Welcome to the BBGI results presentation for the half year 2023. My name is Frank Schramm, and next to me is Duncan Ball, and we are the co-CEOs of BBGI. I will start the presentation. Halfway through, I will hand over to Duncan Ball. We start the presentation on page five. This slide presents the fundamentals of BBGI and our investment proposition. Our purpose is to deliver social infrastructure for healthier, safer, more connected societies, while creating sustainable values for all stakeholders. Our strategic pillars are low risk, globally diversified, a strong ESG approach, and internally managed. Looking at the strategic pillar, low risk, we are 100% availability based in our strategy. Our revenues are coming from secure public sector counterparties, and the result is that the cash flows are stable and predictable, coupled with high quality inflation linkage. The global diversification pillar is based on our focused exposure on Triple A or Double A-rated countries, which provide a stable, well-developed operating environment. With a global portfolio, while we have a global portfolio, we serve and connect people. We have a strong ESG approach, you know, ESG integrated in all parts of the business model. Our portfolio delivers a strong social impact, and we're categorized as an Article 8 social beneficial, actually, investment under the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. Additionally, the portfolio shows a high resistance to climate resilience, and compensation for our executive team is also directly linked to ESG performance. The fourth strategic pillar is we are internally managed. We are the sole in-house management team in the infrastructure investment company sector, and our interests are fully aligned with that of our investors. We focus on shareholder value by being incentivized by NAV per share growth, not actually by portfolio growth. The quantitative benefit of that is also that we've got the lowest ongoing charge, actually, in the sector. Going on to the financial highlights on page 7. This slide presents the financial highlights of the half year 2023. The NAV has gone down slightly by 1.4% to 147.8% per share. The NAV in investment basis slightly to 1.2%, down to GBP 1,056 million. We are also pleased to reaffirm our dividend targets of 2023 and 2024, of 7.93 and 8.4, and also the sector-leading actually increase of 6% on a year-over-year basis. Inflation linkage has been slightly up to 0.6%, and it's strong, it's contracted, and therefore, what we say, high quality. The dividend cover is 1.68, which is exceptionally strong, strong from our point of view. Having said that, our distribution profile is typically front-ended for the first half year. That means we get more cash in from our portfolio companies in the second half, but we expect actually dividend cover to be 1.3-1.4 for the year-end. Annualized NAV return, 8.8, and annualized ongoing charge, 0.92. There's an increase in the annualized charge, and that's mainly due to actually inflation and also increased staff cost. Moving on to the operational model. This slide presents our robust operating model, which is based on three actually operational pillar, starting with the value-driven asset management. Over the reporting per-period, our portfolio of availability-based projects performed very strongly. You know, there's no defaults or lockups in our portfolio, and cash receipts were ahead of expectation. What I mean with lockups or defaults, that means all our portfolio companies distribute, make distributions, and therefore actually contribute to our strong dividend cover. Yeah, there's no covenant breaches in our portfolio, and we are the only one in the sector which I believe reports actually that metric. We also delivered high actually availability to our public sector clients at 99.9%. And that also keeps our customer satisfaction up. We did a greenhouse gas emission data collection, yeah, and that's the first step actually to measure, our carbon footprint, yeah, and our carbon intensity, and that's also first step actually to reaching net zero. Looking at the prudent financial management, we had modest net drawings on our revolving credit facility of GBP 25.8 million and net debt of GBP 7.9 million. On the dividend, we delivered a 3.4% increase annually on our dividends, you know, since IPO. Hedging strategy, we're mentioning here, given that we are, as a reminder, have a global portfolio with two-thirds of the portfolio being outside of the U.K.. Yeah, we've got a strong hedging policy in place, which aims to reduce the NAV volatility to 3% if all currencies move actually against the pound by 10%. Discount rate increased from 6.9 to 7.2, and has an equity premium of 3.4. In the U.K., the discount rate was raised higher to 7.5%, or 0.7% increase, and Duncan will go more detail on the discount rate later in the presentation. We're very selective in our acquisition strategy. What does it mean? We're currently focusing on capital allocation. Capital allocation is key. You know, the first thing we do currently is, we have got a revolving credit facility outstanding of around GBP 26 million, and all excess cash, yeah, will be directed towards repaying of our revolving credit facility. And, we could, by the year-end, also have the credit facility fully repaid. If there's an opportunity, which arises, you know, we'll look at that, but it must clearly be value accretive, yeah, in terms of risk-return profile, yeah, and other portfolio construction matters. Otherwise, we would be very disciplined, selective in looking at any growth opportunities. We've got a pipeline agreement with SNC-Lavalin in North America. But to note here, that's an option. It's not a commitment that we have to buy anything which would be presented to us by SNC-Lavalin to us. Moving on to the next page. This slide serves as a reminder to the robust characteristics of our portfolio and offering crucial safeguards in a volatile environment. What does it mean? We've got a conservative financial structuring. All of our portfolio company debt is non-recourse, and 55 of our 56 assets don't have any refinancing risk. That means everything is financed through with fixed term or hedged debt, you know, until the end, yeah, and on long term, until almost the end of the concession period. There's one asset in Australia, Northern Territory Secure Facilities, where we got a small refinancing risk. This is for a tranche of debt in 2025, and here also to notice, it is not actually the base rate. The base rate is actually hedged. It's only the margin which is subject to change, so the lending margin which we pay to the banks, though there is marginal refinancing risk, and that is also later on shown in the sensitivities there. The second point, we've got significant cash reserves. In the portfolio companies, we've got about GBP 385 million of cash reserves, which represent about. So I have to look it up again. 36% of the net asset value. And basically, we're earning interest on that. Yeah, and, we currently have active treasury management, active treasury management in place, you know, and, that means we're earning currently around 4.5% on this deposit on an average basis. That means looking at all currencies. It's euro, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, US dollar, Norwegian kroner, everything there is in the mix. And the interest, if short-term interest rates go up, we earn more interest, and that acts as a counterbalance to rising discount rates, at least partly. We've got a conservative conservative corporate borrowing. Here are the modest cash drawings, which make up 2.4% of the NAV, and as mentioned, that could be repaid by the year-end with excess cash. Our revolving credit facility currently has got a debt rate of 5.08%, which is well below our discount rate of 7.2%, and there's no outstanding commitments to acquire any assets. So we've got a strong, actually, liquidity positioning and very modest borrowing. The inflation linkage, again, is strong. It's 0.6%, supported by progress, and that supports our progressive dividends. And, the inflation linkage is contracted and mechanical. Once a year, we actually increase our availability fees with our public sector clients, yeah, and there's no caps and collars in our, in that inflation linkage. We've got a globally available style portfolio. Revenues are coming from government, government-backed entities, yeah, and counterparties are typically highly rated. And, we've got a global portfolio, and that means that 67% of the portfolio is outside of the U.K.. That actually offers diversification benefits. Moving on to the next slide. That slide presents actually the dividend track record and the cumulative dividend growth, and the top chart shows our yearly increase of dividend, which is around 3.4%, since IPO. At IPO, we promised a progressive dividend, and we think we delivered on this promise, yeah, especially with the 6% increases for 2023 and 2024, and which we have reaffirmed these targets. The lower chart illustrates the cumulative growth of CPI in comparison to the growth of our dividends. We have consistently delivered a progressive dividend that has outpaced U.K. CPI, so ensuring shareholders will receive a positive real return. Since IPO, our dividends have grown by 44%, surpassing the cumulative U.K. CPI of 40%. Moving on to page 11. This slide presents our projected cash flows from our portfolio, and two essential points to highlight here. Counterparties, as I mentioned, are government, government-backed, and this contracted nature of the cash flows increase the predictability. As we have got an availability-based portfolio, the revenues, are paid as long as the asset is available. Yeah, we're not subject to demand risk. We're not subject to regulatory risk. You know, so that means actually we get an availability income, you know, as long as the asset is available, we are getting paid. Second point is, assuming a scenario where no additional investments were made, the projected cash flows are sufficient to sustain our progressive dividend policy for the next 15 years. Moving on to page 12. That slide presents our track record. The top chart presents the total NAV and dividend per share growth over the last 11.5 years. The accumulated NAV and dividend per share add up to 219.6 and have always shown a positive growth. On the bottom slide, you see actually a total shareholder return of BBGI and the FTSE All-Share since IPO, and you see we've outperformed the index. The total NAV return since IPO was 163.8, or 8.8 on annualized basis, and dividend yield as of June is 5.7%. As we're trading currently at almost the same price, then as of June, it's still at 5.7%, which we consider attractive in the current market, especially in light of the inflation linkage which we're offering of 0.6%. Total share return is 128.2, and the analyzed share return of 7.4. Moving on to page 13. This slide demonstrates four key strengths of our portfolio. On the top two, you see two point facts. We're 100% availability style investments and 99.4% of our portfolio is operational. We've got one road in Canada, which is very close to substantial completion. We expect a completion certificate very shortly. You know, that means we should in hopefully the next couple of weeks be 100% operational. Geographical split, we got 35% in Canada, 33% in the U.K., U.S. and Australia stand at 10%, and Continental Europe at 12%. So with a global portfolio and triple and triple-A and double-A-rated countries. On the sector split, actually, we've got a globally diverse. We've got a sector diversified portfolio as a social impact portfolio, you know, starting from health through light, correctional facilities, you know, into social housing and also transport. Moving to the next slide. This slide offers further insight into the construction of the portfolio. Concentration risk, top five assets constitute 32% of the portfolio, while the following five make up 16% for a portfolio of a strong diversification, eliminating significant single asset exposure. In the center, you will notice our diverse, diverse supply chain exposure, and we have not identified any supply chain risks here. We've got a rigorous supply chain monitoring policy in place, where we try to monitor on a monthly basis all subcontractors here with very different quantitative and qualitative factors, and touch wood, to date, we have not identified any material risk in our portfolio on supply chain. The weighted average life of the portfolio is 90.8 years. Moving on to page 15. This slide presents our active asset management approach, and BBGI takes a hands-on approach to active management, and we're looking both to preserve the value on the one hand, but also trying wherever possible to enhance the value and to identify opportunities. The focus on delivering well-developed, maintained infrastructure to our public sector and communities, and stable and predictable returns to our shareholders. To achieve this, we have a global. We have good governance structure in place here, and one of our key themes is that we're trying to stay close to our public sector clients, and trying to understand if there are any concerns, and if there are any concerns, address the issues early on. You know, the motto is: You need to have got a coffee when there's no issue, because you may not get the coffee when there's an issue in the end. And that is why we're trying to meet our clients at least two times a year, yeah, and might be virtually, but often also physically, you know, that we're getting there and trying to understand if there's anything in the background. On the value upside side or value upside or generation, you know, treasury management is still key. You know, we concluded two treasury pooling agreements, virtual pooling agreements in one in the U.K. and one in Canada, and that means we're not getting just interest on all amounts deposited, but we're getting interest on everything which is coming in the door from the first day, which optimizes our our interest income. And as a reminder, we got about GBP 385 million, which is our proportion of the cash deposits in the portfolio companies, you know. And that asset, that acts as a bit of a counter, you know, buffer towards rising interest rates. We also delivered value enhancements of seven-point six million, or we optimized actually life cycle. You know, we had cost savings, where we concluded new management service agreements, with a lower price on projects, in total, actually, that delivered the GBP 7.6 million. I'll stop here, and I hand over to Duncan. Thank you. This slide talks a little bit about inflation and the high-quality inflation linkage we have in the portfolio. I want to give you a bit more insight in terms of how we capitalize on the inflation that we have within our portfolio. On the left-hand side of the graph, you can see there's a chart that shows what happens to the NAV and price per share, if inflation is 2% higher for one year, three years, and five years, we would materially benefit from. So, for example, if inflation was higher across all jurisdictions for two years or for five years for a forecast, and just to give you some context there, our current assumption for U.K. is 6.3 for 2023, 3.9 for 2024, and if we exceeded that by 2%, the NAV would increase by 4.6%. We have high-quality inflation linkage of 0.6, and it's notable that this is contracted inflation linkage. So when we say high quality, it's justified on the basis of these contractual relationships. So you might have a, an economic infrastructure asset where you have the benefit of inflation by being able to pass on price increases to consumers or users, but in reality, you may find there's elasticity of demand, and in an inflationary environment, your usage of the asset may decrease. We don't have that. We have a very mechanical approach, where the CPI or the relevant inflation factor gets printed in the jurisdiction we're in. We apply that to the contract, and it just gets marked up, sent to the government, and the government pays it. So it's very much high quality. And there's been no pushback from our clients in terms of it's contractual, so there can't be any pushback, but it's just worth mentioning that. And this is obviously different than merchant infrastructure, where it's subject to market and demand factors, and so we highlight this, just this high-quality linkage that we enjoy. And it's also worth mentioning that, you know, when we publish our statistics, these are statistics that are used for comparable, for printing the inflation. And it's CPIH is often used for utilities and regulated assets, where RPI, which is quite a bit higher in the U.K., in July, as an example, RPI was 9%, where CPI was 6.4%. So we're benefiting from the higher inflation factor. If you flip the page, we talk a little bit about our role as a responsible investor. In June, we published our annual ESG report. This was a comprehensive report and provides detailed information on the progress we made during the year on a variety of ESG topics. Perhaps the biggest undertaking we took in the last year and was completed during this reporting period was the portfolio emissions. So we completed a comprehensive data collection exercise to assess the portfolio greenhouse gas emissions and our carbon footprint and our carbon intensity. This is a significant step towards understanding and reducing our portfolio's environmental impact. The idea is that you first have to measure, and then once you have the data, you can start implementing or developing plans, and then implement those plans as you make way towards progressing on net zero targets. And in June, we also published our principal adverse impact statement, which is a requirement under the SFDR, the legislation, and that's available on our website, and it discloses 12 environmental and 8 social metrics, where we report on that. If you flip the page, I'll talk a little bit about valuation. The NAV decreased 1.2%. You know, the portfolio continued to deliver strong performance, so there was GBP 45 million of portfolio return during the period. The change in the market discount rates had a negative impact of GBP 26.8 million, and that was from a reduction in the discount rate, which I'll talk about in a second. It's important to mention that there was a lot more transactional data in this period, so when we report our discount rate, we're confident that it represents what's going on in the marketplace because we saw transactional activity in all the markets where we're active, save for Norway, where there was, and. But we also look at it from the basis of a Capital Asset Pricing Model as well, just to make sure we're correct. The change in macroeconomic assumption resulted in a GBP 13.8 million increase, and that was largely increases in deposit rates. We're earning a lot more on deposit rates than we anticipated, and we expect that that will continue. We suffered a foreign exchange loss of GBP 12.6 million. Sterling appreciated against all the currencies. It's worth mentioning, since IPO, the net impact of foreign exchange movement has been about $1 million over the period since 2011. So our hedging policy works, and there are times where FX is gonna be a headwind and times when it's gonna be a tailwind, but in this particular period, it worked against us. Flipping the page, this gives some insight in terms of the portfolio valuation. So, the weighted average portfolio discount rate increased 30 basis points from 6.9 to 7.2. It's worth mentioning that the U.K.-based discount rate, so the standard rate we use for most projects in the U.K. is 7.5, so that has increased more than the portfolio average. We complement our market-based approach with a capital asset pricing model, where we look at government risk-free rates, and then an equity premium is added to that, to come up with the discount rate. The weighted average discount rate or sorry, the weighted average risk-free rate remains stable at 3.8%, compared to December. So while risk-free rates have increased by 50 basis points in the U.K., they've reduced in all other jurisdictions during the reporting period, except for Norway. So it's important to mention that because the global nature of our portfolio, less than a third is in the U.K.. So yes, risk-free rates have gone up in the U.K., but in other jurisdictions, that hasn't been the case. So, the discount rate, the overall discount rate, portfolio discount rate of 7.2, represents a risk premium of 340 basis points, and we believe that's an appropriate amount. It seems consistent with the ranges we're seeing. Our expectation is a reasonable pick up over the risk-free rate should be 250-350 basis points. And it's supported by a recent German network and a German regulator, a German network agency, which calculated the risk premium for regulated natural gas in that country at about 300 basis points. And we would argue that regulated assets are riskier than the type of assets we invest in. So if you use that as a proxy for risk-free rate, we're comfortable with the premium of the risk-free rate within our portfolio. And just as a reminder, we come up with the internal valuation. It's reviewed by an independent valuation firm, and then it's signed off on our auditors. And both the independent firms and our auditors are of the view that we're within the range or the conservative end of the range. So we're comfortable there. If you flip the page, I recognize it's probably hard to see on the screen, but these are the macroeconomic assumptions we use. Long-term rates are unchanged. We've made some very modest adjustments in short-term inflation rates. The deposit rates are where we've probably made the biggest change. Short-term deposit rates have increased broadly in all the markets where we're active, and so that's been reflected in our assumptions, and corporate income tax rates remain unchanged. If you flip the page to the next slide, this slide shows our key sensitivities. The key point we make is that if you, you know, it's easy to look at just the headline discount rate and what a change in discount rate does to the portfolio value. But we think the more appropriate is to look at what happens when there's a change in discount rates, along with a change in deposit rates and along with inflation rates. And you can see that when that happens, that's about midway down the slide, a 100 basis point combined change in deposit inflation and discount rates only has a 1.6% impact on the NAV. If we flip the page, we can talk to the risk management that we undertake. Economic and market, we've already covered this in the previous slides. The point I wanna make here is that we've been negatively impacted by the increase in discount rates and the adverse foreign exchange. But that's been partially offset by the inflation flowing through and our changes in deposit rates reflecting the higher interest rates we're earning at the various, you know, significant amounts of cash we have in the projects. We haven't experienced any material performance issues within the portfolio, so we're very comfortable with the operation of the portfolio. Taxation, we went through a couple of years ago in the U.K. with Base Erosion and Profit Shifting. That legislation is currently been passed in the U.K., and the EU, and the U.S. That similar type of legislation is being considered in Canada and in Australia. We're tracking the situation in Canada, where it's called EIFEL, Excessive Interest and Financing Expenses Limitation, and we're monitoring that. But there's draft legislation, so we can't really say much more than that at this point in time. Sustainability is a risk that we talk about frequently. We did extensive climate review. We've had detailed climate modeling done on all our portfolios, eight different perils under three different time horizons and three different climate warming scenarios. And we're confident that there's no stranded risk issues with our portfolio, and none of them are gonna be materially impacted by climate change. And then cyber, this is a risk for all companies, but we take comfort in the fact that we've got strong processes in place, and, you know, in most instances, the IT and the infrastructure are the client's responsibility, and our points of interface in that regard are modest. If you turn this page, I'll just talk a moment about internal management. Just to reiterate, BBGI is the only infrastructure investment company which is internally managed, means there's no external manager. We think this is a key USP, a differentiator for us in the sector. It means that, we have the lowest ongoing charge. Our ongoing charge is 92 basis points. There's no NAV-based fees. There's no external manager. We're not incentivized to grow the portfolio just for growth's sake. There's further alignment of interest, and particularly now, when capital allocation is so important, we're not motivated to go out and acquire more assets. We're gonna be looking at acquisitions on the basis of what did they do to the portfolio construction? What did they do to the NAV per share? And it also means we're not distracted by any other mandates. We're waking up every morning thinking about this portfolio and how we can manage it properly and optimize it. Pipeline with the current macroeconomic environment, you know, our strategy is to focus on directing surplus capital towards the repayment of any outstanding drawings on our credit facility. We will continue to look at the market for opportunities, but we'll be, you know, as has always been the case, we'll be very disciplined. When we do come across an opportunity, we have a very structured process for considering potential new investments, and it'll have to be evaluated against a whole criteria of considerations. We have a pipeline agreement, as Frank mentioned, with SNC-Lavalin. This gives us an opportunity for further investments, but again, we're not expecting anything to come out of that in the short term. But I'll remind everyone that that's an option, not an obligation. So if something was presented to us, we don't have to act on it. We're, you know, we're continuing to scour the market, looking for opportunities and monitoring it closely, but we'll, we'll be very focused on maintaining our discipline and, and being sensitive in our approach to capital allocation. So I'd just like to conclude, in these challenging times, we remain very confident in our low-risk, resilient portfolio. We're delivering critical social infrastructure, so health, schools, blue light, justice facilities, affordable housing, transportation, all with a strong social purpose. It's all availability based. We're getting paid by government counterparties. It's climate resilient. We've done the testing. We're confident that the assets will perform in different climate scenarios. And, again, through this set of results, we've shown the good inflation linkage that is inherent in the portfolio. We have low correlation to other asset classes. We'll remain disciplined in our portfolio allocation, and, with that, I'll conclude, and we can open it up for any questions that may be in the room or online. Iain? Good morning. It's Iain Scouller from Stifel. I've got three, if I may. Firstly, just on new investments, I mean, what are your thoughts there? I mean, given you can't issue equity at the moment, you know, how comfortable would you and the board be to leverage up? And obviously, the leverage facilities are fairly short-dated, as a way of financing new investments. The second one is on taxation. You mentioned EIFL in Canada. I think you got a GBP 10 million provision against that. Do you think, based on the draft legislation, there may be scope for some release of the provision at some stage? And then the third one is on dividend cash cover. I mean, that continues to be good. I think it was 1.68x or 1.59x, if you adjust for the impact of the script. But I think that was down from just over two, I think it was 2.02x over the first half last year. So why has that come down as much as it has? Why don't I take the first two questions, and hand the third to Frank? So your question was capital allocation, and we consider buying assets and increasing the RCF. I think in this environment, our focus would be on any excess cash in the foreseeable future will be directed towards making sure the RCF remains either undrawn or at low levels. So that any new opportunities, we have a very strict allocation policy for looking at new capital. So, today, we're trading at a modest discount, about 5%. If we were trading at a more significant, we would weight the opportunity against share buybacks and other things. But we don't have a specific policy on share buybacks. We're looking at it in the whole, in the round, wanting to make sure we have flexibility. And so, we've been very fortunate. We haven't had significant drawings on our RCFs, so that's put us in a good place. We don't have any commitments to buy, so that puts us in a good place. And then we'll see how the markets develop and what opportunities present themselves. But we're very, you know, we're very sensitive to the fact that our, you know, we have a large RCF, it's undrawn. It has some period before it has to be renewed, but there's no immediate concern about that, and we like being in that position. So I don't think you'd see us do something that would fundamentally change that. Your second question was about the tax, the proposed tax legislation in Canada. We took a provision last year, you're correct. We don't know how it's gonna play out. There was draft legislation issued the fourth of August, and there's a solicitation period where they're asking industry for feedback, and that closes the fifth of September. They will then take that on board, and then the expectation is they'll come back with a definitive legislation, perhaps later this year or early next year. There's a significant interest in the concept of public benefit infrastructure, and how that's impacted. So BBGI has written to the tax authority and communicated with them, but there's a whole industry group, so it's premature to comment on the outcome of that because it is in a consultative stage. But you're right, we have provisioned for some things, but there may be more to come, but there might not be, but it's just premature to. And I'll let you answer the third question, Frank. Your question was the dividend cover of first half year was higher than it is last year, than it is now. First of all, I think the dividend cover first half year was last year was exceptionally strong and still actually quite high today with 1.68. Last year, we had in January a one-off income from a refinancing come in. That was an additional cash from a refinancing of McGill University Health Centre in Canada, and that actually one-off actually increased the cash cover in addition. But I think that disclosed that at the time. We don't have that one-off this time. But we also, as last year, we said we would expect the dividend cover between 1.4-1.5. This year, we're saying, and due to the one-off one-off element as well, this year, we're saying that's between one and 1.3 and 1.4. So we think the dividend cover is still actually very healthy. And as always, actually, towards the first half of the year that we get more cash in, this is just actually a structural point. Does that answer the question, Iain? Yeah. Thanks very much. That's very informative. Thank you. Matthew Hose from Jefferies. Your valuation sensitivity to deposit rates was quite a bit higher at the year-end than it is now. Was that just the fact that there was a lot of cash washing around the SPVs at the year-end? So the inflation cover? Sorry. The deposit rate sensitivity to the valuation. I think it's a function of there is a lot of cash, and that cash can vary depending on major maintenance reserve accounts and debt service reserve accounts. Most projects have a six-month debt service reserve account, and that's pretty static. And then the major maintenance reserve accounts can vary depending on whether you undertake a life to the, you know, if you start spending that money to do a life cycle intervention, then that decreases. So that's part of it. And then I think it's probably also a function that we've earned more on deposit, and so we've adjusted the deposit rates. So as that increases, it becomes less sensitive. Great. Thanks. Matthew? Nigel Hawkins, Hardman Investment Research. Two questions, if I may. First, a specific one. I'm intrigued by your dividend policy. 6% increase forecast is very interesting compared with, and I think I'm correct in saying this, HICL, sector leader, which seems to have a five-year flat dividend profile in nominal terms. I wonder if you've got any views on the comparisons, your DPS increases against, let's say, the sector leader, whose dividend is flat as a pancake. And secondly, on acquisitions, since the start of COVID, there's no doubt your acquisition strategy has eased off, shall we say, and I wonder whether this is because you're being overcautious, which perhaps is understandable, or whether simply there aren't the quality deals out there that you might have had pre-2019. Do you first want to take? Nigel, thanks for pointing out actually your comparison to what's HICL, but it's not appropriate for us to comment on how others are performing in the market here. Yeah, you can comment on ourselves. But we can say. I think the one point we can say is, our peer companies have, on the headline numbers, a higher inflation linkage than we have. But I think these headline numbers are. You have to take with a pinch of salt. You know, as Duncan presented in his part of the presentation, our inflation linkage is mechanical, RPI in the U.K. and CPI in the other countries. You know, and you get it, and there's no caps and colors, there's no lag in there, and there's no elasticity of demand. You know, so our peer companies have got elasticity of demand, and they've got regulated assets where this may, you know, and that's a speculation here, may not be as contractual as ours. What you see is what you get, is in our case, and that has led to a significant increase in cash flows in our assumptions, but also in the cash flows now. You know, and that has contributed to our ability to raise the discount rates, actually, to raise actually the dividends by 6%, for two years. And for 2025, we currently got a 2% increase here, but we may revise that looking at, at the cash position and looking at the inflation rates actually next year. We may rise actually here, the, the dividend also higher than 2%, but no decision has been taken. Does it answer the first question? I think so, yes. Good. Nigel, your second question was about just our acquisition strategy, and I think what we've tried to do is remain disciplined, and I think the market has changed materially since COVID and interest rates have backed up. When we reported last this time last year, we said that there wasn't a lot of transactional evidence because we hadn't seen transactions, a lot of transactions. You know, we were starting to see rising interest rates this time last year, and then the mini budget in the U.K. certainly caused risk-free rates to blow out substantially. But in the first half year of 2023, we've started to see more market transactions. So we've seen observed transactions in all the markets we're in, and we've reflected that in our discount rate. And so I think where we're at is, there still is strong demand for the type of assets that we invest in, and that's supported by these market observed transactions. But you'll see that we have increased our discount rate in all regions. You know, we've gone up 30 basis points. We've gone up to 7.5 for our U.K. investments, which is the most significant. So it's a question of we're looking for opportunities that may appear on the horizon, but we're, it's probably premature to figure out where the market is. So we're gonna be very disciplined in approaching that. But the key message is there's still demand for the assets that we'd like to invest in. There's still a bid, but, and so there's no shortage of transactions. It's probably trying to understand where the pricing is and whether the pricing has leveled off, or whether there'll be stability in that, or whether it could drift higher. So we're gonna be disciplined in our approach. So the propositions are actually crossing your desk, but you're being perhaps a little bit more picky now with the interest rates much higher and, frankly, the political uncertainties going forward? Yes. And I think we- As we say with 2017, 2018. We're in an enviable position that we can still look at opportunities. A lot of participants can't raise capital, or they've got significant drawings on their credit facilities, so they're closed for business. So they're, you know, it may create some interesting opportunities, but it's probably a bit premature to say that that's the case right now. Thank you. Ellie Hardy, Winterflood. Just a quick question. Just on briefly touching on what you just said, could you maybe speak to why we're seeing a lot more transactional evidence this half versus last half? I think last, this time last year, there were some processes underway, and, we saw some canceled processes. I think what we're seeing now is people have realized that the market is... You know, we've gone through a decade of quantitative easing, and we're now, I think the consensus is that, we don't know where, what the long-term outcome would be, but I think everyone's on the same page that's saying there's gonna be quantitative tightening. And so the, the investors, I think—or sorry, the, the, the owners of these assets last year were, were, if they were in a process, pausing, to see where, what the secular direction was. Now, I think there's a consistent view that the secular direction is towards tightening as opposed to easing. And so if you've got a planned disposition, you just get on with it. So we didn't have that last year, but I think we now have that now. So it's business as usual, but there's not the, you know, there's not a five-year pattern of transactions now in the new world. It's been a much, much shorter series of transactions to support it. A second one, if I may. Just touching on what you talked about in terms of the emissions reporting exercise, were there any surprises that you came across in doing that? Or has it changed the way that you look at sort of the future of the portfolio in any way? Do you want to talk to that, Frank? The emissions itself is first of all, it's a huge exercise, and we did Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3. You know, Scope 1 and 2 is more or less your looking at energy bill, your gas bills. Yeah, and Scope 3 is actually all the supply chain and what actually what are the emissions coming from our one remaining construction project from our expansion. We have got a large expansion going on in Australia. Given that we don't have a benchmark, Ellie, it's very difficult to say what was in surprises. We tried actually to benchmark within our portfolio, and we tried to make it as plausible and saying, did possibility check, saying, "Okay, we go to one hospital here and another hospital here. Why there's a difference?" So we asked all those questions. And we think we got a robust set of data, yeah, but it's still a journey. Yeah, and especially Scope 3, you know, in terms of supply chain, you know, this is yet to be fine-tuned. I think we could. We have already done a lot of work, you know, but it's not. Well, the price probably is not the right word, you know, because you can only be surprised next year when the data may be different. You know, then you're asking the question, why is this different, you know? Then you have to look into that one. Also, we looked at whether we are comparable to our peer groups. One of our peer group doesn't even do a Scope 3, so the total emissions actually is not comparable. And then actually, carbon intensity, you can look at or per million invested. That's also not comparable. It seems to be that people using still using all the different slightly different benchmarks or slightly different ways of calculating it, where I think the whole exercise will take years to make it more aligned in the whole sector. I'm not saying we are right or the others are wrong. That's not the way, but we need more alignment because a lot of uncertainty is still out there, how to calculate stuff, you know? So therefore, it's a journey, and it's a long journey. It's not just, we started with that, and it will take a couple of years, where we know actually where we go in terms of data. But the key point also is what measure matters, you know, and, the next step is then to, come up with a net zero plan, and that's a journey we're currently on as well. That's- Just touching on that one, one point I would reiterate as well is, the vast majority of our assets, we don't have operational control. So the client, whether it's a school or a hospital, they decide what the temperature is set in the operating room or the classroom. So we can't influence, or we can't control that. We can influence it. And so as Frank says, the first step is what gets measured matters. And by having a data set, then we can start to come forward and work progressively and actively with the clients to suggest opportunities for them to improve their emissions. But it's- Well- A lot of it is, we'll be trying to influence, not necessarily act. Does it answer the question? Yeah. Thanks, Duncan, for the addition. Thanks, mate. No further questions in the room. Maybe there's questions from someone on the call. Participants can submit questions in written format via the webcast page by clicking the Ask a Question button. If you are dialed into the call and would like to ask a question, please press Star and then One on your telephone keypad. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may press Star and then Two to remove yourself from the queue. We will pause a moment to assemble the queue. It seems we now have no questions on the conference call. I will now hand over to the Spark Live team to address written questions submitted via the webcast. Thank you. We have a few questions submitted via the Spark Live page. The first comes from Miguel Medina from Armanext, and it's a follow-on question from Iain's. The question is: Can you comment on the Canadian interest limitation rules and frame its impact in terms of worst and best-case scenarios? Is this regulatory risk putting on hold new PPP projects in Canada? Yeah, I think I'll sort of reiterate what I said. We're tracking it carefully. It's something that is beyond our control. It's gonna be government policy in Canada. We've taken provisions for it already, so there may be something more, but it's premature to say what those, what the quantum could be. Just to give you an idea what we provisioned for previously, I think it was in the neighborhood of GBP 8.8 million. So again, it's kind of highlighting the benefit of a diversified portfolio, that we're not subject to having all our eggs in one basket. So even if it was a negative outcome, it's only Canada's 35% of our portfolio, so it would have a much reduced impact than if we were exclusively in U.K. and you know, BEPS legislation was on the horizon. So, you know, I think that that's all I can say at this point in time. I think there was a second part of the question, whether this has got an impact on the future pipeline. And the answer is no, because it resets your-- there's different taxes now. Like, actually, your-- if you think about it, if the tax rate was, let's say, 25%, it would be 30%, everyone would basically then would look at 30% taxes in there and would structure the deal at 30% taxes. So if the tax rule changes, it's just actually that, or, it's for every new project, you reset it, and, or, and actually you bid it based on the revised actually set of rules. Thank you. The next question comes from Marcus Jaffe from Peel Hunt, and the question is: Have there been any significant core infrastructure project. S orry, core infrastructure transactions in your underlying jurisdictions post-period? And what, if anything, did the pricing indicate? Is this, sorry, is it post-period? Um, post-period. I think if you're talking about after thirds of June, the days that we're having actually is from, which Duncan mentioned, we have in each currency, which we invest in since December, we have seen transactions, except for Norway. And we participate in two auction processes in North America. Yeah, and, so therefore, the number of transactions we have seen has significantly increased compared to the second half of 2022. Do we have specifically seen something after thirds of June? Not something which is relevant or, or, not something which would change our mindset, yeah, in terms of discount rates. Because if you also look at the discount, if you also look at the risk-free rates, which is basically, or the Capital Asset Pricing Model, we have been at 3.8%, or, we were December of the weighted average risk-free rate. Yeah, and, despite the increase in U.K. of 50 basis points, the weighted average risk-free rate were basically unchanged. Two basis points, two basis points different, you know, if you look actually in detail, you're at 3.8. And if you look at now, the weighted discount rate as of yesterday, we would have an increase of around 20 basis points. Even that, yeah, in different jurisdictions differently, but even that is not a material change. And we also have not seen anything in the market where since the third of June, there's a different sentiment in the market or a different, different actually market transaction data, which would change actually our mindset in terms of our valuation. As Duncan mentioned, we believe we got a conservative revalued valuation, yeah, and that is underpinned by, 340 basis points, of risk premium, and also underpinned by, an independent valuation opinion. And our auditor was to say that we're towards the, the conservative end of the value- of their valuation ranges. I hope that answered the question. Yeah. Thank you. The final- Marcus can give us a call. Thank you. The next question comes from Anthony Leatham from Peel Hunt, and the question comes in three parts. First is: Given your global mandate, where do you see the best opportunities for future investments? In relation to the one construction asset, Highway 104, is there further NAV uplift on completion? And what is the outlook for further construction exposure? Okay. I guess maybe I'll try answering them. In terms of the Highway 104, that's easy. The expectation is that we will reach substantial completion, hopefully later this week or early next week. The road is open for traffic, and it's just getting a certificate from the independent engineer. So, there's no works that remain to be done. It's just a certification process. And we will revalue that. We'll take it from a construction discount rate to an operational discount rate, but it won't have a material impact on the portfolio because it's quite small. You know, we—you can see on the chart that it's less than 1%. In terms of where the best opportunities are, I think we've- Mm-hmm, right We wanna remain in the markets we're in. We wanna remain balanced and not have undue exposure to any one market. The market that we probably see opportunities in, where we would like to increase concentration is the U.S., just because it's a big market and it's only about 10%. And with the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., there may be some opportunities there. But I think you will see us continue to focus on the markets we're in. And then the final question was: Do you see us getting into construction more? We've done construction at different points in the cycle. We like it, it's because it can be value accretive if you buy something, if you come in at financial close, and then you go through the construction process and de-risk the asset. So we have a history of doing that successfully on a number of projects. So I think it's something we look at. But the reality is, a lot of those construction processes require big teams to pursue them, and we've been- we've tended to find we get better opportunities in the secondary market than the primary market. But it's not outside of our. But I wouldn't expect it to become a significant portion of our portfolio. Thank you. There are no further questions. I'll hand back for closing remarks. Okay. Well, I just wanna thank on behalf of the people in the room and the people who participated online and dialed in. Thank you very much for your interest in BBGI, and we're happy to report another strong set of results, and we thank you for your interest.