How can you not help but get excited by amazing songs, right? Probably Christopher Brown and maybe Simon Lapthorne and I are the only people in the room old enough to remember Stars on 45, but that's our Stars on 45 version of things. Listen, good morning. It's fantastic to see so many of you here in person again, and those of you watching online are very welcome as well. I hope that when we do this in the summer, you'll be able to join us here in the room. I'm Merck Mercuriadis, the founder of the Hipgnosis Songs Fund, and Chief Executive of the Hipgnosis Song Management, its investment advisor. We're a song management company, and today you're going to see a lot of our iconic songs. What you've just seen is excerpts of the 52 magnificent songs that we own, that Rolling Stone have deemed to be part of their 500 greatest songs of all time. In 2018, we set out to establish songs as an asset class. It's the people in this room that supported us, so it's great to see so many familiar faces. We also have some new faces here, both online and in the room. I hope that you'll find the next hour both informative and interesting. For those of you online, copies of our presentation can be found on the Hipgnosis Songs website. Before we get to the business of today, I wanna pay tribute to Christine McVie, arguably the greatest British female songwriter of all time. She very sadly passed away just a week ago at the age of 79. She wrote iconic songs that propelled Fleetwood Mac into one of the biggest artists of all time. She was our songbird, and it's one of Hipgnosis' greatest privileges to forever be the custodians of her special songs. It's a testament to her indelible mark on the music industry that there's already been a huge outpouring of emotion, with millions going to the digital platforms to listen to the songs that put her and Fleetwood Mac into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As a result, Rumours, one of the best-selling albums of all time, on which she wrote five of the 11 songs, including don't stop thinking about tomorrow and You Make Loving Fun, has entered the charts again at number nine. After my introduction, you'll be hearing from Chris Helm, our CFO, who will take you through the details of the interim results. Ben Katovsky, our new President and Chief Operating Officer, and Ted Cockle, our Chief Music Officer, who many of you will already know. They'll show you the value added by our approach to song management. I'm also delighted that Andrew Sutch, Chair of Hipgnosis Songs Fund, as well as Simon Holden, one of our board members, are here to join us today. We'll take questions at the end, and prior to that, we'll have a special friend joining us who I can assure you will be well worth the wait. I'm not going to pretend that the current share price is anything other than disappointing, so throughout our presentation today, we're going to be explaining why we believe that you can have faith in the valuation of the portfolio. We'll demonstrate the unrivaled quality of the portfolio, some of which you've already heard, and which underpins its earning ability. We'll illustrate how our proactive song management drives value from our catalogs. I'll take you through the incredibly strong drivers of growth in the paid-for music industry, which supports our long-term expectations for substantial revenue growth, and therefore, why the current share price fundamentally undervalues the company and offers an opportunity for investors. Most importantly, you'll see why we are confident that Hipgnosis will deliver superior shareholder returns over the medium term. As I said, I know that some of you are not familiar with Hipgnosis, so I wanna take a few minutes to give you some useful background. Hipgnosis listed and started buying songs in 2018. We identified the opportunity that existed for songs as an asset class. 15 years of technological disruption in the form of illegal downloading had almost killed the music industry, and the only good thing which came out of that is that it left these great songs at attractive prices at a time when the technology evolved into streaming and made it more convenient for consumers to once again pay for music. Our thesis has always been that songs of extraordinary success and cultural importance produce long-term and reliable incomes, making them highly investable assets. We built Hipgnosis Songs Fund as an asset-backed investment vehicle with iconic songs at its heart. As a result, we've delivered a total NAV return to shareholders as at 30th of September 2022 of 60% since the IPO, including GBP 0.19 per share of dividends. We started buying songs in 2018 when paid U.S. music streaming subscribers were less than 10% of the 523 million global subscribers that they are today. Back then, YouTube had barely paid $2 billion to rights holders. This year, it's paid $6 billion. Speaking of YouTube, we happen to own 13 of their top 30 most streamed songs ever. Let's take a look. [Presentation] One more time. We own 13 out of the top 30 most played videos ever on the world's biggest music streaming service, YouTube. 52 out of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. You're going to hear many statistics like that throughout the course of the next hour or so. It's probably a good moment to just remind everyone that one of the things that makes songs an asset class, or that allows songs to be a genuine asset class, is that the copyright protection for these is excellent around the world. We've paid an average weighted multiple of just under 16x for our catalog, but the catalog has something like 101 years average copyright protected income streams to come with it. What we've made sure to do is buy the iconic songs that can endure for that period of time. Share price would indicate that we're trading at somewhere like 14x, so the opportunity and the value that's there is massive. Part of that is because a decade ago, almost all consumption of music was unpaid for. Today, almost all consumption of music is paid for. Importantly, music has changed from being a discretionary or luxury purchase into a utility. In 2018, we predicted these trends, and looking back, I'm pleased that I can stand here and say that everything we told our investors then about our thesis has become a reality or been exceeded. Furthermore, we've assembled a portfolio of songs unrivaled for its extraordinary success and cultural importance, and which is therefore constantly in high demand. It's often said that most music companies make their money on 10% of their songs. We've bought well, and I'm confident that our catalog would represent the top 10% of any music company's portfolio. In fact, I don't think that there's another music company that can say that they own 52 of the Rolling Stone top 500, 13 out of YouTube's top 30, and you'll see many other statistics, as I mentioned, that I think any other music company would have real difficulty in rivaling. Hipgnosis Songs Fund doesn't sit on its investors' cash. As soon as we had available funds, we've invested them, earning a return on your money. At the moment, the company is fully invested, and later on we'll talk in some detail about the various ways we add value to the songs in our portfolio. First, as you know, we've published our interim results today, and I wanna call out some highlights. As you'll have seen from our announcement, our results show the strength of our great songs. Gross revenues in the period increased by 7.5% year-on-year, while our operative NAV asset value per share remained steady at $1.83. When converted into sterling, our shareholders benefited from the strong dollar with an equivalent sterling NAV of nearly GBP 1.50 per share as at Tuesday night's prices. I'm aware that there have been questions about the impact of higher interest rates on our valuation. This is something that both we as an investment advisor and the board of SONG have focused on. While we understand why the independent portfolio valuer currently maintains the 8.5% discount rate, even if it were to increase to 9%, with the current share price, there would still be very considerable upside opportunity for shareholders. Indeed, it would take a discount rate of 12% to eliminate the difference between the current market cap and the operative NAV. It's probably a good moment to remind everyone that in the worst days of the music business, in those 15 years of technological disruption when the music business almost died, the discount rate was 10%, right? We're a long, long way off of 12%, and, you know, the 8.5% probably still has some padding in it. Before I move on, two more points which I think provide added confidence in the value of the catalog. Firstly, as you'll have seen from our announcement this morning, to provide you with added reassurance, the board appointed an additional independent valuation firm, Kroll Advisory Limited, many of you will know them as Duff & Phelps, to review assumptions in our independent valuation, including the growth and discount rates. Kroll's work supported the assumptions employed in arriving at the fair value as being reasonable. Secondly, while Hipgnosis Songs Fund is currently fully invested, Hipgnosis Song Management is very active in the market and aware of the prices that are being paid to acquire iconic catalogs. As a result of our robust co-investment policy, the board of the Hipgnosis Songs Fund also sees all of the relevant data, regardless of the fact that the company is fully invested. As I said, we appreciate how important it is that investors have confidence in the value of the portfolio. Later, Chris will take you through the method used by the portfolio independent valuer, including for the discount rate. Turning to our pro forma revenues, PFAR, which are reported on our calendar rather than the financial year basis, like-for-like revenues in the first half of the calendar year were $58.5 million, a 7.8% increase on the comparative period in 2021, despite currency headwinds for some source income as a result of the dollar strength. Within that, streaming performance is strong, up almost 16%, while the excellent efforts of the sync team to get songs placed into TV commercials, television shows, movies, video games, alongside new revenues from emerging platforms such as TikTok, have resulted in sync revenue growing by almost a third, 32% to be precise, year-on-year. I'm very proud of the sync team. In the summer, we told you that we were seeing signs that the decay curve on the younger catalogs was leveling off more quickly than originally forecast. I'm pleased that we can see further evidence of that trend in these results. We bought these catalogs at low multiples knowing they were going to decay, but also knowing from their enormous success that they were going to become iconic and have even longer than usual copyright protected, predictable and reliable income. Many of them are now in Spotify's Billions Club. There are only 324 songs in that club, and 78 of them are part of the Hipgnosis Songs portfolio. On average, these songs have 101 years, as I mentioned, of copyright-protected income streams. Of course, the dividend has been maintained. Once again today, the board have reiterated that they continue to target annual interim results of GBP 0.0525 per share. Further this morning, the board have declared the interim dividend for the second quarter of GBP 0.01325 pence per share. Chris will take you through the detail on the financial shortly. Turning to the operational highlights, you can see the impact of our proactive approach to song management has in delivering value to shareholders. Our song, All the Small Things, soundtracks the John Lewis Christmas advert. This is an incredible accolade that we even set it out as a key opportunity in our IPO prospectus back in 2018. Securing this sync is a great example of our song management approach in action. Along with the Super Bowl, this is arguably the most coveted sync in the world. Our team saw the potential in the song and pitched it to John Lewis. We then did all we could to make it as efficient as possible for John Lewis to choose and use the song. Please watch this space for what we hope will be a positive Super Bowl result when we announce year-end in summer of 2023. Nicki Minaj's Super Freaky Girl, which interpolated Rick James' Super Freak hit, is number one in the U.S. and top five in the U.K. and all over the world. Less visibly but equally important, we successfully launched a new administration partnership involving Hipgnosis Songs Group, Sacem, and Peermusic, which will result in higher revenues and speedier payments. We also used new, faster, and less expensive collection services for two of this summer's major concert tours. Importantly, because it directly leads to higher revenues, we've advocated for and welcome joint industry proposals for CRB IV which will see a higher proportion of streaming revenues go to songwriters and publishers. I've always been clear that our motive is to establish songs as an asset class and to provide a great return for our investors, and that concurrently, our ulterior motive is to use our success to help take the songwriter from the bottom to the top of the economic equation. We advocated for and welcome the moves by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board and the wider music industry in the U.S. to increase the rates paid to songwriters and publishers. CRB III provided for a 44% increase in the headline rate of DSP revenues paid to songwriters and publishers, reaching 15.1% by the end of 2022. The joint industry proposals for CRB IV would see that proportion rising incrementally to 15.35% between 2023 and 2027. The royalty rate on the physical sale or download rises from $0.091 to $0.12 with additional inflationary increases. There is still a long way to go before songwriters are fairly remunerated, but these are important steps in the right direction. The joint CRB IV proposal show there is an increasing acceptance as a result of our work across the music industry that songwriters should be, excuse me, fairly rewarded for their work. While the increase is more modest than CRB III, we support it as it provides a background of stability at the highest streaming rates ever paid in the context of which we can continue our advocacy efforts. Our ultimate goal is for songwriters' pay to be determined by free market, not legislation. When a catalog is acquired, our shareholders sit directly in the shoes of the songwriter, so there's complete alignment between the songwriting community and our shareholders. What is in the best interest of the songwriter is also in the best interest of the company. Ben and Ted will be going into more detail on all of this during the course of the presentation. Our investment case has always been based on three core pillars: ownership of iconic, culturally important songs, proactive song management to maximize the value of these songs. Together, these two pillars mean that Hipgnosis is perfectly positioned to benefit from the third, which is strong market growth. Clearly, the most important of the three are the songs, without which there would be no Hipgnosis. Not to mention that there wouldn't be record companies, there wouldn't be DSPs, there wouldn't be artists to go and see play live, et cetera. The song is the currency of our business, and, you know, the starting point. By acquiring such a high quality catalog with a proven track record of success, Hipgnosis has the strongest possible foundations and incredible concentration of important and heavily consumed songs. To reiterate, we own nearly a quarter of songs streamed over a billion times on Spotify, including 20 out of the top 100 most streamed. Over 10% of Rolling Stone's The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and 13 of YouTube's 30 most-played songs. These are songs that you know and recognize. Don't take my word for it, we're now gonna show you a selection of the 78 songs that we own on Spotify's Billions Club. [Presentation] I'm gonna just again repeat that stat. There are 324 songs on Spotify that have had a billion streams, and we co-own 78 of them. These are some of the most extraordinarily successful songs and culturally important songs by some of the biggest superstars the world has ever known, and they're going to endure. It's, as I say, there's not a major company out there that can rival that. Ultimately, what I would like you to take away from that is that's the company, right? Like what you own, what you're all shareholders in is that. It's not an idea, right? It's something that has incredible importance, incredible earning power, and will continue to endure, as I mentioned before, for probably something like 101 years. Because when you talk about copyright protection and the fact that there are 70 years after the death of the last co-composer, that's only worth talking about if you've bought well, if you've bought songs that can stand that test of time. What we've ensured is that we've done exactly that. You know, going back to that reference that music companies make their money off of the top 10% of the songs, we've made sure that we've done our best to buy that 10%, that 10% that would drive any great company. In any case, there's another 50 like that. We've only played about 35 out of the 77 or 78 that are ours. We could be here all day playing great music. The accolades keep coming. Only last month, the Official Charts Company on behalf of the BBC identified the U.K.'s most streamed songs by year of release, excluding Christmas songs from each of the last 70 years. Hipgnosis co-owns the rights to nine of these, songs like Don't Stop Believin' by Journey, first released in 1981. Amazingly, it didn't even make the U.K. top 40, peaking at number 62 then. However, this is a great example of the impact syncs can have after being used in Monster, The Sopranos, and Glee. In January 2010, it finally made the U.K.'s top 10, and now it's been streamed more than Don't You Want Me, Tainted Love, or Stand and Deliver, all of which were huge multi-platinum U.K. hits of 1981. We'll talk more about the power of syncs and importantly, what we do to secure them during the course of the presentation. Other Hipgnosis songs on that BBC list include the Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This), which is the most streamed song of 1983. Livin' on a Prayer, which has that accolade for 1986. Going back to the incomparable Christine McVie, Everywhere, which was the most streamed song of 1988 as performed by Fleetwood Mac. We've got a few of these songs. Please run the BBC film. [Presentation] It's tempting to poll you on which of those songs you've now got playing in your head. The bottom line is that these songs are, again, of an extraordinary level of success and an extraordinary level of cultural importance. You know them all. Your children know them all. Your parents probably know them all as well. When the BBC played them all to celebrate its 100th anniversary, of course, each time these songs are streamed, a payment is earned by the Hipgnosis Songs Fund. I've talked about how our songs are in high demand, and as you've seen, Everywhere is the most streamed song of 1988, but it's entered the charts again in the U.S. only last week on the back of this sync, which is taking it to a whole new audience. [Presentation] You know, every time you reintroduce a song into the marketplace via sync, the first thing that starts to happen is that people run for Spotify and they run for Apple and they run for the other digital service providers and they start to press play and there's a whole other chain reaction, all of which earns us money. As I say, that song, even prior to Christine's sad passing, that song is well on its way to being a hit all over again. Just a note for the sound man, this is a group of city investors, but I've known them for the last four years, almost five years. I can promise you they're extremely rock and roll. So keep playing that music loud. Your job. You have one job, play the music loud. One of the most important facts about music as an asset is that people listen to music irrespective of economic conditions. Proof of how great songs endure are reworked and continually find the new audiences can be seen here. Only this week, the Financial Times highlighted how a cover of Neil Young's 1970s track, Only Love Can Break Your Heart, launched the 30-year career of Saint Etienne, and the paper recounted many of the other versions that have been released by the likes of Elkie Brooks, Natalie Imbruglia, Twiggy, The Corrs, and Rickie Lee Jones, to name but a few. This is a song which means very much to me and many others. It's one of the reasons I'm so proud we have Neil's catalog in our portfolio, and in many ways it sums up the value in the songs which Hipgnosis Songs Fund owns. You may have seen the recent report from the IFPI, who represent the global recorded music industry, showing that people around the world are engaging with music more than ever, with average listening up to 20.1 hours each per week. An increase of 1.7 hours since 2021. With energy and food prices increasing, I know it's tough for many people at the moment, and they're making difficult decisions about how to spend their money. However, I can't think of a better value entertainment product than a premium music streaming subscription. Perhaps it's no surprise that paid for streaming with its utility like revenues continues to grow. Indeed, a fortnight ago with a full month of the year left, annual audio streams in the U.S. passed the 1 trillion mark for the first time. That means that any day now, U.S. music listeners combined will have spent a million years streaming music since January the first, and our iconic songs are a big part of that. The second most streamed song of this year to prove that point is Heat Waves by Glass Animals, a song which HSG administers in the U.S., and it's also just been named as the number one song of 2022 by Billboard in their year-end Hot 100 chart, following a record-breaking run on the weekly rankings. Let's take a look at Glass- [Presentation] No song has been on Billboard's Hot 100 chart longer than that song, and it's, as I said, just been named as of yesterday, the number one song of the year by Billboard. When you think that back in 2015, there were under 143 million audio streams, it shows just how phenomenal that growth has been and continues to be. From 143 million when we started or just before we started, to 1 trillion this year, right? It's massive. As I mentioned earlier, there are now more than 523 million premium paid subscribers globally, and Spotify continues to show their strong premium subscriber growth up 13% year- on- year to 195 million. U.S. data shows that consumers of streaming are disproportionately listening to more catalog music. Indeed, Luminate data shows that the proportion of catalog music listened to on the DSPs has increased from just over 50% in 2017 to almost 75% in the latest data, as consumers take advantage of being able to listen to what they want to and when they want to, plus the positive impact of people in older demographics increasingly adopting streaming. This is fueled further by sync and playlist placements. As I say, when people see a song that they're reminded of, they know they love it, they see it on TV commercial, they reevaluate it, and they run and they start to push play on Spotify, they start to push play on Apple, and our cash register continues to ring. Interestingly, the number of our songs over 10 years old on Spotify Billions Club has risen from four to 11 in the last year. Looking at the wider music market, the RIAA reported U.S. revenues for recorded music in the first half of 2022, rising 9.1% year- on- year. As you know, Apple Music has recently increased prices beyond the $9.99 per month price point in the U.S., U.K., and continental Europe. This move by Apple emphasizes my earlier point about the incredible value of music streaming and shows that one of the most commercially successful businesses in the world recognizes the pricing power that great music gives their platform. Our discussions with Spotify and Amazon indicate that this is something that you'll see across the board in the near future. Increased revenue to the digital service providers means increased revenues for Hipgnosis. When we launched Hipgnosis, we promised investors that we would deliver a new proactive approach to song management, one where we have the resource and bandwidth to manage our great songs to their full potential, and in doing so, add significant value. As I mentioned earlier, Ben and Ted will be setting out in some detail what this means in practice and showing how we've added value. Before they do, I'm gonna hand over to Chris Helm to take you through the results in detail. Chris, come up and join us, mate. The podium is yours. Thanks, Merck. Just so the sound guys know, there's no music in my presentation, so they don't need to worry. For those who don't know me, I'm Chris Helm. I'm the CFO for SONG. Over the next few slides, I'll be taking you through the financial results and providing additional context around the numbers. For those not familiar with Hipgnosis Songs Fund, our financial year runs from April to March, and generally today I'll be comparing the first half of this financial year with the same period as last year. As Merck said, these are a very positive set of numbers. There's strong growth in sync and streaming revenues, and our younger catalogs continue to demonstrate that they are reaching the end of their forecasted decay curves. During the last six months, a key initiative in light of rising interest rates has been the refinancing of our debt facility to ensure that we are set up for future success. I am pleased to say that this is now complete, delivering on the board's objectives to control costs and reduce interest rates. We've also taken out a currency hedge for upcoming dividend payments, again, providing certainty on our working capital. Firstly, I want to talk about the net asset value of the company. Underlying our business is the value of songs which we have purchased. We report two net asset values or NAVs and IFRS NAV, under which the company's investments are held at cost, less amortization and impairment, and an operative NAV which adjusts the IFRS NAV to reflect the fair value of the company's catalogs as determined by the portfolio independent valuer, Citrin Cooperman. We consider that the operative NAV is the most relevant NAV for shareholders. During the period, this is pretty much unchanged at $2.2 billion. When including dividends declared of GBP 0.2625 pence per share, this represents a six-month total dollar NAV return of 0.7%. Based on the sterling dollar exchange rate on Tuesday night, the operative NAV is GBP 1.4982 pence per share, up from almost GBP 1.41 at the end of 2021/2022 financial year due to the strength of the dollar. As you can see from the operative NAV bridge on the screen, these movements in the dollar led to a small reduction in the fair value of the portfolio in dollar terms, reflecting the reduction in earnings for non-dollar source revenues. The portfolio independent valuer has continued to maintain an 8.5% discount rate, and I'll talk more in depth about the independent valuation and dividend cover later on. Gross revenue increased by 7.5% year-over-year to $91.7 million. Included in this is an accrual of $19.2 million as a result of the CRB III rate for the songwriter's mechanical portion of U.S. streaming being confirmed. Of this, $3.1 million is the impact of a higher 15.1% royalty rate earned by the company from U.S. streaming during this period. The other $16.1 million has been recognized for the retroactive payment due as a result of revenues historically not having been paid or recognized at full CRB III rates. Both the CRB III retroactive and uplift accruals are based off historical earnings paid through to songs by publishers. In order to calculate the accrual, the U.S. mechanical portion of these earnings were analyzed and uplifted accordingly based on the CRB III rates over the five-year period from 2018 to 2022. At the full year, I spoke extensively about the usage accrual, and in this period, an additional $1.8 million has been recognized. Given there were no catalogs purchased in the period, there was no right to income or RTI booked, unlike the equivalent period 12 months ago, when there was $14.1 million of RTI. Net revenue, which is revenue after deductions related to contractual royalties due to writers in Hipgnosis Songs Group and Kobalt Fund One increased by 5.8% to $78.3 million. On a like-for-like basis, that's to say, removing the impact of the CRB III accrual and last year's RTI, the company's underlying net revenue growth was also 5.8%. PFAR or pro forma annual revenue is based largely on royalty statements and shows the royalty revenue earned irrespective of whether the songs were owned by the company over the period analyzed. Notably, these results do not include any revenues due to the company as a result of CRB III, which would have been equal to approximately $6.2 million in the most recent PFAR, providing a tailwind for further PFAR growth. As a result, it gives a clear view of the financial performance of the portfolio and is undisturbed by purchases. We report this on a calendar year rather than a financial year. Therefore, the most recent PFAR numbers covers the period up to the 30th of June, 2022. Before I look at the most recent numbers, I want to mention that we've updated the PFAR for the 12 months to December 2021. This was a result of royalty statements related to that period that we received after we'd reported the full year. This resulted in $1.9 million dollar uplift to $116.6 million. Turning back to the most recent numbers, PFAR for the 12 months to June 2022 increased 4.2% year-on-year to $128 million. This is despite currency headwinds from non-dollar denominated revenues, which I will look at shortly. As you can see, we've continued to have strong growth in our greater than 10-year catalogs, up 7.6% to $69.9 million, while the less than 10-year-old catalogs have remained stable for the second consecutive period. As many of you are aware, newer catalogs were bought with the expectation that their revenue will initially decay before flattening off and returning to growth. The reported performance of these younger catalogs is further evidence that they are reaching the end of their decay cycles. Before I look at the breakdown of PFAR by income type, I want to talk you through the impact of currency on our numbers. As you know, over the last year or so, we've seen an unusual increase in the value of the dollar against almost all currencies. As I touched on earlier, this is a benefit to sterling shareholders, as the sterling value of the portfolio increased significantly as the dollar strengthened against the pound, especially during Q2 and Q3 of 2022. Generally, we'd expect global currency movements to largely offset one another. However, in common with other dollar-denominated music companies, we are seeing a currency impact on revenues. Some 88% of Hipgnosis' royalties are paid in U.S. dollars and are reported in currency, therefore we have limited direct exposure to currency. However, as you know, people listen to and pay for music all over the world, and there is therefore an indirect impact that we experience. To help you to be able to assess the trends in our numbers, we thought it would be helpful to provide further guidance on this currency impact. Approximately 54% of our source income comes from the U.S., and therefore there is no currency impact on that. Of the rest, the two largest single markets are the U.K. and Continental Europe, making up 14% and 21% respectively. The remainder is broadly divided around the world, with some focus in the larger music markets. We use two different methods internally to estimate the currency impact. Both of these methods suggest the PFAR for the period six months to June 2022 would have been approximately 4 percentage points higher without these currency movements. As I've said, this is only an estimate, and for the avoidance of doubt, all the numbers we are using in presentation today represent the actual numbers and have not been adjusted for currency. Returning to PFAR, I'll take you through the split by income source. As you can see, there is strong growth in streaming and sync income. The 15.8% increase in streaming revenues compares favorably with a 10% growth in the U.S. streaming revenue reported by the RIAA over the same period. This is a testament to this strategy of acquiring catalogs with high levels of streaming consumption. Sync revenues are up 32% year-on-year, partly driven by a marked increase in procured direct sync deals. We've already heard about some of our recent sync successes from Merck, and Ted will be talking more about syncs later on. However, the revenues from a sync can take 12 or even 18 months to arrive. What we are seeing here in these numbers is the result of the success of our sync team over a prolonged period of time. An important factor in this success has been the collaboration between the sync team and Hipgnosis Songs Group on catalogs that have reverted, demonstrating our ability to increase the number of licenses that are procured when we have this level of control. Ben will be taking you through the advantages we're able to leverage by virtue of having an in-house administrator later. Sync revenues include both fees for the use of songs on traditional media outlets and digital licenses from social media, gaming, and fitness platforms. In line with our expectations at the full year, we can now see meaningful revenues from these emerging platforms for the first time. Performance income declined 4.5% year-over-year. This is largely driven by a decline in U.S. radio airplay, which resulted in some of our younger catalogs no longer qualifying for bonus payments and currency headwinds. Within performance, revenues continue to be subdued as income is still heavily impacted by our COVID-19 lockdowns. However, this summer, as many of you will have experienced yourselves, this is a significant return for live music. Ben will also be talking about the song management actions we've taken to reduce the collection costs from and speed up the payments for major concerts. The post-COVID-19 bounce back in general performance revenues are still not seen in our numbers due to the time it takes for this money to flow through to the system. With continued strong performance income revenue recovery reported by the major publishers who sit ahead of Hipgnosis in the music payment chain, this provides confidence of a healthy bounce back in general performance revenues. Some of you may be surprised by the fact that mechanical revenue is still bringing in $2.5 million. Although down from 12 months ago, it does seem that the predictions of the death of vinyl and CDs may have been premature, with revenues holding up far better than we'd expected. Finally, revenues from sound recording rights, which include both masters and producer royalties, declined 2.4%. This is largely a result of the timing of settlement statements. Moving on to costs. Adjusted operating costs, excluding interest costs, were 21.7% down to $14.7 million. This is driven by a reduction in the advisory fees, a function of the lower share price, and reduced administration and professional fees, which resulted from there being no acquisitions in the period. Ongoing charges as a percentage of average operative NAV decreased to 1.23%. As a result of revenue performance on certain catalogs, the company recognized an additional contingent bonus of $3.7 million relating to songwriters. These are contractual payments based on defined revenue performance hurdles when catalogs were purchased. Turning to leverage. Loan interest increased 44.7% to $14.5 million, reflecting the rise in interest rates. Levered free cash flow at 30th of September 2022 was $30.5 million. At the end of the period, we refinanced the company's debt and hedged interest rate risk. Before the board proceeded with this solution, an extensive process reviewing all the refinancing options, including securitization, to ensure that the most appropriate and cost-effective debt structure was put in place. The new revolving credit facility has a commitment of $700 million and runs until the 30th of September 2027, although the policy remains not to draw down greater than 30% of the operative NAV on a gross debt basis. As I set out in the summer, our objective was to reduce the interest margin and provide more clarity about our interest costs. We've achieved both of these objectives, with the interest margin reduced from 325 to 200 basis points, and hedging has been put in place for the large majority of the draw down facility. Our current blended average debt interest is 5.7%. Additionally, our original facility had been arranged when songs were a new asset class. This meant the facility was relatively expensive and lenders required covenants that were quite restrictive. Our asset class is now much more established, and the increase in premium streaming has boosted the quality of the company's earnings. Therefore, it was possible to negotiate a new facility with fewer restrictions over normal working practices in the music industry, which has allowed us to deliver stronger returns for our shareholders. This means, for example, that should the board wish to take recoupable but non-repayable advances from PROs, which is a common practice for rights holders, which would reduce the company's working capital requirements, this would now be possible. Indeed, this is one option that the board is actively exploring for circa 10% of songs' income. We talked about advances at the IPO, and as a reminder how they work, PROs are willing to provide advances against 12 months' earnings, which, due to the time lag in income, have typically been paid... Sorry, been typically earned, but not yet paid. No interest is due, and they can be secured on a rolling basis, and they, therefore, provide a permanent shortening of a working capital cycle. Moving on to EPS. EPS for the period was -$0.0168, in line with the prior year, as growth in net revenue and reduced operating costs were offset by increased interest costs. Adjusted EPS, which removes the impact of catalog amortization and other finance charges, was $0.0376, a 2.4% reduction, primarily driven by the increased interest expense for the period that I mentioned earlier. As you know, we amortize catalogs over a useful life using a straight line method of 20 years, which is in line with the industry standard. Moving on to dividends. The board continues to retain the company's target of GBP 0.0525 pence in interim dividends per ordinary share in the current financial year. Two dividends have been declared in the period, totaling GBP 0.02625 pence per share. As we set out in the full year, the timings of dividend payments have been adjusted to better align with receipts. The dividends declared in the financial year to date amount to $37.1 million, which was covered 1.2x by distributable revenues recognized during the period. In addition, the company had 1.6x the levered free cash flow necessary to meet those dividend payments paid in the period. We are confident that we will continue to have dividend coverage across the full year. Additionally, the company has hedged $50 million sterling of dividend payments at $1.109 to sterling. To be clear, we're not looking to become currency traders. This is purely a strategy to provide certainty at a time of volatility in the foreign exchange markets. I'm now going to turn to the independent valuation. This valuation is important as it gives investors an indication of the fair value of the portfolio. As Merck said, we understand how important it is to shareholders that it seem to be accurate and credible. Twice a year, the board instructs Citrin Cooperman advisors to provide an independent valuation of the portfolio. Citrin Cooperman is one of the largest professional services firms in the U.S. They provide equivalent portfolio valuations for many music companies and are involved with transactions that are widely recognized as experts in this field. To reach their valuation, they analyze each income type for each individual catalog and forecast revenues for 15 years, in some cases, at an individual song level. As with any model, they make assumptions for future growth. The cash flows from this exercise are then valued at an 8.5% discount rate, with the aggregate of these results making up the fair value. The most recent valuation was $2.67 billion. Inevitably, given the moves in interest rates over the last year, there has been some debate about whether 8.5% is still the correct discount rate. As you would expect, both Hipgnosis Songs Management and the investment manager and the board of Hipgnosis Songs Fund have challenged Citrin Cooperman to justify their independent view. The portfolio independent valuer has consistently taken a long-term view on expected interest rates since Hipgnosis' IPO in July 2018. They therefore reduced the discount rate by just 50 basis points since the IPO, despite the substantial fall in U.S. Treasury yields we've experienced until this year. Additionally, the proportion of utility-like revenue from streaming has increased since Hipgnosis was launched and justifies a substantially lower risk premium applied to music as an asset. This risk premium compression has always been part of Hipgnosis' investment case. That's to say, as streaming earnings grew, music would become a major new asset class, and the valuation of these assets would grow compared to other asset classes. We can now see global private equity houses deploying significant capital into these asset classes, which has driven transaction multiples to substantially higher levels than when Hipgnosis first started. These factors all provide a cushion within the discount rate against the global interest rate rises over the last 12 months. Therefore, I thought it would be helpful to take everyone through how Citrin Cooperman arrived at the 8.5% rate. As you know, the discount rate is a weighted average cost of capital, WACC, which is used to value cash flows before financing costs. It's important to note that Citrin Cooperman set a discount rate for a potential buyer of music assets and do not adjust for a specific client's gearing. This means that the valuations reflect the expected market value of these assets. Citrin Cooperman's calculations are based on the generic 50/50 mix of debt and equity, and this is a higher level of gearing than we have at SONG. In order to calculate the cost of equity, Citrin Cooperman assume a risk-free rate of 4.9%. This compares to the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield of 3.829% as at the 30th of September 2022, and 3.585% as at the 6th of December. Citrin Cooperman then apply an equity risk premium of 5.5% with a beta of north 0.96. This results in an assumed cost of equity of 10.2%. For debt, they use an assumed cost of debt of 6.9%, and this is higher than the cost of debt at SONG of 5.7% and other music securitizations in 2022. As I've mentioned, in their model, they assume a 50/50 mix of debt and equity, and this results in a weighted average cost of capital and discount rate of 8.5%. Now, if I apply the same methodology to numbers currently in the market and to SONG's actuals, specifically our gearing, 75% equity, our current cost of debt, 5.7%, and taking the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield of 3.829%, then this gives SONG's portfolio a WACC, which is fractionally above 8%. Following discussions with shareholders, in order to help provide additional comfort around the fair value, as Merck mentioned, the board appointed Kroll, formerly Duff & Phelps, to review certain assumptions by Citrin Cooperman. We have to use the exact wording to describe this review, so it reads as follows: "The board is ultimately and solely responsible for overseeing the valuation of the company's investments in music catalogs and has appointed the portfolio independent valuer to perform this specialist work. The board appointed Kroll Advisory Limited, an independent valuation firm, to consider and advise on the reasonableness of certain assumptions commonly employed in the valuation of music catalogs based on the data provided by the company. The results of the analysis by Kroll provide, in the board's view, additional support as to the reasonableness of assumptions employed in arriving at the fair value of their investments. That said, individual investors are fully entitled to take a different view on the risk-free rate, the equity risk premium, or other elements of the calculation. They may take the view that interest rates are going to go up more than is currently priced into the risk-free rate. An increase in the discount rate from 8.5% to 9% would reduce the operative NAV by $212 million. With the current share price indicating a discount to the operative NAV of over 45%, which implies a discount rate of nearly 12%, there is very considerable upside opportunity for the current share price. I'm gonna leave you with one final observation. While Hipgnosis Songs Fund has not been buying catalogs this year, the investment advisor is still very active in the market. The company has co-investment rights and therefore sees all the proposed transactions. As a result, the board sees information on current market transactions. What we see gives us confidence that the independent valuer, the independent valuation continues to be in line with the prices that catalogs are achieving in the market today. On that positive note, I'll now hand you back to Merck. Thank you, Chris. You know, we mentioned at the very beginning that we think this is a strong set of results. I would, in music business terms, say that we're at number 10. We've made it to the top 10 in the sense of we've got something that is well on its way to where we want it to be, but we're not at number one yet, and we're gonna get this fund to number one. We're gonna go all the way with it. We believe that with the songs that we've assembled at its core, the team that we've assembled that is doing a terrific job now of firing on all cylinders and adding value, and you'll hear more of that shortly from both Ben and Ted, that we're gonna make it to number one. As Chris pointed out, you know, he talked about risk premium. I've said it to a few shareholders in the past, but I think it's worth repeating in the room that over the last 40 years that I've been in this business, the benchmark for extraordinary success has been the platinum record, which if we use the United States as a microcosm is, you know, 1 million copies sold in a country that has 360 million people in it. That one in 360 immediately tells you that while people may love music, they didn't love it enough to put their hand in their pocket and pull out money and pay for it. That construct has now been replaced by there being 100 million homes in the United States that are paying for a premium music streaming subscription. We've gone from our customer being one in 360 to being one in 3.6, and the vast majority of those are paying upwards of $120 a month. Now prices are increasing as well. $120 a year, and now prices are increasing as well. That risk premium is very positively impacted in our favor, which is why, you know, when we challenge Citrin Cooperman on the discount rate, they try to justify it to us, and we understand exactly why it is where it is. You know, this is, again, a new asset class. We completely understand why there are challenges to the valuation and why there are challenges to the discount rate. Again, this is an asset class which is, you know, the pie is growing. The music industry, you know, look at, forget about our results. Look at, you know, Sony. Look at Universal. As Chris pointed out, they're a step ahead of us in terms of payments. The music industry is doing the exact opposite of what macroeconomic conditions are making the rest of the world do. Now I'm gonna introduce you to Ben Katovsky, our new President and COO, who's gonna take you through some important facts and figures. Thank you, Merck. Good morning, everybody. I'm Ben Katovsky. I'm President and Chief Operating Officer at Hipgnosis Song Management. As Merck said earlier, I'm the new one, having only joined the company in October, so let me take a moment to introduce myself. I've been working in the music industry for almost two decades now, and I've particular expertise in the scaling of growing music companies, building value from growing catalogs, and particularly using data and technology to enable this. Most recently, prior to Hipgnosis, I was the Chief Operating Officer at BMG, where I helped to grow the business from a start-up to the world's fourth-largest company. I chose to join Hipgnosis so that I could combine my passion for music with my passion for technology and a growing catalog. Not just any catalog, some of the finest songs ever written. At Hipgnosis, I now lead the daily operations of the business to ensure that our teams are delivering across all areas of song, active song management, that we maximize the opportunities for our songs, and that we continue to build and improve our capabilities that we need in this growing and evolving market. I think it's important to say from the outset that I'm a very firm believer in the ability of active song management to drive shareholder value. Active song management covers a broad range of topics. We've heard from Merck examples of how we drive consumption through streaming and synchronization. A big part of active song management is about how we handle rights management and revenue collection element of our business. How do we go about registering our rights around the world to let everybody know that we own them? How do we go about licensing those rights to DSPs such as Apple and Spotify? How do we go about making sure that we collect every penny of revenue that's due to us for the use of our songs? In a moment, Ted will be talking more about how we drive consumption of our songs, but I've selected the short straw this morning. No music for me. I'm gonna be talking to you about a couple of topics which might sound very dry but are also very important for delivering value. These are optimizing rights administration and the Copyright Royalty Board. Now, when you're collecting money from thousands of different users located all around the world, the payment chain can get long and get expensive as everybody takes their cut. There's considerable upside for Hipgnosis from taking actions which remove the middlemen and allow us to take more control. By doing this, we can increase revenues, we can reduce costs, we can get paid quicker, and we can increase transparency on the process. Let me give you some examples now of how we optimize rights administration to put actions like this actually into practice. The music industry can be confusing. For those of you who are less familiar with it, let me take a moment to explain that a music administrator manages a songwriter's songs in the marketplace, and they help to collect the royalties due to them. For this, the administrator will charge a fee. Most songwriters are tied to an administrator for a set period, and when Hipgnosis acquires their catalogs, we inherit those preexisting agreements. When the agreement expires, we have the opportunity to choose a new administrator. With Hipgnosis Songs Group, or HSG, we have our own in-house administrator in the United States. HSG is increasingly taking responsibility for administering our catalogs there, and so far, we've insourced 40 legacy administration arrangements. This has many significant benefits for Hipgnosis. In terms of royalty collection, it means that we can collect directly from the music licensees and the collective management organizations. That means that we are removing a link in the payment chain. By doing this, we can speed up payments, we can reduce costs, we can reduce leakage, and we can give ourselves greater transparency on our revenues. In terms of our route to market, it means that we can execute licenses directly with some of the DSPs such as YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok, as well as for all of our sync users. This puts us fully in control rather than having to accept the terms negotiated by others on our behalf. Importantly, HSG gives us an even more active role in the largest music market, allowing us to drive improvement and advocate for songwriters. Advocacy has been a key part of Hipgnosis ever since Merck founded the company. As recently as this summer, we've been able to use our position to help drive forward important changes, including playing our role on the joint CRB proposals, which I'll come back to later. By removing the middleman and taking control via HSG, we calculate that we are saving $850,000 in third-party administration fees annually. Outside the U.S., we do not currently have our own infrastructure or scale to allow us to self-administrate efficiently, so we have looked for other solutions to optimize song management. In July, we announced that we had entered into a partnership with Sacem, a world-leading collective management organization, to license and collect digital rights, primarily in the U.K. and continental Europe. We have initially transferred 36 legacy administration arrangements into this new structure. Through Sacem, Hipgnosis can directly license DSPs, and again, we can remove middleman administrators. This gives Hipgnosis transparency on the process and on the terms. It allows us to play an active role in setting of those terms, and it reduces the cost and speeds up payments to us. At the same time, we entered into a sub-publishing arrangement with Peermusic to collect publishing rights not covered by HSG and Sacem. Founded over 90 years ago, Peermusic is a highly established publishing administration company. With offices in 31 countries, this provides Hipgnosis with an optimized collection network across the global music market. By consolidating administration with a single partner, we are able to improve control and transparency for Hipgnosis and to negotiate scale terms. On that point, across the Sacem and Peer partnership, we calculate that annually we are saving $350,000 in third-party administration fees for songs that they now administer. As with the songs that HSG administers, we expect this saving to increase as additional catalogs revert into these optimized structures over time. During the current financial period, we are seeking to move a further six legacy arrangements to the Sacem and Peer structures. Collection from revenue from live concerts is another opportunity for us to take control to remove the middleman, to reduce costs, and to speed up payments. If you're a music lover, and Merck tells me lots of you are, then you won't have failed to notice the return of live music over the summer, including major tours from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blondie, Lindsey Buckingham, and Nile Rodgers and Chic. When a Hipgnosis song is played at these shows, royalties become due to us. Historically, collecting these receipts was a slow process with multiple middlemen. In recent years, though, a number of fast-track services have come to market. Now with the COVID-19 lockdowns, thankfully, finally behind us, this summer was our first opportunity to trial them for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Blondie tours. In both cases, we can already see significant benefits. Significantly quicker payments mean that for both tours, we have already received some revenue before the end of the period and further payments since. On one tour, in just one country, we have saved $100,000 in costs. Now, while this might not be replicable in all territories, it's indicative of the value that can be created. While individually, it's not a large amount, there is no single silver bullet to administrative song management, but instead, there are many individual levers which together all add up. As a result of the positive outcome of these tours, we are in the process of signing up additional tours to the services to optimize collections. Now, I hope that all of these examples that I've shared with you so far today show you how by actively managing the administration of our songs, we can drive value for the catalog. In our announcement, and here today, you've heard us talk on several occasions about the CRB and the MLC. Both are key U.S. bodies, and I wanted to take a moment to explain their roles and why they are important to Hipgnosis. Both are also examples of how Hipgnosis combines our lobby activity and administrative song management to improve revenue for our catalog. The CRB or Copyright Royalty Board, to give it its full name, determine rates for statutory copyright licenses in the United States. Most significantly for Hipgnosis, they decide what portion of streaming revenue is payable to songwriters and publishers. The CRB sets rates for five-year periods, with the CRB III ruling setting rates for 2018 to 2022. As Merck mentioned already, in a major win for songwriters, the CRB ruled to increase the headline rate by 44% from 10.5% of revenue to 15.1%, and that's incrementally over a five-year period. This ruling, however, was appealed by a number of the major streaming services, and while this appeal was underway, the DSPs largely did not pay songwriters and publishers at the increased rates. Hipgnosis played a vocal role in lobbying for the CRB to retain the increased rates, and this summer, the CRB confirmed their original decision. As a result, there's now a backlog of money owed by the DSPs to songwriters and publishers, including, as Chris talked about earlier, $19.2 million owed to Hipgnosis. As a side note, it is now clear that the adversarial approach which characterized the CRB III wasn't in anyone's interest. For the next period, CRB IV, which runs from this coming January through to the end of 2027, the songwriters and publishers worked with the DSPs to put together a joint proposal. Again, Hipgnosis played an active role in this process. The joint proposal would see a further increase over the CRB IV period, with the headline royalty rate rising incrementally to 15.35%. While a more modest increase, the proposal recognizes the need for songwriters to receive a greater share of revenue, and importantly, it brings a period of certainty. That period of certainty will allow us to focus both on the future as well as to wider lobbying activities rather than just arguing about the past. Now this brings me to the MLC or the Mechanical Licensing Collective. It's another U.S. body created in 2019 by the Music Modernization Act, again, as a result of lobbying by us in the music industry. The primary task of the MLC is to administer mechanical licenses to streaming services in the United States. That's services such as Apple, Spotify music, Amazon Music, and then pay out the resulting royalties to songwriters and publishers. Previously, these DSPs paid these royalties directly to songwriters or through a broad range of agents, and this centralization will improve transparency, it will improve accuracy, and it will speed up payments. Currently, the MLC has two additional tasks. Firstly, with its mandate starting in 2021, the MLC is tasked with processing the adjustments to the higher CRB III rates for the 2021 and 2022 period. Secondly, it's responsible for distributing over $400 million in revenue due to songwriters and publishers from periods prior to 2021. These royalties were not paid as DSPs did not know who to pay them to. Now, that might sound incredible that there's such a large amount of unpaid royalties, but unfortunately, the music industry does not have the best track record for data quality. The advent of streaming was an incredible gift for songwriters and for artists, but suddenly, millions of songs were effectively released, and there were countless examples of incorrect or missing registrations. This is where opportunity lies. It's where our active song management can come in to maximize revenue collection. The MLC has provided unprecedented access to the data that is used to identify and pay royalties and to tools that can be used to correct errors in that data. A significant focus of our copyright and royalty teams has been to work with this data to identify issues and to correct them as necessary. We've also enlisted the support of third-party companies to help us in this process. Combined, these activities will help us to not only maximize revenue from the go-forward licensing but also to ensure that we maximize the money that we collect from the $400 million of unpaid royalties and the CRB III adjustments. Due to the complexity, though, the CRB recovery processes are slow-moving for the industry as a whole. Therefore, we currently expect to see these royalties paid from the fourth quarter of 2023. Now, alongside the revenue uplift that CRB III delivers, our active song management is allowing us to identify missing and new revenue, which can now be collected. The combination of our active song management, our lobby efforts, and the positive legislative tailwinds of the music industry are improving revenue and creating value in our songs that simply did not exist at the time that we purchased them. In conclusion, Merck and the team have clearly created an unparalleled catalog of iconic songs. As I've shown you today, we started to unlock some of the hidden value in those songs, and I'm incredibly excited to be working with Merck and all of the rest of the team, some of them who are here with us today, to unlock even greater value as we move forward. On that note, I'll hand back to Merck. Thank you. Sorry, I'm approving another sync as we speak in real time. Thank you, Ben. It really is great to have you on board. I don't know how many of you have managed to see any of the Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts this summer that Ben was referring to. However, they were incredible. The good news is that they're back on the road in January with concerts in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Japan, Mexico, Canada, and the U.S. We've added an additional 13 dates across Europe, including London again in July. You'll see that there's not a single venue that is available in 2023 at this point. Every one of our artists is on tour. Every one of our artists is going to be generating performance income that's back on a par with where 2019 was, if not better. Ultimately, that's gonna continue into 2024, despite the macroeconomic conditions and inflation, which is obviously gonna make it difficult for people to be able to see as many shows as they want. The pandemic has created a demand that's you know not gonna be satiated for some time to come, and that's very good news to come for us. Next up, Ted Cockle, our Chief Music Officer, who's gonna take you through how we increase revenues by boosting consumption of our music. I'm gonna go back to approving this sync. Right. I better move things along. There's a lot of you who've already got your 1:00 bookings at The Delaunay for one of your boozy festive lunches. We better keep it moving along. Thank you again for all of you joining us in the Maxwell Library. I've not had it confirmed whether it was in tribute to Robert Maxwell that this was named. I'm not sure about that at the moment. This is an excellent opportunity for us to lead you through Hipgnosis and everything that we're up to. As a sidebar, it's also an excellent opportunity while you are up west away from the office on company time to finish any of your Christmas shopping as well. Just a reminder for that important partner's Christmas present or Christmas card as well. I am here. I come from a record company background, 10 years at Sony Music and 15 years at Universal Music, where I was President of Island Records and Virgin EMI. I am on the coalface, and it is for me to try and work out the best ways to sweat the assets, to find opportunities for our songs to be working that bit harder. Here today, I will lead you through three very tangible examples of the kind of thing that we get up to just keep making the songs that we own work that bit harder. Generally, we love Christmas. We love Christmas at this company because we own the copyright to Mariah Carey, "All I Want for Christmas Is You." What a wonderful thing to have. From the middle of November, this song really starts revving up. It is the arrival of Christmas. It came out in 1994, and we use the phrase a lot with our repertoire. The song is now bigger than it was when it was famous. It continues to grow. Christmas in the U.K. is also heralded by the arrival of the John Lewis Christmas advert. Many of you may remember the Lily Allen with the Keane cover. Many of you remember the Tom Odell with the John Lennon cover. Some of you will remember when Elton John used your song and actually appeared in the advert. The advert, the reveal, the rollout heralds the start of Christmas. This year, our sync team, the team that deal with the advertising agencies and the music supervisors, have managed to secure one of our songs to soundtrack the John Lewis Christmas TV ad. It is by Tom DeLonge, who is known as... from the band Blink-182. This is a new version by a New York collective called Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox. The song has been chosen. It captures the mood of the ad beautifully. We own a third of the copyright of this song, and it receives a six-figure sum for usage within this ad. Could I now play you the John Lewis Christmas ad for 2022? [Presentation] Songs in action. When Merck IPO'd the company, he talked about trying to aim to get a John Lewis Christmas TV ad. Here we are in 2022 with the advert secured. The song by Tom DeLonge, the catalog we own. Tom DeLonge from Blink-182, they were pretty much the high tide mark for pop punk in America at the start of the millennium. Their reputation has continued to build. The band have now reformed. What better when a band reforms than when the drummer, Travis Barker, happens to add a little bit of cultural cachet by finding himself with his new Kourtney Kardashian as his partner. That helped the band are now going off on a 75-date tour, playing venues bigger than they were playing in what would be classed as their peak. As in bigger than when they were famous. They will head off playing Tom DeLonge songs from which we will earn on the 75-date tour. That is the first case of where we are looking at finding a major sync for our songs. Secondly, the example I'd like to use is us creating new masters of songs. You know a song really, really well, and it's buried in your heart, but sometimes we work out a way where we can provide a different interpretation of that song. In a clumsy way, we would say, "You know it with a male vocal," the male vocal. If you suddenly hear that song with a female vocal, it can transform the song into another dimension. We did that. We have a Bon Jovi song written by Mr. Richie Sambora. We had the song. We found an artist from the Channel Islands that we like with a beautiful vocal. We recorded the song "Wanted Dead or Alive." "Wanted Dead or Alive" is a song from the band's 1986 Slippery When Wet album, an ultimate power ballad. We've re-recorded the song. We have a new master. We released the song. 1.3 million streams on Spotify alone. That's good, but the mission was to find a place for the song in a sync. That was the real mission, and this week, the new version of our Richie Sambora song, the Bon Jovi song, "Wanted Dead or Alive," is being used by a major gaming studio in the trailer for the launch of their new game at the event in Los Angeles. I think it's tomorrow. We have 50% of the copyright of this song. We now have 100% of the master. That is a situation of creating a whole new life for a song. If I could now play you the originally Richie Sambora written song, "Wanted Dead or Alive," but featuring our new talent, Empara Mi. "Wanted Dead or Alive," just a small clip of this song, please. [Presentation] Lovely. Thank you very much. A new master, a new song, 100% under our ownership. Third and finally from me, Rick James, the king of punk funk from the 1980s. An excellent catalog acquisition. This is a catalog that has been sampled over 500 times. His songs have found new life. Nearly a decade after the Rick James "Super Freak" song was released, MC Hammer took the opening riff of the song and made MC Hammer, "U Can't Touch This." Many of you will have this as your standard Christmas dance to your "U Can't Touch This" dance moves. MC Hammer, a song, Grammy-nominated number one single in America. Exceptional new life for the song under our ownership. The song is just irresistible to people. We were involved with the documentary, Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James, with HBO. That just meant that everybody had the opportunity to reevaluate why he was such an extraordinary character, why his music was so amazing. That one came out at the start of the year. The uber producer in America, Dr. Luke, then got with Caribbean super rapper, Nicki Minaj, and they created a new song, "Super Freaky Girl." This song. Oh, we're playing the videos of the three songs. Here we go. [Presentation] Now, that is the journey of a record. That is the journey of a record that we want to repeat and repeat and repeat with as much of our repertoire as possible. The song in 2022, some of you may be old enough to know one of the original versions. Many people out in the world have no idea about the origins of this song. Here, the song was released. It broke Spotify records. It was the first female rapper to go to number one on the hot Billboard 100 since 1998 when Lauryn Hill achieved that with "Doo Wop (That Thing)". It's enormous. Top 10s around the world. Rick James reimagined. Rick James, his song, finding new life. Just very quickly here is hopefully three versions. A massive TV sync on a song with a different version. We create a new master of our song with a different version. We have a classic Rick James song, reused, reinterpreted, 265 million streams and counting for the use of Rick James' song with Nicki Minaj. Just a few examples where I hope to convey exactly what we are doing on the coal face, representing these songs, sweating this asset, and adding serious extra revenue to our funds. Thank you for listening. The quality of these songs is such not going to end with just another interpolation of you know by Nicki Minaj of Super Freak. You know some of you will know that because we announced it not too long ago that on the private side of our business with Blackstone we acquired Justin Timberlake's catalog. A week ago I sent Justin a what they call screwed-up version of another Rick James song which Justin is now taking and turning into a single based on the song catalog. On every level we are trying to ensure that we're adding value creating new copyrights creating new opportunities to take our song catalog to places that it's never gone before. On Monday of this week, we had the head of music for TikTok fly in from Beijing to sit down with us, and we've talked about a cooperation whereby we will create as many as 20 different cover versions of all of our key songs. Basically, taking the right song with one of our creators and then putting it into the context of all of the different versions of music and the genres, if you like, that you know, people are consuming TikTok on. You know, I think even everyone in this audience knows that TikTok is one of the most, you know, the biggest emerging platforms. It's launched its own DSP that will be licensed around the world before we know it. While it's an anemic payer, it's going to be an anemic payer that turns into a significant payer in due course. Our ability to be able to work with these people, create new cover versions, take them to every genre of people and every demographic of people that are consuming their music via TikTok and make two and two add up to ten for us. An additional part of our active management is to advocate for our artists and songwriters' incredible legacies. Recently, we had the Eurythmics inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Eurythmics, as you know, are an artist that's been having massive records for over 40 years now. They've been eligible for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for more than 10 years. Our being, you know, willing to put the time and the effort to lobby the various members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the judging panel, and the journalists that vote on it, and also the public that votes on it, was the difference maker in terms of finally getting them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is a little clip of some of the photos from the night. [Presentation] On the same night, we had Jimmy Iovine inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the great producer, and also our James Bond theme, Nobody Does It Better, which was written by Carole Bayer Sager, was performed during the performance and on television as part of Carly Simon's induction. These are a few photos from Jimmy's induction. [Presentation] That was Bruce Springsteen inducting Jimmy Iovine into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It was The Edge from U2 inducting Eurythmics into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As we've mentioned a gazillion times over the last five years, we're only interested in two things in order to really be able to give our shareholders the incredible opportunity of what I think will be exponential net asset value growth, and that's extraordinary success and cultural importance. Doesn't get much more culturally important than being inducted by The Edge from U2 or Bruce Springsteen, for that matter. Further to this, Shakira was honored at this year's Ivors, the Great Songwriters Awards, probably the most important songwriters awards in the world, with the International Lifetime Achievement Award. There's a clip. [Presentation] We've obviously chosen Waka Waka to play during the course of that clip, because the World Cup is back on. It won't surprise you to know that despite the fact that it was a top 10 hit all over the world when it was released in 2010, you know, the new Middle Eastern chart, which was launched last week, that song has entered at number nine again. It's becoming a hit all over again, and we will work very hard to see whether we can take that from just being a regional hit and spread it around the rest of the world again. Of course, it's being streamed everywhere as we speak now and, you know, I guess there's really only one thing to say about the World Cup, which is come on England. Let's do it on Saturday. Finally, the same award for international achievement at the Ivors also went to a special friend of Hipgnosis. Before we get to him, here's further evidence of how iconic our songs really are. Pete Paphides is considered to be one of the most important journalists in the U.K., and this is a tweet from Pete where he says, "Seriously, how many songs have the power to do this? Just glorious." He's referencing another tweet from Goodable, where he says, "A man was sitting alone on a park bench singing Bon Jovi's Livin' on a Prayer by himself. By the end, the entire park joined along to sing with him." We're gonna show you this little clip. [Presentation] You might know who this guy is. [Presentation] You know, there's a funny story that used to go around the music business before we ever bought Richie's catalog, but I like to repeat it a lot now because, of course, we're biased, and you can see for good reason why. But the funny story is, you know, do you know that Jon Bon Jovi is the second-best singer in Bon Jovi? That is oft repeated well before we ever bought Richie's catalog. You know, you're gonna see, you know, Richie's become such a part of the family, along with people like Nile Rodgers and all of the songwriters that we work with. You know, when we make these transactions, in the case of most companies, the transaction is the extent of the relationship, right? I give you the check, you sail off into the sunset, and I get on with letting the money trickle in. That's not the way that it works at Hipgnosis. At Hipgnosis, the transaction is the beginning of the relationship, and we go to work adding serious value for our shareholders, but also for the legacies of these incomparable songwriters that have entrusted us with their catalogs. That is pretty much the end of our presentation. I'll do a summation in a few minutes. First, Chris, Ben, and Ted are gonna join me up here at the front, and we'll answer any questions you may have. You're gonna ask the questions, and I'm gonna point at each one of them to deflect from myself. Who's got the first question? Hi, this is [Jafar Hawseratman, Flood Securities]. Thank you for hosting us, and thank you for a wonderful private concert there. A few questions, but maybe first and foremost, speaking of holding on to what you've got. What do you say to investors that are concerned that at the current discount, this becomes an attractive take-private target? I think that as most investors will know, that I have a put in my agreement, the IA agreement with the fund that if the fund were ever to be sold or if someone were to take it over, that I would have the first opportunity to do that. It's very important to me when I look at these songwriters in the eye and effectively acquire their metaphorical children, I have to have integrity and credibility for the success of the company if I'm going to do that. I've made sure even perhaps a commercial sacrifice to myself and to the IA that both on the song side of things and even on my private side with Blackstone, that I'm always gonna be the manager of these catalogs. Having said that, I have a fiduciary responsibility to my investors that is equal to that I have to songwriters, if not greater. You're, you know, really getting down to it. I think that as you've seen from this presentation this morning, there's incredible value here, and that incredible value is something that I'm determined is going to be reflected in the share price. I will work tirelessly along with the group of people. You know, the IA is now more than 50 people strong here in the U.K. We have additional people in America, and we will work tirelessly to ensure that the share price reflects the real asset value of this company as fast as we possibly can by always telling the truth, by working hard and adding value. Ultimately, I think that will keep the wolf away from the door. Who's next? Hi, it's Emma Letheren from RBC. Hi, Emma. Hiya. You mentioned that you could see the valuations in the market from recent M&A, and I was just wondering if you could give any idea of what they're currently tracking at. Sure. You know, obviously I'm under NDA in terms of being able to comment on individual catalogs. You know, you've seen incredible catalogs like the Genesis catalog trade and the Phil Collins catalog trade. Primary Wave have recently raised a bunch of money, and part of that money from Brookfield bought $700 million worth of assets that they had. You know, a lot of the people that have come along over the last couple of years that have competed against us are you know, out there, you know, writing very significant checks. I can't comment on the individual catalogs, but what I can tell you is that we are seeing multiples that are being paid that are significantly above where our NAV is. I'm not talking about where share price is, I'm talking about where our NAV is. Who's next? Mr. Brown. Yeah. Just a couple- He's gonna comment on the fact that Richie changed the arrangement of Livin' on a Prayer, and he's not happy. That's a great one. Maybe he is happy. Very happy. Just on performance income, you said it was a bit, you know, you'd been expecting a recovery, and it hadn't quite come in. When do you expect that to sort of flow through to the figures? I think that we're going to see significant improvements in our performance income in the next reporting period and in the next reporting period after that and in the next reporting period after that. As you know, Chris, because you've spent a lot of time in learning the asset class since we met almost five years ago. The performing rights societies around the world, as well as the major publishing companies, have a major lag time, particularly in their international collections. When we see the pain that we had in performance income in our last reporting period, that last reporting period probably coincides perfectly from a timing perspective with the very worst of COVID, right? We're about 18 months behind. You know, that last reporting period represented 18 months behind where, you know, this reporting period is probably the very worst that we'll see of performance, and we expect to see, you know, very significant improvement in the next period. Thank you. While I've got a mic, I hope to ask a couple other quick questions. Please. First of all, the Can I choose who answers? For the songs younger than 10 years, are you able to give an idea of the sort of average age of those? Are they sort of towards seven or eight years or? The average age is 2016. They're younger than 10 years. Thank you. The last one. Can you say what the average remaining admin contract life is, and therefore, when we might expect that to be brought in-house and the savings made? I think that's something we need to come back to on a case-by-case basis and come back to you with an average on that. With regard to those younger songs that obviously continually make up a smaller part of the overall portfolio, Chris, again, I'll repeat what I said earlier in the discussion, which is that we only buy songs that are extraordinarily successful and that have what we believe is cultural importance as well. So even if you see something like, you know, Señorita, Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes, that was up there earlier as part of the Spotify Billions Club, these are songs that we buy on low multiples relative to the rest of the portfolio, sometimes single digits. We know they're going to decay, but at the same time, we also know that we're going to get greater than baseline income for, you know, in terms of the baseline that we've bought them at, income for a couple of years beyond what we've bought them at. They're gonna trough, and they're gonna level off, and these songs, you know. It's no secret to everyone that the Pink Floyd catalog was for sale not too long ago. In the end, that catalog won't trade. When you look at a catalog as iconic as that, on the surface it looks amazing, right? Below the surface, you've got incredible records that are gonna go into public domain because it's a catalog that is over 50 years old, hitting 60 years old. You've also got an audience that includes me and you. Wish You Were Here is my favorite record of all time. It's an audience that has, you know, limited life left to it, where, you know, if you're the 14-year-old girl that was listening to Señorita three summers ago or four summers ago, you've hopefully got another 70 years of life left in front of you and another 70 years of consuming these incredible songs that become a part of the fabric of your life and become a part of the fabric of society. Next. Please, mate. They're bringing the mic to you right now. Can I just ask about the administration directly in the U.S.? I just appreciate it's a cost saving, so it makes sense, but how are you guys able to do it cheaper than the large organizations that are incumbents? Just what do you have to invest in? How do you get the data? I mean, I think that it's just a lot to a certain extent, those incumbents are taking a margin on providing that service, right? We're able to eliminate that margin. I think thankfully, it is a relatively scalable process as well, right? Once you set the song up correctly once you get that registration in place once, you don't need to come back and check on it every now and again, but it's not that you're constantly working that, right? You don't need to scale up your resources and your team directly in line with the number of songs that you're administering, and that allows you then to be able to capture more of that margin yourself. I think the other thing to say alongside that, which is in line with what Ben is saying, is that you've got the single biggest record market in the world or consumption market in the world, doesn't matter whether it's records or whatever it is, right? You have a limited amount of payers, right? You wanna get paid by Spotify, you wanna get paid by Apple, you wanna get paid by BMI, you wanna get paid by, you know, ASCAP, et cetera. You know, it doesn't take a large team to be able to do that effectively. Whereas of course, if you attempted to administer yourself, I know that a fund like Round Hill talks about the fact that they administer themselves around the world. We wouldn't spend that kind of money on administration. It's a very onerous process to have your money collected around the world. You're better off paying 5%, 6% to someone else to do that and, you know, put in the processes to get your money faster and get more of it and everything else that goes with that. In the United States, you can do that very efficiently. In the rest of the world, we would be more focused on managing our songs rather than collecting the monies on those songs. There are many good payers. As you all know, we are not only in business with HSG as our own administrator and our preferred administrator in the U.S., but we also have significant catalogs with Warner, Sony, Universal, Kobalt, et cetera. All of them have their strengths, all of them have their weaknesses, and we know those probably better than anyone. We probably have a better level of experience in terms of being able to explain to anyone what the strengths and weaknesses of all of those companies are. The most important thing is, you know, Chris has assembled a very strong revenue assurance department to ensure that regardless of what the weaknesses of any of those companies might be, that we're on top of collecting our monies. That's something that has evolved over the five years that we've been in business, and that's gonna continue to evolve and get better because, you know, we wanna put the money in and whether we're, you know. You know, our chief concern is to add value for our shareholders. At the same time, we're often adding value for Universal, Warner, and Sony as well. On the advocacy front, I'm very critical of those companies because they hold back how songwriters are being paid. But ultimately, you know, if you get past the senior leadership of those companies and you get to the sync people that are doing the same work as our sync department is doing, they love us, right? Because we've created a level of efficiency amongst these iconic catalogs that they've never had before, right? If they send through, you know, we're working, you know, aggressively to actively manage our songs and to add value. They're sending us requests at the same time all the time, which are, you know, you can look at them as passive requests, but in most hands, those passive requests rarely get answered in a timely fashion. They rarely get acted on because there's just so much bureaucracy. When they send us something, they have answers in seconds. So you could go to the sync department of Sony, you could go to the sync department of Universal, you could go to the sync department of Warners, and I guarantee you that they will tell us that we are the very best that there is because they've been able to make more money at the same time as we're making more money. Can I add two more points on just to answer the question? Please. I think the first thing to say is that it comes down to the nature of the songs that we have and the iconic songs that we have as well. Because it takes the same amount of effort to enter a song in a system, to register a song at a CMO around the world, whether it's making $1 million a year, whether it's making $1 a year. You need to keep in mind that all those other companies have you know, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of songs that are making $1 a year, right? They need to recapture their cost and cover their costs by charging a higher fee on those songs that are doing well, right? I think that's in our favor. The other thing that is in our favor is that because we sit in the songs, in the shoes of the songwriter, we're capturing a large amount of that value on the song as well, right? If you had an administrator who's just taking a 10% fee, right? That's not really a significant amount of money coming to them. When we do the work, we capture 50%+ of the value that we find in the market. You know, I haven't looked at this statistic recently because I've been trying to be kind with my comments on our competitors. The last time I looked at this, which I believe was fiscal year to fiscal year, we did something like 21% of Warner Chappell's revenue on less than 1% of the assets. That's the difference between, you know, it's not rocket science. We're not smarter or better than they are. They have amazing people that are as passionate about music as we are. Maybe not quite, but close. But it's the difference between structure, right? It's all about bandwidth. It's all about, can you apply yourself to the job at hand? Do you have time to send that Rick James sample to Justin Timberlake? Do you have time to, you know, make sure that you create this new version of Wanted Dead or Alive, and add value? Sadly, because those companies have as many as 20,000 songs per person, the people are overwhelmed, and they don't have that kind of bandwidth. Yes, sir. On that topic, is there any guidance you can provide in terms of your expectations of what song management will add to sync over, let's say, the next two, three years, or to net revenue overall? Sure. You know, I can't really give you guidance with any authority other than to point to our track record. You'll see from today's results that our sync is up by 32%, and we continue to add manpower in that area. You know, we created a partnership with Blackstone, as many of you will know, a year ago, that not only included the launch of the private fund that I've referenced, but that also brought them in as partners on the management company. That has allowed us to attract, you know, an additional level of investment into the company itself and to add bodies. We will certainly, in what is a very diff... You know, very difficult environment at this point. You know, Chris referenced the savings on IA fees in his presentation, but we continue to add people, and we continue to be very, very focused on the management of our songs. That Blackstone investment is something that is not only a benefit to our Blackstone fund and the investment advisor itself, but that's also a very important benefit to SONG and SONG shareholders. I believe that we're only getting started in terms of where you see sync in our numbers. Look, I think it's just worth noting that on that optimization of the song administration, I mentioned the two numbers separately when I presented, which was the $350 outside the U.S. and $850 in the U.S. So in total, that's over $1 million that we're saving on those administration fees. That's just for those catalogs that we have put through the system already. We will come back as to what the average term is on the remaining contracts to give a view on that. Yeah. Look, it's important to point out as well that while those numbers may be on the surface don't appear to be that material, when you look at them in the context of what administration actually costs. You know, a couple of things to say about that. First of all, when we bought our catalogs, we bought them net of the administration fee, and that administration fee was anything from 15% to 40%, depending on where the songwriter was in their evolution and their success at the time that they made that deal. As soon as we're able to move those catalogs, we move them into those lower single digits that Ben was talking about. Ultimately, you know, when you're saving, you know, $300,000, $800,000, $1 million+ in the context of, you know, what is, you know, probably, you know, that's as much as, you know, 20% of even our net would be, or our lower administration fees would be. We've probably got time for a couple more questions. There's a lady there. Yeah. There was one lady there. Which one? That lady. This lady right here? Yes, indeed. There you go. Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. Congratulations on the half year results. Thank you. Just two questions. One, is there any chance that perhaps the ad spending slow down due to the macro environment could impact you? Specifically thinking about your synchronization unit, but also perhaps, I know a portion on YouTube, similarly on Spotify comes from ad. If that ad spending shrinks, would that also impact your digital spend? It's an excellent question, and this is why that combination of extraordinarily successful songs along with culturally important songs is so important, because there's no question that there will be an impact in ad revenues going forward for at least a period of time. You know, the question is, you know, have you bought songs that are important enough to continue to be consumed and to continue to be used regardless of the macroeconomic conditions? I think that's where we're in a very good position. You know, if you think about this six months of results, we've got a 32% increase despite the fact that that's where you really see inflation coming if this was, you know, the first quarter of 2022, you could make an argument that the pain isn't being felt then. Certainly, when you look at April 1st through September 30th, the pain is being felt and we are on track for further growth, you know, from September 30th until now. I feel very comfortable that our songs have a level of importance that makes that a non-issue for us. Just quickly, could you also kinda explain the unique economics differences between a master record and, well, your others, basically. How much is that enhanced? Do you wanna take that, Chris? Um. You weren't listening? The unit economics, sorry, between a master royalty and- Publishing royalty a publishing royalty. Yeah, I mean, it's relatively complex if we're gonna break it down. If you look at the master royalty, the royalties that we would receive from an artist royalty based on an artist royalty rate based on the net dealer price that the record company sells the music for. On a publishing perspective, it's on 8.5% royalty rate on the gross dealer price. There's a, I think, the ratio is around four-to-one. Yeah Differential. So that's it in a nutshell. I think if you're looking at $1 coming in from a DSP, 30% is being held by the DSP. Around $0.15, $0.16 goes to the song, and the remainder goes to the master recording. That's our ambition, you know, to get that amount that's going to the song to be a higher proportion of that. Because as Merck says, you know, that is the underlying asset that makes all of this possible, right? That's why we feel positive about the CRB III ruling and the CRB IV ruling, which have both moved in that direction of recognizing that the song deserves a greater share of the revenue. I think part of your question as well is there's no doubt that in the first instance, the master is going to benefit more from streaming than the publishing is, but the publishing is gonna last much, much longer. It's a pleasure. Any final questions? All right, I'm going to close this out here. You know, the group of people in this room, those of you watching online, I apologize for not paying more attention to those of you online, but I don't have a screen and I can't see you. But hopefully the next time we do this, and it's been great to be able to do this post-COVID in person, with so many familiar faces here. But hopefully those of you that are online will be inclined to join us in person next time when we have, you know, probably someone equally as wonderful as Richie Sambora joining us as well. Really what I wanna say is that, you know, this group of people that are here, I see many of the faces that I saw in 2017 and 2018 before we launched this fund. You're pioneers in establishing what is an exciting new asset class, and we don't take your belief in the company lightly. We therefore take our responsibility to you as our shareholders very seriously, and I hope that the information that we've shared in these results will give you belief in our fair value and the company's incredible value eventually becomes recognized in the market. All that remains is for me to thank you for attending and for watching our presentation. I hope that we've answered all of your questions, but if you have any further points that you want clarity on, please come and speak to me and speak to the rest of the group of people here. I'm gonna bring Richie out so you can say hello to him before we all depart. We are the market leader. Hipgnosis Songs Fund is the market leader in every sense. We established songs as an asset class. It has provided a company which allows investors to share in the long-term stable returns that songs will generate. Hipgnosis Songs Fund has an incredible collection of iconic and culturally important songs which people will be enjoying for decades to come, and our sync performance is a clear demonstration of how effective that part of our active song management has been. We're in a market which is growing rapidly, growth which industry analysts expect to continue to the end of the decade and beyond. As you head back to your offices, enjoy the Christmas decorations, remember that this week Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You is heading back to number one in the U.K. We're the number one midweek as of an hour ago. We're gonna kick ass on Wham! and Last Christmas. We're number one on the Billboard global chart already, so the number one song in the world at this moment in time is All I Want for Christmas Is You. We're at number two in the U.K., although I fully expect that come Monday, we'll be number one. Sorry, in the U.S. I fully expect that come Monday, we'll be number one in the U.S. as well. We're gonna be number 1 everywhere in the world, and then on top of that, we've got Michael Bublé's Christmas album coming back into the top 10 and the top five everywhere. The midweek in the U.K. is number five. Every time you hear one of these songs and, you know, in addition to that, you're seeing, you know, a song like Heat Waves, number one song of the year. You're seeing an album like Christine McVie's and Fleetwood Mac's Rumours coming back into the top 10 all over the world. By the way, you know, her sad passing, of course, is gonna lead to, you know, additional consumption. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours has been a top 20 album literally all year, right? When you see us publish our next fact sheet, you will see that many of our albums are, you know, 10 years old, 20 years old, 30 years old, 40 years old, are still in the U.K. top 75, being heavily consumed by people like yourselves and other people out there. So remember, as you see this consumption, as you look at your kid playing Nicki Minaj's Super Freaky Girl, and you get uncomfortable and you wish that and you imagine that you're turning around to your daughter and say, "No, no, don't play that. Play Super Freak instead, or play You Can't Touch This instead," remember, we're earning money every moment of every day that those songs are being played. You know, All I Want for Christmas is a brilliant example of a song we bought well and nurtured in the short time we've been the co-owners. It may surprise you that despite the success it's had over the last 20 years, it only became a number one song after it was acquired by us. In that period of time, we've increased revenues by 78%. This is really what song management at its best is. You know, I maybe made a reference point that went over everyone's head a little bit earlier, but I consider ourselves to be entering the top 10 of the charts as a company at the moment. This is a company that's gonna go to number one. This is just the beginning, and it's a good set of results, but they're only gonna get better. We're only gonna work harder. Yes, share price doesn't reflect value. Yes, the discount is unacceptable, but we're gonna fix those problems. We'll fix them together. Thank you very much for taking the time, and it only remains for me to wish you and your families a merry Christmas and a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year. Thank you for your continued support.