that is over 40% of the revenue for the overall business now. The trade or the commercial part of the total addressable market is two times that of retail. Given the success they have had, we think that has been missed by the market. We quite like the growth profile of Beacon Lighting. Obviously, they have that commercial, so they have the consumer part of the business, but it is really the commercial part that over time we believe can continue to drive the growth for the overall company. That is another company that we like. Yeah, thanks, Tobias. Next company I'll talk about is Event Hospitality & Entertainment. EVT is the ticker. These guys run Event Cinemas, which is, I think, the second largest cinema operator in Australia, Thredbo, and also Rydges Hotels and QT Hotels in Australia. Now, this business has a lot of property. It's always had a lot of property. It's always been a frustrating stock for the investment community over a period of time because you never ever saw the value of that property properly reflected in the share price. Sometimes you get little snippets in your career and you run with it. Basically, all we did was read their AGM, which occurred in November. There was just one sentence that said, "The company is reassessing its property holdings." That was code for us in terms of making asset sales. They have a significant asset in 501 George Street. I think it is on the books for about AUD 150 million-AUD 200 million. They came out at their result and said they are actually looking to sell that asset by the end of the financial year. What is more is their cinema business, which has been struggling since COVID. That is largely because there have been a number of strikes in Hollywood, so it has impacted the content lineup. You had a very strong Christmas. The management team has always said that the way they have changed that business is that they can achieve the same level of earnings with 30% less attendance today compared to before COVID. They had a very strong Christmas, and they actually came out and showed the market that. For context, the analysts following the stock had assumed 30% lower earnings in that cinema business in the next couple of years. Those earnings have subsequently been upgraded, coupled with the view that the company will sell some assets. The share price has done incredibly well. I think it is up about 30% or 40% since we started buying the shares back in November. The last company is an old favorite of ours. We have probably talked about it to death. We actually, in the end, did incredibly well out of the stock, is Myer. We are back in, and we are back in, and we have got probably the most bullish we have ever been on this stock. The reason is that Solomon Lew, who we would regard as the best retailer in the country, has personally got a very large holding in this business. He's assembled an A-class board led by Executive Chairman Olivia Wirth, who's ex-chairman or ex-head of Qantas Freight & Flyers, which is probably one of the best businesses in the country, coming to run Myer. She's got a strategy of using Myer one, which I think is the fifth or sixth largest loyalty scheme in Australia. Using her experience at Qantas Freight & Flyers to really drive membership into that Myer one, use the acquisition that Myer has done of Premier's apparel brands, increase the customer base, and return Myer to where it was, which was a company that used to grow sales 3% or 4% a year. Given it's got such a large cost base, we really should see significant operating leverage to the bottom line. Now, we would regard Solomon Lew as probably one of the smartest people we deal with in our careers, to be perfectly honest. He's done that acquisition or that merger at the worst possible time in retail. Since the business has come together, we've just had an interest rate cut. Certainly, we think there will be more interest rate cuts. If the Myer get it together, we think earnings can effectively more than triple in the next three to five years. We are very bullish on the company. I think we're sitting at just over 4% of the company and really want to back management over the longer term. I see a lot of upside there. Thank you, Camilla. Thanks, Oscar. Thanks, Tobias. We'll go to questions. We've got a lot coming through, and we did have a lot submitted before the webinar began. We will just start with some stock questions. From James, can you comment on your holding in Bravura and the outlook for this company over the next six months? Yeah, Bravura had a really good result. The share price went up quite a bit. It's sort of come off a little bit last week or so. That's with the market sort of sell-off. Very strong result. Look, one of the things that they've done really well is to be able to grow the top line. We think there are a couple of opportunities, potential contract awards that if they were successful, the revenue top line growth could continue at a pretty healthy rate. We're quite positive for Bravura. Thanks, Tobias. Aegis Automotive had a good result recently. What are your thoughts following that? Yeah, great result and beat earnings expectations by, I think, 15%-20%. Their management's very confident in the long-term margins of this business. Given their strong market share in Australia and industry-leading margins and returns that they generate in their business, we think they're looking potentially at taking this business offshore. It's got one of the best founder-led individuals, I guess you could call it, Nick Politis, leading that business with Keith Thornton, the CEO. No, we're very much along the stock. We really like it. Thanks, Oscar. This next one, I don't think we've had a call where it wasn't mentioned. Tobias, are you still positive on Tuas? Yes, still positive on Tuas. Continues to be our largest position. I would say what's changed as they've continued to deliver, without going back to the sort of history of the business, is what's probably surprised us as investors, it's been the ability for the management team to have opened up new opportunities or new areas of growth along the journey. When it first started, as you know, it was just a mobile operator in Singapore. Over time, they've been able to add additional revenue streams, additional products to the well-oiled machine, which is the mobile business. They've continued to gain share in Singapore. Now their products effectively have started to expand outside of Singapore. The total addressable market's gotten a lot larger. am very excited to see how David Teoh and Richard, the founder and the CEO, can take the business over the next few years. Thanks, Tobias. You've both been involved recently in the Founders Fund launch just a few weeks ago. How is that, if it is, going to impact the portfolio at all? We believe the Founders Fund will definitely help the existing LICs. The ability to access management, ability to really pick their brains, we think will help our existing positions in the current LICs. It has given us an opportunity to obviously meet with a lot of these founders and CEOs as we've raised the money for that fund and being able to understand these individuals a lot better, their aspirations and their headspace and what made them successful. I think this is a quite important part of our investment process is to understand the people behind these businesses and backing the management team. That has really given us another level of insight for many of these individuals. It has really helped for us as well. Thank you to those listening as well, obviously, who participated in the fund. We're ecstatic with how it's gone. We started on Monday. In the end, we had over, what was it, close to 80 founders or CEOs, CFOs, or founders of companies participating in the raise, which we were blown away by. Thank you very much. Really appreciate it. Fantastic. Thanks, both. The next question is around AI and how have the recent advancements in AI influenced your investment strategy? Are there any new small-cap companies in this space that you believe are going to benefit? Yeah, I mean, the AI is very topical. Obviously, a lot has happened even since ChatGPT and obviously DeepSeek. I think it will be a month ago now. For us in Australia, in terms of the investable universe or the opportunities in Australia, it's really not backing a specific leader in AI. It's understanding how AI could filter through these different organizations and how these organizations are using AI to get ahead of their competitors. That has been a lot of the work that we're doing in terms of understanding exactly how these businesses are benefiting. Our view is when done correctly, AI does lead to a huge improvement in efficiency. For a company like Temple & Webster, using AI frees up a lot of their time to focus on other parts of the business, to focus on the revenue-generating parts of the business. We see the AI impacts and the various organizations and how they've adopted AI come through a lot of the conversations we've had. It gives us an opportunity to also judge just how digitally savvy some of the organizations are. Obviously, the ones that really are the early adopters that have the right mentality and investment and are happy to invest for the future are the ones that should outperform over the longer term. That has been good for us. In terms of sort of AI pure plays, there's a company, a very small company called AI- Media. They do captioning. They do captioning for a lot of the large media companies globally. AI, for the first time, I think 12 months ago, is now more accurate and obviously faster than human-annotated captioning. They are using the efficiency and the quality of AI to effectively replace captioning. What does this mean? The cost goes down by a significant margin, which makes the product a lot more accessible to more content, which should open up the total addressable market. It is a global business. The founder owns a very large part of the company. Obviously, it is something we are quite bullish on. AI- Media, for example, is an AI company that we have. Across all the companies we invest in, we talk about how they are adopting AI and how they are adopting AI within the processes and going through tangible evidence of that happening. Thanks, Tobias. This next question is from Olivia. She says, what are your thoughts on the Collins Foods result recently? Yeah, thanks, Olivia. Look, Collins Foods result was this was back in late November. And we own quite a decent holding in it. And Collins Foods, like the whole fast food industry really across Australia, and it's actually like a global issue, to be fair, is just through rising costs, McDonald's, KFC, a number of the chains have put prices up too much. You've got a cost of living crisis. Simply, the foot traffic's just not there from what it used to be. They had a tough half. For us, we've added to our position since that period in time. It's the cheapest the stock has looked at probably ever. They've got a very, very strong balance sheet. The Australian business is an excellent business. Yes, it missed expectations, but it's a very, very strong business. It generates great cash flow. We think the business is in a great position to make acquisitions. The market is starting to come back, which is great. Yeah, it's one we think looks good. Get an interest rate cut like we've had, maybe get a couple more. That would be excellent for it. Yeah, it's a decent position for us. Thanks, Oscar. I will stay with you and just note that we've got a couple of questions on dividends and franking. We will address it right now in the upfront. WAM Capital and WAM Research, they were recently partially franked. Can't you pay more tax to generate more franking? The answer is we can and we do. The level of that we can is, I'm going to say, it's still not enough to get it to, and I'm speaking for the board here. Just remember, I'm not on the board. We still need the market and our performance to be stronger for the remainder of the financial year and the cutoff is 30th of June so that there's greater visibility on that franking. We're getting closer. There's no question. We're not there yet. The last thing we want to do for both funds, and again, I'm speaking for the board, is put it up to 100% and then 6-12 months later, bring it back down to 60%. That would create a whole heap of uncertainty. I'm speaking for the board here, but the board wants to put it back up to 100% when there's greater certainty. Certainly, our performance has been couldn't have asked for it from our end. It couldn't have asked for it better in 12 months. It's great. We've gotten back some of that reserve, but it's still not enough, is what I'm saying. We're looking a lot better, but I can't promise when that will occur. You need markets and our performance to keep going higher. Thanks, Oscar. MayaZ has said you mentioned that it was a mixed reporting season, but you came out OK. Could you talk us through some of the companies that disappointed and why they disappointed? Yeah, we had plenty. It was funny. On Friday, I sort of got out of it battered and bruised. I looked at our performance. We outperformed. I was surprised. I can't believe we outperformed. We did. It was quite a decent number, actually. Where do we start? I said to Tobias, and it's a comment Tobias made to me a year and a half ago about another stock where he said to me going to the result, I'm so bullish on this stock. I think I'm probably wrong. I made a joke and said, I'm going to say that same quote. That stock was AMP. Turns out I was wrong. That was probably our worst stock over reporting season. It actually beat expectations. The result itself was fine. The stock had rallied too much. We got too excited on it. I got too excited on it. We probably misread the share register. I think a lot of people were still there for capital returns and dividends and so forth, where the business is transitioning now back to growth, which is great. That's fantastic. You need a transition of the shareholder register. It was not at that stage yet. Unfortunately, that was a bad one for us. We have been buying it lately. It is now actually trading below NTA. Another stock was Integral Diagnostics. Again, we are still buying the stock. We have become a big shareholder of IDX from Capitol Health, which they took over back in June of last year. We own 10% of Capitol Health. Integral Diagnostics, the other listed, a bigger listed company, acquired it. We folded our shares into Integral Diagnostics. We have a big shareholding now in Integral Diagnostics. Now, you often see with mergers and acquisitions, there are some teething issues and some timing issues. In this instance, we actually did not even see that. The actual Capitol Health business has been going well. Actually, management team was very confident in the synergies. It was as simple as the first half was not as good as the market thought. There was a second half wait. It was a terrible reporting season in terms of volatility. The stock fell 30-odd%. To give you an example of how volatile reporting season was, I went to the I think we had one of the first meetings of Integral Diagnostics after their conference call. Just before I left the conference call, the shares were trading at AUD 1.94. They had fallen 33%. I said to Chris, who does our dealing, I said, oh, can you buy a few here? This is nuts. This is crazy. I then had three meetings. I got back to my desk, and it was 10 minutes to 4:00, and the shares were AUD 2.50. In that two-and-a-half-hour period from the time we bought those shares at AUD 1.94, the shares had increased 30%. We actually sold them out at the end of the day for a little profit. We still got hurt on the stock because we owned a lot more. That gives you an example of how volatile it was. There is a lot going on in the macro at the moment. We suspect it will continue to be quite volatile. Thanks, Oscar. Liam is asking about M&A activity. He says, do you think we'll see more small-cap companies getting involved in mergers and acquisitions? We want to see it. It's the right time to be doing it, particularly with the rate cut. We're certainly encouraging our companies to do it. Look, we're not kidding ourselves. The last three weeks has been very volatile. What we do expect to happen, as we were lucky enough with SG Fleet just before Christmas, is we continue to see value across small caps. We think acquisitions from private equity coming into the listed markets will continue. Like, for instance, with SG Fleet, which is a company we've talked about here before, it was trading on a price-to-earnings multiple valuation of seven times. That is very, very cheap. That's like a third of what the market trades on. It got bought out by private equity, I think, at about 11 times earnings, which is SG Fleet really should be trading at 11 or 12 times earnings in a normal market. Look, we think M&A will continue. We just think it'll be private companies buying public companies. You need stability in markets. Probably another interest rate cut. Get through this tariff noise. We do think probably in the second half of this calendar year, we will see some IPOs, some M&A activity. Because certainly, when I got back from my holiday in Japan, not that it was a holiday. I do not think you had one either. Anyway, when we got back, all the investment bankers were speaking to us about the pipeline of what they got. It is at really, really high levels. Look, companies are just waiting for all the noise to settle. We've had two M&A during February. That's a good point. Yeah. Dropsuite, which is a big position of ours. I think we're 12,000 shares away from 5% of the company. Business we saw less than 12 months ago and got acquired. And PointsBet, that was another one that got acquired. The big one in a small-cap space is Domain. Obviously, made a lot of news there. Yeah, to Oscar's point, we do see it happening. Potentially, during periods of market volatility, some of the other asset owners will come in and look for some of these beaten-down companies. Great. Thank you both. We've mentioned volatility quite a few times on this call. We've had a few ask, how do you handle volatility when investing in small caps? Yeah, it's hard. It's like impossible, to be honest with you. Particularly, we don't focus, as I think a number of our shareholders know, we don't really focus on resources. I mean, that's what hurt us a lot in Russia, Ukraine, when that war happened and inflation started increasing. We could see it ourselves. We'd love to buy all these resources stocks, but it's not our expertise. That's really the only thing you can really do. To answer your question, yes, we get periods of volatility. It's very tough for us. I think on the upside, though, is what we saw in 2022. This always provides opportunities. Particularly in that microcap space, as I said at the start of the call, where microcap has been hit in the last two months, hit pretty hard. We're still outperforming by 4% or 5%, where we were outperforming by 9%. That's a big move in two months. Yeah, look, you see that really small-end dislocation between what's the true value of companies and the share price. That's when we like to strike. You just got to look through the noise, focus on the process. That's the number one thing, the investment process. Is there a catalyst? Does it fit the investment process? Is the balance sheet strong? Are they the best company in their sector? Where do we see the long-term upside? Our greatest defense mechanism in the fund is cash. The problem with cash is if you go to cash and you get it wrong and you have to get back into the market, it is very, very difficult. You can lose a lot of performance. Over the last, since Tobias and I have been looking after things, it really was only COVID where we upped the cash. We went to about 40%. If there were not a number of those capital raisings in that March-April period, which allowed us to quickly get back into the market, we would have lagged some way because the market went up a lot in that period. Yeah, look, for us, to go high in cash, we would have to be very, very negative about how we are seeing things. The next question we've got here is from Sophie. Interested in the Australian Small-Cap Landscape and how it compares to the global market. Are there unique opportunities or challenges here? Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, it's sort of similar. Like for us, I think it's a really good question. It's a great question. I think for us, we know the Australian Market really well. We feel like we have the advantage, perhaps in many instances, to be able to visit the thesis of some of these companies and obviously meet the management of these companies by being here. There is an advantage from an information perspective and the overall understanding of the market. I think one thing that's pretty unique to Australia is if there are high-quality tech companies in Australia, there is a scarcity factor where in the U.S., there are so many tech companies and often it gets lost or gets compared to the thousands of other tech technology companies there. Over here, if it's a high-quality growth business, it often, particularly if it's liquid, and we've been seeing that quite a bit over the last few years, it's sort of larger liquid growth tech companies, they get a higher premium to the valuation. The payoff through the journey of a company going from something that's unloved to going into the index and therefore coming out of the index and being in either the small ords or the all ords or the ASX 100, there is this opportunity to see very strong outsized returns over that period. We've seen it across a few companies. Obviously, TUA has been one. Regis Healthcare, Generation Development, the ones that really sort of languished for a few years and then obviously delivered operationally. The market discovered these businesses and it went on a run. That's quite interesting for us, perhaps quite unique for the Australian market. These are the type of opportunities we're looking for. Great. Thank you. Next one is from Matt. Are there any small-cap companies in the renewable sector that you're keeping an eye on? Yeah, I mean, there's a couple. I mean, one of the ones we have in the microcap fund is called Genus Plus. So it's the exposure renewable sector. They effectively build the poles for the transmission lines. Rewiring Australia and having to effectively 3x the amount of transmission within Australia, given the renewable energy coming online, is a massive tailwind for this business, which effectively helps rebuild these power lines across long distances. Genus Plus would be one. LGI would be another one that's exposed to renewable space. They do biomass, biogas, and ACCUs as well. They have monopolies in landfills, effectively turning the landfill biogas into energy and electricity and winning projects that gives them the opportunity to expand the network and expand the number of sites. Those are a couple of stocks we have in the fund. Great. Thank you. Next question, Rick Taylor. He says, can you sell the position in Light & Wonder? He understands all the arguments about strong fundamentals, good management, strong shareholder returns, but believes it's not an ethical investment. Thank you, Rick. I think you'd probably argue we'd probably say the same thing. Light & Wonder is effectively a pokie machine operator. For us, if we're going to invest in a company like that, which would be low on the ethical guidelines, let's call it, or ESG, we'd have to be very certain about the outlook for the company. I would say that we only recently just bought into the company. Our reasoning is the management team and the board is looking to actually delist or get out of the U.S. and 100% list in Australia. Why that's important is its largest peer or competitor is Aristocrat that trades on a much higher valuation than Light & Wonder. We think that'll be very positive for Light & Wonder. They've also had some issues around one of their high-quality games called Dragon Train. We think that's now washing through the numbers. We think that the business is primed to upgrade earnings. The answer to your question is, look, when we started, when in terms of the way we invest started back 27 years ago, we're not going to change our process of investing, given that's what shareholders have always been used to over that period of time. I can assure you, Tobias and I and the team, if we get a business such as this, we've got to be doubly sure in our work. We know that given it is low on the ethical standards, let's call it, it rules out quite a lot of the other investors. The work we do on stocks like this is very intense. We want to get it right. Thank you. Next one is from Dennis Castino. He says, why is WAM Microcap trading at a large discount to NTA? And what can be done to reduce the discount? Oscar, if you just want to mention, we're at a premium at the moment. Yeah, sure. I would say, look, we were at a point last year, October, November, after we paid the dividend, we were trading at 7% or 8% discount. I think that was the highest discount. I can't remember when WAM's traded at this discount. It might have been 2011 or 2012, maybe. Clearly, we got on the front foot as a business and have been calling. The difficulty we've had through this last three-year period has been the lack of profit reserve. We haven't been able to do that. Now we've got the profit reserve, and we can, because we've got more confidence in the visibility of the dividend. How do we get it back to a premium? As Camilla said, we are at a slight premium at the moment. We were at a 20%-25% premium. Some may argue, unfortunately, that was probably unsustainable. Certainly, Jeff was selling stock in that period of time. That is where it was. We'd love to get, look, Tobias and I think about the share price every second of every day. We'd love to get it back to where it was. We need markets to keep going up. We need small caps to get back in favor. Look, yes, we've had a great year over the last 12 months. Small caps still are not in favor with investors. We need to keep building upon that profit reserve and the dividends. All I can say is we're working as hard as we can to get the share price back to where it was. Let's call it AUD 1.82. We need some things to go our way, is what I'd say. Some interest rate cuts would also help. Thanks, Oscar. Peter Dixon on WAM Microcap, he said the profit reserve is approximately AUD 0.40 per share. Is this value in addition to NTA? He has also asked, is it already valued as part of the NTA? Is it in the NTA or not? Yeah, so it is in the NTA, the net tangible assets. Think of it as retained earnings of a business. When we pay out that retained earnings, which is a profit reserve, which you're correct in saying, when we pay out that retained earnings as a dividend, the value of the net tangible assets will fall. The problem we've had over the last three years, which we've talked many times on this call, is while we've done well, the portfolio has increased, and we've outperformed, the amount of dividends has actually been higher than the performance that we need to more than offset that. Because of that, we've eaten into our capital, or the capital of the net tangible assets. Pleasingly, the last 12 months, our performance has been much greater than what the dividends have been. The net tangible assets has actually grown. As we said earlier in the call, for us to keep maintaining dividends and to also get back to 100% franking, we need the markets to keep going up, and we need our performance to keep being strong. Great. Thanks, Oscar. The next one is from Tim Farley. Is WAM starting to increase its defense stock exposure? Look, just because there's a lot of stuff going on in the world, we're not just willy-nilly buying defense companies. It's got to fit our investment process. I think probably what's more important is there is a lot of defense expenditure coming into it. Australia is spending a lot of money, particularly in Western Australia, at the naval bases and so forth. We do own Austal books in WAM Capital, which is a stock we've owned for a number of years, which has record high levels of order book. Probably most importantly, a change in their contracting model. So it's a little bit less risky than what it used to be. In the microcap portfolio, we have a company called DuraTech, which also does a lot of maintenance and contracting for the defense sector. I wouldn't necessarily assume that's where the tone of the question came from, is, oh, there's a lot going on at the moment. Is that why you own? Is that why you've upped the defense exposure in the portfolio? The answer is no. It's probably more just what we see in terms of overall defense expenditure in the country. And those companies poised to benefit from that. Great. Thanks, Oscar. The next one is from David. What effects on WAM Microcap are being anticipated, given the breakdown of governance and economic order in the U.S., if you want to call it that? Yeah, look, for us, there's not much we can do. It's very, very volatile at the moment. We have a lot of companies that are really in their own little subsectors, whether it be a radiology company in Australia or an automotive parts distributor in Australia. It's very nuanced and it's very niche. There's not really many companies that we own. There was only one on the day when the tariffs began. We're running around in the weekend, speaking to each other on WhatsApp threads, oh, panicking, what do we do? What do we do? You sit down, take a deep breath, look at the portfolio. Out of AUD 2.5 billion that we run, we had one stock that was impacted, which was Fisher & Paykel Healthcare. The reality is, when you get uncertainty, it's very tough for small-cap companies. Unfortunately, it's been like this really since COVID. Look, what's happening to us right now is nothing new. We knew this would happen with Trump coming into power. It was always going to happen. We just have to ride it through, stick to the process, stick to fundamentals and stocks. Once this normalizes, as we've been saying many times on these calls, we think small-cap companies will outperform the broader market. The underperformance has been around 26%-27% since around September 2021. It's a big number. Once we get some easing conditions, hopefully some interest rate cuts, we think that gap will close. Thanks very much, Oscar. Stephen notes that in a previous webinar, Tasmea was highlighted as a top stock pick. Has your view on the company changed since their result was announced? No, not at all. I mean, there was a good result. They upgraded earnings. This happened a lot through reporting season. A lot of companies that had done well, and Tasmea is one of them, the share price has doubled since it listed back in June. There were very, very high expectations for it. It did not do anything wrong. It just saw selling after the result. We saw that with many, many companies. There were a lot of companies we had that upgraded earnings. That is our job, to effectively find that and to deliver on those catalysts that we see prior to earnings results. Big Achieves was an example of that. It upgraded earnings, I think, by 30%. We got to the end of the month, it was down 17%. It was a funny reporting season. Again, as the last question, these are abnormal times. When it comes down to it, when things settle, fundamentals will always come through. You can't just think in the next day or the next week. It's where's this thing going to be in the next two, three, five years? That's how we invest. The worst thing you can do in these situations, and we found that through 2022, is panic and go to cash. As I said earlier, it's very hard to get back into the market. In 2022, when the sell-off happened, yes, it was a hard, hard year for WAM Capital. We would have been on this call. We underperformed by 11%. Since that point in time, we've way more than offset it. A lot of the reasons why we did that was because we bought well through that downturn. Who knows what the markets will bring in the next few months? It's going to be volatile. Whether or not it's a 2022 situation, I don't know. If it is, that's an exciting time for us because that's when you find stocks that are very, very cheap. Thanks, Oscar. Just back on the U.S., Verona has asked, what is your investment focus with Trump as president? Look, Trump, again, very hard for us to make a call, given the style of stocks that we invest in. I will say, yes, there's a lot of noise going on at the moment. When it comes down to it, take a step back. Trump was very good for business in his first term in power. Markets did very well. He is very liberal, wants to get rid of bureaucracy. I think make it easier to do business in the country. That is a good thing. Yes, there's some volatility at the moment, which isn't good for us. We feel like as his presidency goes on in his first term, things will start to hopefully quieten down. We go back to it and go, take this uncertainty out of it. The actual U.S. economy is actually doing quite well at the moment. Once again, you return to fundamentals, we think you're going to find very interesting ideas. The last thing we want to do now is panic. It's tough. We don't know what the market's going to do every day we wake up. Got no idea, to be perfectly honest with you. We've just got to keep sticking to the process. That's what we'll keep doing. I think what's important is during periods of volatility or operating environment, volatility in the operating environment, what we have typically found is the fact that many of the higher quality companies actually outperform because they've been able to navigate the uncertainty a lot better, make decisions quicker. Our view is, if we can invest or hold on to these businesses, they should be able to outperform versus the competitors that they're in and therefore win market share. That's, I guess, a tangible sort of mark in the sand where that's how we sort of judge how these guys are going. It's quite important for us to not lose sight of the fundamental, I guess, intrinsic value of some of these businesses. I mean, I'll give you the best example. In April, May, June of 2022, this is when inflation was rampant. We made a decision in the portfolio to invest in companies such as Nick Scali. We did that at about AUD 5 a share. Temple and Webster, we already owned through the downturn, but we actually bought more shares at, what, AUD 4 a share. Premier would have been AUD 15 a share. Lovisa would have been at the time, I'm guessing, probably AUD 15-16 a share. Now, if we go through these companies now, I mean, Lovisa got to a high of almost AUD 40. Nick Scali today is sitting at AUD 16-17, I think. Temple and Webster is at AUD 16. This has been, look, up until a few weeks ago, inflation's been going up and interest rates are going higher. You are like, well, how do these retailers effectively, how do they get stronger? The answer is they have the scale. They have a high-quality management team. They have a long-term vision. As I said, it was very easy at that point in time to sell those companies. We chose to buy when everyone was selling. As you can see, three years later, they have done incredibly well and been a big contributor to our performance. You are always looking for opportunities like that in our seats. Thanks, Oscar. Thanks, Tobias. Just staying on the influence of politics on the portfolio, John says, at this stage, it looks as though there will be a minority government federally in Australia. What are your thoughts for companies or sectors that will be winners and losers from either a Labor or a Liberal minority government? Yeah, I haven't seen the odds for a while. I thought it was looking like it was a majority Liberal win. I could be completely wrong there. Look, Labour, I think, has been incredibly good to healthcare in particular. For us, aged care has been fantastic. Childcare as well. There's been a big increase in the subsidy. The government's funded award wage increases, etc. I would say, out of those two sectors, on the aged care side, I don't think the Liberals will probably do anything given the problems and the issues you have structurally longer term in that space. Childcare, potentially, they could water down a few things, but they've rushed through a lot of the key policies prior to the election. I think if the Liberals win, I think just broadly, if Dutton gets in and there's a Liberal majority, I do think you'll see a contraction in public sector spending. I think if you looked at that, I think it was the Labor, the employment statistics, the growth is all in the public sector. It's actually private sector's going backwards. You could argue the private sector's in a recession right now. There are a lot of employees getting taken away from the private sector into the public sector. We think generally public sector spending could get pulled back. That would be bad for any company exposed maybe to the NDIS, any potential software contracting business that comes in if that gets hit in IT spend. On the other side, we think the Liberals will spend heavily on defense. We talked about that previously. Companies like Austal, Civmec, DuraTech could benefit. Either way, I think, like we saw in the U.S., you just want certainty. A minority government is not a good outcome. We want certainty. A majority either way, that's all we would like. Certainly, as we've had interest rates being cut in February, you get a majority government, gives you certainty in the second half of this calendar year. It could be very, very good for that cohort of stocks Tobias talked about earlier, which are those stocks which is about 30% of everything we invest in that's exposed to the economy in some way, the Australian economy. Hopefully that gave you a semi-good answerm Yeah. I would say, maybe before the election, potentially, obviously, there is going to be a budget. The budget could be pretty supportive in terms of spending, etc., etc. That is good for the domestic economy. Obviously, if the election happens after the budget, we could potentially get some positive news on government spending prior to the election as well. Thank you. Marianne has asked if you can go through the differences between the Future Generation products and the four LICs that you guys look after. Is there a compelling reason to invest in one over the other? Thanks, Marianne. Look, I mean, again, it comes down to your personal circumstance. The four listed investment companies that Tobias and I run look at small-cap companies. Obviously, the management fees and the performance fees that we earn from managing your money come back to Wilson Asset Management, the business. Future Generation is slightly different. The management for Future Generation is a fund-of-funds product, which means there are multiple funds like Wilson Asset Management contributing to the overall portfolio. The fees that normally would go to the fund manager are actually donated to various charities. Again, it depends on what style you like. There is Future Generation Global, which focuses on global equities. There is Future Generation Domestic or Australia, you could call it FGX, which has a mixture of value funds, growth funds, large-cap funds, small-cap funds, etc. It is probably a good cross-section of the overall market. You have us, Tobias and I. Obviously, we're a for-profit business. We largely focus on small-cap companies. If I take a step back, as I said, I don't have the numbers on me, so I apologize if I get this wrong. The four listed investment companies that we currently manage at the moment are at slight premiums to the net tangible assets. I can't remember where Future Generation FGX and FGG are. I think they're probably low single-digit discounts. If you take that view, and hopefully I'm right there. I apologize if I'm not. If you take that view that you like buying a dollar of assets at $0.80, then maybe perhaps Future Generation is for you, as well as the fact that obviously it's a charitable organization. There are very differences between the funds. Marianne, happy to have a chat after the call if I didn't answer your question properly. Thank you, Oscar. If we can just quickly duck back to Trump, this one's from Gary. If you can talk about the impacts of US tariffs on ASX companies, please. Yeah, I think the key we're bottom-up stock pickers. The key for us is really the quality of the product. Because if you remember the last time it happened, companies or the products with pricing power really didn't see much of an impact. I mean, it could be different this time. Obviously, there's a lot of uncertainty. Even with tariffs, in terms of what's in the news and what ends up getting agreed afterwards, there's a lot of noise and a lot of uncertainty that happens. It really depends on the exact supply chain many of these businesses have set up. There's a lot of noise. If we, I guess, just focus on the key, the core, which is the product, the ability for that product to have pricing power in the market they're in, hopefully gives us some sort of margin of safety on whatever happens exactly on the tariffs and the countries that are impacted by the tariffs as well. In our portfolio, it was really only Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, which has manufacturing facilities in Mexico, that was impacted. Clearly, at the larger end of the ASX, there's plenty of companies that will be impacted. I think it'd probably be best to ask Matt and John and Anna and Hayley and the team in their call, which I think might be tomorrow. It'd be companies like BlueScope as an example and Steel, which would be impacted. For us, it's very minimal. What's more of an impact is just the overall volatility on small-cap companies. Thanks, Oscar. That's correct. The WAM leaders' call is tomorrow at 3:00 P.M. The next one is from Simon. Could you please give your outlook for energy stocks? Energy is not, I would say, our strong point because we invest in industrial companies. Global volatility and tariffs, I'd say, is probably bad for global growth. I think oil prices are currently at 2021 lows at the moment. If I'm telling you that it's weak, it's probably an opportunity to buy energy stocks because it's not my forte at all. I was just looking the other day. Woodside and Santos are at really low levels. They pay great dividends. Look, there's probably one for Matt and John and Anna and Hayley tomorrow. I think in the near term, it would be tough for energy stocks. Thanks, Oscar. Jocelyn's asking, are you still invested in Cedar? No. Haven't been for a while. Thank you. Brad, what did you make of ServiceStream's earnings? Do you expect them to make acquisitions? It was probably one of the best results of reporting season. The most positive thing for that was that there was a lot of noise around going into the result. They've got a significant contract that they have with NBN, which is doing a lot of the maintenance and servicing work with NBN Connections across, I think it's in Victoria, is their largest region. That contract was up for renewal. They actually increased their market share, went from four providers to two. What that means is there's now a lot of certainty around ServiceStream's contract book for at least the next five to seven years. What we think will happen is the shares can re-rate higher. Valuation can go up a lot more. Yes, the answer is once that occurs, the management team and the board can use their higher share price and potentially do an acquisition, which if they do that, we think it will go into the ASX 200, which would be huge for the company. They are doing a fantastic job. Thanks, Oscar. This one's from George. He notes that you are really positive on Myer. However, he says, why was Myer sold off so drastically in January/February 2025? Yeah, so thankfully, in the case of Myer, it helps being an active fund manager. We were buying a lot of Myer into the merger with Premier's apparel brands. We went substantial the company at around sort of, and substantial means we own over 5% of the shares, at around AUD 0.80. Now, the share price went way ahead of itself and it got to about AUD 1.20-AUD 1.25. Thankfully, we sold a lot at that point in time, which I think was in November, December. Basically, Myer, like every other retailer, had a very tough Christmas, obviously, with the cost of living pressure. They had an issue at their new distribution center. This is probably something we misread, was after the merger, a lot of the Premier shareholders got Myer stock. The problem is that Myer is not in the ASX 200. It's in the ASX 300. If I'm a large or mid-cap or large-cap investor, I suddenly have these Myer shares. What ended up happening was a lot of them sold out. That process has been going on for probably about six weeks now. We think it's finally cleared. I think it's fair to say we probably misread that. In saying that, though, our average entry price, as I said, is around AUD 0.80 anyway. Thankfully, we sold at a much, much higher price at AUD 1.20, AUD 1.25. For us, it's fine. We're taking a long-term view. As I said earlier in the call, we think the share price can triple from here. They've done this merger at the bottom of the market. You've got Solomon Lew leading the company. You've got a fantastic CEO. A lot of synergies to come through. We're very bullish on the company. Thank you, Oscar. Probably one for Tobias here from Hung. Have you bought any Tuas shares through the founders' fund? Yes. Great. The next one is from Adrian. We might just do a couple of quick stock questions, but you can add as much detail as you like. BCI Minerals, Macmahon Holdings, and SIG Global. BCI, I'm sorry, I don't have any idea on. Apologies. Macmahon, we own it, the microcap portfolio. Again, it was a weird one. That one result was fine. Nothing wrong with it. It's fallen 20%. The reason why we own that one is they made an acquisition of a company called Decmil. Decmil owns a, call it, accommodation villages up in Gladstone in Queensland. We think the company will sell that asset, which will effectively pay off the acquisition itself and reduce debt on the balance sheet. Operationally the business is going well. SIG is another contracting business. Done fabulously well at sort of diversifying into services and maintenance over the years through acquisition or organic growth. Look, again, stock upgraded earnings at result quite handsomely. The stock has fallen about 15%. We have been buying the stock still. We think that stock will go into the ASX 300, which I think the announcement is tomorrow. We will wait and see what happens there. Thank you. Next one is from Joseph. He says, can you please give some examples of companies that you'd invest in for the founders' fund? He notes that he's very interested and keen to invest himself. Thank you for the question. Look, I think the key reason we've launched the founders' fund is for many of these companies to have that alignment of interest with the founders or the management team. Some of the companies, I've talked about TUA, obviously, Temple & Webster, where the founder owns a substantial holding in the business and continues to drive the business very, very hard. Many of these businesses have navigated the last five or six years, which has had extreme volatility, both in the operating environment and as well as the share price performance, and have come out the other end a lot stronger. For that, it will be a higher risk product to the listed investment companies that we run, given the turnover will be a lot lower. It is more of a buy and hold and being that patient capital with the founders and co-investing with some of these founders over the long term. Yeah, I mean, that is the key for us is obviously doing the work that we have. Many of these, pretty much most of these businesses, we have an existing fund already. There is quite a high level of overlap. Great. Thanks, Tobias. A couple more stocks coming through. Let's do Pro Medicus and ImpediMed and Mars Group, actually, while we've got you on stocks. Yeah, Pro Medicus, we have it in the fund. We continue to like it, and particularly given the recent share price pullback. It's a great opportunity. I always talk about Pro Medicus as one of the highest quality companies in the world. If you look at it objectively from a financial metrics perspective in terms of the growth they've delivered, as well as the margins. The growth over the last 10 years has been something like 30% CAGR and the margins being 50% margins. It's something that's quite unique globally from a business. Now, we look at Pro Medicus from the perspective of a global company, even though it's a very large technology company listed here. The market that they're in, it's particularly in the U.S., and it is global and currently about, I think, 10%, 11% of the market in the U.S. We think the market share gains will continue. They've had, I think, the strongest 12 months in terms of contract awards they've ever had. The momentum's strong. Their product is very unique and is winning a lot of share. That is just in the space they're in, which is radiology. We think over time they get into cardiology. On to one of the earlier questions in relation to AI, they're effectively the gatekeepers to some respect from an AI perspective for the radiology industry, given they provide their software that service radiologists. That's one we quite like. ImpeMed, not too sure on that one. It hasn't been something we've looked at recently, but it's definitely after this, we'll have a go and just revisit the story. The last one was Mars, I think. Oh, Mars, yeah. Mars was a disappointment. We had misses overreported things clearly, which we talked about earlier. Mars was a miss. I mean, the interesting thing was, the frustrating thing was that they actually guided to a big second half weight in there when they raised some money back in November, but it was like the market had forgotten that. The share price has been hammered. We've been buying the stock. You will not get a better beneficiary to lower interest rates in this company. As a reminder, it does a lot of construction work in regional areas for the housing market. It does residential developments as well. It's got a big Melbourne exposure. Melbourne's been the weakest property market in Australia, weakest economy for Victoria has for some time. They have great leverage there when you get a recovery. They've got a little bit of debt in the business as well. Any cut in interest rate for them is very, very positive, both operationally and from an interest expense perspective. We've been buying a lot of the shares since the result. It's very, very cheap, asset backed, great founder. It's been a frustrating one for us over the last few years, no doubt, because it is a big position. We're back in the founder whiz. We think ultimately that the share price, once it gets it all together, is worth AUD 5.56. Thanks, Oscar. From Charles, on PointsBet Holdings, BlueBet Holdings has just lodged a high bid. What are your thoughts on this? Yeah, so look, our thoughts on it are that, look, it's great. We are shareholders in PointsBet, and we own quite a lot of it. I think it's fair to say when this all happened a few weeks ago, that was in a different market to where we are today. There are a lot of conditions for the BlueBet takeover. If it was to occur at the current where the Japanese MIXI have bid at AUD 1.06 and where BlueBet has actually bid right now, if you have a normal market, we think the BlueBet takeover looks better. The reason is because, like we talked about earlier with Capitol Health and Integral Diagnostics, you get one company plus one company almost equals three. You see the ability for this company to grow over time, get into the ASX 300, maybe get in the ASX 200, et cetera, et cetera. However, I will say the markets are tough right now, and there is a AUD 1.06 cash bid on the table. How about I leave it at that? Yeah, thanks, Oscar. From Bill, thoughts on DuraTech and GR Engineering? DuraTech, yeah, talked about before, contractor exposed to an engineering company exposed to the defense sector, doing very well, had a great result. We like that in the microcap fund. GR Engineering, we do not own in the microcap fund, but it is run by a very good management team, founder-led, which is a stock we probably have not thought about for the founders' fund. They have a very strong exposure in gold and also lithium in terms of processing plants. For various reasons, we do not own the stock. Yeah, always one we would revisit if the share price got low enough. Thanks, Oscar. We'll hit you with a couple more stocks. Perenti, Austin Engineering, Domino's. Okay, so Perenti, we're a, no. We don't own it. It's very cheap. There's still just a lot of moving parts in the business around Africa and Australia. It's just not one for us at this point in time. We also didn't really like the DDH acquisition that they did a few years ago. Look, we just think there's better opportunities elsewhere in mining services, such as Austin Engineering. Literally, I caught up with Austin Engineering just before this call. We are big shareholders in Austin Engineering. We own close to 10% of the company, led by David Singleton, who used to run Austal. Look, we think that business is really building to be a very big business and is doing so this year. We'll see the benefits next year. Certainly, the North American and South American business, effectively, is doubling capacity over this period. It's a bit of a transition year this year. That's why the shares have fallen. We're very bullish the long term of the business and think it's materially undervalued. I think it's trading at a price earnings multiple of five or six times earnings. We think it should, if they get it all together, we think the share price can double from here. What was your last one, Camilla? Domino's. Oh, Domino's. Do you want to do that one? Yeah, we have a small holding in Domino's. I think for us, the founders obviously come back and there's a new CEO that's trying to turn around the business. Domino's has been a very successful company for a very long time. They've had to go through some of the challenges recently. As they've expanded globally, we've seen initial signs that that's stabilizing and they're trying to really rationalize the network that they've had and sort of focus on some of the more quality part of the network. When I talk about network, I mean like the stores. We're really just taking a wait and see approach and just see how that turnaround is progressing. We think there's obviously a lot of value to the brand name and the franchise network they've built. We're just sort of backing the management and the founder there to turn the business around. Thanks, Tobias. John has asked about IDP Education. Do you think immigration will affect the share price and the opportunity with the company going forward? The answer is yes. That was probably an area I should have talked about in terms of if the Liberals get a majority where it could be further targeted. It has been hit very hard. It is not just in Australia, for IDP Education. It is Canada, it is the U.K. It is like every nation is doing it. You feel for them, actually. They are getting hit from all angles. The result missed back in February. I suspect it is probably going to come back into their small cap land, which would be great because it is a great company. Look, is it a buy now? I do not think so. It is always a company we are talking about internally because in the next 12- 18 months, there will be a time to buy. George has asked, can you comment on HMC Capital after the recent sell-off? Been brutal, and it's still happening. HMC Capital has been one of our best stocks the last two years. Again, the heat of the market back in November, December, it got to unsustainable levels. Thankfully, we were selling quite a lot through that period. There was nothing they weren't doing. It was just the valuation got ahead of itself. Look, again, one of the best founders we think in the market and David De Pila, at the moment, look, everything he touched turned to gold for two years, there's no question. Now he's got something that isn't, which is Healthscope and the REIT that owns Healthscope, although the assets there, which is HCW. If anyone can fix it, it's him and the team who we speak to a lot. That's certainly impacting the sentiment towards the stock. We have actually been buying the stock since the result. We actually sold on the result day. It went up a lot. We took the opportunity to sell some because we just sensed that the market was getting a bit tough. This is very much a high, very volatile company, let's call it, just the way it trades. In saying that, it's been down pretty much every day since its result, which was an excellent result. Unfortunately, that's the market that we're in at the moment. We have been buying back very slowly. As I said, there's one issue that they're going through at the moment, which is in Healthscope. It's in the press most days at the moment. As I said, he's a very high-quality individual. The team around him is excellent. Yeah, we like the business. Thanks, Oscar. Next question is from Dennis. Not one we've spoken about, but do you have any thoughts on DroneShield? Very popular stock in retail for retail shareholders, the DroneShields. Look, we do not own it. We have not through this whole period. I think, look, we see stocks like DroneShield come and go a lot. They have their time in the sun for 6-12 months, and they come back to reality. It raised a lot of capital last year as well. That is usually what happens. They spike up, they raise capital, and then things get delayed and they start falling. That is exactly what has happened there. Look, it is always one we will keep an eye on. For us, we want sort of sustainable earnings. Clearly, Russia-Ukraine war has been a boon for it. At some point, hopefully, that will end. I would say just at this moment, it is not one we are looking at. Thank you. Next one from Barry. Do you have any exposure to uranium? No. JK has said, do you ever short stocks during a market crash? The answer is no. If I can tell you a funny story. Can I tell a funny story? No, I can't. I put it this way. In COVID, there was a couple of days where we did. Because we can, and I'll put it this way, afterwards, I think it lasted a day and we're like, this is not what we do. We stopped. We never did it again. This team here at WAM Microcap will never short. We haven't done it since. We won't do it. It's a different game. Thank you. Russell has said, is Viva Energy one of your investments? And do you see them getting approval for a gas terminal at Geelong? It is one of our investments. We've reduced our holding, thankfully. Look, there's no question we believe in the company and the long-term plan for it, which is effectively they bought a company called On the Run, highly successful founder-led business in South Australia, basically dominated the market there in terms of service stations. They're going to change a lot of the Coals Express service stations to On the Run across Australia. The problem with Viva Energy, which we always say internally, it's like the Titanic. It is a big, big business. Things go wrong from time to time. I think the rollout's gone a little bit slower than expected. They've also been hit by a lot of the illegal cigarette or nicotine, I guess, industry. That's a black market that's developed over the last 12 months just because cigarette pricing's gone through the roof. I think it's fair to say the government hasn't done much to stop it. That's a big part of their business. Also, refining margins have been very weak as well. Everything's hit them all at once. They had a very poor result. It's probably the worst result, I think, in the ASX 100. I would think it would have been. Thankfully, we were a small position. Didn't hurt us too much. We are keeping it because I think the shares today are at, are they AUD 1.80? It's just so cheap for the company. We'd be mad to sell it here. If they get it all together, it's a AUD 5 stock every day of the week. They have a great team internally there, led by Yasser on the Run and Javan in the convenience segment and Scott as CEO. Look, we're backing them. We'll hold a small weighting. It'll be a tough period for the next 12 months, but they'll come through it. All right, a couple of stocks coming through. Codan and Alcoa. Alcoa, no view. That's one for the leaders, guys. Codan, yeah, big holding for us. Been a cracking stock. We saw them this week. Amazing what they've done, really. It's a very underrated company in the ASX. About five years ago, just did gold detectors and had a small tactical communications business in the defense sector. I should have said this is probably one of the best defense companies, actually, in the market. I'm sorry for that for the previous questions. In the space of a couple of acquisitions and some very smart investments, this business is now growing at over 20% a year, has a great balance sheet, and is primed to do more acquisitions. It's a company that's done very, very well. We own it in WAM Capital. We've owned it for a few years now. Okay, some more stock picks. McMillan Shakespeare and PYC Therapeutics. McMillan's, I saw this week as well. It has been a big week. It looks very interesting. Very high dividend yield, very low valuation. There is no risk of the dividend being cut. Where the market is worried about it is there is a change in the electric vehicle legislation that is going to happen at the end of March, where hybrids will no longer get effectively a subsidy. They also have a small business exposed to the NDIS. It is not that big in the company, but it is enough noise to keep investors away. It is one we are doing the work on. Good management team, it is a good business. I think at the moment, you would say, if you looked at our portfolio, we own AP Eagers, we own Amotiv in the automotive space. For us, we would have to sell one to buy it. We are choosing, obviously, to keep those two. At the moment, I would say, look, it looks interesting, but we do not own it. Yeah, PYC, we do have it in a microcap fund. It's a biotech company, which we historically don't have a huge exposure in. The technology itself, I'm going to get this wrong, but effectively, it addresses rare genetic diseases where they effectively change part of the RNA to address these genetic diseases. We think the technology itself, from the research we've done, there's a few ways to effectively use it. It's a technology platform that we are attracted to. The ability to leverage that platform to address various diseases is hopefully the focus. It's something that we're looking forward to. It's a small position in the microcap fund. Thank you. Question from Peter. Does the fund concentrate on large 5%-10% holdings in the companies you invest in? Do you take on board seats? It's not so much the positions or size of positions in the companies themselves, but more the size of the position in a fund. Sometimes we have a very large, say, 10% position in a company, but it's a very small company. The dollar value contribution or the holding size in the fund, it's perhaps not as large as some of the other companies that we're not substantial shareholders in, but it actually makes up a much larger part of the fund. In terms of the board seat, the answer is no. Obviously, we try to back management and existing boards to deliver. If we don't like the strategy or if we don't agree with the strategy, we will exit the position rather than trying to implement change. It's not what we do. It's not our skill set. We do not ever ask for board seats. I think just for investors, the shareholders listening as well, we get a lot of questions around our substantial holdings. That is when we get over 5% of a company. Just because you see that, it does not necessarily mean we are very bullish on the company. Just remember that. I think that is very, very important. That is just because we are a pretty large fund. If we are buying a small company and perhaps it has been weak, we are trying to buy the stock. Sometimes we can end up over 5%. I guess the point we are trying to say is just because you see us coming out substantial in a company does not necessarily mean it is our highest conviction bet in the portfolio because there are various sizes of companies that we invest in from time to time. They are the most public stocks that we have because they get renounced to the ASX. What you are better off doing is just keep looking at our top 20 that comes out every month and noting the changes, the ups and downs in that top 20. That will give you an idea of the things effectively that we are buying and the things that we are selling. Thanks for that. Thanks for the explanation, Oscar. Tobias, we'll just go to you from Joseph. He says, you've touched on Tuas, but what do you expect the result to be like? Thanks for the question, Joseph. I hope it's not Joseph from Morgan Stanley that covers the stock, but look, we've been in the stock for a while. It's very hard for us to, we don't know what the results will look like, but the company and the management has continued to deliver. We are looking to gain a better insight into some of these strategies and thinkings of how the market's evolved in two weeks' time. All right, thanks for that, Tobias. Another couple of stocks, Brickworks and Cedar Woods, please. Brickworks we own on the trading in WAM Capital. Why do we own it? I think we're trying to work out why we own it at this result. I think it's fair to say. I think our issue with the stock, and you won't get a better long-term company or long-term shareholder than Soul Pattinson. I think they themselves will say Brickworks has probably spent a lot of money over the years in their building products business. They'd probably like to see some returns come back in that business. We are sort of looking for this result for signs of that. That's why we own it. We think we couldn't get worse conditions right now in the building products business. We think once we get to a normal environment, they've invested a hell of a lot of money in that space. We think it can earn a lot more than what consensus is saying, the analysts are saying. Also, with lower interest rates, you should get a revaluation upwards in the property division, which will be very positive for the share price. Again, it's a stock that's largely been forgotten about by the market. It is a great player on lower interest rates. There is a lot of work we need to do when the result comes out in a few weeks. Cedar Woods, again, a great company, really exposed to Western Australian housing market, which is doing very well at the moment. We do not own it. I think the frustrating thing with that one, it does swing around from half to half in terms of developments. That is the frustrating thing with the stock. You can have these big swings in it. Look, we don't own it at the moment, but it's always one that we're looking at. Thank you, guys. The next one is from Greg. Do you have a view on JLJ, particularly in light of the impending cyclone in Brisbane? Yeah, look, I mean, they'll benefit, no question. The issue with JLJ has been, and I feel sorry for the guys, a good bunch of guys, but look, we sold out of that a couple of years ago. I mean, our view on the stock at that point in time was they'd just gone into the U.S, and they had also just gone into a few new sectors. A very simple business had suddenly become very, very complicated. That was the reason why we sold out. I think there's just a lot going on in the business. Unfortunately, they had a period of now dry weather and had one of their divisions in the Australian business not performing. It's really, really hurt the share price. Look, we're staying very close to it. We've got a great relationship with management. Look, yeah, we just still think there's probably some downside there in earnings. It's a hard one, this one, because if you get a cyclone like this, yes, they'll make a lot of money out of it, no question. The share market wants to see recurring earnings. You've had a period now where that's what the market really cares about. When it was a very small stock, they only cared about cyclones, very, very small, when it was like AUD 1, AUD 2 a share. It's a lot bigger now, and it's also carrying a bit of debt. The market really needs to see evidence that the recurring business is doing a lot better, and then it will start the share price going up. You've got to be careful just buying the stock just because there's a heavy cyclone. Hopefully that made sense, that answer. Yeah, thank you, Oscar. Let's do a couple more stocks, CSR and Korvest. The ticker for that one is KOV. CSR is an easy one because it's been acquired at the end of last year. And then Korvest. Then look, I mean, that's another reason why we own a number of those building material companies because you saw CSR get acquired, Adbri get acquired. Look at our portfolio in my borrow by Seven Group. There's clearly a view from these big global companies that Australia is a good place to be right now and potentially could benefit from an interest rate cut. Obviously, we've participated in Boral with Seven Group. In WAM Capital's been fantastic. Yes, we've been hurt by Mars Group this reporting season, but we've been buying it since. Wagner's in the microcap portfolio has done very well for us. CSR is not there anymore, but there's plenty of other ways to play it. What was the other one? Korvest. Korvest, we do not own it. It has done really, really well. We should have owned it in the microcap fund. Had a great result. We need to see them. All right, thank you. The next question is from David. Was the bigger sell-off after a strong result mainly due to the multiple it trades on? Bit of everything. Look, we probably misread it in hindsight. We did sell going into it. It was a funny result. The shares went, honestly, the earnings per share was upgraded by about 30%. That's how much a beat by. It's a huge number, huge number. I think it's fair to say the valuation got ahead of itself and the market was expecting much more. We have seen the stock get aggressively sold off. We've seen this with a number of stocks over this reporting season. Codan was another one that did the same thing. Again, ultimately, fundamentals would come through. We still like the business. It was so puzzling to us because its best division was the reason why it upgraded. Usually, when you see sell-offs like that, it's because the inferior division beats expectations. It's actually the best part of the business to beat expectations. It was a confusing one for us. Look, in the end, as we said earlier in the call, fundamentals will come through. It's now trading at a very attractive valuation. They're probably looking at an acquisition of Fonterra, which would be huge, and there'd be a lot of synergies. For us, yeah, we still like the stock. We've been buying. Great, thank you. Okay, buy hold sell, Mesoblast, Orthocell. On the topic of founders, WiseTech. The first two is easy. We're not really across it. The WiseTech will be a great question to ask WAM leaders tomorrow. They're much closer to the story than we are. Come on, give an answer. It will be a buy for me if you're asking for WiseTech. There we go. Thank you. John has asked for your outlook on travel stocks, please. Yeah, we think it actually looks quite interesting. The valuation for many of these travel companies have come back. Now, the operating environment, it's still very uncertain, as we've seen with some of the reports that's come out. We own Webjet and Corporate Travel in the funds right now. Corporate Travel had a good reporting season and really backing that. We're not looking for a huge amount of growth, but we're just looking for that steady growth as they continue to expand the market or expand their market share. Webjet, it was out of cycle. They didn't report. We think they are past some of the challenges operationally. Over time, they've set out the longer-term targets for their business, which I know the management's very focused on getting to. They've had a very long track record of delivering for the shareholders. We're really backing them to get the business back on track. Obviously, this is the Webjet Travel Group, the B2B part of the business. We're shareholders of Webjet as well. All right, thank you. We've got a few people asking about your view on the Paragon Care result, please. Yeah, we're very happy with the result. It's a very complex transaction and acquisition that was being made that really only closed back in June. We think the management team's doing a great job there. We're there for the long term in that business. We see once this merger is done, so many opportunities for them on the acquisition side of things as well. Founded their business, I think 70% of the shares are held by founders. It's a big business in our founders fund. Yeah, like the stock. It's come off a little bit since the result for various reasons. For us, it's very much a long-term play, and that's why we're there. Okay, this one's from Dean. He says, why are LICs like WAM Capital not reaching their previous share price highs? He bought in at AUD 2.25. Dean, obviously, we feel terrible that you bought in at $2.25, like that straight up. I guess the issue back then was we were trading at a big premium to our net tangible assets. Our net tangible assets at that point in time, I'm guessing, was probably around $1.80, $1.85. We were trading at a 20% premium. You had the sell-off in 2022. It wasn't just us. I think it's fair if you have a look at AFIC. I think they're trading at a 10% discount right now. They've never really traded at a discount since they started in the 1950s. It's taken a long time for the LICs sector to recover. It's taken a long time, you could argue, for some of our LICs. As I said earlier in the call, it means a lot to us now that we are trading at a slight premium to our NTA. We want to keep it that way. How do we get back there? It is hard to say. As I said earlier in the call, there are a lot of things that need to go right for us. In 2021, interest rates were close to zero. Today, they are a lot, lot higher. There are a lot more alternatives for retail investors and for shareholders. I mean, they can either take risk on the market and get a nice yield like they do with us right now. The markets might fall. If the market falls, even if we outperform but we are down, our net tangible assets will fall. You could just put it into a term deposit. Look, we think interest rates have definitely had an impact. You could argue potentially the rise in private credit has also had an impact. You could probably argue that ETFs have also had an impact. We've done twice, and I've done a lot of meetings with the founders fund over the last two months. I think it's probably fair to say I think the LICs industry as a whole probably needs to talk about the benefits of an LIC, the franking benefits in particular. I think on that note, it's actually worth saying that for us in WAM Capital, because we pay such a big dividend, you can't just look at our share price and compare it to the share price that you bought at and then look at the market. The dividend we pay is more than double than what the market pays you. Now, yes, even if you did that, we would have underperformed because the premium's gone from a 20% premium to today a 1% premium, so a 19% contraction. That's just something worth thinking about. Yeah, I mean, those days were when they were at a 20% premium. If you go through the history of WAM, Jeff was selling the stock, and he was probably buying WAM Global, which was trading at a discount at the time. Unfortunately, look, we feel terrible about it. As I said earlier in the call, it was in the second of every day that we don't want the share price to get back to where it was. We'll keep working as hard as we can to hopefully get it back there. Thanks, Oscar. Daniel has asked, and a few other people have asked this as well. Will the WAM Capital dividend be increased given the profits reserve? I've got to answer for the board here, and I'm not on the board, so putting that out there like I usually do. Look, I would say the answer is no. We pay AUD 0.0775 each half. At the moment, we have AUD 0.25. We have visibility up to, I'm testing my brain power here, but I think it's the October 2026 dividend. Does that sound right to buyers? I think, hang on, April, October, April. Yes, so yeah, we can partly pay the October 2027 dividend as it stands right now. Now, if we get a market that falls 20% in the next, I don't know, year or so, even if we outperform and say we're - 10% and the market - 20%, we'll be happy here sitting here because we've outperformed the market, but we haven't generated any profit. When you do not generate profit, you cannot use that profit to pay a dividend. Look, I am speaking for the board here, but I think it is highly unlikely that the dividend would be increased. I think it is worth noting that even though the share price has rallied on a grossed-up dividend yield, which I think includes franking, it' s currently WAM Capital trading at 12%. It is a huge number. If we increase the dividend, it eats away at our capital. The answer, I think, from the board's perspective, and I am answering for them, is probably no, unlikely. Thanks, Oscar. Back to a couple of stocks. Can you please share your thoughts on Bellevue Gold and Southern Cross Gold? Gold's not in our wheelhouse. We did own some Bellevue Gold about a year or two ago, and it did well for us. Like most gold companies that are going through, going from that phase from exploration to development, they've had a few issues around development and ramping up that mine. Thankfully, we did sell out before a number of those issues happened. It is a high-quality gold mine, very high grade. Again, it's one we've done a lot of work on. As I said earlier in the call, resources really is in our space, but we do have a little bit of expertise in the team. That's one company we've done work on historically. It is something we do stay close to, but we don't own it at this point in time. All right, thank you. Nick has said, have you ever considered quarterly dividend payments? And maybe you can touch on a product that would pay more frequent dividends. One for Jeff. I think if I was answering for Jeff, it's to try and say, and it's definitely one for Jeff at the road shows, but I would say, what would be the answer there? I think it's probably not getting investors focused on the short term and taking a long-term view. Yes, this is probably the reason. Actually, this is definitely the reason. As long-term shareholders will know, often the shares get bought into the ex-dividend date, and then the dividend happens, and there's some selling pressure after that. People buy just before the dividend gets paid. They get the dividend, and then they sell. If you have a look at the gyrations of the share price over the last five or six years, you see that every six months. If we went to a quarterly dividend, that would happen every quarter. I think that's, I'm just trying to think on the spot there, to be frank. I think that would be Jeff's answer if he came back. I'm not 100% sure, but I reckon that would probably be his answer. You'd have four periods in a year where there's extreme volatility in the shares instead of two. Thanks, Oscar. I think Jeff would also encourage viewers to register for the WMX webinar, which is on the 21st of March, which is a monthly income product as well. Back to the market from George, do you see ETFs as a competitor? They are a competitor, but I think you've got to be realistic here. There's room for active funds management and passive funds management in a portfolio. Passive works in periods, there's no question. When you get periods of dislocation like now or a reporting season like we just had, passive, if you look at some of the worst performers over reporting season, the banks had a major slip up over reporting season with their earnings outlooks. Passive funds or ETFs would have held a lot of the banks, whereas a lot of active fund managers, such as I'll give you now, the WAM leaders, are actually underweight the banks. They would have outperformed. Having a diversified portfolio is probably what it's all about. There's room for active funds management. There's room for ETFs. Have the ETFs been better at probably marketing the benefits of their products over the last five or six years? I think you would say yes. In our view, there's room for both. Thanks, Oscar. We'll do a quick round of stocks, LAU, KLS, and SXE. It's probably me, isn't it? LAU, yeah, just a bit tough at the moment. Balance sheet a little bit stretched. It's a good business, but it's a hard business in logistics. Look, not one for us at this point in time. Southern Cross Electrical is doing very, very well. We don't own it. Sometimes, unfortunately, as a fund manager, we did own it. It was a great stock for us last year. We own Genus Plus as well. Sometimes you don't want to own both. I'd just rather own one. We made the call to sell Southern Cross. Had a really good result, though. You could argue we shouldn't have, but so did Genus Plus. What was the last, the other one? Kelsian. Kelsian Tough stock. Yeah, it's a great example of small-cap stocks in the last three years. Unfortunately, it's a capital-intensive business focusing buses and ferries. It's had a lot of headwinds of COVID. They've still got a hangover from COVID and finding drivers and the penalty rates that they're getting. Look, when it comes down to it, it is a good business. Again, it's got too much leverage. It's just snuck in and hit earnings numbers. As you flow all the way down with depreciation and interest, you get big, huge downgrades at the earnings per share line, which is all that matters. Look, they'll get it right. I would not be surprised if I woke up tomorrow and there was a takeover bid for the company. I'll put it that way. Look, we can't own it for that reason. At the moment, we don't see any catalysts, so we don't own it. It's always one we're looking at, a bit like IDP Education. All right. From Victor, does WAM Capital have any ethical screens, including for fossil fuels and gambling? If not, why is that? I think, yeah, I think maybe just going back to what Oscar was saying earlier in regards to the question around Light & Wonder, obviously, it's part of our investment process to look at all aspects of a company. In terms of what we've been doing for our shareholders for the last 27 years, we're sort of sticking to looking for these undervalued growth companies with catalysts. The ones that you've talked about, obviously, the hurdle for it to go into the fund will have to be a lot higher, given a large part of the market wouldn't be looking at these types of businesses. We want to maximize shareholder returns or shareholder value, and that's what we do. We're happy to look everywhere for those opportunities. All right, let's go for Premier Investments and Supply Network, please. I'll do Supply Network. The business has been around for a very long time. It's done incredibly well for a very long time. We really rate the management team. They effectively just heads down, running the business, growing market share. This is a business that does truck parts. They have the best service in the market, hands down. They've been able to grow their market share. I think currently they're about 12% of the market. We think over the long term, they could double their market share, taking a lot of the share away from the OEMs and expanding the network that they currently have in Australia. It's very specialized. There's a lot of pieces of kit that needs to be distributed and moved around every single day. The management team has that laser focus, and they've just quietly, I guess, one of the quiet achievers that people do not really talk about, but they've just done a wonderful job on growing that business. We do really like Supply Network, and it's a big position in our fund. Great, thank you. We've mentioned the DALLAS' Fund. Premier. Yeah. I'll just go Premier. Premier looks a lot different now post the Myer demerger. They've gotten rid of the apparel brands. That's now with Myer. Today, it's just Smiggle, Peter Alexander, and their shareholding in Breville and a lot of cash. I'd say operationally, Smiggle and Peter Alexander, I would say Peter's is still growing very well, looking at offshore distribution. Smiggle's doing the same, but it's probably going through a transition period, probably needs some management to settle down, the new management team to settle down, I should say. Again, look, with Solomon Lew behind the business and a huge cash balance, we think they're priming themselves potentially to do another acquisition. We own a smaller weighting in Premier than what we do in Myer. Certainly very bullish, the long-term outlook for both stocks. Thank you. Are you both personally invested in the founders fund? Yes. Okay, that was our final question. We will close the webinar there. A reminder to all the viewers that we post regularly on social media and across our emails, more stock stories from Oscar and Tobias. Please subscribe and follow. Oscar, any final words for viewers today? Just the usual. Thank you for your support. Obviously, we're only just a phone call away. If we didn't get back to you on any of the questions and we missed them by accident, just please call in. Always happy to chat. Yeah, again, thanks again for all the support just generally and also for the founders fund. Really appreciate it. Certainly, it'll be a long journey, the founders fund, but we're very excited. We think the synergies within the existing funds that we run will be quite large, probably larger than we thought. Yeah, look, I mean, for all funds, really, we just need the markets to settle. Some IPOs would be nice. Some earnings accretive acquisitions would be nice. We haven't had them for a while. We still haven't seen that small-cap rally occur. I can assure you the team's doing a great job. The wider Wilson Asset Management team has as well. Thank you, Camilla, and thanks to everyone for dialing in. Thank you.
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