Good evening everyone, and welcome to the, NZL Annual Results Call. I've got with me the Chairman of New Zealand Rural Land Company, Rob Campbell. Well, good morning, and thank you for participating in this call. Just a few comments from me as Chair of NZL before I hand over to Richard on behalf of our our manager. First, I just want to thank our equity and debt partners in the business for their support during the period, their ongoing support. Also like to acknowledge the contribution, of course, that our lessees make towards the success of this business, and they're very much partners with us in this endeavour. And finally, to thank the team at New Zealand Rural Land Management for their handling of the company's detailed affairs. The board is not happy with the share price of the business, and we believe that it is fundamentally undervalued. But we will focus, as we have been doing, on the implementation of the business and our business plan. I have to say that the 2023 results which we are presenting, satisfying in terms of the fact that they meet the objectives that we set out for the business. It is performing exactly as we anticipated that it would. We have opportunities to grow and improve our business, like all, but investors are going to see during this year, as planned, rental and committed rental increases flow through, improvements in the earnings of the business again, exactly as we intended at the beginning. We have no reason as a board to be changing the strategy that we're pursuing. We believe that if we continue to pursue this strategy alongside our new partner, Roc Partners, in the part in the limited partnership exercise which we'll touch on in more detail, alongside of that, we continue to have very good opportunities ahead to increase the value of this business. We'll touch on those opportunities as we proceed. Thank you for joining us, and I'll hand over to Richard for the detailed presentation. Thanks very much, Rob, and thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the call this morning. I've got a brief presentation that will touch on both the financial results as at the end of our financial year being the 31st of December, 2023, and it will touch on some subsequent activity that's happened in the earlier part of the FY24 year, which is the last couple of months being January, February, 2024. I'll share my screen. Are you all with me? So, a summary of the FY23 result and subsequent events for FY24. So FY23 finished with a net profit after tax of NZD 10.9 million and an AFFO of NZD 6 million. We've seen net asset value per share grow from NZD 1.25 at listing to NZD 1.62 at the end of December, 2023. $1.60. $1.60. 1.6002. As of the 31st of December, 2023, total returns for the business that include NAV growth and dividends paid have been 32.6% in total or 9.9% compounding annually. AFFO has grown from NZD 0.0413 per share in FY22 to NZD 0.0435 per share at the end of FY23, and we're forecasting an FY AFFO per share of NZD 0.0503-NZD 0.0538 per share in the FY24 year. And so we've seen some reasonably consistent growth, which we expect to continue in free cash flow per share. Our gearing ended the FY23 year at 36.2%. It's lowered to 32.9% post the Roc transaction and subsequent acquisitions. We've seen our rural land portfolio materially increase its diversification throughout FY23 and the start of FY24, with forestry acquisitions and further horticultural acquisitions. The company has reinstated its dividend with an amended dividend policy targeting a payout ratio of 60%-90% of AFFO, which gives the company some flexibility to ensure it has the flexibility to be able to deploy some free cash flow or operating earnings in the most accretive way that it deems possible. The on-market share buyback program continues, and we've seen Roc Partners purchase 25% of the NZL portfolio, that both validates the strategy that we've set out as a business to embark on and partnering with NZL for future growth opportunities. In terms of the Roc Partners transaction that happened post balance date, i.e., early in FY24, it has been announced to market, and so I won't label the point, but a 25% equity interest has been sold to Roc Partners in the NZL land rural land portfolio. That was sold for NZD 44.2 million in cash. NZL's used the proceeds to repay its $11.8 million convertible note and spend a further $20.7 million without any debt to fund orchard and forestry land acquisitions. The benefit of the transaction was capital recycling at a substantial premium to the market capitalization or the market share price of equity at the time. It improved the financial position of the company and provided the company with some flexibility and ability to take part in further opportunity. And it also gives it a long-term strategic partner, a very experienced investor in the similar asset classes. In terms of the future in terms of the further acquisitions that were undertaken in early FY24, the company has purchased via its limited partnership. So bear in mind that Roc has a 25% interest in the rural land portfolio. Has bought some apple orchard land only in Hawke's Bay and some forestry land in the Manawatū-Whanganui region. These purchases have seen the diversity of the portfolio increase. It's seen the weighted average lease term of the portfolio increase materially, and it's seen the gearing of the company lowered by just under 10%. In terms of outlook, the dividend has been reinstated with an effective date of the 1st of January 2024. So the company will pay a dividend of between 60%-90% of its AFFO or free cash flow per share based on the first half of this financial year. And the company continues with its share buyback program if it sees accretive value in shares on market. In terms of the company's outlook and our FY24 forecast, this year sees a number of CPI increases on its leases. It will see 100% of its forestry assets experience a CPI increase this year. It'll see 54% of its pasture leases up for a rental increase on the 1st of June 2024. In terms of NZL's hedging on its borrowing, 64% of its total borrowing is hedged. It still retains some cash on hand from Roc Partners, which it's currently investigating options for deploying this cash in a way that best serves shareholders. And NZL's forecasting 7 to 7.5% 7-7.5 million dollars of total AFFO for FY24. This excludes just over NZD 1 million of earnings from put/c all arrangements as well, which brings us to an AFFO forecast of between NZD 0.0503 and NZD 0.0538 per share for the FY24 year. Just a reminder that the new dividend policy ratio is to pay out between 60%-90% of AFFO. I've included in here a chart that was developed by Craigs Investment Partners. It demonstrates quite an important point, we think, when we're looking at listed property vehicles listed on the NZX and future growth opportunities for free cash flow per share. What this chart shows is current yield in dark green and Craigs' forecast growth in yield in the light green by FY27 and what the combination of the current plus future forecast yield is likely to be for companies to give investors an idea of the potential future growth that may exist in certain listed property vehicles. You'll see on the right-hand side that NZL is forecast to experience some material growth in its free cash flow per share. I would say that on the back of the type of asset that it owns being rural land, being in, in our view, a reasonably or relatively lower-risk type of asset, that this that some growth in earnings and free cash flow per share is a reasonably positive thing against that risk backdrop. In terms of our FY23 results, the highlights are total returns, which I've touched on earlier, are net asset value growth from NZD 1.25 per share at IPO to NZD 1.6002 per share as at the end of 31st of December, 2023. Gives total returns, which is the NAV growth plus dividends, of 32.6% in total or 9.9% compounding, which is, which is, we believe, for the type of asset in the environment we've been operating in, a satisfactory result. AFFO has increased again in FY23, and we're forecasting for it to increase again in FY24. In terms of high-level total numbers, the assets the total assets of the business are NZD 369.8 million. Net asset value is NZD 223.1 million. Net asset value per share is NZD 1.602 per share. Gearing at the end of the financial year was 36.2%, but as we've touched on, this is lowered to 32.9% subsequent to the Roc transaction. We've seen further and meaningful diversification of the portfolio, both by tenant and by sector. In FY23, as we've touched on, we saw the acquisition of a forestry estate that was funded with just over NZD 25 million of a green loan supported by Rabobank and a convertible note and the proceeds of a capital raise. During the year, AFFO guidance was lifted. The dividend was suspended because of an unnaturally low share price. So the repurchase of shares and repayment of the convertible note was deemed by the company to be a very accretive use of free cash flow for shareholders. Obviously, that dividend has been reinstated. In terms of specific financials, the financial year saw free funds per share of NZD 0.0474 per share, an AFFO of NZD 0.0435 per share, a net profit after tax of NZD 10.85 million, and earnings per share of NZD 0.0806 per share. Again, total assets of NZD 369.8 million and total equity or net asset value of NZD 223.1 million. Debt ended the year at just over 36% gearing, brought down to 32.9% gearing post Roc transaction. Our weighted average interest cost is 5.8%. Our weighted average term to expiry is 2.3 years, and we're currently 64% hedged. Total returns for the business since listing have seen an 8.6% compounding annual growth rate of net asset value. It's seen AFFO per share grow at 24% per year. We haven't included the FY21 year in this because there were some rent holidays in the first year. If you included the FY21 year in this calculation, the compounding annual growth rate would be 70.3%, but we don't think it's an annual accurate reflection. We've seen dividends per share based on the midpoint of FY24 forecast grow at 32.5% compounding annual growth rate. In terms of our sustainability program, we continue to work on mapping our current portfolio to look for marginal land that can be used for carbon sequestration and/or timber and sediment control by planting trees around the hedges. We've initiated work on several projects across our portfolio. We've released to the market our sustainability program with our 5 pillars, with governance being the 6th pillar that ties it all together. Highlights of this program for the year is that we've rolled out our Land for Life program across our portfolio with our tenants. We continue to implement and report on it. We've drawn down a green loan, and we've seen planting and other initiatives approved and started actioning on the 2 properties. I won't run everyone through the appendices, but in our appendices, and you'll find this on the NZL's website, is the investment summary, a further breakdown of our portfolio as at today, a profile of tenant and lease concentration alongside a small update on carbon and dairy markets and key people foreign ownership rules and levels, and index inclusions and broker research coverage. With that, I will open up for questions. I've got some hands up here. I'll, Arie, you had your hand up first. The benefit of sitting at the front of the class. Thanks, Richard, and, and good to see you, Rob. Hi, Arie. First question. I guess just in terms of the sourcing of assets, I mean, you guys have clearly been, you know, very successful on, on that front and, and don't seem to be having issues there. You've now got a partner sort of on board as well. You know, and there's a bit more capacity left in the balance sheet as well, which is great. But, I mean, how are you thinking about, I guess, you know, the prerequisites, you know, and I'm thinking about, you know, share price in particular and, and, and, and versus sort of, I guess, your, your NTA in that, for, I guess, raising capital at some point again in time to, to grow. And how are you also thinking about allocating the capital or the capacity that you've got between sort of growing the portfolio, which is obviously on strategy, but also the option around buyback? We've left ourselves some ongoing capacity with AFFO payout if, you know, we are still a small company, and there aren't a lot of shares that trade day to day. We have left ourselves some capacity within our free cash flow that we produce each year to return cash to shareholders via dividend buyback if the shares provide enough value. Obviously, and I think that most on the call would agree, growing the company is an important as well, but we need to be very careful and slow and thoughtful about the way we deploy any capital, be it Roc proceeds, free cash flow each year. And you're right, between shares offering value, any purchases offering value, we need to be reasonably judicious about that. Your point on raising capital, with the share price where it is, we wouldn't be looking to raise capital. We certainly don't have any intentions of doing so in the near to medium future. We just have to, we just have to make an assessment of buyback, you know. of buying back versus buying other assets based on what we think's gonna add the most long-term value to shareholders, bearing in mind that we've left ourselves some flexibility over the long term to be able to deploy some free cash flow each year if the opportunity looks attractive. Yeah. Arie, we continue to see attractive opportunities that we would, in an ideal world, take advantage of. But Richard's quite right. From the board's point of view, we will not be approaching the market to raise additional capital in relationship to the current share price; that simply, simply would be wrong to do so, and we won't be doing it. We do have some limited capacity with current cash resources, and the flexibility we have around dividend. But frankly, this year is not really a growth year for this business. It's a consolidation year that we're in at the present time. Yep. So far as the board and management company are concerned. We've got plenty of capacity, and we've yeah, we're very happy with where we are. No, no. That's great. And then in terms of catalyst for the share price re-rate and obviously, you know, guess the key thing, you know, the direction of the market's obviously difficult. But obviously a clear one, and you've got, you know, very good guidance out there in terms of growth for this year. But, you know, the catalyst for realizing that and sort of confidence, one of them is the, you know, the step up in that first circa half of the past four leases. I guess when will NZL be making the announcement to the market, sort of confirming that successful rollover, you know, of the lease and on those with the ratcheted up CPI? When can we expect you to confirm that for the market? Arie, we won't do that until we get the. So it happens, but we could not be more confident. As you would imagine, we have intensively reviewed the financials of the businesses concerned, and we have absolutely no reason to think that we will not get that cash. We strongly believe that we will. We'll confirm it when we get it. That's exactly right. And plus, you know, alongside our own. Thorough work. We've had an external party come in and do exactly the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. And I understand that, but so, is that an announcement that, you know, like, will confirmation of that be sort of in April or May? No. The leases don't roll over till June, so probably. July. They'll be due on the 20th of July, and so we'll announce when we see the money in the bank. Okay. No, perfect. Then just last question, just on the accounting going forward, will NZL be proportionately accounting for its interest in the LP, going forward? We're just seeking some guidance on that at the moment. It's a technical accounting issue about where we consolidate or report our and then back out minority interests or report the 75% in the, in the limited partnership. I'm told by the technical accounting guys that it's an issue that's been investigated and even gone up beyond the XRB Board. And so they believe that it's consolidated, but we're just seeking final analysis on that. We've made a note about that in our accounts. We're just seeking final verification. Yeah. Arie, from the board's point of view, we don't see any commercial issue, either way in that. And I think it's quite likely that, well, we will report in full compliance for the accounting conventions. It may well be that we need to, in our presentations, cover it a couple of ways. So there's absolute commercial clarity about it. Yeah. We'll bridge to make it really clear anyway, but it's a technical accounting issue that they're analyzing at the moment. So thanks for that. And also just, you know, for the record too, congratulations on that Roc deal and sort of getting that across the line. Thanks. Thanks, Arie. Is that a? Is that your questions? Yes, it is. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Nick Hill. Hi. Good morning. Can you hear me? Sure can. Good morning, Nick. Yeah. Just following on from Arie. Congratulations on the deal with Roc Partners. That was great to see. I'll start off following from where Arie left off and asking about some technical accounting questions. Just in the AFFO guidance that included the put/ call option, it excluded the put/ call income, the non-cash component. Going forward, would your reported AFFO also exclude this non-cash put/ call income? Just, I didn't hear the last bit. Will our. Will your future reported AFFO figures also exclude this non-cash put/ call income component? Correct. Great. Okay. Thanks. And then just looking at your revaluations, you reported a positive NZD 7.4 million revaluation gain for the period. Just looking into the detail, there were negative revaluations across the board apart from Manawatū-Whanganui, so the forestry estates. And that. It's the only place we own forestry. So what we really saw was sort of negative 2%-3% or 4% on some dairy assets, which were, you know, in our view, that weren't particularly material and saw slight revaluation upwards on NZD 70 million worth of forestry assets. One of the forestry assets was a bare land block that got planted out, and there's quite a bit of development margin in doing that because foreigners aren't able to. Oh, okay. So it was basically done on the planting. It wasn't, say, to do with the policy U-turn on NZ Emissions Trading Scheme in the end of 2023 or anything, was it? NZUs have a big impact on the value of the property. So, there are a couple of things. So if you take a really unproductive steep sheep and beef farm, add trees to it, and can produce NZUs off it, the forward look of the NZUs has a big impact on the value of it. So the outward looking, the outward look for NZUs is really favorable, and you can see in our financials, we sort of take a midpoint between two different price paths. And there's a big range between those, and so need to understand that. Secondly, because there's quite high demand for forestry, especially big forestry estates from foreigners, the issue that foreigners are facing is they cannot plant bare land blocks. And so by the time you actually have a bare land block planted in trees, there is substantially more value associated with that than just the costs of buying the land and planting with trees because of that development margin. And so, yeah, forestry forestry was up for us. Dairy was flat down very slightly but not materially. Nick, it is an issue for us that the valuation techniques which apply to pastoral land and that apply to forestry land are quite different. So not only is the market experience of those two sectors a bit different, and we'll find that in orchard as well, but the particular gap that Richard's referring to is that technical gap in terms of how the assets are valued. They're quite differently valued. Yep. Okay. Thanks. That was really helpful. I wasn't aware of the difference between the two subsectors. Yeah. I guess just sort of thinking about future acquisitions, you know, you've got the recent acquisitions yielding lease rates of 7.5%, 8.5%, and these were funded by cash, so earnings are accretive. You've got some balance sheet capacity, so assuming you'd use that, back-of-the-envelope calc suggests, you know, 7.7% marginal cost of debt plus 50 basis points of management fees, at least, an IRR target return of 8.2%. Is that what you're sort of, like, looking for in sort of, say, like, more orchard acquisitions, and do you think you can find that? No. Don't think we'll be able to find stuff that is that high, but between 7.5% and 8% starting yield with an uncapped growing CPI rental versus a debt curve that's you know, we take, especially for Orchards, we take a 20-30-year view, which is often the lifespan of some of those leases. And so beyond 25 with the debt curve looking negative versus a starting rate of 7.5%, 7.75%, 8% sort of thing trending upwards, we think that around those levels, that they look attractive over the long term for people. Yeah. Nick, the board is not intending, and we will buy if there are tremendous opportunities available within our current balance sheet capacity. But we have to weigh that against the value to shareholders of buyback, and the conservatism, which is probably appropriate right now in terms of leverage. So you can expect the board to be quite conservative in this period about acquisitions. Okay. Thanks. That's very helpful. That's all from me. Thanks. Which other questions here? Yes. We've got some other questions here. So, Shane Solly's asked, "Can you discuss NZL's hedging strategy?" Yeah. Our ongoing hedging strategy is to have between 40% and 70% of debt hedged at any given time, which is our current policy. Bear in mind that policies can change, but this does allow us enough flex while still having a range that we're targeting. Obviously, at 64% hedged at the moment, we're right in the middle towards the upper end of this range. We will look to have probably recently, you know, continue to have a recently high degree of hedging going forward, and we'll roll a regular program so that we're not waxing and waning too much. Yeah. Shane, just to add to that, we obviously, that's hedging something you review pretty much continuously. But with the Roc partnership on board, we are currently undertaking a review with Roc of what our hedging policy might be on the portfolio going forward, a more comprehensive review. The second question, what does the opportunities here look like for further deploying capital in target sectors? What return ranges would you expect from this deployment? We touched on that a little bit with Nick's questions. The opportunity set looking forward, there is reasonable opportunity in the horticultural space. There's a little bit of hurt in kiwi fruit. There's no hurt but some reasonable buying in apple-type orchards. Bearing in mind that when we look to acquire, we don't really have appetite for any biological assets. We look to be a ground. We saw, you know, you have to own your own house or something but not vines and biological assets that would be on a land, you know, on a primarily land improvements basis with nothing biological. We think that on a risk-adjusted basis, these types of ground lease assets are at sort of the very much lower end of the risk curve. We think we can achieve well over 7% into sort of 8% on those. There's also some forestry-type assets floating around, especially with the development margin that you know, being a domestic buyer of unproductive land and being able to turn that into either carbon sequestration or timber provides us. Sort of a distinct advantage, and, you know, therefore, shareholders. And so we'll continue to look at those like we do all of the time, but that's probably the opportunity set and the range that we're looking at at the moment. Some questions here from Craig Tyson. "How is the revaluation of forestry assets so significant?" Craig, I hope we've answered that question. It's largely development margin across the board of; it's writing a lease slightly above market. You know, 8% is slightly higher than market lease. The NZU outlook has improved over the course of the year. And it's development margin on planting bare land blocks. In FO per share, do you adjust the denominator for the performance fee? Yes. Each year when the performance fee is issued, that increases the shares on issue and therefore increases the denominator, the AFFO denominator. Tenant concentrations increasing. NZ Forest Leasing form the rent roll. Is this a cap? We'll continue to look at this from a risk, from a risk management point of view. We certainly wouldn't see them becoming 50% of our rent roll or anything like that. We, we do consider you know, strong consideration for us is how big is our tenant. And so we will look to have a very you know, a diversified tenant mix and portfolio-type mix and geographical rent mix that the, the relative part of that is New Zealand Forest Leasing is a very large business with over NZD 1 billion of equity. And so having them guarantee leases versus some smaller businesses does provide a lot of comfort as well. You know, we will be managing that against the core metrics we look at with a tenant, which is needing to have a certain amount of equity to guarantee the lease based on the tenure of their lease, so 6 times for a 10-year lease, 12 times for a 20-year lease, etc., and maintaining that at all times. Plus, with certain tenants, we have ICR-type cover as well and some negative pledges on their ability to grow and sell assets if they weren't gonna meet their financial covenants with us. I hope that's. Yeah. Craig, I just add to that. We haven't determined that level as a cap from a board point of view, but I wouldn't expect to see it increase significantly anyway. No. Not significantly. If there are no other questions, I will thank everyone very much for coming today. I appreciate that it's earnings season. And so yeah, a number of you will be busy. So thank you very much, everyone. Yeah. Appreciate the participation. If there are other questions, obviously, of course, we're very happy to answer those as best we can. Thank you. See you bye.