Right, I think that's most people. Welcome, everybody. We're very pleased to welcome you to the review of Impax's interim results. A couple of bits of administration from myself first. This presentation is being recorded, so if you miss part of it, don't worry, you can watch it again. We're very keen with the management to address any questions you might have. Please submit them via the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen, and we will try and deal with them after the formal presentation. The deck that Karen and Ian are going to be using, along with lots of other useful pieces of information, is available on the Impax investor relations website. We're very pleased to welcome back CFO Karen Cockburn and the CEO and founder many years ago of Impax, Ian Simm. I am now going to hand over to Ian to start proceedings. Okay, thank you, Andy. So, yeah, let's just go to the summary slide, which might be the one before that one, so the blue one. There you go. Mm. The one after that. Thank you. So just, for those who don't know Impax, I started the business in 1998, and from the outset, we have been an investment manager targeting the institutional and wholesale space around the world, with a investment philosophy that effectively says that what we call the transition to a more sustainable economy is a source of potential investment outperformance, from a pure capitalist perspective. So although many of our clients are interested in, if you like, the ethical side of green investing, then our strong pitch is that there's money to be made by, on a risk-adjusted basis, by investing in businesses that are gonna benefit from, from this transition to a more sustainable economy. So roughly speaking, by the end of March, we were about $50 billion or nearly GBP 40 billion under management, with a couple of 100 institutional investors and wholesale clients, and the wholesale clients are reaching retail type investors all around the world. Only 22% of our client base by assets is from the U.K., and so relative to other U.K. peers in that mid-size space, we are pretty unusual in having such a low exposure to U.K. market, which of course, has had problems with the amount of liquidity in it. So today we have investment teams out in the U.S. and in Hong Kong, and then further teams in Tokyo and Dublin, and, shortly we'll be organizing and setting up an office in Copenhagen, as I mentioned. So that's a summary of the business, and then on the next slide, the investment philosophy essentially is that in the context of a constrained planet and rising population with rising expectations of a standard of living, then there is money to be made by companies that are, first of all, providing solutions to resource efficiency and environmental solutions. So, for example, air quality, water quality, sustainable green type food, but also businesses in the financial sector or healthcare sector that are benefiting from the sustainability trends. So, what we've done for just over a quarter of a century is assembled a sophisticated investment team, which is analyzing alpha opportunities in three asset classes: listed equities, fixed income, which is a public fixed income rather than private debt, and private equity with a focus on value add around infrastructure markets in the renewable energy space. Next slide. This is the history of the business going back to day one, which was a GBP 15 million or $25 million mandate from the World Bank, and you can see it took us quite a long time to get to GBP 1 billion under management. But the last five or six years or so, we've really expanded very rapidly on the back of much bigger investment opportunities and real globalization of interest in this space. Last few years, as we all described, last kind of two years, we've been fairly flat, for reasons that we'll go into, but, we do have a very well-established global brand in this area, which is, increasingly of interest to both capitalists, asset owners in the pension and fund insurance space, sovereign wealth fund and private banking areas, but also those ethically minded investors who are looking to have a, a non-financial impact. Next slide, please. So, just, summarizing the report that we put out, very recently, which is the half year report to the end of March 2024, so six-month period. So you can see here that, we've expanded assets under management quite nicely, nearly 6% over that time period to about GBP 39.6 billion. We have really developed our product range with a couple of new products. We've expanded our distribution in certain parts of the world, and we've been the very focused on operational management and efficiency in the context of quite choppy markets. So a big push to introduce more IT and scalable business processes with a view to underpinning the next phase of growth of the company. And on the right-hand side there, you can see a number of the investment awards that we've won in the last six-month period. Thank you. So this shows how the assets under management have changed. So the top half of this page is the reporting period, six months, showing that the market movements, Forex, et cetera, were significantly beneficial. That's the black line there, and then the net flows, inflows minus outflows, were negative in this last six-month period, so I'll explain that in a moment. If you contrast, that's the previous six months, which is from first of April 2022 to 30th of September. That's what's shown in the bottom half of the page. So actually, markets against us in that period, flows also net negative, but to a lesser degree. Next slide, please. So here you can see a mapping of the various financial results. So please focus on the dark blue lines here, which contrast with the previous six months in green and the six months before that in orange. So this is consistent with the 25-year AUM chart that I showed earlier. So things are pretty flat for the last couple of years. The six months that we're reporting on, as shown in the top left section of this slide, everything's slightly down in terms of revenue and profits relative to the previous six-month period, and that, in simple terms, is because the assets under management on average were down slightly, and the costs pretty flat. So you can see the operating margin just hitting 30% bottom left of this chart. However, we are as a board been very confident in the prospects of the business, and so the interim dividend, as shown in the bottom right here, is gonna be the exactly the same as the interim dividend from the previous financial year. Next slide. So, investment conditions, I mean, clearly, as I'm sure everybody knows, it's been quite a tricky couple of years for investment, particularly around active investment. So 2022, the calendar year, was impacted dramatically by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and that so was a major contributor to the extension of uncertainty around economic growth and also inflation. So there was generally a flight to money market funds and to fixed income funds in 2022, which was considerably extended into 2023, when there was actually a strong surge around interest in the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks with an AI exposure, where we've had a little bit of coverage, but definitely underweight relative to passive indices. So in that sense, the last two years, in contrast to the five or six years beforehand, have been quite a challenging environment to be investing in what essentially are quality growth businesses. So, at the same time, though, the transition to a more sustainable economy has been underpinned by some quite strong secular growth trajectories, so further commitments around targets for both renewable energy and the switch to electric vehicles around the world. And also the increasing evidence that climate-related risks, including hurricanes, general storms, droughts, were impacting share prices of individual companies, and some cases undermining the ability of regulators to provide reassurance, including, for example, regulated insurance markets in many of the states in the U.S. are now very, very fragile or almost non-existent in some cases, given the scale of the recent losses. So, very happy to come back to questions about that. It's a bigger macro picture if anyone would like to at the end, but let's just move on to the next slide. So in that context, as I said, the investment performance of the quality growth-oriented portfolios we've been running has been relatively behind markets and generic benchmarks for the last two years, having been significantly ahead for the previous four or five years. The so-called specialist strategy, which is our longest established equity strategy, going back to 2002 with our investment trust, or 1999 on an advisory basis, has derated quite considerably, as shown in the P/E chart at the bottom there, now back to the median level over the last 10 years. But as you can see from the top right of this chart, then the growth rate of the underlying portfolio companies is considerably ahead of the growth rate of companies in the generic index. And so even though the valuation's a little bit ahead on the price earnings to growth ratio basis, then, this portfolio is looking particularly cheap and therefore set for a mean reversion over the next period, which of course depends on a number of catalysts. But we are pretty confident that over the next 12-18 months, mean reversion will happen, in which case, this type of strategy should significantly outperform global equity indices. Next slide. So this is a bit of a dashboard of how our assets under management look. So you can see on the top left, the green area is our thematic equity products, half a dozen or so strategies that are focused on Environmental Markets, so in particular, renewable energy, energy efficiency, water and air pollution control, and also materials efficiency and sustainable food and agriculture. So relative to our more broad-based products in the so-called Sustainability Lens space, we've seen a somewhat reduced coverage there as the Sustainability Lens products have proven relatively more attractive to new clients. That's broken out into a little bit more detail in the top right, where you can see in the donut chart the breakdown of how the two types of fund break down by different strategies, so Leaders, Specialists, et cetera, for the Environmental Markets area. In the chart on the bottom left, you can see the geographic breakdown and see how the EMEA region has shrunk slightly as a result. Explain that in a couple of slides, how that's originated, but U.K., North America have been growing relative to EMEA exposure. And we've also seen a slight increase in our own label funds relative to third-party funds, and in particular, BNP Paribas third-party funds that we sub-manage for them, which I'll explain in a moment. Next slide, please. So, yes, I think just pulling that out in a bit more detail. So we've seen a very strong increase in AUM because of the investment performance of the underlying strategies on an absolute basis, but the net outflows that we've reported in the six-month period to the end of March have been 77% from one client, which is a BNP Paribas channel, and roughly another 12% from or 11%, rather, from the St. James's Place U.K. channel. So, 88% of the net outflows have come from just two clients who are wholesale clients, and meanwhile, we've seen a net increase in the institutional clients, and I think a very satisfying retention of clients in that institutional space. So we're quite firmly marketing our services in the institutional space as offering a chance of outperformance over a three to five-year time period. So generally, with one or two years of underperformance, then that's more often treated as a buy signal by institutions, than it is a sell signal. On the next slide, this is a bit further of a breakdown, with the blue again being the most recent six-month period, green being the previous six months, the end of September 2023. So this is just more detail around what I've already said. So anything to the left of the vertical line for each chart is net outflows. St. James's Place switched from net inflows to net outflows in that time period. And BNP Paribas, you can see the elephant in the room there. That's the 77% of the total, which is quite extraordinary. What's going on there, seemingly, is that the central asset allocation team within BNP Paribas, particularly the private bank, have been bearish, unusually bearish about equity markets for the last 12 months or so, and that's in contrast to particularly North American asset allocators in similar situations who've been positive about equities since November or so last year. And, and therefore, that the North American equity flows generally have been positive, not completely in the context of Impax as shown in the top right, which is a slightly complicated story, but essentially, there's one or two North American investors who've been allocating to fixed income. And then you can see in Asia Pacific on the bottom right, we've still maintained slightly positive flows, as we have with the separate accounts in the U.K., whereas the rest of continental Europe outside BNP Paribas has also been slightly negative in aggregate. So that's a bit further detail of how the flows have panned out. Next slide, please. So one of the points that we have been drawing attention to in our communication in the last nine months or so has been the opportunity in the fixed income area, where we've had capabilities since our Pax acquisition in early 2018. Those capabilities in U.S. high yield and U.S. investment grade. What we've been doing for most of 2023 and into 2024 is strengthening the existing teams with material new hires in the research area and trading. Last September, we recruited into a new position, which was a global head of fixed income, somebody based in London, who comes with an excellent track record of building a fixed income business. He's been helping the U.S. teams to strengthen their investment process and become more appealing to institutional investors. With myself and one or two others, we've developed and completed this acquisition in Denmark, which is a relatively small amount of assets under management, around EUR 400 million. But what they are doing is generating some very notable alpha relative to high yield in emerging markets benchmarks, and they've got a very nice broad client base in Europe. So their current employer, former client, doesn't have great distribution, and so by coming over to Impax, then we're very confident that we'll be able to accelerate their distribution. There's also scope elsewhere in the industry to be bringing on board further teams, so we're also signaling at this stage that conversations are developing quite nicely for further inorganic expansion of this team. So we'll be back in touch as soon as that's taken a further step. So very good progress on fixed income, and that should be a major contributor to Impax's growth going forward. On the next slide, you can see that in the equity space, we have developed two new products in the last period, last six months. So the social leaders product, which is focused on financials and healthcare in particular, and then our emerging markets product, which is a small extension to the Asian equities product we've been running for around 14 years. And then we are close to establishing a so-called EAFE product, which is for American investors, sort of, international ex-U.S. equity investors. So that's something which is underway. And then in private market space, we've had a final close for our fourth private equity fund. Fund one was established in 2005, so we've raised just less than EUR 460 million, which makes it the largest fund. To date, and our investment strategy, which is investing in the development and construction of renewable energy projects, mainly in Europe, but some degree in North America, is continuing to produce some great investment returns. So, in contrast to many operational infrastructure investors who've seen that their returns have been squeezed dramatically by rising cost of capital, then broadly speaking, this development and construction opportunity has not seen that kind of constraint. Next slide. So, distribution for the firm is a key edge. So as I said at the outset, almost 80% of our assets under management are from non-U.K. investors, which is a very sharp contrast to many of our similar size listed peers on the U.K. market, who tend to be focused, sometimes exclusively on U.K. investors. So we do have 22% of our client base from the U.K. and a U.K. sales team, but we have 50 people doing distribution-type work out of North America, and are increasingly well-positioned with both wholesale and institutional clients for U.S. distribution. And we are excited also about a relatively new relationship out in Latin America as we are in Canada. And then in Europe, we've been extending our team representatives from having somebody just covering the Benelux region to adding 18 months ago somebody also covering Scandinavia, and then that person's gonna move to Germany 'cause she's a German national, and we're just bringing on board a Scandinavian expert who's based in Denmark. So, careful expansion of our European distribution, and then, we launched our Tokyo office in March 2023, on the back of an exciting mandate from GPIF, the government pension fund, coupled with an opportunity to work more directly with Japanese pension funds and also Japanese wholesale markets. So, that's adding to our Asian presence, which includes a large investment team based in Hong Kong. And then we've got a very large investment partner in the form of Fidante, based in Sydney and Melbourne, covering the Australian market. Next slide. And meanwhile, we have extended and put more structure around our non-financial research work in the what we've now called our Sustainability Centre, which of course is a key feature of Impax's edge and brand, and as well as providing investment ideas and color to our investment teams, this Sustainability Centre is also of great appeal to our institutional client base, who are very interested in the policy advocacy thought leadership work on topics like physical climate risk, and also our impact reporting. So, we'll continue to invest in that area as well. Next slide, please. Corporate services, which is everything apart from distribution and investment management, is a key part of our risk assurance and quality control. So we have continued to invest in our back and middle office, legal, compliance, and risk management, and we do have a well-established internal audit process, which goes through a three-plus year cycle, just checking that everything is working in line with sector best practice. That's run by an external firm. You can see here that the firm's office headcount has been broadly flat, very slightly up on the previous six months. Again, the dark blue is the recent numbers relative to the previous six months in green and the one before that in orange. And you can see here the relative size of our different office spaces. So very much thinking of Impax as a, as a sort of full service boutique in three asset classes: listed equities, private equity, and fixed income, with a commitment to grow this area. We have been talking about getting our $50 billion to at least $80 billion over the medium term, so that's still very much the medium-term objective. Next slide, please. And then, just before handing over to Karen, just a quick note that we have had a couple of board additions in the last six months. So, you can see in the top right here, Julia Bond and Lyle Logan have joined the board in anticipation of Sally Bridgeland, who's the Chair at the moment, and Lindsey Brace Martinez stepping down the end of July, which will be the end of their nine-year window, and so in line with sort of sector best practice, they're leaving after nine years. The Chair position will be taken over at that point, August first, by Simon O'Regan, who's been with us on the board for four years or so, and his Senior Independent Director role will be taken by Annette Wilson. So, a few changes of seat on the board, and very pleased to welcome Julia and Lyle. I think it's now time for Karen to take over. Thank you. Can I just check you can hear okay? Yep. I think so, yep. Yep, okay. Andy, you can let us know if not. So look, I, I will try and get through these next few, few slides, look forward, to your, to your questions. But just adding a bit more color to what the headlines on the financials that Ian has taken you through. So we've reported profits for the period of GBP 25.8 million. So that's against the continued headwinds. This was revenue held up well at GBP 86.2 million, and then we'll get into a bit more detail around with some strong cost discipline. We've managed to hold the costs, as expected over the period, the period, fairly low. Ian has mentioned this Danish acquisition, Absalon. It's progressing into half two and is not yet included, progressing well for half two and is not yet included in these numbers. Now, so looking at just the revenue in a little more detail, you know, I'll not speculate too much, but you've seen sort of the share price, if you've been following it this morning, has had a reaction to a degree in terms of that sort of setback in profit. Now, we reported at the end of March that very strong growth in the AUM up to GBP 39.6 billion. But what I have to point out is that came from what was probably back in September, about GBP 37 billion. So the average over the period, roughly GBP 38 billion. What that had done is followed a period in the prior six months or the last six months of 2023, where the assets started high and finished low with roughly an average of about GBP 39 billion. So despite being on, when we look back into 2024, despite being on that upward trajectory, the average for the period has pegged back that revenue. When you look sort of underneath the bonnet of, in terms of the main drivers of that reduction in the AUM, it really is, you know, quite a story of two halves. So for the first time, really, we saw the significant outflow that Ian has talked about, the GBP 2.7 million. But importantly, that coming from two very focused, sort of European wholesalers in SJP and BNP in the main. The important message behind that is that we're seeing our institutional clients being very sticky. So looking at that outflow of GBP 2.7 billion, on top of the annualized effect of the smaller outflow that we saw in the second half of 2023, that sort of compounds into have the most significant impact there of GBP 5.2 in terms of the impact of the net flows. We have recovering performance that we saw over the six months, and markets moving more generally in our favor, that's added a million pounds to the overall revenue base, taking it to 86.2. The main question, I guess, that you'll maybe have is where do we see this figure go? Well, look, we're hopeful we are on that upward trajectory and see some growth in the revenue into half two. In order to support that, what we do have to see is that markets continue in our favor, that we continue with the improved performance, and also that we see then a reversal in those net flows. What I can say is that as we move into half two, we are seeing some promising signals in terms of being able to continue on that upward trajectory. But there's many items in there that are out with our control. But really, what is in our control, and is a very important data point, is looking at the average fee margin, which I'm pleased to say has is remained stable at 45 basis points. Now, that is quite a complex mix of our 90+ clients that we have in a variation of different strategies. And any variability that we see, you know, plus or minus a basis point around that, will be driven by mix. That's what we're seeing just now, and we're not, we're not seeing market pressure right now in terms of price, and we retain the guidance that we expect to be in the region of the mid-40s over the short to medium term, and drifting slowly down over time, is how we see that moving. If we could move on to the next slide, Andy, I do want to spend just a moment. Really, for me, this is Impax's, you know, the how it diversifies itself relative to other asset managers. And it's really three things. So first of all, it's this revenue. So our revenue by strategy, we have 20+ strategies that are focused on the transition specialist asset manager focused on this transition to the sustainable economy. There is a range of strategies that we have in there, and over time, as we expect, we're seeing the very specialist Environmental Markets that share coming down quite significantly from 64 to 59, as we expected, with the broader focused Sustainability Lens coming in. And then also, as we see our listed, our private markets business grow, that that is what the driver in that increase in the mix from the other. And as we grow into fixed income, we expect to see that differentiate further. I think one of the strongest levers that we have here at Impax is then moving on to the revenue that we have by region. We continue to win globally. We had new wins in the period in Sweden and in Australia. And what that's doing is allowing us, as Ian says, to differentiate away and dilute exposure to the U.K. asset management sector, which is generally, facing the toughest headwinds. EMEA is now making up 44%, and North America is continuing to grow and now, heading, over to, well over a third, of the business. I expect to see that strength of that diversification that we have across the regions increase over time as we expand that footprint. And as we expand that direct distribution footprint, what you then see is sort of the third main area of differentiation and diversification is this revenue by client type. Key point to pull out there is BNP are now make up nearly just a quarter of our revenue. It wasn't long ago when that was well over 30%. So what that proves to us is the direct distribution is working, and we expect to see again that dependency upon BNP to reduce further. So I think all in all, it's you know it, it, the AUM, the average AUM is down, but we're on the upward curve on that equation. I think all in all, a solid revenue performance. We're hopeful that those early signals carry through the rest of half two. Moving on to the next slide, if I can, very quickly, to just look at the costs, that we're reporting cost growth of just 1%, over the period. There's a number of drivers in there on top of just very, very strong cost disciplines that we have here at Impax. What we've now done, I think, and most importantly, is that, you know, over the past maybe two years, finishing mid 2023, where we had been adding cost, that we reached a point of stability. That's really where we're, and importantly, where we're at now in, as we face into sort of these more challenging, tight, more challenging revenue headwinds, is that we're not under pressure to add cost to our listed equity business. We have built it, and what we're observing now is really the leverage that we believe we've built into that business, now primed for when revenue growth returns, and favorability returns to asset management more generally. We've also been running an efficiency program really focused on technology, removing redundant processes, adding Salesforce payroll. What that's done is created a bit of headroom, but it also has allowed us to cautiously invest organically into fixed income. We've launched those two new listed equity strategies, and we are able to grow our private market business, so driving ahead with the strategy at the same time. Looking over to the right-hand side, you can see we've only added a small number of heads, six heads, actually, in the period, and the majority of those were into the fixed income business. Lastly, just looking at the cost breakdown, the shape of the costs have remained very similar, with about 70% of the cost base in our staff costs. And therein includes our bonus, where we retain the policy of paying up to 45% of profits before bonus. And you can see a small uptick in the non-staff costs, driven by some revenue related, and that really is the closing that we had on the private markets fund. Moving on then, just bring it-- or so and in terms of a bit of guidance on that, so, you know, we've done, I think, extremely well to hold those costs. I think there'll be a bit of inflationary pressure into the second half. So sort of looking at the second half, maybe, single digit, low single digit growth into the second half. Bringing that together then on the next slide, just looking at the operating margin. It is, I guess, those revenue headwinds that are pegging back the operating margin. I think a fairly credible outturn at 30%. And we, you know, we remain committed to sort of the growth of the business. We are building a business for the medium term. And we believe that the operational leverage, particularly in the listed equity business, is now there. With markets in our favor, we remain committed to returning the overall operational, the operating margin into the mid- to high-30s%, in the medium to longer term. That remains a key target for the business. If I then move on, finishing there on the P&L, just looking very quickly into the balance sheet, starting with sort of the cash generation. We continue to generate healthy levels of cash, finishing the period at GBP 60.8 million. Just to call out, that's the low point in the year, having paid bonus and dividend in the first half. And I expect with normal trading conditions in the second half of the year, for that to return closer to, certainly the 80+ region, by the end of the financial year. Ian's mentioned that we are holding the dividend, flat, despite sort of those earnings sort of stepping back. And what we've also done is we've adjusted our dividend policy, which previously had been to pay out in the range, in normal circumstances, between 55% and 80%. And we're changing that, really removing the cap, such that the policy going forward will be to pay at least 55%, of the adjusted profits after tax, whilst retaining sufficient, sufficient capital in the business to take advantage of the growth opportunities that, we have. And really we've done that just to provide flexibility. It's a commitment to the growth, the conviction that we have in the growth of the business, the strong balance sheet that we have, and it really just gives us the flexibility to be able to maintain and grow the dividend at all times, including when there is some earnings pressure. And then finishing off, if I can, on the last slide, in terms of sort of our balance sheet and balance sheet management. Again, a very stable position, I would call it out. We still have no debt in the business, and the capital surplus has increased just marginally, but in, along with plans over the period. And then how do we think about that surplus capital that has increased? Look, we like to, first and foremost, hold a capital buffer, strong capital buffer. We then will continue to be buying, funding shares that we purchase to share awards that we put into our EBT, thus avoiding, we don't want to issue, thus avoiding any dilution of the shareholder base. As mentioned, we're seeking to sort of maintain our dividends, and then that does leave us with sufficient collateral to support future growth. And as Ian has mentioned, particularly focus on opportunistic organic growth within the fixed income space. So all said, you know, so looking back over the six months, you know, it's... We're finishing sort of on the upward trajectory, which is good. We have sort of the outflows have been challenging, but you know, potentially we're seeing those reversing as we move forward. I think we're in a very good position relative on costs, and the business is very well positioned for growth when we see that return. And, you know, moving it through half two, beginning to see early, but some positive signals. If I can pass back to Ian before we can take your questions. Yeah, so just, one final slide on the outlook. As Karen said, we do feel that the business is, very, very well placed for further growth. We do have, global investment capabilities, both in, equities and in fixed income. Global client base, almost, 80% outside the U.K., and established funds with, long-term track records. So in the context of a, an end of inflation and a steady reduction in interest rates, which hopefully is, just around the corner, then equities should, continue to perform well, and the quality growth equities are due for a rerating and relative, outperformance. So that's, that should stand us in good stead. And meanwhile, the secular trends around the transition to a more sustainable economy, including new industries like renewables, electric vehicles, and risks around climate and resource availability, continue to create alpha opportunities. So, very optimistic about the medium to long term, and I think depending on the outturn for 2022, then we are in a good place for rerating of many of our investment strategies. So happy to switch back to Andy and take some questions. That's great. Thank you both, very much indeed. Very clear and indeed, one of two, I think, uncertainties when people, first look at the results, they neatly cleared up. So, a number of questions already in. Let's, dive straight in and remind people you can submit more. Firstly, I mean, you just mentioned renewables as a, if you like, a subset of sustainable, investing. We've got a question, perhaps from someone quite new to Impax, drilling down to stocks that you invest in. Looking at the energy sector, does that constrain you from only looking at pure play renewables such as solar, wind, or, or hydrogen? Or would you, for example, invest in, in technologies that are going to help drive the nuclear energy industry? No, we would very much consider investing in businesses that are helping to expand the nuclear energy sector, similarly, energy efficiency. And our thresholds for investment for the thematic area are actually, for specialists, a 50% revenue requirement. So what happens in the rest of the business, the 100 minus 50 or more, we're indifferent to. So some of the businesses that we are investing in can be supporting, for example, through consultancy service, the oil and gas sector, but we're just wanting to make sure that if there is any oil and gas exposure, that we don't think it's gonna drag the business in question down. Okay, thank you very much, Ruth. Karen, maybe one for you. Just to clarify on the new dividend policy, obviously, you can't make forecasts or projections, but analysts like ourselves are forecasting a maintained dividend through 2024, and indeed in full year 2025. Are people misinterpreting your new policy as a material change in payouts? So, it's certainly not intended to be a material change in payout. It is, as I said, sort of that conviction that we have to the growth of the business, that we're just not in a position, you know, just now, where we think it's the right thing to reverse the dividend. So look, we will maintain. We really want to sort of a key part of the statement is that we will retain sufficient capital within the business to satisfy the growth opportunities. And as we return to growth, you know, and start seeing the operating margin open back up again, that we, you know, I think we will operate below the 80% anyway. So it really is just a little flexibility as we, you know, as we manage our way through, and we think we're navigating our way through challenging markets that we do believe, you know, we're beginning to see a more consistent forward momentum in. And it really was just about flexibility rather than any material change in how we think about dividend. Good. Well, I hope that clarifies that. Can I just add one more thing to that? Sorry, yeah. Yeah, sorry. So in the past, we had a progressive dividend policy, but we replaced that with a policy of paying out between 55% and 80% of distributable profits a few years ago. If you look at our track record, we have maintained a progressive dividend over that latter time period, and as Karen says, it's our intention to try as much as possible to not let the dividend go backwards. I think we're not saying that we will definitely pay out at any certain level of income at the final year. That does depend on what happens in the second half, of course. But as she says, it's our intention to go backward, not to go backwards in terms of the amount paid out, and if that means paying out slightly more than 80% this year, then this removal of the upper limit would allow us to do that. Makes perfect sense. Thank you. And another clarification requested on the timing of your AUM updates. One investor got the impression that they would only be on a quarterly basis through this calendar year, but there was an update with the AGM, and perhaps that led to expectations of another update as of today. So could you just, you know, clarify, looking forward, when you anticipate releasing AUM updates? Yes. Up until the back half of last year, we were publishing monthly AUM updates, but we did find on a couple of occasions that we were having to explain intra-quarter why the AUM had changed, and that produced a bit of a lumpy communication. So given that, I think all our peers produce no more frequently than quarterly the AUM update. We had agreed with our Nomad and main corporate brokers that we would switch from monthly to quarterly. So yes, you're absolutely right. At the AGM, we did give a snapshot because we felt at the time that we were standing up in front of investors, it was helpful just to give the end of February data. But, we're not going to do that at the end of every quarter because otherwise, we'll sort of slip back to the previous policy. Yeah. So yeah, it's a bit of a sort of fine, fine judgment, but I hope everyone understands and is empathetic to that policy. Yeah. Fine. Karen, if you can, can you give some explanation on the fee margins that Absalon and or indeed, the fixed interest group, are and might deliver in the future? So, I can say that... So, the current, I'll maybe take a step back. So we currently have our fixed income business that we acquired with the Pax acquisition, in, back in 2018. And it has a margin, you know, above 50 basis points. And we... So, that's sort of our start point. Added to that is, you know, the very high-quality assets that we are getting, with this Absalon acquisition. We're actually very excited about, these assets and how that will help us grow out that fixed income business. They're focused on high yield and emerging markets, and also have margins in, the high 40s into 50s. So, that, that's why we expect to see that business grow. It'll be small, so that's why it's not going to add significantly in the short term to the 45 basis point blend for the business. But over time, we're expecting that to take the margin up rather than down, provided our focus is, you know, provide, you know, that we'll, we'll develop over time. But certainly with that early focus on developing out the high yield and the emerging markets, that we expect it to be adding to the margin. Okay. Thank you. Can I just add a couple of things to that? So at the moment, our plan for fixed income is under development. As Karen says, we are currently operating fixed income strategies that are relatively niche or constrained in terms of capacity, and as a result, are able to charge quite high revenue margins, as Karen's indicated. I think it's an interesting strategic question going forward, whether we need to stop at that point, because there are definitely many clients out there who like to see their managers switch between different types of fixed income strategy, depending on how risk and return are moving in response to external market conditions. I think we're likely to be able to maintain high margins for new fixed income products, but it's not out of the question that we end up with a core fixed income product with a lower than 45 basis point margin, just to make sure that we can move client money into that strategy if external market conditions suggest that for a period of time, that's the right thing to do. Keeping on the fixed income theme, there is a couple of questions relating about your, your aspirations. Starting from a small base, organically, and Absalon not having a huge amount of assets under management relative to the scale of the group, on a three to five-year view, what do you think you might see fixed interest as a proportion of total AUM move up to, without making a significant acquisition, which doesn't sound to be on your agenda when there are teams and smaller businesses that can be added on? Well, the assets and management in fixed income at the moment are about $1.5 billion, and Absalon adds another $0.5 billion. Just to sort of reconcile currency, so that takes us to $2 billion. We have indicated in the slide deck, as I mentioned, that we are actively looking for other tuck-in type acquisitions. So, I think it's probably best to assume that we're successful at some point in that time frame, to add something that's not just investment individuals, and then we have to start raising money from scratch. So I think over a, let's say, a four-year time period from now, it's probably realistic to get the fixed income from somewhere between $5 billion and $10 billion. And so in the context of what today would be roughly just less than $50 billion in equities, including private equity, then maybe over a four-year time period, let's say we can grow equities by another sort of $10 billion-$20 billion. So you can, that would take that to, roughly speaking, say, $70, and fixed income might be up to, up to $10, out of $70 + $10 =$ 80. Yeah. So, you know, 1/8 fixed income potentially over that timeframe, rather than 4%. Okay, thank you. And, a slightly different way of looking at the question, can you discuss the relative growth rates and opportunities in listed equities versus fixed income versus private equity as you're looking at your pipeline? Well, the reason that we're in all three is that we do see significant growth available in all three. As we've indicated in this report, the Sustainability Lens area of equities has been attracting more assets than the thematic space, I think due to lower tracking error and, probably less, worry about risk necessary. But, I think when quality growth equities, start to show signs of mean reversion, which could happen over the next sort of three to nine months, then that ought to grow very, considerably. Fixed income, I just mentioned, so, with higher rates of interest now compared to three years ago, that is particularly attractive, hence our strategic push. So just mention the numbers a moment ago as to where fixed income could get to. Mm-hmm. And then private equity, we have been raising funds up to sort of EUR 400+ million. That's likely to continue, probably with that number growing, and we're certainly actively looking at other teams and capabilities we could bring on board. So I think that's probably always gonna be a small part of our overall business, but definitely heading in a direction of more funds under management. Great, thank you. Back to internal matters. Karen, probably for you, you've listed in detail total staff numbers. Impax has always been historically very good at retaining staff, so there is a question on whether you are seeing much turnover in staff on a relative basis, 'cause there are, of course, more people being employed. Yeah. So, we've always had very low retention, and that continues. If not- Sorry, low, low departures. No departures. No departures. No, very, very... Well, retention percentages, I think is where I had was going, but not understood. Mm-hmm. So let me be clear. Look, our retention figures have always been sort of very low relative to many employers, many sectors, but specifically, I think, in asset management in general. You know, it's always been about 10%. We're probably better than that just now. Maybe that's part of the function, is there's not a lot of recruitment going on in asset management. But the point I always like to bring out is, you know, it's the stability that we have in our listed equity team and our investment teams. And that remains very, very... The level of retention in there remains very, very strong. It might be a bit sort of light-handed, but such is sort of the lack of turnover. We've actually just had to make redundant our head of recruitment, 'cause simply there wasn't the vacancies that we really had to fill. And as you can see, that we're managing the headcount, you know, we've sort of reached the build, the capacity that we wanted to get to, for a listed equity. So we're not recruiting because we've got lots of vacancies. We're not recruiting because, you know, we've got the 300-odd people that we need to take us on to the next phase. And just to finish off, you know, the level of staff engagement remains very high, and retention is not an issue for this business. Good to hear. Quick question, on BNP Paribas, Ian, I think an easy one, for you. You've explained the situation very well, how it, how their asset allocation affected, your, underlying, AUM in the half concluded at the end of March. Can you update us if there has been any change in their central allocation risk off policy since then? Well, certainly the evidence from May so far is that, things have, significantly slowed down in terms of their switch out of equities, which has been to our benefit. So we haven't obviously finished the May period yet, but, but, but yes, I think certainly the last, three or four weeks or so, things have improved quite considerably. We're moving away from wholesale to institutional mandates. We have a question: Do you frequently or indeed ever win institutional mandates without there being a competitive tender? Good question. I think the answer must be yes, particularly in the space of, say, family offices, where there's almost invariably a tender is anything to do with public funds, state pension funds, for example, in Scandinavia. So yes, but I would say that the majority, significant majority, if not a vast majority, are with some kind of competitive tender. So we do have an RFP team that's spending their whole time. I think there are eight or nine individuals who do nothing else but fill in requests for proposals and due diligence questionnaires from these competitive tender situations. Mm-hmm. Following on from that, is it typically the same competitors that you would be up against in those tenders, or is there some regional flexibility or variance that may determine who you come up against? No, very much varies, depending not just on region, but also on strategy. So if we're in the Article 9, Environmental Markets, thematic space, then we come across firms like Pictet or Nordea, or Mirova out of France. If we're in Sustainability Lens strategies, then we'll come up against the larger global equities managers, groups like Wellington or maybe Baillie Gifford. Thank you. Very clear. Quick question on, on technology, which is very much a, a driver of your, your investments. Internally, the question is, there, there was a mention of AI on, on one of your slides. Could you give a little more detail on, on where it's being used at, at the moment within the group? Is it operational processes? Is it helping in your, your investment research? And, are there any beneficial margin implications from further use of, of AI into the medium term? Let me start, maybe Karen would like to add something. But so the principal use of AI to date has been in carefully controlled experiments within the investment team, particularly in the listed markets, using AI to try to uncover mispricing while making sure that we don't give away any of our proprietary data. So there are three or four specialists within our 45-person equity team who are leading those sorts of projects. I think in our distribution area, we are contemplating using AI to fast-track the preparation of responses, for example, to DDQs or RFPs, which can take a huge amount of time. So that that's not yet started yet, but I think is envisaged that could well lead to cost savings. And I would just add, sort of in terms of the, sort of the back office operations, we all, you know, we actually have a very neat operation and operating model that we have in place. We again are experimenting in just small pilots as to where artificial intelligence could help in just streamlining process. But what we're more minded to do is probably look at external providers of artificial intelligence with an eye to outsourcing, and let sort of, you know, piggyback on the back of some scale elsewhere to be able to get artificial intelligence benefits into our back office. Great. Well, I think we have covered a lot of ground there. I'd like to thank our audience for their attention and incisive questions, and I shall also ask you, audience, to please fill out a feedback form that you will be sent after this event, which is greatly appreciated by Ian and Karen and the rest of the team, if you can just share your thoughts. A final reminder for those who weren't here at the beginning, that this slide deck will be available on the Impax's investor relations site, and as will the recording of this event be on the Equity Development website, where there is also a piece of detailed research from our analyst, Paul Bryant, that was released midday today. I shall leave you to go and read it and draw your own conclusions, but, I shall say there was no material change to his forecasts after the update given today, and he continues to think that, Impax is well on track and extremely well positioned for the future. Of course, our final thanks go to Karen and Ian. Thank you for making the time, and best of luck in, in nurturing these further green shoots. Yeah. Thank you, Andy. Thanks to everyone for joining us. Thank you, guys. Thank you.