Morning all, and welcome to the Gore Street Energy Storage Fund plc investor presentation today. With us, we have three members of the company's board of directors. Throughout this recorded meeting, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are, of course, encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab, which should be on the right-hand corner of your screen there. Simply type in those questions and press send, and we will receive them. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all those questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we start, I believe the IMC team are just going to submit a poll, which I'm sure they'd be very grateful if you had time to complete. Without further ado, I'm going to pass across to Angus Gordon Lennox, Chair of the company, to start us off. Angus. Thank you, Henry, and welcome to you all who are on this webinar. We are here to hopefully give you some background, and indeed, our position on why we think the Saba resolutions are poor for you as shareholders, and we urge you to vote against them to protect your investment. Before we go onto that, I would just like to introduce Norman Crighton, and Christine Higgins, who will just give you a short bio of their own. Norman. Good morning, everyone. My name's Norman Crighton. I joined the board of Gore Street in October of last year. My credentials for joining the board are that I've been involved in closed-end funds for the past 36 years as stockbroker, as a fund manager, and as a director of numerous closed-end funds. Recently, I was the Chair of Harmony Energy Income Trust, which was also in the battery energy storage space, and that was bought by Foresight for around net asset value back in the summer of last year. Christine. Christine. Good morning, everybody. I am Christine Higgins, and I joined the board in February of this year. My background is that I am an accountant by training, but spent most of my executive life as an investment banker arranging finance on transportation and infrastructure assets. Since becoming an independent non-executive, I have sat on boards in a number of industries, but most recently in financial services. Thank you, Christine. For those of you that have listened to these IMC presentations before, I have explained myself. I am the Chair of the company and have a deep understanding of investment companies, having been Chair of other investment companies and indeed worked in the industry for a very long time. The two directors who are not here today, and for very good reason, are Keith Pickard, who was the CFO of HICL and is deeply entrenched in the infrastructure industry, and Simon Merriweather, who has, again, a deep understanding of infrastructure. Between the three that have the most understanding of infrastructure, i.e., Norman, as he has just explained, Simon and Keith, they have formed a broad subcommittee to oversee asset sales and indeed the running of the assets as we present them. You will remember, for those of you who were on the first of these that I did, that we updated the strategy back in March 17th, I think it was, because we realized that we needed to return some value and money to shareholders. The updated strategy announced in March focused on disciplined and timely value realization, accretive augmentations, i.e., to make the assets that we have already got worth more, and returning some money back to shareholders. Those are all underway. You will know that last week we announced the sale of two Republic of Ireland assets. Indeed, this morning, this very morning, we announced another 1.75p dividend, which is a distribution to all shareholders in an equal way. We also have, as you know, further assets to be disposed of, but also to recycle this capital that we are raising from the asset disposals into augmentation of other assets to increase their value. This, we think, strengthens stakeholder alignment, in particular, for the shareholders. As I will come onto you in a minute, we are making good progress at our speed, as fast as we think is sensible. Next slide, please, Henry. We have received these two resolutions from Saba, and we think that they, through acceleration of what we are already doing, risk destroying shareholder value by derailing the process that is already well underway and in good shape. The two resolutions. One is Resolution 16, which is to make the company not be. I will read it out. An ordinary resolution that the company shall not continue in existence as an investment company. Resolution 17 is a special resolution that if Resolution 16 is passed, then within three months the directors shall put forward proposals to the shareholders to the effect that the company be wound up, liquidated, reorganized, or unitized. We believe that both of these risk destroying value because it is accelerating a disposal process. When someone seems to be an accelerated seller, the buyers tend to try and bid down or disappear. You would all have experienced this in your lives, frankly. We think that we should vote against, and you should vote against, these Saba resolutions. The other point to make at this stage is that Saba, very often in the past, has relied on shareholders like you, like others, not voting at all. Sometimes it can be difficult for shareholders to vote, but we urge you to vote for our resolutions, one to 15, and against the Saba resolutions, 16 and 17. It's really important that you vote if you want to make the most of these shares and the value. Next slide, please. We think that accelerating sales risk crystallizing value at its lowest point. You will all remember that these assets have been worth more in the past, and we think that we're at a cycle low, a cyclical low for both revenue curves and revenues for these assets, and therefore, for the NAV of them. We are a diversified portfolio geographically, and we have considered all sorts of things for this company. But we actually believe that a single whole portfolio sale is unlikely. Have we lost Angus? I think we might have done. Yeah. I don't see moderator. Do we have him? Yeah. We have just lost him momentarily. Just do bear with me while I attempt to reconnect Angus. Just bear with me one sec. No problem. Please hold on, everyone, while we resolve this technical difficulty. At what point did you lose me? Keep going. At what point did you lose me? Why don't you start us off on the slide? Okay. This slide, apologies for that. We firmly believe that accelerated sales, as envisaged by the execution of the Saba resolutions, would risk crystallizing value at its lowest point. You will remember that the NAV, which is driven by revenue curves very often, has fallen, which is unfortunate. But it's a cyclical low for these, we believe, and therefore, to accelerate into a sales process at this stage would destroy value. We also, because of our geographic distribution around the world, we think that a single portfolio sale is not possible, and certainly not as a full seller. We actually are believing and beginning to experience that live sales are being derailed with people asking questions about what is going on at this company. We need to say goodbye to the Saba resolutions and continue to do what we've been doing, which is making progress on the plan that we announced in March. Selective, steady asset sales, timed for best value, alongside the value augmentation that we've talked about, is expected to deliver much greater shareholder value than an accelerated realization that would be brought about by the passing of the Saba resolutions. Next slide, please. We're making progress. I've already talked about the dividend that we've announced this morning. We've also made progress by selling the two Republic of Ireland assets here. Completed last week. The money is in the bank. It enables us to say that our strategy is working, but there's more to do. Next slide, please. We've also announced that the Middleton pre-construction asset will be sold, or certainly in part, and disposals are underway. There's also augmentations underway, you'll be pleased to hear as well. Just to be clear, augmentations is improving the site so that they can make more revenue, more money, but it requires money to be spent on that site in order to do so. Next slide, please. Now we're all too aware as the directors, and don't forget that this board has only been fully in place since February. But we're all too aware that for some of you, and a lot of you, this has been a tough share to own. We're only too aware of that. That's why we've made these commitments, and that's why we've come up with this strategy, and that's why we have said that shareholders should get some money back in the fairest way possible. We've committed to a 7p distribution each year so that you, the shareholders, get the money back. We have asked the manager to make disposals to do both the payment of that distribution and also the augmentations of the assets that can be made more valuable by augmenting. And if that doesn't work, there's a continuation vote in 2028 anyway, and we think that that is a much, much more realistic timescale than this accelerated timescale that's happening at the moment. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, the board is great experts in the relevant parts of what can make you better value and better shareholder value. We've talked about their deep experience, and it's been completely changed. We would urge you, the shareholders, to vote for what this board, which is steeped in experience in these assets and infrastructure generally, and against Saba, which by the way, is not. Having said all of that, we urge you to vote for resolutions one to 15, against the Saba resolutions 16 and 17, and we know that it's not always that easy to vote, especially if you hold your shares through a platform. But please make the effort. Make it for yourselves, not for us, because we genuinely believe that we will deliver better value than what is being proposed here. Without further ado, I think we can move on to a question and answer session. Hopefully, you've all asked all the questions that you would like to, but please do so if that's raised any further questions. Henry, back to you. Thank you, Angus. Ladies and gentlemen, as Angus has said, please continue to submit questions using the Q&A tab. Hopefully, you found it on the right-hand side of your screen. We will review those questions submitted today. In the meantime, we would also like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard through the portal. We have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, so thank you for those who have done so, and please do keep them coming. I suppose we have received quite a number. I will try and group them in areas, to maximize time. I suppose there is a couple here might make sense to start on performance. It is an area you touched on, Angus, in your comments just now. One asking why performance has been poor versus the rival Gresham House, as the questioner puts it. Another says, "We have seen an 11% decline in share price to date following the latest set of changes. What assurance should we gain from the board and manager on a recovery of value?" What do you have to say on performance to date? We are clearly disappointed about performance. I think you shareholders have had a rough time of it, frankly. That is why we are trying to make it better value for you in the future. We are not alone as a company that in the infrastructure and renewables area where many of the infrastructure renewables companies have actually suffered poor performance, largely in the battery energy storage space because of the perfect storm of massive build-out of energy assets and also higher interest rates than when this company was first envisaged. Therefore, it comes back to the point about the cyclical low. What happens when lots of assets are built, revenues fall. Because revenues fall, assets stop being built, therefore revenues rise again, and I think we are in the middle of that at the moment. Norman and Christine, do feel free to dip in if you would like. No, sounds good. As to the Gresham House one, the Gresham House is a different company to us. I do not propose to talk too much about them. I would say that they no longer pay a dividend, and of course, our total return is a different number to the Gresham House total return. Similarly, we are geographically diversified, and they are not. We think that our strategy, however, will produce an outcome for shareholders that is significantly better than the current outcome. You referred to the manager just then of a different trust. There is a couple of questions here on Gore Street Capital as manager. One saying would you invite external companies? I think that means management companies, to bid for management. Another that says, after eight years, would you consider a manager review? I suppose, is that one of the areas that you looked at in your review earlier this year? The answer is yes. As simple as that. We looked at everything. We looked at every type and kind of how to get better value for shareholders, and that, of course, included looking at the manager. The outcome of that, however, if someone has bought it, built it, and is running it, they are more likely to know it and manage it better than others. But we are open the whole time to all aspects of trying to get better management, and better performance of the share price and indeed the NAV. If that includes manager change, that includes manager change. But the reality is that we have decided at the moment that the current manager is best placed to produce best value from these assets. Great. One here on the discount more generally, and I think this touches on a number of areas in some other questions, but I think this one sums it up quite well. What are your plans and strategies for reducing the share price discount? The thing that will reduce the discount will be better performance of the NAV and better background in the renewables area as a whole. We are not alone in a wide discount. We have a wide discount, but we are not alone in a wide discount in this area, in the renewables area. Clearly, we're uncomfortable with the discount. We think that the distributions over time will improve the discount because we'll be giving money back to shareholders at NAV, which is effectively what we're doing with these distributions. Therefore, we think that over time, given performance, given better performance, the discount will close. Now, of course, we've looked at all sorts of things like share buybacks and other things. The reality is share buybacks give money to just those people that are selling, whereas we wanted it to be very much more equal so that the distribution is spread across the shareholders. In time, we will be looking at our KPIs, and we'll be looking at our augmentations. The reality is that if the return of buying our own shares is better than the return of augmenting some of our assets, then we'll be doing that as well. We look at everything, and Norman and I have been deeply involved with investment companies, which therefore means with discounts over the years, and there's no quick fix to any of these problems. But, we are on it, and we are wanting to close that discount more than anything. Great. I suppose as part of that strategy, an addendum question here to that theme. I'll read it out verbatim. If a portfolio realization is value destructive, why did the board change the strategy to paying out a large dividend, which would require realizing assets? I suppose going to that point of the strategy you just described, Angus. Yeah. We felt that the shareholders should have some distributions back, so that we could. We went back to the original prospectus, and 7p was the right number. The issue is the accelerated sales. It's not the sales themselves. We think that accelerated sales destroy value, and therefore, but sales in an orderly fashion create value and enable us to pay some of that money back to shareholders. So we changed it so that we've got capital recycling, we've got augmentation, and we've got distribution to shareholders, financed in part by the orderly sales of these assets. What would derail that process is some kind of disorderly sale of those assets. That's clear. I think we should move on to an area regarding the Saba letter of last week, and some of the points that were raised in that, because there have been some questions on that area. I'll read this one out, but there are some similar. Can you address the concerns raised by Saba in their most recent press release? There were concerns around some of those points that were raised, I suppose in particular, regarding the sale. Would you be able to talk more about that, Angus? Yeah. I think I've addressed some of the things already. I think let's just talk about the Irish sales, and us not being able to disclose the precise number of what we have sold. We've sold, just to be clear, not to a related party, but to another fund that is advised by GSC who have got their own Investment Management Committee, et cetera. The reason that we haven't been able to disclose that number. It's nothing to do with our choice. It's because the limited partner that was buying the assets from us put it into their contract that we weren't allowed to disclose it. We had two choices. We could disclose it. We had two choices. One was not to sell the assets, because we couldn't disclose it or to sell the assets at a premium to NAV and not disclose it. We took the second choice. By the way, the whole process, which I think is understandable, the whole process of that was not only overseen by an independent third party. There was a company called Alexa that was selling those assets for us. At GSC, there were two different parties with a barrier in between them, so that we could ensure that no information flowed between the two, so we can ensure the best value. The third thing is that, as I mentioned before, there was a subcommittee of the board who monitored this unbelievably closely, and we were comfortable, completely comfortable, with the process and how we did. We were comfortable with the valuation, more than comfortable with the valuation that we achieved. But we were, to be honest, quite frustrated that we couldn't announce it, but that we were stuck between a rock and a hard place. That's where we are. The choice we had is don't sell it or sell it and don't say the price. I think that was the main thing in that letter. Great. I think that covers a lot of points actually, in that fairly comprehensive answer in a number of areas. A few of the questions refer to related party. This clearly wasn't a related party, was it? No. As you might imagine, with that board that I put up there beforehand, all unbelievably experienced executives, if you like. We asked a lot of questions about this. We took advice from lawyers, took advice from our investment bankers. We've taken a lot of advice on a lot of things. It was clear that this was not a related party transaction. Great. Question here on Germany, which we haven't spoken about yet. I'll read out in full. You've previously spoken about disposing of your assets in Germany and saying this was well advanced. A lot of time has now passed. The shareholders have heard nothing. Please provide an update. What can we say today about Cremzow? We can say that we'll advise you as soon as we can about it, but I would say that these resolutions have probably not helped this process. The point that we make about it disrupting the process that we're trying to do, it has taken longer than we wanted. It's still in process, and we're hopeful that we'll be able to announce something in due course. But as I say, we talked about delay beforehand, and there is currently delay. Yeah. But if there wasn't delay, we would've announced it. A follow-up on the Saba points again, just querying whether the board will disclose the sale price. Clearly, that's something that you're not able to do, but please do add anything else, further color on that. Well, we're contracted not to. That's clear. Unfortunately, as I say. By the way, we are quite pleased that, A, we have completed it, and B, we have got a good price for it. We would love to shout it from the rooftops, but we are contractually obliged not to. Roughly how many bidders were involved in the process? I do not know if there is anything more we can add other than, A, it was competitive. It was certainly competitive. There were a lot of bidders. Just so you know, the winner was the highest bid. Norman, I do not know whether you want to say something. You were closely involved in that, but as you can imagine, the funnel narrows until you get to one or two or three bidders. At the top of the funnel, there were a lot of interested parties in the data room and stuff like that. One probably does not need to say more than that unless you would like to, Norman. No, I think you have got it. Yep. You touched on share buybacks briefly earlier. I suppose we have sort of covered that, but there is a question here. Would they make sense given the big discount to NAV? I think you were saying before that you prefer something more equitable, but. Well, so the distribution is obviously equitable, and it is at NAV rather than, so it is giving shareholders money at NAV effectively by giving them a distribution via the dividend method. I think a share buyback will certainly be considered in the future because you would be buying your current assets at a discount, effectively. But there are a couple of things about share buybacks. One is that you end up buying them from only a small amount of shareholders, and therefore, what happens to the other ones, which is why we think the distribution is better. Secondly, actually, we have got this KPI about augmentations and things like that, and we will be, at every stage, be looking at whether we are it is better for shareholders for us to augment current assets or to buy back shares at a discount. There are all sorts of IR calculations that can and will be done. The ultimate answer is that we actually need effectively a war chest, which we have not quite got to yet through these timely disposals, so that we can allocate that capital in the most effective way. We certainly have not written off share buybacks, but there are other competitors for the money. Great. Is there anything we can say on when the next NAV is likely to be released? It's likely to be released in the not too distant future. I'm needing some help here as to exactly when it's going to be released. I think it's- We can always come back on that one. I think let's go back on that with an exact date rather than me saying an incorrect date. How many assets can you sell before the trust is too small to be of interest to investors? Question here. As you would know, the gamut of investment companies range from tens of millions to hundreds of millions to billions. We are only too aware that we want to appeal to investors, and size is an issue of that for some of the wealth managers and things like that. But for many retail shareholders, it's not so much of an issue. I think we're still at the very early stage of this process, and we will be selling some assets and augmenting others. In due course, we effectively want to trade out of this predicament that we're in, and if we manage to do that, we might be able to manage to grow again. But that's not on the short-term horizon at the moment. First of all, we need to get through this predicament. A couple of questions here on merger candidates considerations, some of them specific, some of them not. Are mergers within the renewable sector something else that you've looked at, reviewed as part of the process? We reviewed everything at the time of the strategic review. We reviewed everything. We would do so. This is a continuous process, by the way. But we think that our strategy is the best one to deliver value for shareholders. Of course, if someone was to come over the hill with an offer that we should look at, we will certainly look at it. Of course, we will. That's our job as a board to do what's best for shareholders. But we haven't received anything like that, just to be clear at the moment. There is one here. Sorry, there are a lot of similar questions that I am working through. There is one here that is different. There are assertions that Alexa is not truly independent from the manager. Can you comment on that aspect, please? I am not going to talk about the relationship between GSC and Alexa. What I will say is that the previous board appointed Alexa themselves with no recommendation from GSC, with nothing, et cetera. They were the ones that appointed Alexa. I will let you write a letter to Alex, the Chief Executive Officer of Gore Street, and he may reply and tell you what he feels about them. It is not for me to say at this stage. I think that, no, I can categorically say that Alexa is in no way attached to GSC. There are a number of more detailed questions about the process for the Irish assets that we can't go into. There is one here. What reasons did the buyer share for not disclosing the price? You would have to really ask the buyer. There' s one here on augmentation. Is there an approximate timeframe on augmentations adding value? Presumably, this takes some months to years to augment assets. They also make the point that share buybacks are accretive on a shorter timescale. I think you have already covered share buybacks to some extent, but is there anything more we can say on augmentations? I suppose the KPIs provide some indication of what you are targeting. Exactly. The KPIs provide some, and also the augmentations are, some are very well advanced and things will be coming on stream quite soon, and some are pipe dreams in the future. So it is difficult. What we have done is we have set targets for the amount of sales disposals that we want, GBP 25 million this year, GBP 75 million next. That money will then be used for, A, the distribution, B, the augmentations, et cetera. So there is a range of different dates for the augmentations. Don't worry if we have any good news on anything, you will be the first to know. I think we've already stated that Stony and Ferrymuir could be done by the end of the year, and then Enderby will be done early next year. That's what we've stated and that's what we're working on. A question here on the total expense ratio. What is it or perhaps where can they find it? That be available in the report. I haven't got the numbers complete to hand here at the moment, so I think we can go back to people with a proper answer of that. But we pay GSC a management fee, and then we also pay them for some services that they provide us. And the board is in the process of making sure that all those services are absolutely good value for money, and to date, we think that they are. And get a better service as well, by the way. Great. Perhaps one more then, on a different area. Can this business generate an economic profit and operational return on equity greater than your discount rate? If so, how long will this take? I suppose, earnings, what's the sort of outlook there in terms of, I suppose, the augmentations come into it equally- It is also the revenue curves and indeed just the overall level of revenue. Because we are geographically diversified, they are different in different places. The overall mix of the revenue is something like GBP 7.5-GBP 8 per MWh. That has been, in the past, as high as 22, 23, only a couple of years ago. It comes back to this whole point about us being at a cyclical low, we think. Certainly at a low compared to those few years ago. Therefore, if things recover fast, then clearly our earnings will recover, and we will get back to a much better position in terms of cover and return on capital, et cetera. Great. Perhaps another one just playing in that should be quite straightforward. The latest NAV for the recently sold Irish assets. What was that? GBP 13.6 million, I think. Yeah. That was March, wasn't it? Yeah. Valuation there. Wonderful. I think we are well over the half-hour mark, so I think we can sort of draw that to a close. Thank you for all the questions that have been provided. We are going to redirect investors to provide their feedback, which the company will greatly value. Angus, can I pass across to yourself for closing comments? Of course. Thank you for engaging with us. Thank you for being on this call. Thank you for listening to what we have to say. What I would say is that we as a board firmly believe that a vote against the Saba resolutions is the future for better value for shareholders. Because the Saba resolutions accelerate the whole process, and accelerating the process at this stage, we think would be a large mistake. We urge you to combat all those difficulties in actually voting, because we know that there are difficulties to vote. And we urge you to vote for our resolutions one to 15, and against the Saba resolutions 16 and 17. The last thing I would say is that you have three directors here. There are five of us. We are all available to answer further questions, should you so wish. You can do that via the Company Secretary, Benjamin, and he can pass on the questions. And we are very happy to engage at whatever time. So thank you again, and we will hopefully see you at the AGM, which is being held on the 16th of September in the offices of Stephenson Harwood in the middle of the city. Thanks so much. Angus, thank you for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that management and the board better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete and will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the board, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. Good afternoon all.