Greetings, and welcome to our full year results announcements for FY23. I'm JB Rousselot, the CEO of Chorus, and with me is Mark Aue, our Chief Financial and Operations Officer. Now, most of you will know Mark from his previous role as the CEO of 2degrees, and also his earlier telco finance experience. He's been in the seat for just a few months. I'm sure he's gonna do an absolutely great job today, but just keep that in mind during the Q&A later in the presentation. As usual, we're gonna cover the areas summarized on the slide, including key results, financials, guidance, and also future trends, and then we'll take questions from the phone at the end of the presentation. Chorus has delivered another strong result in a year of many challenges and change. Like many other sectors, we were impacted by a softer economy, by cost of living concerns, and increased costs across Kia ora koutou ngā mihi haere mai. Greetings, welcome to our full year results announcement for FY23. I'm JB Rousselot, the CEO of Chorus, with me is Mark Aue, our Chief Financial and Operations Officer. Now, most of you will know Mark from his previous role as the CEO of 2degrees, also his earlier telco finance experience. He's been in the CFO seat for just a few months. I'm sure he's gonna do a great job, just keep that in mind in the Q&A later today. As usual, we're gonna cover the areas that are summarized on the slide, including key results, financials, guidance, and longer-term trends, and then we'll take questions from the phone at the end of our presentation. Chorus has delivered another strong result in a year of many challenges and change. Like many other sectors, we were impacted by a softer economy, by cost of living concerns, and increased costs across the board. Other more operational challenges included extreme weather events, and especially Cyclone Gabrielle, and a shortage of skilled workers when borders reopened, post-COVID. This meant that we faced significant constraints on the number of customers that we could connect when they needed a physical install. Despite that, we managed to grow total fiber connections by 72,000 to 1,031,000. We added another 22,000 net broadband connections in our fibre areas, meaning that we gained broadband market share in areas where we have fibre. Net broadband connections were down just 1,000 connections when you add the non-Chorus UFB areas and the rural and regional regions. Total connections were down 33,000 compared to a loss of 36,000 in the year before. We now ended up with 1.27 million connections. On the financial side, reported revenue lifted by NZD 15 million to NZD 980 million. That's our second year of revenue growth. As we flagged at the time, our half-year upgraded EBITDA guidance did not include an allowance for the extreme weather impacts that we were dealing with at the time. Those weather-related costs came in at NZD 7 million, and changes to our operating model also added one-off costs of about NZD 3 million. When you exclude these costs, underlying EBITDA was NZD 682 million, so up NZD 22 million from an underlying EBITDA in FY22 of NZD 660 million. Net profit after tax was NZD 25 million, compared to NZD 64 million in FY22. We have confirmed a final unimputed dividend of NZD 0.255, taking total dividends for the year to NZD 0.425. Despite the workforce constraints that I've mentioned, we continued to see good gains in the uptake in our UFB rollout areas. UFB1 areas were up 3%, and UFB2 areas rose by 6.5%. Overall, the uptake stands now at 73% across the combined UFB footprint, which is 4% better than last year. Of the 72 connections that we added, about 10% came from outside our UFB fibre area. Our growth is not just about the UFB areas. This slide is from our June quarterly update. You're familiar with it. At a high level, it shows the strong broadband growth in our UFB areas that I mentioned earlier. That growth is largely offsetting the reduction in copper voice lines. In our non-UFB zone, we have seen an uplift in disconnections, and we attribute that more to consumers switching from low-speed copper services to improved satellite offers. Then finally, line loss in the other fiber companies areas, the LFC areas, is reasonably constant, and we now have about 39 connections remaining there. When you look at installations, the 92,000 fiber installations that we completed in the year was at the lower end of our initial guidance of 90-110 installations. The field workforce challenges meant that we had to shift part of our managed migration efforts to really encourage fiber activations in homes where the installation had already been done. You can see play out in the chart on the right, with the migration contributing just 35,000 of the total installations, down from 43,000 the year before. The good news is, we did lift activations from 32,000 to 36,000, and 17,000 of those were from off-net addresses. Now, the workforce shortage, and the restoration works that was caused by the extreme weather events, obviously had an effect on our customer experience scores. To give you an idea, we had something like 60 days in which field activity was subject to force majeure conditions just in the second half of the year. We also had to delay some planned improvements to intact provisioning processes, and we hope that these changes will help lift the CX scores for those installs in the new year. We've now returned to sustainable workforce levels. We're pleased to be back to carrying out our proactive installations and see them make a difference going forward. Our plan mix for residential and business services continues to show positive trends. One Gig and multi-gigabit Hyperfibre services were 39% of the residential connections growth in the year. That helped lift the 1 Gigabit service from 23%-24% of the plan mix. Our Home Fiber Starter, the 50 megabit plan, also started to get some good traction, growing to 16,000 connections. A very encouraging characteristic of these new Home Fiber Starter customers is that about 60% of these were coming from off net just in the months of July. On the business side, we now have 71% of connections on speeds of 500 megabits per second and above. 91% of both residential and business plans are on speed of 300 megabits or better, and that's a really strong competitive positions to be in. Overall, some high-level, solid results. I'm now gonna hand over to Mark Aue, who will take you into more details of the financials. Thanks, JB. Good morning, everyone. While I've only been with the Chorus team for a few short months, I've been in the telco industry for over 20 years here in New Zealand and overseas, and will have crossed paths with many of you on the call today. Once again, I wanted to say hello. Let me say, I'm consistently amazed at the quality of telco infrastructure we have in New Zealand, which I think often gets lost. You only have to look at other global benchmarks to recognize how fortunate we are in New Zealand, and even more so when you consider our relatively low number of population and our diverse topography. Chorus has built and now runs fantastic fiber infrastructure across our country that we can be exceedingly proud of, and likewise, I'm proud to be part of the Chorus team. If we turn to the slides, this is our usual slide summarizing the earnings result. The overarching thematic, I would say, is that despite a challenging year, due to the extreme weather events and technician shortages, we've been able to maintain revenue growth and underlying EBITDA growth. On a reported basis, revenue's grown by NZD 15 million, with EBITDA largely flat year-over-year. As we've reported previously at the half, there are several one-off adjustments impacting both underlying revenue and expenses. These are detailed in a subsequent slide. When adjusting for these, revenue was up NZD 22 million, operating expenses were flat, and underlying EBITDA has grown by NZD 22 million to the NZD 682 million in FY23. As we've noted in prior periods, our push to migrate customers from copper to fiber, means that we've accelerated depreciation on copper cables in our fiber areas. This contributed most of the NZD 19 million lift in D&A throughout the year. Net interest expense has a number of moving parts that has resulted in an increase of NZD 53 million. That's primarily been driven by rising interest rates and some increased levels of debt. Tax expense reduced as a consequence of lower earnings, also a NZD 10 million accounting adjustment relating to the revaluation in land and building assets. Reported total revenues of NZD 980 million reflect the ongoing growth in fiber broadband as fiber uptake increases, and we see good growth in higher speed plans. As JB has mentioned, we're consistently seeing about 40% of quarterly net adds taking up these plans. Although total broadband connections were flat, the ongoing migration of consumers from copper to fiber, has meant fiber broadband revenues have grown by NZD 74 million, and copper broadband reduced by NZD 36 million. CPI increases had a staggered effect throughout the year. There was an average of 5% increase across some fiber services from October last year, and then 7.2% for some copper services from December last year. Overall, our fixed lines reduced by 33,000 connections. The bulk of those were copper voice lines. Those voice revenues were down NZD 13 million and are consistent with the prior trends. In field services, revenue was stable. We did see a large lift in Greenfields' revenue for new property development, up 14% year-over-year to NZD 33 million. However, roadworks and other activity was down and offsetting this. On an underlying basis, total expenses are flat at NZD 299 million, which you'll see on the following slide, but on a reported basis, expenses increased NZD 18 million. Of the key movements, labor costs, whilst increasing by NZD 12 million on an underlying basis, are only up NZD 5 million, again, due to one-off adjustments for the holiday pay provision and COVID impacts from FY22. As at 30 June, we had 846 permanent and fixed-term employees. That represents roughly a 6% increase from this time last year, and that increase reflects some contractors becoming permanent, and additional resourcing to support the implementation of the new fiber regulatory framework, as we reported earlier this year. Network maintenance costs continue to trend down as customers migrate to the fiber network. As a result, we've seen lower network faults, but this was offset by NZD 3 million of costs relating to the extreme weather events, some CPI increases, and a more complex fault mix. I would note our service company contracts meant CPI adjustments only flowed through from April this year, so we've only seen one quarter of inflationary impact, and more will come through in future maintenance and CapEx costs this year. IT costs are down NZD 8 million, benefiting from the release of a NZD 2 million software provision and savings from ongoing migration off legacy IT systems. Other network costs increased NZD 8 million, again, partially driven by extreme weather-related costs of NZD 3 million, but there were also ongoing property and network optimization costs of NZD 3 million as we exit copper and other legacy assets. On an underlying basis for EBITDA, we increased NZD 22 million to NZD 682 million, with both years incurring one-off adjustments. FY22 adjustments were NZD 15 million, while FY23 had NZD 10 million relating to, again, to the weather events and operating model changes. Secondly, I'd note that we've been looking into our optimization of our assets. We've identified that our land and buildings were valued significantly below market value. Having now gone through an independent verification process, we've applied a NZD 282 million revaluation to those assets. There'll be a small effect on depreciation from this change. Barring market volatility, we would expect to review this valuation now every three years. In gross CapEx for the year, we have NZD 454 million. It's down NZD 38 million from the prior year. Much of that follows the end of the UFB rollout. Fiber installations and Layer 2 expenditure was NZD 193 million, with 92,000 installations completed. The average cost per installation in UFB areas was NZD 1,067. Well within the guidance range we provided for this year. Layer 2 spend was NZD 51 million, up from NZD 29 million in FY22, as we scale up our network capability and make multi-gigabit Hyperfibre services more widely and readily available. Other fiber growth, CapEx was up NZD 36 million, driven by strong demand for new property development, up from NZD 54 million to NZD 68 million, and capacity upgrades to our core and metro transport network electronics. I'd also note there was roughly NZD 6 million of spend on fiber backhaul in Fiordland that is largely government-funded. Copper spend was down significantly. At a reported level, spend of NZD 33 million was down NZD 5 million for the year as we implemented stop sales in UFB areas, but the underlying decrease was actually NZD 12 million, or more than 30%, when you remove NZD 7 million of rural cabinet upgrades that were also largely grant-funded. Common CapEx lifted from FY22 levels as building projects resumed after COVID delays. We had various IT projects, including those that are helping us exit legacy systems and reduce our ongoing OpEx. Our EBITDA guidance for FY24 is a range of NZD 680 million-NZD 700 million and reflects our ongoing objective of modest EBITDA growth. While we continue to expect favorable trends on connections and ARPU mix, there are some headwinds specific to FY24. For example, in Greenfields, we anticipate some moderation to revenue from our record high last year, given the macro-market challenges impacting the building industry and indications from large developers for slowdown. We also anticipate costs to be approximately NZD 10 million higher, and again, specific to FY24 due to a number of factors. These include the deferral of some FY23 initiatives because of technician shortages and weather events that have now shifted into FY24. Inflation that is hitting a range of cost lines. Network maintenance, in particular, will have a full year of service company CPI on annualization. The regulatory and compliance costs are growing, with our next regulatory submission, a significant focus through this year as we build up to RP2. Finally, costs to transition to our new operating model from Q2. Moving to CapEx guidance. For FY24, we're expecting CapEx in a range of NZD 400 million-NZD 440 million. Within that, fibre CapEx of NZD 320 million-NZD 340 million, and the majority of that is installation and Layer 2 spend of NZD 180 million-NZD 190 million. That's based on between 80,000-100,000 installations. Copper CapEx also includes about NZD 6 million for the remainder of the rural cabinet upgrade program. That, again, is largely grant-funded. Sustaining CapEx is expected to be in the range of NZD 220 million-NZD 240 million, up from NZD 207 million in FY23, in part because we see the inflationary effects come through and a number of key projects that either continue or will come online. Those projects include some that we mentioned back in February as part of our CapEx outlook, such as the exchange building work that had been delayed by COVID, the deployment of Hyperfibre capability into the network, upgrades to provide greater capacity on key transport links and ensure we avoid network congestion, and a multi-year life cycle project, where we're replacing rural transport equipment. Our net debt to EBITDA grew to 4.39 times from 4.808 times in June. Borrowings were up circa NZD 170 million, primarily due to the new bond issue in September. About 65% of our interest rate exposure was fixed as at June 30 this year, with an average effective interest rate of 5.4%. We have NZD 750 million of fixed interest rate swaps starting in the first half of FY24 at better than current market rates. That will then take us to around 70% fixed over the next three years, as per our treasury policy. Those rate swaps are detailed in the presentation slide in the appendix. On our debt profile, you can see the new 2029 Eurobond on the chart that was issued in September last year, in conjunction with our decision to proactively repurchase NZD 457 million of the October 2023 bond. That was at a net cost of NZD 11 million, effectively delivered a net NZD 2 million benefit. The remaining amount on the October 2023 Eurobond is NZD 328 million, we'll be undertaking further financing activity in the near future. With the UFB rollout now finished, we've completed the drawdown of the NZD 1.3 billion in Crown financing, the first debt repayment of NZD 85 million is due in mid-2025. In line with our guidance of a 42.5% per share dividend for FY23, we've announced an unimputed final dividend of NZD 0.255 to be paid in October this year. The DRP remains suspended. Dividend guidance for FY24 has been confirmed at NZD 0.475 per share, unimputed, and subject to the usual caveats. I'd note our dividend policy to pay 60%-80% of net cash flow from operating activities, less our sustaining capital expenditure, is now in effect. With regards to the share buyback, there's just NZD 11 million left to run of the original program, and our intention is to close that out in FY24. Total shares on issue have now reduced to 435 million. Finally, on the regulatory front, I'm sure many of you have waded through the wealth of information in our information disclosure filings earlier in May this year. The main points were that our estimates that the RAV had grown to NZD 5.7 billion at the end of calendar 2022, and a MAR wash-up balance of NZD 47 million that will be carried forward to the next regulatory period for RP2. For us, we're very focused on that next regulatory milestone, with that proposal due in late October this year, and we'd expect to provide an update on that proposal sometime in early November. With that, back to you, JB. Thank you, Mark. As part of our active wholesale strategy, we now have a campaign in market that promotes the fact that New Zealand now runs on fiber. Before I go into future trend and priorities, I just want to reinforce some of Aotearoa's success in broadband connectivity and the strong position of Chorus in that space. New Zealand ranks ninth in terms of fiber broadband penetration among all OECD countries. The coverage of fiber, the fact that 87% of Kiwi homes and businesses can order it, and the take-up at 73%, are among the best. Providing 75% of that fiber coverage, Chorus runs an extensive network with the capability to already support multi-gig services. It's a future-proof network that requires limited investment to keep up with demand, now that the fiber is in the ground. Once customers have experienced fiber, they tend to stay with it, which is why we're focusing on driving fiber uptake. More than 3 million Kiwis are now able to access fiber, and the ones that are on fiber are making the most of it. To show that, it was just on 2 years ago that we saw the biggest spike in average monthly data usage when the Auckland region was locked down for weeks. We're no longer in lockdown, but data usage is pretty much back to where it was during that peak. The average monthly usage in June was 585 GB on fiber, and in July, it was 595 GB. While there's a lot of talk about metaverse, things like virtual reality, we think that the more immediate lift in data usage is going to come from the proliferation of 4K streaming content. Today, 45% of traffic on our network is being driven by video streaming traffic. If all that traffic was in 4K quality, monthly usage would double to about 1,200 gigabytes per month. If all broadcast TV content moved online, monthly usage would be in the order of 2,000 gigabytes. As Kiwi viewing trends are likely to catch up with what is happening internationally, and especially in things like 4K live sport, we do expect that this will drive demand for high-speed, reliable internet. This kind of demand can also snowball because video and latency requirements grow in tandem. We're clearly seeing new applications that are driving greater bursts of data download and upload, whether it's for gaming or software updates. At the same time, the number of devices in the home is expected to double every five years. For us, this all points to continued growth in the demand for high bandwidth and speed, low latency, and rock-solid reliability and consistency. There's no question that fiber is the best technology to deliver this and that New Zealand is right up there with the global leaders in that space, as we deploy 8-gig-capable Hyperfibre and also 400 gigabit capacity in our metro networks. As consumer needs evolve, Chorus is also evolving. I've talked previously about our focus shifting to a more operational future now that the fiber rollout is done. We're adopting a new operating model that will help us to streamline the way we respond to trends and deliver better consumer outcomes. This means changing from the very strong, vertically integrated network and product business units that helped us deliver the rollout and large-scale uptake of UFB, to a matrix structure. This structure is centered around 3 value streams that are aligned with our strategic priorities. Access is responsible for high-volume consumer and small business products and is tasked with driving fiber uptake and retention. Infrastructure is focused on higher spec products and charged with leveraging our network and assets to grow new revenues. Fiber Frontier is about extending our fiber coverage beyond our UFB footprint and ultimately retiring our copper services. We plan to have this new structure in place from Q2 to unlock more value out of our great assets. If we look at our strategic focus of winning in core fibre, that will be driven by both the Access and the Infrastructure groups. We believe that we can lift fibre uptake to 80%, and we're seeing strong market dynamics that support this. While some RSPs are keen to grow fixed wireless broadband, many continue to grow market share by offering competitive fibre services and leveraging our latest offers. Our 50 Mbps Home Fiber Starter plan is getting good traction, with several retailers now promoting it at a NZD 50 retail price. We're seeing demand lift, and about 60% of those Home Fiber Starter net adds came from off-net. As I mentioned earlier, 1 Gbps demand also remains strong and is contributing about 40% of adds currently. Over the last few months, we've seen larger retailers starting to offer Hyperfibre, which is a great development. In the current year, you can expect us to see leveraging our copper withdrawal program even harder to make sure that we grow uptake in our UFB footprint. Especially, we're gonna be putting more focus on smaller UFB2 communities. We'll keep driving activations from our installed base of inactive fibre sockets. We're also continuing to take a considered approach to product pricing. We're holding pricing on our Home Fiber Starter and on Hyperfibre plans while applying inflation to most others. The new operating model means that the Infrastructure and the Fiber Frontier teams will bring greater focus to developing potential opportunities. We were pleased this year to see our new Power Sense service get immediate traction by helping power companies deal with the effect of the weather events. We're completing new rack space for our Auckland Edge Centre. We already have orders for about 30% of that. Backhaul is also an area where we think that we can develop more, and we've connected 7 data center nodes, as well as seeing more cell site demand. Smart Locations is an area that we haven't talked about much before, but we're approaching several thousand connections in that space, and these are for things like traffic cameras, digital billboards, and so on. We've seen 19% growth last year in that space. The infrastructure team will also look after the new property development, and as you've heard Mark say, that's had a record year. You can see that we completed build for about 33,000 lots in FY23, and the volume of orders remains solid, about a little bit below the peak. I mentioned at the half year that we were looking at taking fiber further into rural areas. We've issued now a tender for 10,000 premises that are adjacent to our UFB footprint or existing fiber. About 60% of those are off net, we expect to have a view of that project sometime later in FY 2024. As we've said before, any rural expansion beyond that remains subject to business casing, also to regulatory and policy outcomes. The growth in consumer broadband needs and the global shift to fiber has reinforced our belief that the copper network is approaching the end of its technological life. Our copper connections reduced by a third in FY 2023, with just 240,000 remaining. Of the 100,000 reduction, the vast majority were in our UFB footprint, and they migrated to Chorus fiber. That's why we expect to be a pure fiber business company within a decade, with copper retired in our UFB areas by the end of 2026, and then in non-fiber areas by the early 2030s. We have about 90,000 copper connections remaining in our UFB areas, the Access team will be managing our withdrawal program. We're no longer selling copper in these areas, we expect to issue another 30,000 withdrawal notices this year, closing another 750 cabinets and targeting the continuation of a high broadband retention rates when we do so. In the areas that are provided by other fiber companies, the LFCs, we'll take an economic approach to copper withdrawal, we're already conducting some trials with them. In non-fiber areas, we have about 150,000 copper connections remaining. The Commerce Commission has already noted that this is less than half of the market. The growth of mobile coverage and the emerging satellite offerings mean that the copper legacy obligations that we have in those areas are less and less relevant, and this should be reflected in the Commission's regulatory review of copper services, which is due to be completed by 2025. I've talked previously about fiber's green credentials. FY23 was another record year for data traffic on our network, with 7,400 petabytes. Despite that ongoing growth, the efficiency of fiber means that we can carry more data while realizing electricity reduction. This year, we reduced electricity by 5% as we began to shut down the copper. Our target ultimately is to have a 25% reduction by 2030. We also saw our Scope 1 and 2 emissions fall by 24% from the year before, and we've begun preparing for our first climate statement, which is due next year. You can read about this and also our digital inclusions and DEI initiatives in the sustainability report that was also released today. In summary, and before going to Q&A, you know, FY23 was a solid year from an operational point, with growing fiber takeup, despite a very challenging environment. Our financial results were solid, as the positive EBITDA impact of delaying some of the initiatives, due to our shortage in field resource, allowed us to absorb the one-off costs of extreme weather events. For FY24, we plan to continue to grow overall revenues and deliver modest EBITDA growth, despite catching up with some of the delayed initiatives and the impact of high inflation. Data consumption continues to reinforce the competitive positioning and the future-proof nature of fiber compared to other technologies. For us, it is disappointing to see that some retailers are not offering all our products to their customers, especially the low-cost Home Fiber Starter product or our high-speed Hyperfibre range. It is something that we really hope the regulator will start questioning. We also think that it would be in the interest of customers to be transparently and fairly presented with all technology options by retail service providers, because it is still often too hard to find a full range of fiber product. I was recently highlighted in a BusinessDesk article. Customer preferences should drive technology choices, not network economics, because ultimately, there's no such thing as fiber-like products. You're either on fiber or you're not, and you will notice the difference. With that, let's now go to the questions, which will be moderated by the operator. Operators, do we have any questions? Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Arie Dekker with Jarden. Please go ahead. Oh, good morning. Yeah, firstly, just on, on revenue guidance, just at the lower end, and, and thinking about where, you know, I accept the comments on, on field services, but, you know, the bulk of the revenue obviously comes from, from, from fiber, mass market and to a much lesser extent, copper, where, where you've got, you know, very strong inflation going through on, on all core products. Yeah, at the lower end of guidance, can you just sort of give us some visibility on what you're assuming around connection loss, in line with FY23 or, or, or, or not at, or, or worse? Then also economic conditions, like, are, are you assuming trade down to, to cheaper retail products? You obviously have the NZD 60 fiber retail product in the market now. Just, yeah, what are the assumptions on those two things? Yeah, no, thank you for that question, Arie. I, I'd say, you know, on the, on the guidance for revenues, we continue to plan the same trends that we've seen last year. We continue to plan for a uptake increase in terms of fiber take-up. You know, we, we grow by 4% last year on the UFB footprint. You know, there is strong indications that this uptake is continuing to increase. On the copper losses, you know, overall, we dropped less total connections this year than we did last year. We're definitely seeing a bit of an uptake, especially outside of the UFB footprint, in terms of copper, broadband, and voice reductions. Those would be included in our revenue assumptions going forward. From a product mix perspective, we still see the fact that the starter fiber product, the 50 megabits product, is growing as a good thing. You know, I mentioned that about 60% of the net add in that product were from off net. It tells us that, you know, with this product, we're actually targeting a segment of the market that is currently not with us, either on copper or, or, or on other fiber products. We're not seeing signs of a downgrade in terms of product mix. And we just continue to believe that that Hyperfibre product, 50 megabits service, will continue to grow. Sure. Just, just a quick point of clarification on Mark's dividend policy comment, and it being in effect. Can you just clarify, is that open-ended in terms of term, or are you going to review policy when, when you see where RP2 settings will land next calendar year? No, I think it's the first year in place, Ari. We've put in for the, the 60%-80% range, and we were, we were comfortable that that actually would, would see us through to the second through the second regulatory period as well. See you through second regulatory. Great. Thank you. Another point of clarification, just quickly on the OpEx. That NZD 10 million of, that you're guiding to, is that on a normalized OpEx base? Yes, if I, if I understand what you're saying. I mean, I, I think, you know, probably the best way to, to think about it, if I, if I think about our EBITDA guidance range, is either we're doing it on a reported numbers or we're doing it on an underlying basis. The NZD 10 million applies in, in, in either case, which is why I'd say, you know, our aim was for ongoing, moderate EBITDA, EBITDA growth. If you were to take our midpoint as an example on the EBITDA range at, say, the NZD 690, you're either comparing that NZD 690 to a NZD 672 as a reported basis, or you're comparing NZD 682 on an underlying basis to. You've, you've then got to add the NZD 10 on, to the midpoint to get to NZD 700. Either way, you're looking at roughly that NZD 20 million of, of growth. I hope that makes sense. Yeah. But yeah, well, yeah, I, I guess what I was asking was, you know, there were one-off costs and your, your adjusted costs were NZD 299. I can think about the NZD 10 million being NZD 10 million of additional- Yes OpEx on the 299. Yes. Yeah. No, that's cool. Then just on the operating model changes, you know, take your comments that, you know, you're bedding it in and, obviously, there's broader focus for them beyond sort of cost out. Can you just perhaps, JB, just talk briefly to whether there is any ambition for those operating model changes to ultimately result in cost savings, you know, and on what timeframe that might be? Yep, that's a good question. Look, listen, the, the primary objective for the op model change is to really unlock the value that we've created now that we've finished the build of the UFB footprint. You know, the, the old operating model with really strong horizontal business units, served us really well to deliver the UFB program on time and on budget. Now the focus has moved to unlock the value that exists in this asset, and that's why we're moving to this value stream model, with three value streams that have a very focused and dedicated teams that are looking at specific market segments and growth initiatives. With, with Access on the kind of big volumes, broadband products that we provide, with infrastructure, looking at the more complex services and also adjacent revenue opportunities, and with Fiber Frontier, looking at the rural and regional strategy. The core primary focus of this value stream model is to have dedicated team really focused on specific growth opportunities, with, you know, very sharp, short, medium, and long-term strategies, and also with an ability to better deliver end to end. The primary objective is not to reduce cost, but, you know, that being said, you can definitely count on the long-term DNA of Chorus being a very efficient operator, to continue to be something that will play out as we implement that new op model. Sure. Then just lastly, on the CapEx guidance, and just looking to understand that a little bit better. Just on the Layer 2 CapEx, would you expect that to be similar in 2024 to 2023? Can you just talk briefly about where most of that Layer 2 CapEx is going and how long you'd expect it to be at these sorts of levels? Yeah, Arie, look, I mean, I think that Layer 2 CapEx recognizes some of the scaling for network and network augmentation, and actually building for future demand and capacity. Most notably, the, the Hyperfibre capability. We see that opportunity, and that's, that's obviously increased in FY23, and we'd expect that, as we roll out the network as well, and meet that future demand, that that would be over the next couple of years as well. Just in terms of the installations, do you expect to continue to do installations in excess of your net connections and fiber at a similar level as FY23, or would you expect that gap to close? Well, I, I, as you saw, you know, because of the, the shortage in, in field workforce, this year was, was a quite special one, where we basically, really focused the effort of the managed migration teams on activating, the premises where an ONT had already been installed. You were seeing this in the graph that we covered during the presentation. We now have the field workforce resources that allow us to go back to this active mana- m- managed migration plan. It's something that have served us really well, especially now that we're in a phase of active copper disconnection in the UFB footprint. Yes, you'll continue to see us focus some of those installations in a proactive install mode, knowing that the vast majority of them actually turn into active connections within 12 to 18 months. And, uh, Ari, you know, I- And then la- Sorry, Ari, I was just gonna just add, too, I'd recognize that, you know, the guidance that we'd set for FY23 was NZD 90-NZD 110. Obviously, that was suppressed. We were at NZD 92 for the year, but it was suppressed given the, the technician shortages in the main and some of those weather events. You know, that demand rolls forward as well. Yeah, the last bit to this, my, my, my stream, is just on customer retention costs. I mean, NZD 30 million, I mean, in some ways, you know, depending on, on how you look at it, it's quite high on an average net connection basis. You know, albeit you're managing churn and that sort of thing as well. Can you just sort of talk to how you're thinking about customer retention costs in 2024 as net connections do start to slow down? Are you gonna continue to invest at that sort of level, or what, or should we expect to see it come down? No, I mean, listen, the, the good news for us is that, the, the churns, that, that we experience of people that are on fibre continues, to remain, very low. We do still need to continue to invest, and you'll see that in the, in the, incentive, plans that we have and in the retention plans that we have. Yes, it's something that you'll continue to see a, a focus on from us. Okay. Thank you. Your next question comes from Aaron Ibbotson with Forsyth Barr. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi there, good morning, and apologies. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question was actually just on general data demand, which we don't talk about so much. You know, if you look at the one gigabit adoption, it seems to have slowed quite dramatically. I'm just curious, you know, what, what your sense is amongst the end consumer. You know, you're paying $10 extra for 3, 4 times the speed, and your penetration grows from whatever, 23%-24%. How do you see that going forward? I know there are big consultancy forecasts over the next 5-7 years, but if you look more on the ground, what you're seeing for data demand? Thank you. Yeah, no, thank you, Aaron. you know, I'd say, the, we, we're still very encouraged by the demand that we see in the gigabit and now, multi-gigabit service with the, with the Hyperfibre product. you know, while, we got from 23%-24%, in, in terms of the overall footprint, when you look at the new customers that are signing up, the net new add, it's about 40% of that that's coming in that One Gig and above type of services. you know, the, the average monthly consumption data that I shared, the 595 GB per month, of traffic, you know, again, matching where we were when we were in lockdown period, is the, the main driver for that. Many households now have multiple people using, a broadband stream in parallel. That's when you start needing the 1 gigabit, service, when you have multiple people streaming, content, in the household. We do not see this as a reducing trend. In fact, we continue to see this as a future growth area for our product mix. Okay, and, and, you know, if I could just probe a little bit, because, you know, previously we've talked about, you know, Wi-Fi 6, and you know, where, where the actual speed is experienced for the end consumer, how many uses them on Wi-Fi and how many use the data, you know, plugged in. Presumably the vast majority is experienced the speed via Wi-Fi rather than, you know, plugged in. Do you have any data on that? You know, I look at the same chart, and I draw slightly different conclusions from you. You know, it looks like it's been flat for two, three years. I appreciate there's a lot of COVID disruptions there, but you, you can squeeze 600 GB of data out, over 300 Mbps connection quite quickly. You know, what is the main reason you think for the 1 gigabit uptake having slowed down? Is it price conscious, or is it, has it been just less advertising around it from your retailers, or? Yeah, I, I, again, I'm not sure I would agree with the, with the qualification of it having dropped off. We're still seeing a, a really strong number of people that are signing up to this product. On the Wi-Fi point that you're making, what's encouraging for us is to see that a number of the retailers are now providing a Wi-Fi 6-capable modem as the modem that they provide with, with the service. This is definitely the case for, for some of the retail service providers. So that will actually make it easier for people to experience the full benefit of a 1 gig connection in their household. What, what's driving that, as I said in the presentation, is a continuing growth in video streaming. If you think about the viewing trends in New Zealand compared to what's happening overseas, you know, we have a% of people that are using that 1 terabyte of data per month. That's a lot lower than what you see in the U.S. or in some European countries. Why, why would viewing habits in New Zealand be any different? We still continue to believe that video streaming growth, and in particular, the 4K one, will drive people to look at those higher speed plans. Okay. Thank you. Second question. You know, you gave a lot of detail around the interest expense, and I'm sure we can sort of figure it out ourselves, but do, do you have anything you'd be willing to share when it, when it comes to just expected weighted average interest expense for FY24? Interest rate, so weighted average interest rate, basically. Yeah. Well, Aaron, overall, I'd just point to, you know, where we landed at the end of June this year, where we're at 65% fixed, but actually, and I think that's a 5.4% effective interest rate. I think what that chart showed in the slide as well, is that we've been able to take advantage of having a portion of our, our interest, our debt actually is floating over the last few years and take advantage of those rates. Obviously, the interest, interest rates have increased rapidly over the past year. We do have in place, though, forward-looking hedges from the end of this year, this calendar year, that, that would ensure that we're over 70% and again, of our debt that's actually fixed, and we'd be comfortable with that. you know, that, that's going to ensure that we're at rates that are lower than that are in market today. Okay, I guess we'll run the numbers ourselves, but thank you. Finally, I just wanted to know if you had any sort of qualitative, you know, comments you can add, maybe from the regulator or elsewhere, with regards to your indicative sort of long-term investment opportunities that you've put out to the market. Have you got any indication of whether this is going to be well-received, or where, where there are some sticky points or anything you could add of a qualitative remarks? I'm sure you're in regular contact. Thank you. Yeah. Listen, I, I think it's probably just a little bit early, 'cause as, as you know, we are putting together our RP2 submissions to the Commission. I think that rather than look at the indicative data that we've put at, at the half year, they're waiting to see what the numbers will look up in the document. One of the things I'll say is that in preparation for this RP2, we did a big consultation of consumers and asked them what they valued in terms of investment going forward, in terms of resilience, in terms of future capability, higher speeds, also in terms of digital equity and being able to grow the coverage of UFB footprint. So this is, some of the elements that are, part of our UFB submission. In terms of, you know, Commerce Commission's reaction, I think they, they, they do support, in general, resilience. They do support, growing, the fiber footprint. They do support, better capacity, and, and faster speed. You know, it's too early to, to really comment until we've put the submissions out, and they've started to comment on it. Okay, that was it for me. Thank you very much. Thanks, Aaron. The next question comes from Brian Han with Morningstar. Please go ahead. Thank you. Just a few more questions on expenses, if I may. In the other network cost line, the NZD 3 million network and property optimization costs incurred, would that be a recurring cost into FY24? If so, how much do you think it will be this year? On advertising costs, what do you think the sustainable advertising cost base will be in this post-COVID environment? I'll, I'll take the advertising one as, as, as a high-level answer, I'll throw back to Mark on the specific ones that, that you asked. You know, we've, we've been in market with what we've described as an active wholesaler approach. We feel that it's still important that we are in market to, you know, clearly explain to customers, the benefits of fiber and why they should consider fiber when they look at a broadband services. You can expect a continuation of that campaign in particular in the UFB footprint, because ultimately, this is what drives customers asking for that service going forward. On the other one, I don't know if, Mark, you've got a chance. Yeah. cover that? Yeah, Brian. The NZD 3 million that was in there this year, I mean, you, you look at where we are withdrawing from copper, and there are costs involved of, of actually being able to do that on the cabinets of initially mothballing the cabinets. In, in effect, that we don't have customers on them, so we get the electricity savings at that point, but we haven't physically removed the cabinet, which would, would happen later on. Those are some of those optimization costs that go in there. From an ongoing basis, that's also some of the work that was delayed out of 2023 and has shifted into 2024. If you think about, roughly speaking, we've, from a cabinet withdrawal perspective, we've reduced by 400 or so in the year to 2023, and the plans are to reduce over 700 in the 2024 year. There's a significant step up, and I think, again, reflects our desire to accelerate that copper withdrawal. Gotcha. Great. While you're there, Mark, the question for you, if I may: as you assume the COO role, should we expect any notable changes in the way Chorus works with resellers, apart from all that advertising that you're going to do yourself? Well, you know, I, I think, for one, gi-given my previous experience, on the retail side, I think that probably brings a bit of insight as well, being able to work at a strategic level, with, with the retailers. I think there are opportunities there that I see for, for Chorus, and the retailers as well to come together. Look, I think, from a COO perspective, I think what it really enables is it's bringing the customer into the, into the conversation in an integrated way, but where you're bringing the commercial and the finance elements together. Part of that, I'd recognize, Brian, as, as just a maturing of an organization as well, as we shift out of what was largely the build program and, and now into an operate and run, and, and how we really drive that optimization. Great. Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks, Brian. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Your next question comes from Philip Campbell with UBS. Please go ahead. Morning, everyone. Just a quick one for Mark. Just on the FY24 sustaining CapEx, obviously, it's kind of gone up from NZD 200 million up to NZD 220 million-NZD 240 million. I just kind of wanted to get your view on that. It sounds as though, reading between the lines, some of it is kind of CPI related, and some of it possibly is one-off, but I just wanted to get your view on kind of going forward beyond 2024, like, what that sustaining CapEx level- Yeah. would be. Yeah, sure. Morning, Phil. Look, cou-couple of things I'd note. Fi-first one on timing, and I think when we look at the, at the chart, and you look back over the last couple of years, I think we'd say, you know, the NZD 160 odd million in 2022 was a bit of an aberration, given all the COVID impacts and delays. I think where we've landed at 2023 at NZD 207 million, and then moving to a 2024 view in a range of, of NZD 220 million-NZD 240 million. Yeah, there's, there's a, there's a big, piece of that, that's driven by inflationary, impact, which is obviously real. I think equally, some of the, some of the initiatives that we've talked to in part of that network scaling, so augmentation of the network and actually building for that, demand of, and capacity in the future as well, takes time. It's not a, not a case of waiting and switching a, a light on. There's equally some life cycle spend. As, as the network gets to being 12 years old, obviously some of that life cycle spend that goes out over, over multi years as well, starts to come into play. Obviously, then offset by, the, sustaining CapEx for copper as we keep withdrawing. Great. So just so I understand correctly, if we're going to say 25 and was trying to estimate it. Would it be still around that level, given that most of it's CPI, or would you see it just drop back a little bit? Well, I mean, look, the first qualifier I'd say is, given that we're in the process for the RP2 submission, you know, and what the allowances come out, that's all subject to, to the ComCom. However, I think where we see 2024, you know, you could see some of those multi-year life cycle programs, the scaling and augmentation of the network for future demand and capacity, they'll, they'll continue to come through in the short term. Okay, awesome. I just noticed, normally, you used to kind of disclose, you know, the kind of copper OpEx and revenues versus the fiber OpEx and revenues this time around. Is that because you've got the RP2 coming up, or is it? Exactly, we're still working through that, that process for the submission in, in October this year. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Maybe just, just one last one for JB. Just, because I did notice in the annual report kind of outlook statement, you did kind of talk about this Wi-Fi issue. Because I suppose if we have got such big demand, and we've got, you know, 4K transition and stuff like that, you know, even a 1 Gig connection on the ComCom numbers is kind of like average speeds of, like, 280 Mbps on the home. You know, does that act as a bit of a constraint, or do you, do you end up with the possibility of somehow retailers trying to switch out modems to try and give us Wi-Fi 6 and, and other means to try and get faster in-home speeds? No, no, that, that's a good question, and, and just to be clear, the, the Commerce Commission does show that, you know, the, the measure at the, at the box, is indeed, delivering the 1 Gig service. It's when you actually use Wi-Fi to, to access that service that you would experience different speed. That's why, you know, for us, we do want to encourage a conversation with the Retail Service Providers, but also the, the providers of, of Wi-Fi extended, to really lift the standard so that Wi-Fi 6 is generally spread throughout premises. People can really realize the benefit of, of what a 1 Gig connection to your home actually is. You know, it, it is a full chain from the fiber into the home, going into the modem, going onto Wi-Fi, and then going onto each of the devices that you use in your home, to consume that, that, that stream. That ultimately is the experience that an end user will have when they, when they use an application. We will continue to push that. It is a, a space that the retailers have said they want to have control of, but ultimately, the gateway that is installed in the home is a gateway that is service provided by your Retail Service Providers. We'll continue to push for one, the Commerce Commission to do that measuring, so that there is transparency about what the efficiency of the services, and especially the home modems are, so that consumers can make the right choice. Great! Thanks, JB. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back for closing remarks. Okay. Well, thank you very much for everybody who joined this broadcast. It was Mark's first one, and hopefully, we answered all the questions that you had. We look forward to catching up with some of you during the Rogue Show over the next few weeks. Thanks again, and talk to you in 6 months.