Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the 3i Group plc results for the year to 31 March 2023. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session through the phone lines. Instructions will follow at that time. Participants can also submit questions through the Webcast page using the Ask a Question button located at the top left of the page. I would like to remind all participants that the call is being recorded. I will now hand over to the Chief Executive of 3i Group plc, Simon Borrows, to open the presentation. Please go ahead. Good morning. Welcome to 3i's FY 2023 annual results presentation. I'm Simon Borrows, CEO of 3i Group. Also on the call with me today are James Hatchley, our Group Finance Director, and Silvia Santoro, our Group Investor Relations Director. The slides supporting our remarks have been put on our website this morning. As you can see from this morning's numbers, we've delivered a very strong set of results for the year to 31st of March. We've done that despite strong persistent headwinds from rising interest rates, energy costs and other inflation impacts. We've also had to deal with the latter stages of supply chain disruption from the pandemic and the Ukraine war. Our purpose remains the delivery of attractive long-term returns to our shareholders and co-investors. We invest selectively in private equity and infrastructure assets and take advantage of our permanent capital to run our winners and to build the long-term compounds within our concentrated portfolio. We focus on thoughtful, thematic origination linked to ambitious plans. Our objective is to at least double the profits of the companies we buy. If you set Action to one side, our recent realizations are delivering closer to 3x than the 2x target. That's despite the pandemic, the Ukraine war and the after effects of too much quantitative easing. It was a real challenge to produce these returns in a year like we've just had. Our performance is testament to the careful selection of our portfolio and our particular approach to active asset management. One key is that we can and do remain disciplined, and we don't have to buy into what we see as overpriced vintages. In FY 2023, we generated another excellent return on equity of 36% after delivering 22% in FY 2021 and 44% in FY 2022. Private equity produced a 40% gross investment return in the year and another good year of realizations in dividend cash flow. Infrastructure produced a 6% return and GBP 107 million of cash income. Group gearing dropped to 2% at the end of March, and we increased the proposed annual dividend by 14%. We only invest in businesses that benefit from long-term growth trends, and our focused portfolio reflects those four themes you see here. We produced this next slide for the first time in November last year. This is 3i on a page as of the 31st of March 2023. You're not buying into a big alternative fundraising action. You are buying into the underlying theme-originated investments and into 3i's focus on active asset management and a longer-term approach. Put simply, 83% of today's portfolio is anchored in private growth companies focused on value, infrastructure and healthcare. The sustainability of what we do has always been at the heart of 3i's agenda and culture. We continue to make good progress in the areas of environment, social and governance. Good governance and long-term stewardship have always been central to our mission. You can see what I mean in both group and portfolio organization. Our environmental initiatives continue to move forward effectively. We have now taken the step, after careful consideration, to commit the group and our portfolio to science-based targets. We will submit our targets to SBTi for validation during the course of this financial year. We continue to develop and train our people. Our diverse international team is the bedrock of everything we do and very much reflects the values of today's 3i. Okay, now I'll turn to our FY 23 results. I'd like to start with private equity, where we generated 40% gross investment return, including another outstanding contribution from Action. The strong performance was well spread across the portfolio. In fact, 90% of the portfolio by value grew their earnings for 12 months to December. Despite that overall growth, we have followed our valuation process and reduced the multiples for those assets facing either peer group compression and/or more challenging circumstances. James will cover valuation in more detail in a minute. We've maintained a very selective approach to new investment. Clearly, the challenges of the year and the weak M&A environment have made things a bit tricky, but we continued our good level of bolt-on activity for the existing portfolio companies. Despite the challenging environment, it was also another good year of realizations with healthy exit premiums and good cash income from the portfolio. The year was marked by resilient performance from the majority of our portfolio, mainly from the discount, healthcare, and infrastructure sectors. The travel-related assets also recovered well, but our companies in digital retail and consumer discretionary had a much more challenging year. That was mainly due to weakening consumer demand and the inflationary pressures we've all faced. This divergence in performance around the portfolio continued throughout the year. The valuations outcomes at 31st of March reflects on significant value declines in our consumer digital and discretionary investments in particular. The left-hand side of the value movement slide shows the breadth of some of the positive movements in the portfolio this year. You can see that 9 assets below Action in the list accounted for just under half a billion of value growth. As usual, a good number of these businesses have grown just as strongly as Action over the year. The right-hand side of the slide does include particularly large write-downs to Luqom in the year, and they represent a significant drag on the overall private equity result for FY 2023. In general, we continue to see healthy momentum across the majority of the portfolio. We continue to see the balance of this year as being a challenging environment for our digital and our discretionary consumer assets. Action produced another very strong result in 2022, with sales growth of 30% as a result of 280 new store openings and 18% like-for-likes. Scale benefits and good cost control delivered 46% growth in EBITDA and excellent cash conversion of 78%. The performance was very evenly spread. All product categories in all countries performed well and benefited from good availability of product in store at all times through the year. The strong performance I've just described has continued into 2023, with a further step up in performance during the first quarter. Like-for-like sales have risen to some 24% with LTM EBITDA to the end of P3 of GBP 1.328 billion. That's 42% ahead of last year's. Once again, Action supply chain is being well managed, and that has meant good availability in store across all product lines. The strong start has continued through April, and we now have four months of like-for-likes of over 20%. Action has opened some 52 new stores in the year to date. That compares to 44 new openings at the same point last year. Cash is currently approximately EUR 400 million, and that's after paying significant dividends in December and March. In March this year, we organized a liquidity window for LP investors in Action. Just under a total of EUR 500 million worth of Action interest was traded between different Action shareholders in that window. As part of the process, 3i acquired a small additional stake, GBP 30 million. These March trades were based on 31st December valuation at a multiple of run rate EBITDA of 18.5x for Action. They were completed before the payment of the Action dividend at the end of March. Action also successfully syndicated an amend and extend agreement on its existing EUR 2.3 billion of term debt that originally had a maturity of March 2025. That maturity was extended by three and half years to September 2028. The deal was extremely well-received and significantly oversubscribed. That allowed Action to increase the size of the new loan to EUR 2.5 billion while maintaining attractive pricing. Action also secured a new larger EUR 500 million RCF. The new term loan, which completes this month, marks the largest single tranche euro Term Loan B in the European leverage loan market since 2018. Action has now become one of the fastest growing scale retailers in the world, and it's also 3i's largest and most resilient portfolio investment. Action has achieved 12 years of consistent, significant growth under 3i's ownership through all phases of economic cycle and through a global pandemic. It continues to see considerable growth potential across mainland Europe and elsewhere. The group has opened over 2,000 stores across 11 countries under 3i's ownership and has the potential to open multiples of that number in the future. The organic expansion puts Action on track to join a very rare group of retailers where growth extends over decades, not just years. This store expansion is also self-funding. In fact, store paybacks average just one year and are based on very high sales densities. Action can continue to grow at a rapid pace, as well as making growing dividend distributions to 3i and its other shareholders. As I've emphasized before, 3i invests permanent rather than time-limited fund capital, and that allows us to capture the significant compounding benefits from Action's growth and consistent financial performance. It's no surprise that Action continues to represent one of our preferred capital allocations. We now focus on developing a select number of other portfolio companies to fulfill their potential to become longer-term compounders for the group. We have two early candidates in Cirtec and Royal Sanders, both of which have delivered very solid growth since our acquisition and look well set to continue on their strong trajectory. Cirtec, our medical device business, has completed nine bolt-on acquisitions since 2017, as well as building out its international footprint into Europe and Costa Rica. Cirtec now covers a very good span of end markets and operations. We expect to see continued good growth over the long term. Unlike the single-use market for SaniSure, where we're seeing some customers destocking this year, Cirtec's markets are showing a good pickup in activity. Royal Sanders, our leading personal care private label business, is showing clear potential to join our long-term compounder bucket. It has completed five bolt-on acquisitions since our original investment and is well set to continue to act as a consolidator in the sector across Europe. Incidentally, Royal Sanders is supplying a private label Wisma range to Action, which is growing well. Supporting assets such as Cirtec and Royal Sanders to fulfill their long-term potential is what we do best at 3i. That's partly to do with our people and the 3i processes which support them day-to-day. Our PE team made four new investments in FY 2023 in a difficult transaction market, where being disciplined and selective have been the real key. The team have also remained busy with bolt-ons, completing 11 deals over the course of the year. Most were self-funded by the investee companies, with the exception of those for Luqom, Arrivia, and WilsonHCG. We had another solid year of realizations with the excellent sale of Hervé Léger at a 50% uplift and a good recovery in Christ, our German jewelry business. Christ really picked up well after a very difficult pandemic. We also continued the reorganization of Q Holding. We raised GBP 332 million of proceeds from the sales of QSR, Precision Components, and the Twinsburg site. Q Holding an unlevered international catheter technology specialist with a strong book of business. The infrastructure team produced excellent portfolio performance in Europe for 3iN and other funds, very good growth in North America. The strong investment performance wasn't reflected in 3iN's share price, which actually declined over the year. This was somewhat surprising, especially when you look at how well 3iN's portfolio has correlated to the various mega trends I mentioned earlier. We have confidence that 3iN's share price will not be divorced from its underlying NAV growth forever. Once again, we saw some excellent cash income from the team, as well as continued growth in AUM. Smarte Carte in the U.S. was another travel-related asset in the portfolio, where we saw a very strong recovery in performance. Domestic travel in the U.S., where Smarte Carte operates in all 50 of the top 50 U.S. airports, recovered strongly in 2022. It also looks like international travel into the U.S. is recovering strongly this year, and that will clearly help Smarte Carte further. I'll hand over to James to take you through the numbers in more detail. Thank you, Simon, and good morning, everyone. Our financial year to the end of March has not been short of external macroeconomic, geopolitical, and capital market challenges. As Simon said, despite those external headwinds, the group has again navigated these issues extremely well. Over the next few minutes, I'd like to give you some of the color behind our strong performance and explain why 3i continues to be well-positioned for the future. Our total return on equity was 36% for the financial year, and we closed the year with an NAV per share of GBP 17.45, as you can see here. The NAV increase was driven by the significant value growth across the portfolio of GBP 3.90 and a contribution from foreign exchange of GBP 0.65. Carry deductions reduced our NAV by GBP 0.39, and a surplus of income over costs added GBP 0.41. A deduction of 51 pence from dividends explains the rest of the movement. You can see the components of the 390 pence per share or GBP 3.8 billion of value growth on this slide. We are really seeing what a difference the consistency of Action's outperformance can have on the group with a value movement in the year of GBP 3.7 billion. It's easy to say that the group's performance is all about Action, that's not right. The positive performers in the PE portfolio actually did what we wanted them to do and executed against their plans and delivered over half a billion pounds of value growth. Excellent performers include names such as AES, SaniSure, and Royal Sanders. Luqom and YDEON, having enjoyed outsized pandemic growth, together accounted for the biggest part of the PE performance decreases of GBP 310 million. We also saw a net reduction of GBP 167 million as a result of us moving 8 x down in the period and 3 x up. Our two quoted assets accounted for a reduction of GBP 106 million. Smarte Carte performed very well in the year off the back of the rebound in travel and accounted for a big part of the GBP 106 million gain from assets we value on a DCF basis, as you can see in this chart. Taking the pluses and the minuses together, the portfolio grew to GBP 18.4 billion. When you consider all the volatility and challenges we've seen, that is a truly excellent result. Simon has already talked about Action's strong absolute performance. I'd like to cover the Action valuation. Action reported an LTM operating EBITDA to P3 2023 of EUR 1.328 billion. That translates with the usual run rate adjustment to a run rate EBITDA of EUR 1.439 billion. We've applied a consistent post-discount multiple of 18.5x to those earnings. That gives Action an enterprise value of EUR 26.6 billion and a valuation of our 52.9% holding at the end of March after deducting debt of GBP 11.2 billion. The implied prospective multiple for Action, looking back at the enterprise value at the end of March last year and considering the actual run rate EBITDA one year later, is just 13 x. Before looking at the Action peer group, let's just recap on some of the KPIs we showed at the recent Capital Markets seminar. Taking the last five years, Action is a very strong relative performer against its peers. That's true in measures such as like-for-like growth, revenue growth, and EBITDA growth. This period includes the COVID period in which Action, but not all of its peers, faced certain COVID-related closures. This picture of relative performance is the best backdrop against which to consider our Action valuation multiple of 18.5x. The graph on the left for the peers shows the LTM basis. The better performing peers in the set are bunched at the top of the graph with a group five below Dollarama, Costco, and Ollie's above the average with multiples in the range 18.2x-23.8x. Action's rating compares well to this group, especially when compared to its KPI outperformance. On an NTM basis, shown on the right, Action's growth trajectory puts its likely multiple more in the middle of the pack. We don't publish an estimate for Action's NTM EBITDA, but we take comfort from the look-back which drives the 13x multiple. We also use other data points to triangulate our valuation. Our DCF doesn't need demanding assumptions to support Action's valuation. I now have the transactions completed as part of the recent LP liquidity window to add to the LP transaction back in 2019. Taken all together, we're very comfortable that the 18.5x multiple is appropriate as a basis for determining the fair value of our interest in Action. Okay, let's turn to private equity valuation multiples. I'm pleased to report that since 30th of September, markets have made a partial recovery. The FTSE and the S&P are up 10.7% and 14.6% respectively. This leaves the PE portfolio positioned relative to the average of the peer sets, as you can see on this slide. Just to remind you, this chart shows our PE performance valuation multiples in dark blue compared to the average of the multiples for the relevant peer sets in light blue. This year has been very challenging over which to consider valuations, but the valuation process we use at 3i remains rigorous, and the embedded independent challenge by the board's valuation committee and by KPMG is highly valuable. Having a relatively small portfolio of assets with low churn very much aids this process. During the first half of the year, as a result of a combination of peer group weaknesses and specific soft performance, we reduced the valuation multiples on eight assets, as shown by the red arrows which we've added over the bars on this chart. These include Luqom and YDEON. Our valuation buffers built over recent years were eroded at the end of H1. They haven't disappeared completely. The buffers have begun to rebuild over the second half of the year. We marked one company multiple down again in H2. Also moved three company multiples up a little. In each case, they represent serial outperformers in our portfolio who are beginning to drop towards the lower end of the peer group range. All of our portfolio is marked within the range of the relevant peer group multiples. Our overall portfolio weighted average multiple, excluding Action, remains at 13x. We continue to believe that multiple is appropriate, both taking a cross-cycle view as we do, and when considering that the majority of the companies in the portfolio are on track to more than double their profit over five years. It is also worth remembering that valuation levels continue to be underpinned by realizations at significant premium to their book value. Our private equity portfolio generated a gross investment return of 40%. To be clear, that investment return included a GBP 622 million gain on foreign exchange, including a GBP 129 million gain from the hedging program we put in place in October and November last year. Our private equity realizations in the year were GBP 857 million, made up of GBP 332 million from the three partial disposals completed by Q Holding, GBP 471 million from the sale of Havea completed in October, and GBP 47 million from the disposal of Christ we completed in January. Our cash investment of GBP 381 million is below what we would consider a normal run rate level of investment, that reflects the difficult market conditions the investment teams faced this year. We focused on leverage at the half year, I thought it would be helpful to repeat this slide again with the updated position. Our private equity portfolio leverage, as you can see on the left of this slide, continues to be focused on senior-only debt, it's set at a moderate level. At the end of March, the net debt to earnings ratio across the portfolio, ex Action, reduced to 4x. That's down from 4.6 x at the beginning of this financial year. Action's end of March debt ratio was 1.8 x. As Simon outlined, we're delighted that Action has since signed an amend and extend transaction for its largest term loan, which extends its maturity by three and half years. The chart on the right shows the maturity position of the private equity portfolio as a whole at the end of March. If we were to recast this chart after the closing of the Action debt refinancing, 68% of the portfolio would have maturities beyond 2026, which we think is a very solid position to be in. Term debt across our private equity portfolio is now over 70% hedged against interest rate risk. That's up from 2/3 at the half year. At a weighted average maturity of more than three years. The all-in debt cost of this portion of the book remains below 6%. Continued strong performance of Action and good performance in other vintages led to a GBP 392 million increase in the carry payable in the period. On the balance sheet, the carried interest payable has increased to GBP 1.3 billion, as you can see on this slide. This is before we reflect the crystallization of GBP 200 million of carry, which we executed in parallel with the LP trading in the Action liquidity window. The carry liability will not reflect this purchase until the cash actually flows in May. As a result of that purchase, the carry scheme related to Action will now accrue at a rate closer to 7.5% of GIR. In terms of all other private equity vintages, a sensible guide for net carry accrual as a percentage of GIR, at least once they pass their performance threshold, is circa 12%. Our infrastructure team delivered a gross investment return of 6%. The GBP 23 million unrealized profit shown on this slide is made up of a gain and a loss. The gain is GBP 116 million from U.S. infrastructure and funds, principally from Smarte Carte, which is rebounding very strongly in line with the U.S. travel industry. The loss is GBP 93 million, attributable to the 10% decline in the 3i share price over the year. Dividend and interest income of GBP 47 million largely reflects the dividend from 3iN, which was up 6.7% over the prior year. Scandlines generally had a solid year and was largely free from pandemic effects. It delivered good relative growth compared to 2019 in freight and enjoyed a return to its usual peak summer leisure volumes. The year-end valuation of GBP 554 million reflects GBP 38 million of dividends paid, as well as a cautious short-term outlook. This is consistent with the approach we took at the half year. The value of the infrastructure portfolio, including Scandlines, was GBP 2 billion, or 11% of the portfolio value at the year-end. Private equity delivered a strong contribution to the operating cash profit, not least from the GBP 325 million dividend from Action. Excluding the Action dividend, we still made a healthy cash operating profit of GBP 39 million, which is well ahead of our break-even objective. In terms of costs, we set out last year that we would expect to see a full-year effect of the recruitment that we did in FY 2022. This has indeed been the case, as you can see in the operating cash expense increase to GBP 133 million. Other costs also increased due to the impact of inflation. I can assure you that we remain focused on cost discipline. I'm pleased to report that costs as a% of AUM were only 50 basis points. An improvement of 10 basis points compared to last year allowed more of the return to drop to the bottom line for shareholders. Moving to the balance sheet. Our portfolio value ended FY 2023 at over GBP 18 billion, which is more than double the GBP 8 billion it was just three years ago at the end of March 2020. Our balance sheet remains simple and transparent. It's principally made up of investments and cash on the asset side and loans and carry payable on the liability side. Gearing at the year-end remained very modest at 2%. Cash at year-end was GBP 412 million, of which 91% was held in AAA-rated money market funds. 3i Group has access to a wide range of well-rated counterparties with strict limits for each one. We remain open to opportunities to optimize our debt structure, but we continue to have no appetite for structural gearing. Given the growth in the size of the Group, we've tweaked our capital resource tramlines. We now have a stated aim to operate within a range of GBP 500 million net cash and GBP 1 billion of net debt, up from GBP 750 million, with the usual tolerance to operate outside of this range on a short-term basis, depending on investment and realization flows. Finally, let's turn to the dividend. This morning, we announced our intention to pay a second dividend of GBP 29.75 pence, which, combined with the interim dividend paid in January, will make a full-year dividend payout of GBP 53 pence. This remains subject to shareholder approval and would represent a growth of 14% on the prior year. Before we get into Q&A, I'll hand back to Simon. Thank you, James. I'd like to just close with a few final remarks. At 3i, we're excited about the shape of the group and the potential in our portfolio. We have great teams with plenty of experience and disciplined processes to underpin our performance. We have a long-term mindset that's a result of investing permanent capital, and we see significant growth stretching out in front of us, especially from the compounders in our current portfolio. Action is clearly the leading light in this regard, and we're really beginning to see Action's compounding starting to manifest across 3i Group's returns with strong income as well as asset growth contributions. Action has started 2023 very strongly, with a significant step up in true like-for-like performance. That performance is driven by footfall as Action becomes a key destination for customers buying essentials, as well as looking for a surprise. The magnitude of the step-up in trading in the first part of this year is stronger than we expected, it's important to note that there are some very challenging like-for-like comparisons ahead, in the last four months of the calendar year in particular. We don't necessarily expect the current very high level of like-for-likes to be sustained throughout the entire year. The 3i story is not just about Action. As you've seen, we've delivered strong compound returns from all three of the group's segments since the restructuring in 2012, we expect to see those strong contributions continue in the years ahead. In particular, we expect to see other companies graduate from the P portfolio into our long-term hold bucket. I'd like to close off all remarks with a comment on active asset management at 3i, which is something we also focused on as part of our restructuring in 2012. As investors in private equity and infrastructure companies, we pursue a highly involved form of asset management. Our approach is only practical with the concentrated nature of the current 3i portfolio. We start at the outset of our acquisition process with an investment case, which we author in conjunction with company management. The simple goal of the investment case is to grow the business to at least double its profits over a five or six-year timescale. Managers of each business are closely aligned to the plan outcome and to 3i through their participation in equity and equity-linked plans as co-owners of the business. These long-term equity plans, 5+ years, are much more meaningful than short-term annual variable pay. In successful investments, this 3i approach will deliver significant capital sums to the management teams. The management team is supported in the execution of the investment case by a board primarily made up of experienced 3i executives or others hired by 3i, who bring particular sector or specialist skills to the situation. The board and 3i investment team have regular monthly involvement with the company and are assisted by other members of the local investment team. Our teams are regularly involved at different levels throughout the organization of the investee company. Active and involved governance is one of the key ingredients of our success. 3i also provides specialist legal, corporate finance, banking, ESG, and digital expertise to assist investee management teams in sharing best practice. That support particularly relates to specific projects in funding and M&A, as well as their ESG and digital agendas. The 3i investment committee and the senior partners in the private equity and infrastructure investment teams review in detail progress against the investment case of each investment every March and September. It is in these reviews that investment committee challenges the investment teams on the progress their businesses are making against their specific investment case. On those occasions, the investment committee may agree to changes which could either prolong 3i's ownership by marking the asset as having potential for our long-term portfolio, or even shorten the life of the plan to capitalize on current opportunities in the M&A market. A more highly intensive approach to asset management is only possible because we are a conviction investor with our top 20 assets making up 94% of our portfolio value. Our approach to asset management has been key to our strong investment performance since 2012. With our focus on good governance, with real influence, a long-term perspective, and permanent capital, we have a real competitive advantage against other forms of stewardship, be they more hands-off private or shorter-term focused public ownership models. Our business is not complex, but it does rely on consistency and discipline, and it helps to keep it as simple as possible. These are the attributes at the heart of our strategy. They give us confidence in the future, despite the external challenges we will all continue to face in the months and years ahead. Thank you. We'll now open up things for questions. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, participants can continue to 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 through the phone lines, please press star then one on your telephone keypad or the keypad on your screen. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may press star and then two to remove yourself from the queue. We will take our first question from Bruce Hamilton of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Hi there. Morning, thanks for taking my questions. I've got two or three. On the Action like-for-likes at 24%, I'm just checking. I don't think there's any sort of prior year adjustments we need to think about, so that sounds a relatively clean number. I hear what you're saying about, you know, that the comps becoming harder as we move into the latter parts of calendar 2023. I assume you would expect that that comes down to the sort of high single-digit level, i.e., over the next 12 months your like-for-likes are probably well above that, well into the double-digits. Just to check I'm not missing something. Secondly, linked to that, I guess the operating leverage set out at Action at sort of 14-ish% seems relatively undemanding. I just wanted to get a sense of whether you know, there was any chance of that being changed, or certainly the degree of conservatism you feel is built in. Final point, just given the appetite for the, you know, debt extension at Action, how are you thinking about potential sort of releveraging timing for that business? Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Bruce. I'll deal with these questions around Action. Yeah. Yes, it is, it is as Jo said at the capital markets day, it is pretty clean comparison this. That's point number one. I think on the like-for-likes, we do have some very strong trading in the second half of last year to jump against, and that is particularly strong from September through to year end. We would expect the year in accordance with what we guided about our plan to end up with like-for-likes in the high single digits, given the high inflation environment we're still seeing across the high street. When we authored that plan, we didn't expect to start the first four months of the year with like-for-likes over 20%. The weight of trading is in that second half of the year. We need to bear that in mind. In terms of operating leverage, again, it's a bit of the same thing. The scale benefits come through from trading at any period of the year at 24% like-for-likes are more powerful than we were expecting, perhaps this year. Again, we can't predict how it will be in the second half of the year, but certainly in the first part of the year, that is delivering scale benefits that we hadn't planned for, and therefore will put upward pressure on the EBITDA margin. In terms of the debt extension, we decided to again, keep things simple and be cautious, so focus on simply an amend and extend transaction as the first step of Action moving back into the debt markets. As I described, that was a very successful exercise. We hadn't intended on upsizing the Term Loan B. Given the weight of demand, for Action paper from investors, we decided to do that in a small way. In due course, we will consider whether we do a more straightforward refinancing for Action. The company is de-leveraging very rapidly, even while it's paying out significant dividends. That's a topic on the agenda for due course, but we're not actively working on that I think at the moment. It's been a busy period with the trading, with the amend and extend and holding the hat for the LPs through this liquidity event. Great. Thank you. Our next question is from Luke Mason of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys. Three questions. First one on deployment. Heard you messing around with a difficult outlook. I'm just wondering what you're seeing and expecting for the rest of the year in terms of deployment. Have you seen valuation multiples come off for the types of companies that you may be looking at? Then secondly, just similar on realizations in FY 2023. Just wondering if you have anything in the pipeline or how we should think about kind of cash realizations for the next year. Then thirdly, just on Action, just a cheeky question. Wondering if you can give any details on kind of gross margin progression in H1. In Q1, sorry. Just given some of the challenges with cost inflation, et cetera. Thank you. Okay. Again, why don't I take those? I mean, on deployment, if I look at where today, I think it's pretty patchy. We're not seeing significant increase in transactions that some bankers and others are talking about. We are locked on in certain sectors to some interesting situations, but we're not convinced that the vendors have walked away from last year prices or the price before. We'll have to wait to see. There is still quite a lot of capital looking for a home, even if there isn't the debt appetite there in the way it's been there in the past. We do expect to continue with a reasonable level of transactions, but we're gonna be vigilant around pricing as we normally are. We think it will be fertile ground for add-ons and that side of the activity level is pretty strong. I would still expect another year of GBP 1 billion + of cash inflows in the form of dividends and realizations this year given the plans that we have. In terms of the Action gross margin, it's pretty much where we expected it to be and where we've signaled, which is we're managing various cost inflation across the piece internally, but we are seeing some cost of goods sold reductions, particularly out of the Far East, which is helping with all of that. We're feeling pretty comfortable about where that's coming out at the moment. Great. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question on the telephone line, you may press star and then one. The next question is from Chris Brown of JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, Chris. Chris, your line is live. You may go ahead with your question. Sorry, I was on mute. Yes. Hi, Simon. Hi, James. Just a quick couple of questions. Just on the amended extend, can you talk a little bit about the terms of that and what might have changed? Just in terms of thinking about maybe covenants or the spread or anything like that, and also what hedging arrangements you might have made? The hedging, the final point, Chris, the hedging arrangements haven't really changed. We had extensive hedging arrangements in place covering Action's debt, which go out a good way. Those very much are unchanged in terms of the interest costs that we're paying. The margin on the loan itself has not changed very much. We were at the tight end of things given the interest in the paper. I think in terms of the amending, then we've cleaned things up. It's very much a cov-lite set of loans with a good degree of flexibility for Action. Okay. Thank you. The other question really was about the LP event on the Action sale. I just wanted to sort of get a bit of color around that in terms of, you know, how many investors took part, whether you had any new investors coming on board, or whether it's perhaps existing investors just topping up. Yeah, it didn't involve new investors. We kept it as a closed window, if you like, between existing LPs. It was primarily triggered by one LP who always signaled that he had a fund timeout on this time duration. That was what led to this. Essentially that investor, with a few other smaller investors, sought some liquidity. Two or three of the bigger LPs were the main purchasers of that stock. That's great. Thank you very much. There are no further questions on the conference line. I will now hand over to Silvia Santoro, Group Investor Relations Director, to address the written questions submitted via the webcast page. First question is from Sid Lall at Canaccord Genuity. What is the end game for your stake in Action? Might an IPO exit route be considered in time? Is there any need to sell the entire stake or can you hold onto it regardless? I mean, the plan at the moment is very much to continue to hold onto the stake and we regard it as a core part of the group in our long-term compound bucket. We expect to see continued good growth from the asset as we do from other parts of the PE portfolio in particular. We're very comfortable with the concentration exposure that it gives us given the resilience in the asset. We tend to measure concentration as an investment trust here based upon the cost goes into individual investments rather than on the value that they may appreciate. We're not automatically forced to sell our best performing positions. The next question is from Kim Burgo from Dumas. How should we think about the number of portfolio companies versus 3i resources? For example, how additional advice on ESG may impact this? I don't think current ESG advice is affecting the policy that we've pursued since the restructuring. We said at the time, it was our goal to get down to about 30 companies in the private equity portfolio where we have majority control. That's pretty much where we've been at for the last few years, and that's the sort of number that we think we can sustain, that we can manage from a, from an ESG point of view as well. We have a question from a private shareholder. To what extent is the Action model principally dependent on being able to buy cheap goods from the Far East? What happens if that cheap supply base is no longer available? I mean, only half of the goods that are sold in Action shops originate from the Far East. Only about 15% of the goods that go into Action shops are bought by Action from the Far East. It's important for people to understand that it's, for most everyday articles, the level of manufacturing that takes place in the Far East for those items is very considerable compared to everywhere else in the world, and even for components of those sorts of items. It's really very hard to envisage a world without being able to rely to some degree on that manufacturing base. We've actively pursued a dual sourcing policy since the early days of the pandemic, and we do have significant sources coming out of Europe now. The amount of European supply has been increasing every recent years into the Action stores. We have no further questions through the webcast. Operator, any more through the conference line? We have no further questions on the conference line. Very good. We appreciate your attention and for calling in. Thank you very much. Thanks very much.